I was at the Met Opera Halloween Eve for a lovely performance of Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream—fittingly programmed for that night of traditionally blurred and heightened identities. And any number of people in the audience had gotten into the act. Rather than content themselves with thematic congruity, they instead constructed a contiguous venue for transformative magic in the auditorium.
They paraded through the lobby at intermission decked out in costume and make-up. It was all festive, all instructively mutable. When theatrical garb and daily-life attire are blurred, we realize that all identities are constructs and anything we put on our backs a masquerade of sorts.