SEXY ANGEL OF DEATH AGAIN
Watching Death in Mahler's Fourth and remembering Albee's sexy Angel of Death in The Sandbox, I develop the idea that having SEX with the Angel of Death would be a fabulous way to go: people encounter him KNOWING he's the Angel of Death, that he offers death with the sexual act, but they are so attracted to him that they do it anyway, willingly, joyously, for the touch of a perfect experience before there are no more. There could be levels of realizations, thunderstruck thoughts that this might not be a play, but real life, and if they get to the end of the play that the PERFORMER will die, to which the Angel of Death could respond---as Albee has him say, sweetly---"That may be right." There could even be the debate whether death will come on the orgasm of the dying person or the orgasm of the angel, and the dialogue would make it clear then that the ORGASM doesn't have anything to do with the death, the whole thing's a symbol anyway, so it could be ANYTHING that attracts a person very greatly, attracts a person greatly enough to have him give EVERYTHING for the performance of that action, and then the person must live up to the bargain and GIVE everything. It may be indicated that, like the orgasm, the life that's being "spent" is going to be renewed to be "spent" again, going through that ineffable minute at the top of the orgasm where words don't suffice and experience doesn't encompass the magnificence and the variety and intensity of feelings, just as our human memory doesn't recall the moment just after death, and only does sometime DURING the next life. Then there's the fantasy of looking for the actor who would play the part, casting director's dream of finding a young beauty who'd turn into the new idol, people willing to do anything to be chosen for the part, lesbians turning the man into woman for their purposes, permitting reactions WITH gays and straights, men and women, old and young, religious or not, theists or not, even though they might not even believe in THEIR death. Another chance to use the remarkable stage trick of "growing" by having a movie-projector light blasting behind the actor and making him transfigured throughout the theater in his beauty.