If Only Life Were Really The Stage

When I reach back and feel my hair, I can still sense hairspray and my fingers get caught in tangles. On Friday at 4pm, I was sitting in front of a mirror getting my hair curled with burning hot metal and loads and loads of hairspray. Four days later and it still doesn't feel like it's all washed out yet.

My play for the Fr!nge Festival well swimmingly well. Our first show was the best performance I've ever seen from every single cast member, myself included. Our play, though tagged as an "existential mindfuck" didn't turn out to be so mindfuckingly existential after all, because most people understood it well enough to say that they liked it and thought it was clever. Friends came to my shows which made me really happy, but I still felt as though I lacked that special someone to really celebrate with. I walked home slowly and alone that night and arrived to what I thought was going to be a dark, lonely house. My miserable mood melted away when I saw a bouquet of flowers and received an e-mail congratulating me on my new "baby".

I am really happy with our performance. And I am proud. It's been a while since I've been able to say that about myself, and I still have to put aside some insecurities and inadequacies, but I am proud. I know that we did really well as a cast, well enough to sweep four awards at the Fr!nge Oscars. Best Script, Best Director, Best Actor and yours truly: Best Supporting Actress. That's two years in a row if I may say so myself - and I say so with as little hubris as possible. Receiving recognition for my acting means a lot to me because I've always been somewhat doubtful of my talents. After all, I have received no formal (or even amateur) training and basically learned how to act on my own. Finally, a natural talent...?

During the last few months of rehearsals I've learned that acting isn't all the fun that it's sometimes cracked up to be. Acting is hard work. It's not all about the crazy postures and laughing you see on Who's Line Is It Anyway?. Sometimes it can be, but that's improv...drama takes a few steps in another direction. It didn't matter what mood I went to rehearsals in because my character doesn't feel what I feel, I have to feel what she feels. I have to be someone else. It didn't matter that after three months we all became bored of the script, of each others' lines, of the entire play in general. We are performers.

And though it sounds scary, it barely matters what you think because you have to put on a show for the audience. And if you're lucky, you'll love the theater and all that's involved with it enough to put your boredom aside and get on that stage and act like you've never acted before.
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