Converting All Your Sounds of Woe Into Hey, Nonny Nonny

No matter what - no matter what pain my body or voice may be in, no matter what I may be upset or flustered or anxious over, no matter what someone may have thoughtlessly said earlier in the day that my hypersensitive self may still be reacting to - everything is always better on stage. Intermission will come, and I'll be back to reality, and once the show is over, there is an entire night and day ahead of me before I do it again, but while I am on stage, I am the luckiest, the happiest, the most blessed, and the most contented girl in the world. I've been on stage or in rehearsal more days than not this year, and, obviously, not every day is a good day, or a day in which you feel like going out there and making people laugh, or putting yourself in an emotional state you know you're going to have difficulty shaking later. Those days, however, are the days when I am most grateful to be able to go out there and be completely and entirely at home, dead center stage. It's really difficult to feel lonely when you're transparent in front of your fellow actors and an entire audience of witnesses.

This last time through BOEING BOEING, I woke up one morning to an incredibly personally upsetting email. I joke about how much I cry, but honestly, I mainly cry (or used to, anyway) at the theatre or on someone else's behalf. This email...I ugly cried for four hours. When I stopped crying, I was a zombie, and could barely focus on speaking to my castmates without losing it. That night at the show...I cried as I was about to enter, I cried immediately after exiting, I cried doing my quick changes...but on stage...It was reaffirmed for me that once I was on stage, I was in the safest place in the world. For me. I had to go out there and make people laugh when I was in the closest thing to emotional agony I have ever experienced, but it was glorious, and helped me to begin to heal, right there. Luckily, Gretchen is an incredibly volatile, passionate woman, and so I thanked myself for the years I've spent working on my technique (so that I could let myself feel that deeply in front of people without losing control of my voice, or crying when it was inappropriate, etc), and threw myself into her. A couple of the actors I spent the most time on stage with said that my performance wasn't markedly different, but that I had a fire behind my eyes like NEVER before (and I am usually described as a pretty intense performer). I was so humbled to be granted the gift of being on stage that night, of having to go outside myself and my little problems.

I've been a bit sad the last week or so. It makes sense - I lost a wonderful friend to cancer on Monday, which was devastating, and I'm hitting the point in the contract when all of my shows are open, but everyone else is still rehearsing (or at least busier), and I'm feeling a bit lost, like I have to find things to productively fill the time. For some reason, this vague melancholy is pestering me for a couple of hours every day (perhaps the epic Russian novel I'm working my way through is adding to that...though I'm pretty sure reading Tolstoy has only the opposite affect on me). I was feeling a little down before the show tonight, and realized, about two numbers in, that I was happy - joyful, in fact, and it was purely because I was on stage, playing, invested in GODSPELL and what we were all creating together. It is such a relief to be able to step on stage, see the audience, and live in that world for a few hours. I think it every day, and I will say it here: I love, love, love, LOVE my job.

Art. It's good for what ails ya.