The spittle in the stage light

You may have spotted a couple of references to football already in these blog pages and assumed that it's my first love. Well, you'd be wrong. It's theatre. Don't worry. You weren't to know. I wasn't going to reveal everything about myself on our very first dates, was I? But now's the time to tell you about the precise moment I realised why I loved it so much and knew that I always would. It was the late 80s, and we went to see Hamlet at the National Theatre. Daniel Day Lewis, who'd recently 'arrived' as a genuine film star, was in the title role. We were sat right in the front row, almost under the front of the stage. It wasn't the actor's celebrity that got me. It wasn't even Shakespeare's poetry. No, it was when we looked up as he performed his first soliloquy pretty much above us. I was struck by his passion as he spoke, but then I noticed something else. As he formed his words, I noticed that he was - quite literally - spitting them out. And his spittle was lit up by the stage lights. It was odd but beautiful. Like a theatrical Vegas fountain. I reckoned that nobody but me had that view in that split second. I realised then that theatre is special because it's a one time only three-dimensional experience, performed just for the people there for those moments. And every audience member has a slightly different perspective. 'But why has this tale about being spat on by Daniel Day-Lewis made it into a blog about charities?' I hear you ask. Well