Becoming aware of our own existence is a reflexive act that happens after you’ve been around for a while. It is hard to pinpoint when it happens. Each person is a whole universe and being aware of existing does not fit in with normal patterns. The act of becoming aware requires a certain capacity to think, have critical distance and reflect, and, for this very reason, it never happens at the moment of birth, but instead quite some time afterwards. A day will come about when, for whatever reason, the main actor or actress realises that he or she exists and has done nothing to achieve this. S/he becomes aware of her/ his existence, is marvelled, startled even, at the feeling of being centre stage in the Grand Theatre. Then, for the first time, s/he feels that life is a gift, a unique possibility, and at the same time, a responsibility.

When the actor becomes aware of being on the world’s stage; in the same way s/he realises, that s/he could very well have never been there, that her/his existence was not necessary, that if her/his parents had not met or loved each other, s/he quite simply would never have been born. S/he realises s/he is the fruit of the coincidence of a series of encounters, of an intimate encounter that took place in the past and could quite easily not have taken place. For the first time s/he understands that her/his existence is relative, heteronomous, that s/he did not give life to her/himself but that others gave life to her/him. S/he realises that s/he exists thanks to others, that the gift preceded her/him. S/he then realizes s/he is indebted, that despite the ups and downs s/he has lived through and will live through in the future, s/he has been given the chance to exist.

During the play’s most dramatic moments, the actor will feel, just like Job, disgust at having been born; will wish, like Segismund, to never have left her/his mother’s womb; s/he will even wish to cease to be, to be wiped out. But in the moments of optimum beauty, goodness, unity and harmony, when s/he feels love reciprocated in the springtime of sensations, s/he will experience infinite gratitude for existing. Perhaps s/he will not express it, but s/he will feel the need to communicate it, to thank those that bought her/him into the world, immense possibility of existing, despite his ancestors. Perhaps her/his parents neither had it in heart nor in mind to bring her/him into existence, and yet, however it has come about, s/he finds himself being, playing a role in the Grand Theatre and s/he realizes that s/he exists.