Who’s there?

Let me ask again. Why don’t we answer the person pretending to be Barnardo/Barnardo?

How do we know this figure on stage is not talking to us?

We know we are in the theater. Yes, that’s true. And so we likely know that if we just casually and answered people would look at us funny. Social convention, in other words, is how we know “that Barnardo person is probably not speaking to me and it would be a risk for me to act otherwise.

Is there any part of us that “knows” even if we did say something it would not reach the person we seek to speak to.

Who’s there?
We are. We must be or we would not hear this question.

From the perspective of Barnardo we are “there” and so we should answer, that’s what a human does when they hear another human asking “Who’s there?”

“Hello, Bernardo, it is I, Sizo, from the land of audience.
How goes the guarding?”

But Sizo does not say this. Sizo stays quiet.

He says nothing. As do we all.

No one not on stage answers.

To play the role of audience, we pretend not to hear what the person pretending to be Barnardo/Barnardo says

We, pretend we are not there
We pretend we are not here.

We pretend not to be.

We all do this.

In solidarity.

Together, Blue, we are not.