Already familiar with When Did You Last See My Mother?, Total Eclipse and The Philanthropist, this book spine called out from off of the shelf of J.W.Doull's as a so-called "no-brainer". It cost me $6.50, second-hand, in the handsome 1991 Faber and Faber edition. White Chameleon boasts an exquisite architecture, concludes with a final gesture so sure-handed and so effective as to reassert – for those who weren't already convinced – Christopher Hampton's skills and political conscience as a playwright. Passages of poetic prose change place with a deceptively grand political allegory, rooted in the Egyptian revolution of 1952. In what would qualify as a memory play, Hampton explores parallels between life and art, specifically his autobiographically inspired recollections against his playwright's craft; moreover, he explores the microcosm in the macrocosm, or the way one household can reflect a nation, one character an entire people.

For me, reading plays continues to be a personal and professional delight. I am constantly discovering the world through the words of people who have written before me. I too often allow the barrage of e-mails and administrative duties of my theatre company to get in my way and distract me from my extreme delight in reading plays. I have been more successful recently in taking an hour a morning – sometimes sitting in the sunny cove where we have our washer and dryer, sometimes in our bathtub that doesn't drain properly. Reclaiming this time, this privilege for pleasure, allows me to pretend I am still in school, working my way through prescribed reading lists, imagining course titles as I go. "20th Century Gay Plays and Playwrights." "Symbol and Structure in Dramatic Writing." "The Poetry and Politics of Christopher Hampton." I highly recommend it.

There are two ways to live your life: as if you're writing the play or as if the play's already written. I chose a job for which I am required to read scripts, study scores and work with imaginative and creative people. Plays such as White Chameleon inspire me to think clearly, refine relentlessly and embrace the philosophical complexities of everyday life. For in these complexities lie the simple truths.

I just finished reading Staircase, a play by Charles Dyer. Written in 1966, the play is a bit of a mystery. Part of the mystery is that the protagonist's name is Charles Dyer – the author's name. However, the play reads as fiction about one or two aging men, not as autobiography, struggling with their dwindling sex appeal and the legislation against homosexuality. The dialogue switched between camp, rapid-fire repartee and poetic, heartfelt musings. Adding to the mystery, the only other character to appear on stage, and several of the other characters' names, are anagrams of Charles Dyer. Buying the script second hand at J. W. Doull for a mere $2.- was an impulsive, and inexpensive gamble. Fascinating and moving, the play tuned out to be an unexpected delight.

As my colleagues and I look at kick-starting Café DaPoPo again, we have been working on figuring out how can we write the inherently unpredictable performance elements of Café DaPoPo more profoundly into the event? Unlike a traditional performance, there is no illusion of a repeatable Café performance. Every time a certain scene or song is ordered, the set – tables, chairs, bars, corners of the room –necessarily changes. Who ordered this? Table 3? But it's so crowded over there! Often the costumes change. Oh no! I forgot the blonde wig. Can I borrow your hat? Props reveal themselves in performance: a beer glass; a patron's hat; a butter knife. Often the parameters shift: add a sock puppet; make it 'saucy', make it 'queer'; sing your Hamlet. By donning a pair of sun-glasses last-minute, the performer experiences a total transformation.

How can we devise more original material for Café performances without the monthly task becoming an overwhelming one? Each performer becomes a writer, a director and a dramaturge, if they choose. How do you use a picture frame, a shower cap and a rubber ducky effectively, in what is essentially an open rehearsal, performing a two-person song? In fact, the audience, who is at times almost indistinguishable from the actors, influences the performance, unknowingly. They laugh. They turn their heads away. The lean forward in their chair. These immediate cues bring about another total transformation in the performer. The entire theatrical moment disrobes and becomes naked, intimate dialogue.

What do you do with a theatrical form like Café DaPoPo, which relies heavily on audience interaction, non-traditional locations and an ever-changing cast (and the "available" performances in our collective repertoire); a form that doesn't fit into the conventional theatre model in terms of finding audiences, choosing venues and generating revenue? Again, the performer can find Café transformative. The reason for performing in Café DaPoPo is to experience the performance, the audience and the impulse for art with an immediacy that is too often lost in the big theatres. In a time of banal programming and an increasingly marketing oriented world, art for art's sake – even art for audience's sake – is becoming increasingly rare.

Reading daring, poetic, political plays like Staircase, and taking artistic risks rather than settling for less, remain genuinely exciting and worthwhile endeavours.