02.02.08
Performance is the same everywhere you go.
The way things went last night I’d have to say…I was lucky.
I was asked to be an actor in a short fringe play at FronteraFest in good old Austin town. Here’s how it works: you perform your original play once. If your show is selected by the audience as a favorite, you get to do an encore show. If you get selected from that group, you ‘win’ another performance at the “Best of…” It’s the same model the world over — Edinburgh and Minneapolis and various other theatrical centers. Lots of self-gratificatory wrist-slitters doing plays based on high school slam books and getting back at old boyfriends by setting fire to something symbolic. Some good, some bad, some drunk…you get the idea.
So, my friend and monologue coach Wendy directed; Jesse of Blind Mule Productions wrote; and Walt, Melissa and I performed to a stunning packed-in crowd of 80 at the Hyde Park Theatre. The play is called “Based on the Lives of True American Heroes,” an excellently funny satire on middle management, Homeland Security, and how people get killed for speaking common sense.
We rehearsed for 4 weeks, on and off, for our single performance last night. And last night as I prepared to go onstage in my too-tight pants and my too pale shirt with my clip-on tie (middle management, remember?), I was struck with a halibut.
No…wait…I was struck with a question. Sorry.
Anyway, I said to myself “Self? Why rehearse a play for a month to do it once, with a possibility of doing it maybe three times total?”
And the answer was “because I wanted to perform.”
I wish I had a better answer than that, I do. But really, I’m a performer. That’s the type of chap I am. I’m a performance-based writer, actor, bon vivant. I was born about 80 years too late for the world, when people were famous for wit and not their shaved nether regions, when rehab was still shameful and alcoholism was cheaper than cable TV. But I stick to my guns, or pens, or keyboards - print is not dead, live theatre is not dead, wit and wisdom is not dead! Seek it out - find it in every permutation. Don’t let today’s YouTube catchphrase dictate humor to you. You are your own best thing, folks.
So I answered myself, and I stepped into the performance space, like so many performers before me. And the show went on. And we were thrillingly good and funny and sharp and witty and wise and tacky and crass. And in the end, we had accomplished something the poetasters of the world could not. We had created shared space, communion with an audience, that sense of “I know what that feels like” that radiates between spectator and actor. It’s rich and rare and lovely to find every time you step out onto the boards, or put pen to paper, or hand to mouse.
So to you, I say “Perform.” and I mean it. Go out there and DO something. In the end, there’s no regret, even if it’s a single day to shine.