Oh, Boy

Well, Crap. Something came over me and I decided to be in a play. It’s a real play with multiple actors and a director and a script and everything. But, it’s in the Fringe Festival so feeling unprepared is normal, common. Which is only a touch comforting as I struggle to force the ream of lines my character has into my head while trying to figure out how to make words mean something and also listen to the people I’m supposed to be interacting with.

For the past few years I’ve mostly just stood alone on stage and told a funny story or two for 10 or 15 minutes whenever I had the urge or the time to share something of myself with people who don’t live in my house. This seemed to be the transition the actor part of me made when I became a parent. I’ve got a dependant so I’m less able to allow others to depend on me.

I still want to stand up in front of people and say things and have them laugh or listen or pretend to do one those. But if I just do things I write and do them alone I don’t have to figure out how to rehearse or how to create a relationship with another person on stage or what exactly a director means when he says my character may not have a clear reason for reciting a snippet of poetry. I didn’t think I was necessarily taking the easy route when I started focusing more on going solo.

The reality is that I haven’t been focusing at all.  My stage life, my creative life overall really, has been relegated to an occassional squeezed in thing. I decided to get a degree, I decided to make a little person, I decided to get job job with a salary and insurance and accountability. There’s probably some way to have all those normal life responsabilities and also maintain a healthy creative life, but I haven’t figured it out. I might never figure it out.

It’s easy to look back and glamourize how things once were. I used to be on stage as much as seven nights a week. I’d be rehearsing a show, writing sketches, watching cool theater, hanging out after shows and having deep, meaningful conversations with wonderful people.

But, I also used to work as a temp in shitty offices with mind-numbing tasks and mind-numbing people that made me want to stab someone in the eye (often my own eye was preferred). I used to live in an apartment with two alcoholic brothers who would come home at 3 in the morning beyond high and wrestle with each other in the living room wearing nothing more than briefs. I used to have to choose between health insurance and food.

I can’t do my best work as an actor or an artist of any kind if I’m scrambling for food or unable to get a possibly broken ankle looked at. I also can’t be the artist I want if I’m only able to be creative in the hours between 10pm and 6am. Should these by my choices? Are these my choices? The truth is I don’t really know. I’m usually not trying all that hard to have everything I want. Instead I spend a lot of energy feeling miserable that I don’t.

I’d love to triumphantly announce that all that is going to change. Present this typing as a turning point in my creative life. Proudly proclaim that I’m redoubling my efforts towards being a writer and performer while still providing for my family and actually seeing my family and being a pleasant person while doing all of this. But that’s not going to happen.

Things don’t change over night. A significant thing like reshaping one’s creative life/work life dynamic is a slow moving animal for most people. Sometimes so slow that you don’t realize a shift is happening and suddenly you notice you’re not where you used to be. That’s what I want. That’s what I’ll take.

So, I’m doing this play in the Minnesota Fringe Festival. I feel out of sorts because I haven’t been directed in a few years. I feel snowed under because it’s literally the most lines I’ve ever had to learn for a show. I feel disoriented because I know funny and I’m usually a pretty quick study but there is shit going on within my character and around my character that I’m not getting. And I feel awesome because I’m engaged, and I’m focused, and I’m challenged. I feel good because I’m doing something that I know I can do but I also know I can fail at. And that’s how that slow change comes.

 

LW