Reflections on the Stage

 As I have mentioned on my blog already, I am in the process of Diaconate Formation.  This means that God-willing I will be ordained a deacon in a little less than three years.

With that in mind, I realized that what I call my free time is going to be given more and more in service to God's service.  That means that there is a narrow window of opportunity for certain things that I will have to give up permanently.

One of these things is acting.

I have not acted on the stage in decades, but I always thought in the back of my head that I would one day return.  I don't know that I am very good, but theater was such an important part of my life and finding my voice that I've always felt the desire to return.

This summer, I auditioned for a musical and I got a nice supporting role.  We open in the next few days and I was thinking back on the experience and had a few reflections.

1. Homework

I had forgotten how much homework is involved in acting.  Even though I've directed a number of shows and I tell my actors to work at home, the reality of it hits differently.  Even though I only have a supporting part, you feel like you have pressure to learn everything right away and it always feels impossible.

I am an audio learner, so my method was to record all of the lines and to listen to them over and over again, speaking along with the audio until I had them down.

Even still, I am gripped with the fear that I am going to forget something so I am constantly reviewing.  My poor wife has to listen to me as I walk down the hallways of our home constantly repeating lines over and over again.

But it strikes me that even though it seems impossible at first, there is a strong sense of accomplishment when are able to internalize them.  Yet part of me thinks that all of this is punishment for the times I had my actors memorize Shakespeare.

2. Fear

There were several times throughout this process I had the same thought cross my mind: 

"What was I thinking?"

I am not a young man any more and even taking the steps up the stage is done with more care than most of my cast mates who bound directly of the stage into the audience.  Trying to keep up with my fellow actors reminds me that even though I used to do this all the time, I am not that same man.

Every time I forget a line in rehearsal or hit a sour note, all of my anxieties fall on my head.  When you are on stage in front of a live audience, there is nowhere to hide.  

Though I will say this fear has pushed me to work harder than I had anticipated.  To increase my energy and stamina, I even joined a gym.  Exercising most days has given me more strength to keep up.  

But as the opening gets closer, that gnawing pit in my stomach grows.  This is typical for me, as I recall.  But as a good friend of mine reminded me: "You're not nervous, you're excited."  Thinking of it this way helps.

3.  Neediness

I am actually not a person with a great deal of self-confidence.  But acting on the stage reminds me of this fact more than most things.  During rehearsal, you try different things in terms of performance.  Improvisation, by nature, is mostly terrible.  While rehearsing I tried, different accents, voices, improvised lines... anything I could do to get a laugh.  

The problem is that most of the time, I have no idea if it looks good or awful.  I found myself walking up to the production staff after rehearsals pestering them for feedback.

I wonder if this behavior is caused by insecurity or is only enhanced by the experience.  I also wonder if one of the reasons I gravitated toward acting when I was young was because I could get direct feedback as to how I was presenting myself.

4. Community

I had a former student who is in the cast say "I'm so glad that we got to act together on stage."  I understood what this person was saying.  Even though we had done shows together as director/actor, there is something different about being in the trenches of the performance.  

One of the things that I always loved about theater is that you find a community of people.  It is true that there is often a lot of drama in the drama.  But, as one student once described it, theater is where some people find their "forever people."  Going through the intense experience can bond you together in a way that few things can.  We come to rely on each other on that stage.  If someone doesn't do their job, we all begin to fall apart.  

And then when all is said and done, you know that no one else will ever have that experience.  People may put on the same show, but it won't be with those same people.  And you have created something you unique, something that only this small group of people will understand.

5. The Art in You

Stanislavski once said "Don't love you in the art, love the art in you."  

As nervous and as needy as I can get, there is something special about standing on that stage and entering into the art.  Athletes talk about being "in the zone," which is an apt description as any.  All of the rehearsal makes the words and actions second-nature, but there is a life that it takes on all on its own.  

Part of you feels like you are taken out of yourself and you become someone else and yet you are still you.  You transform and remain.  It is such a difficult thing to explain, but in losing yourself on stage, you find yourself again.  

This is something I have missed for many years.  And I am grateful to have the opportunity once again.

If I am eventually ordained a deacon, then I believe this door will be closed to me forever.  

But for now, the show must go on.