Theatre, japanese tourists and people

There is something incredibly liberating about the sight of nine fully grown men and women lying on the ground in a manic scene of desperate hand eating and obsessive compulsive face slapping. The process is quite painful - and having spent several minutes beforehand creating the feel of madness we are all of us in a zone of inward reflection that is hard to step out of. Outside on the pavement and lined up along the window are nine Japanese tourists, faces glued to the glass, cameras at the ready - not quite sure whether these really are genuine St Andrew's students sharing a typical Saturday morning - a local British pagan dance perhaps or just the local insane assylum.
We are of course a theatre group - rehearsing Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' and along the way discovering the joy of losing the inhabitions that are drilled into us from birth. Theatre is something everyone should do. It seems to force you to question norms and self like nothing else - we are indeed all players in our ways - and we play so many parts that sometimes it is easy to lose the centre of ourselves. And so what if learning to go just a bit mad and be the subject of numerous Japanese tourists photos and jokes is a neccesary part of the process fo re-centering oneself - it's bloody worth it!