Theater is not in the blood; it's in the cards and how you play them. Most in the shantytown -- The Hill -- were HIV positive. Pushing all their chips in at the last table. They allowed us in the game only because they sensed we were doing the same, but in a different way. Gnostics called it the Second Death. When belief becomes knowledge, it is possible in our short lives, to begin to arrange our eternity. To etch the portraits, the experiences with others, into the face cards that will haunt and hunt us forever. Not all these people we initially love, but as we approach the Second Death, we learn how to live with them. Something like the family you had as a child. We sit at the same table, The Mise-en-Scene and its Double. Genet named it well, the title of his last book, Prisoner of Love.
