the cell-masses' neverending struggle for exceptionality

or something like this.
i just saw... something. a rogue theater group has formed at my former school and they performed their... thing "catharsis" today.
quoting the leaflet, it's a collage of scenes about identity and individualism. it consisted of sixteen small scenes, each and every one revolving around the familiar but still unanswered (and unanswerable?) questions of who, what and why we are.
now, two hours later, i'm still not quite sure what to think of the whole shebang. i somehow feel as if i had been watching a skyscraper without any real kind of foundation being built on promise and goodwill. there was much ado about highly philosophical subjects but mostly without any real substance to it.
the quality of the acting ranged from pretty good to abysmal although i have to say that one or two of the scenes really impressed me.
and again there's that anger rising in me. this was a really nice idea. the kids (oh dear fucking god, today i really felt old) had been writing all the stuff themselves (except for quotations from tucholsky, shakespeare and goethe) and some of the scenes were really, really good.
there was one with a fashion show where the models walked up to a designer who got whispered instructions from an unnamed person and either applauded or ridiculed the model according to those instructions. the crowd watching the fashion show always waited until he had given his verdict until acting accordingly (clapping, boo-ing...) and were completely confused when he failed to assess the current model's outfit.
there was a lot of talk about what individualism is, how it can be achieved and whether it's desirable at all. the scene i liked best was called "individual love". there were two people (the fact that they both were girls was - just as with the rest of the thing - completely irrelevant), one who had just left and one who had just been left a former love. they were talking about what love really is, what it means and why it can be so hard to achieve.
the acting in this part was really solid and every word they said somehow resonated in me and triggered memories, thoughts and emotions. i couldn't help but sit there smiling and stroking my (now heavily diminished) beard.
and that's what i would have liked a lot more. thought-provoking, head-infiltrating, mind-boggling stuff. not the stupid comic relief ("these boots are made for walking"), not the stuff scratching on the surface of too many subjects (politics, individuality, love, loneliness, identity, fame or peer pressure just to name a couple of concepts involved).
focus, kids. focus.
alright, the verdict: four point five out of ten points, four of them for writing, half a point for acting. the rest (visual cues, audio stuff) was not really worth mentioning so i won't.
acceptable for a first-timer but too much teenage tragedy.
alright, one final quote, the subtitle of one of the scenes:

forehead crosses - how individual is the wolf in the herd of sheep?

.
hm.
unsatisfying.
charon

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