BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

The quest for significant being is the heart of existence. We do not crave that quest; we find ourselves involved in it. Animals may be content when their needs are satisfied; humans insist not only on being satisfied but also on being able to satisfy, on being a need not imsply on having needs. Personal needs come and go, but one anxiety remains: Am I needed? There is no human being who has not been moved by that anxiety. Humans are not satisfied, lie is not meaningful to us, unless life is serving an end beyond itself, unless it is of value to someon else. The feeling of futility that comes with the sense of being useless, of not being needed in the world, is the comost common cause of psycho-neurosis. Happiness may be defined as he certainty of being needed. But who is in need of humans? Human existence cannot derive its ultimate meaning from society, because society itself is in need of meaning. There is not a soul on earth which, however vaguely or rarely, has not realized that li...

In undergrad school, for my senior thesis/ performance (I was an English Literature Major and a Theatre Minor) I choose a number of monologues to do that portrayed a variety of the themes theatre covers about women. Particularly as more than sex objects. One of the hardest ones for me was Martha from "WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINA WOOLF? " I love Albee's works and Virginia Woolf has been a favorite writer of mine for years. Woolf had a good grasp on the struggle of women to find balance and selfhood - a struggle which finally overcame her personally. But Martha is a tough role. She is very 3 dimensional and at the age of 22, despite getting a standing ovation, I knew I didn't have the inner experience to flesh her out the way I would have liked. I think about Martha a lot, in light of my divorce, because my marriage had some similarities to Martha & George's. (Though Martha's loose sexuality was diametrically opposed to my own sparse sexual experience a...