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Additions to Plot
Maurice Aarons (played by Cassavetes)

Additions to Analysis
The concept of aging is constantly addressed at a narrative level in the film, both in the dialogue and the image of the film itself. The "evil" of old age practically overwhelms the characters from the first seconds of the movie. It is represented by the enormous pictures of an older woman that cover the play's stage. The figures of Myrtle and Maurice, who appear in a long shot, are made to appear little and unimportant beneath the unquestionable fact of aging and its figural embodiment in the picture. In a subsequent scene, Marty, Maurice's stage persona, addresses the issue directly, declaring, "I'm getting older. What do we do about that?" This theme of aging, which is hinted at in other works of Cassavetes, is merely the most overt (and possibly even superficial) expression of a deeper and more fundamental interest in time: a continuous investigation of time and its effects on the body and mind. For what seems like the entire film, Myrtle battles this fear of getting older. This battle, horrifically portrayed by Genar Rowland, results in a final climactic drunken struggle of existential resolve in the last scene. She stumbles her way through the play, determined to keep the show going.

Additions to In popular culture
Arnaud Desplechin, whose Esther Kahn (2000), though based on a late-nineteenth-century novel, presents an almost identical hypothesis on stage acting and self-actualization.