Who I am, Part 4: The Play's The Thing

I have always been a somewhat charged, not to say, hyperactive fellow. In my youth, they put me on Ridillin to control it. It's not as easy to control now. Even at the quasi-mature age of 26, I have occasional spastic urges that make it impossible to sit still. When I'm alone, only the most fevered concentration enables me to focus for more than five minutes on a single thing. Needless to say, this made athletics, especially team athletics, a barren pursuit for me. Who wants to stand in the outfield and watch the pitcher walk the opposing team when there's cool rocks and bugs to play with?





In other words, the theater was the only extracurricular activity that was really open to me. It appealled to my intellect and my hyperkeneticism, I could shout and be loud and indulge all manner of make-believe. After a few shows in high school, with the kind of praise that brings, I decided that the world was my stage, and set off to college determined to prove such. I was wrong.





I should have expected it, or at any rate, I should have responded more maturely. To begin with, I wasn't studying drama. I wasn't even going to a Theater School. My university's drama program was presided over by a sleepy old Lear bearing a striking resemblance to Admiral Akbar from Return of the Jedi, who had decide at his advanced age that the plays of Shakespeare were tiresome, and that the overbearing musicals of Sondheim and the plodding O'Neill wannabeism of Brian Friel were the way the organization would rise phoenixlike from the ashes. Being untrained in singing, and posessing few gifts for acting other than stage presence, I was doomed to bitter disappointment. The man never gave me a decent role after my freshman year, preferring younger students who unflinchingly believed in the New Order. I shall never forget the last set-strike of my senior year: standing on a bare stage that I had once dreamed would see me elucidate Hamlet or MacBeth, after having unconvincingly played a dying old man with exactly five seconds of stage time (time enough to die). I cursed solemnly and walked out, determined never to look back or perform in front of anyone ever again.





I gave the whole affair far, far more emotional importance than it was worth. I'd never seriously entertained the idea of being a professional actor. I hadn't had the training, and I didn't want to submit to the thousand indignities and labors that aspiring stars are heir to. New York and LA were full enough of "actors," I concluded. Better for me to study political science, to attempt to learn German, to expose myself to Kant and Nietzsche and de Tocqueville, to actually learn something about the human mechanics that govern our world. What was acting, if not bread and games for the masses?





Yet I kept coming back, all through college, hungry for that breakthrough, that recognition that I was brilliant, that never came. My junior year the old fellow went on Sabbatical and two English professors instituted a brief Reign of Terror, favoring those who opposed the Sondhiem juggernaut and punishing those who had grown fat under its auspices. We put on Much Ado About Nothing. Here at last was my chance at redemption. I had played Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew back in high school, surely Benedick was mine for the asking. I got Don Pedro, and proceeded to engage in a fit of despondency that annoyed friends to no end. Oh, the show was wonderful, I picked up many a pointer from the director, and had more fun than at any other show. But my image of myself had been shattered. I know what happens to a dream deferred. It doesn't explode, it doesn't barnacle over, it just shrinks down into a nothing that must be filled. I kept up the dance, went into senior year hoping for some manner of swan song, but it was well and truly over, and I'd have done better to accept it then.





That of course was six years ago. Yesterday I auditioned for Romeo and Juliet. Friday begins the closing weekend of Getting Away With Murder, Sondheim's only straight (ignore the pun, please) play, which is as clever and deep as his musicals are ponderous and overreaching. I play an unhappy young man who cannot seem to escape the will of his powerful father and make his dreams happen, personifying as he does the Deadly Sin of Sloth. I recently finished a seven-month run, off-and-on, with a traveling vaudeville show, singing and joking and dressing in drag and mugging for the crowds. I've done bit parts in Kauffman plays and played Algernon for the second time in The Importance of Being Earnest. All of which has been done under the auspices of community theater, and working with those who win awards for doing the same thing. I've even had my name in the paper.





The temptation is strong to throw all that out as a double-condemnation of those who Failed To See My Talent, but I know better. If I can manage to get cast nowadays, it's because I've managed to control that spark of scene-chewing mayhem with doses of perspective. I've learned the value of silence, of a soft voice. I no longer have any designs on conquering the world, only on rendering it as truthfully as is in my power. Maturity, to my mind, is learning how much you have to do to truly care for yourself, and it begins with the recognition that you are not your dreams.