Over the course of the previous year or so, through the modern marvel of Facebook, I have reconnected with so many of my fellow theatre alumni from WVU. We’ve all gotten a little older and perhaps somewhat wiser, but the essential personalities I remembered so well have remained—familiar, warm and comfortable as a favorite old sweater.
Well, the horizon, like the universe, apparently, keeps expanding.
A few months ago, on a pleasant summer evening, I walked to Steamer No. 10 Theatre, about a mile from my home in Albany, to audition for a staged reading of Joanna McClelland Glass’s† Trying, which was being produced by Theater Voices. I had been eagerly (and extremely nervously) awaiting an opportunity to audition after a 25-year absence from the stage. (I graduated with a BFA in Theatre from West Virginia University in 1985. Since then, life got in the way.) A staged reading, wherein the actors carry their scripts while performing in a fully blocked production, seemed like something even rusty ol’ me could do. I actually surprised myself by not sucking at the audition. (Auditions, like job interviews and first dates, have always intimidated the hell out of me; as a result, I have typically bombed at all three. With alarming consistency.) The director, Carol, was very complimentary when I spoke with her by phone later that week. Unfortunately, there was one obstacle I couldn’t quite overcome: At 47, I couldn’t pass for 25. Not even a very mature 25. But I had already told myself (on that walk to the theatre for the audition) that the most important thing was the experience of auditioning. Basically, I treated it like a training run. This wasn’t about the result; this was about the process. And in that process, I met some wonderfully warm people who quickly reminded me why I love the performing arts. I also agreed to operate the tech board for the production, so at least I was getting back into theatre. When God closes a door, somewhere He opens a window.
Between work, running and still trying diligently to housetrain a sweet but very willful Chihuahua mix puppy, I still haven’t prepared an audition song. But at least I have some sheet music now. When the next feasible audition notice arrived in my e-mail in box (it seemed I had to wade through an inordinate number of audition notices for very young people, or theatres that were nearly an hour away from my home, or looking for a specific ethnicity—Italian-American in one case, which would be an even tougher sell for me than trying to pass myself off as a 25-year-old), it was for a Christopher Durang play, Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge, being produced by Confetti Stage, Inc. This audition would require a prepared comedic monologue and the a cappella singing of any song, such as a Christmas carol. I was tired of using the I-don’t-have-time-to-prepare-an-audition-monologue excuse, so I dusted off the only monologue I had a shot in hell of having memorized in a few hours (since, by the time I saw the notice that morning, I realized the audition was later that evening): the Epilogue from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. I printed it out, read through it periodically through the day at work, and ran the lines as I did my afternoon training run. In the meantime, of course, I had plenty of time for what seems to be my real profession: second-guessing myself. I wondered if preparing a Shakespearean monologue for a Durang comedy would be akin to showing up for a 5k wearing a tuxedo. And clown shoes. Would the director roll his eyes? Would my brain seize up and cause me to forget part of the monologue? What if the Trying audition had been a fluke? What if I really still just suck beyond belief at auditions? I reminded myself that it was about the process, not the result. I went to the audition. I certainly didn’t leave anyone thinking they’d just seen the next Meryl Streep, but I didn’t suck. I remembered the whole monologue, sang a snippet of “Deck the Halls” (ironically, on the last line of the verse, forgetting the f*cking lyrics), read from some sides and met more fun, kind theatre folks. After leaving the audition, I prepared myself for the possibility of rejection. I didn’t even care what role I got, as long as I would have an opportunity to act. I hummed “Anticipation” to myself as I imagined the ketchup-like wait to hear about my audition.
I took my time getting home, sitting in my car for a good 10-15 minutes checking and answering e-mails from my CrackBerry before pulling away from the curb and heading away from downtown. Just as I pulled the car into the garage, my CrackBerry rang. It was Jeff, the director, offering me the title role of Mrs. Bob Cratchit. Like a complete idiot (because why do anything halfway?), I actually said, “Really???” <FACEPALM> (Note to self: That was asinine. Don’t do that again. It makes you sound like a dork.) Even in the midst of full-on asininity, I was thrilled beyond belief. As of this writing, we’ve completed our first read-through; our first rehearsal begins this Monday. We open December 10th at Albany's Masonic Hall.
As I considered my return to acting, I quickly found a lot of parallels between community theatre and running road races:
First, both involve stepping out of your comfort zone, whether that’s going to an audition or signing up for your first 5k. Either way, you’re putting yourself out there, risking ridicule or embarrassment (most of it just a figment of your imagination, you later find), saying to the Fates, “Please consider me worthy.” Do well, and you get the role or run a good race; do poorly, and you examine what went wrong and determine how to change your approach to avoid doing poorly next time. In both cases, “Screw this, I’m never doing this again,” just doesn’t cut it.
Second, you are because you do. I can “officially” call myself an actor because an accredited university (a real one, not some for-profit online diploma mill), after I invested four years of my life (and enough tuition to spend 10 years repaying student loans, despite two years of performance grants) to the study of theatre, gave me a piece of paper that states I am. In much the same way, one can call oneself an engineer because one holds a similar piece of paper attesting to one’s completion of the requisite course of study. But being an actor isn’t just about what you know; it’s also about what you do. (What you know informs what you do.) And in that sense, I have considered my profession to be “unemployed actor” for 25 years. Oh, I’ve been employed; and the skills I’ve used for most of the employment I’ve had—skills I’ve had the luxury of taking for granted—have come directly from what I learned while studying to be an actor. But to those who didn’t know my academic background, I’ve never been an actor; I’ve been a writer, a bank teller, a personnel manager. These have been various jobs I’ve had, but I’ve never considered any of them (with the sole exception of writer) to be even remotely like a profession to me. They paid the bills and I was good at them and they were all legal. And, in a sense, the work I get paid to do is what enables me to devote some time to the work I love to do. But to be an actor, all you really have to do is act. Granted, studying the craft is tremendously beneficial, but there are plenty of people who are good actors who've never studied Stanislavsky or Strasberg/Meisner/Hagen/whatever. You don't have to be in Hollywood or on Broadway to be an actor, any more than you need to be in the Olympics to be a runner.
People tend to have an image of what a runner is: slender body, disciplined routine, the latest athletic apparel and that long-distance, concentrated stare. When you line up at the start of a road race, whatever the distance, you see an abundance of people who look just like that. But you also see a lot of people who look nothing like that. People like me, for instance. If you didn’t know anything about me and you saw me on the street, you would never peg me as a runner. You will never see someone like me on the cover of Runner’s World. It’s often been frustrating for me to find good athletic running wear because sometimes even the ladies’ XL size leaves me gasping for breath (before I’ve even taken my first step), relegating me to the saving grace of online athletic apparel suppliers that recognize the needs of “plus size” female athletes. When I started running, it seemed as though just about everyone told me I would lose a lot of weight and “get so skinny”; well, I’ve actually gained a few pounds. (I’m working on it, I’m working on it. But that’s another blog entry for another day.) I’ve run all of my 17 races (so far...and that's just since June of this year) between 200 and 213 pounds. And let me emphasize that I ran most of those races. I ran them slowly, but I f*cking ran 3.1 miles at each race. I don’t care if you weigh 200+ pounds or 98 pounds soaking wet; running five continuous kilometers at any speed is an Accomplishment-with-a-capital-A. Sometimes we non-traditional types need to remind ourselves of that: I AM A RUNNER.
Third, you don’t have to be the best; you simply need to do your best. Some of those very athletic-looking types toeing the line at a 5k will leave at the end of the race with a medal or a PR, but the overwhelming majority of them will leave knowing that they ran the best race they had in them that day. Just as you don’t have to win an Oscar or a Tony to be an actor, you don’t have to win a 5k to be a runner. Maybe your goal was to PR, maybe it was to run comfortably or just have fun. For my most recent race, the Race Away Stigma 5k in Troy, I didn't even have a time goal. I just wanted to run the full distance and not have my hips feel like they were trying to kill me from the inside. I relaxed, had fun, conquered (slowly) a hill that had forced me to slow to a walk twice just a few months ago and ran without pain. The result? My second-fastest race time ever. Go figure!
Fourth, you prepare thoroughly for the whole play, but you act in the moment. No actor would even think of setting foot onstage without having prepared extensively—learning lines, rehearsing blocking, exploring and developing a character. But when the play begins, you’re acting; you must be right there, in that present moment, not three pages ago, not two scenes ahead. An actor lives in the now. All of that preparation is what frees you to let go of everything except now. As a runner, you go through your long- and short-term preparations, but once the race starts, you just run. You pace yourself, follow the “script” for that race that you’ve developed through your training (and, as necessary, ad lib when something goes awry) and let the result be what it is.
And fifth, once you get started, you will be amazed to discover the community that’s out there. Before I registered my first 5k, the Freihofer’s Run for Women, I had no idea how many road races were out there. I knew the various distances—5k, 10k, 15k, half-marathon, marathon—but I had no idea that there were races damn near every weekend. At last night’s performance of Confetti Stage’s production of Heresy, I found as I perused the program that there are even more local theatre companies (and, therefore, more acting opportunities) than I realized. And with two good, solid auditions (one of them resulting in an actual role) under my belt, the question now is not if but when; and that question isn’t answered, “Someday,” but rather, “Does the audition or rehearsal schedule conflict with my Mrs. Bob commitments?”
One of the nice side benefits of running and returning to the theatre is that I have had to be more disciplined with how I organize and use my time. As a self-professed obsessive-compulsive, anal-retentive, perfectionist control freak, I’m almost ridiculously well organized; but the best plan isn’t worth sh*t unless it gets put into practice. I’ve also started mapping out my off-season training plan, with the goal of being 10k-ready by late January, so I can get a few 10k races under my belt before heading to Atlanta for the 2011 Peachtree Road Race. (I already know that my current PR more than qualifies me to run the Peachtree, but I have to get in first—and registration for that race notoriously sells out in hours. And they cut off registration at "only" 55,000.) If all continues to proceed reasonably according to plan (and if this approaching Upstate New York winter will do me a solid and be f*cking mild for once), I hope to be (gasp!) half-marathon ready by summer. I’ve even got my sights on a duathlon in 2011 in the hopes of moving up to a sprint triathlon in 2012, hopefully in Ohio, where my athletic inspiration, "Ironman Tiffany," lives.
So if you’ve ever toyed with the idea of trying community theatre or running (or both) but thought you couldn’t because you don’t “look” the part, take a deep breath, exhale with a firm-but-Zen-like, “F*ck it, let’s GO!” and take that leap of faith. Do the work, step by step, and before long you’ll find your old excuses falling apart like a house of cards on a rickety folding table being periodically brushed by a Newfoundland puppy who desperately needs to pee. Your knees that used to ache when you just thought about running will gradually acclimate to it and, in time, you may even find that your knees ache more when you don’t run. Your I-don't-have-time-to-be-in-a-play excuse will dissipate as you organize your time better. All you have to do is start. An object in motion tends to stay in motion; an object at rest tends to stay at rest. It's hard to argue with physics.
The rewards are immeasurable. You don’t need to win the race or get the lead role. All you have to do is engage the process and see it through. That’s where confidence comes from. You don’t have confidence or discipline first; you develop them by pushing your own envelope, facing and conquering little challenges day by day, week by week, month by month. And most of all, surround yourself with people who will cheer you on, even if only from afar, who will love you for who you are and admire you for reaching out beyond what you think you can do. (Victorious, inspirational “Rocky“-like music swells. Fade to black. Roll credits.)
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