Day 130: Things You Shouldn't Say To An Audience

So it's the tech rehearsal of the Freak Show and we really still only have a sorta-kinda clue about what we're doing and my lines are not cemented into my head but rather poorly Scotch taped and oh, all of a sudden, there's an audience.

The first run goes well. Okay, it goes AWESOME. And then we all sit around for an hour and I think about A) how totally kick-ass I am at acting and at life, and B) how much nicer it is to eat chickpea curry and chitchat than it is to tromp around in the snow, screaming. Which is what I do in the show.

But then it's time for the second run, so we go. Only we can't get the door to the rooftop 'stage' open. "You gotta jimmy it," was what Mark Hopkins told us. But he's a foot taller than both Wil or I and therefore probably has some kind of mad upward leverage us shorties don't. So time's a-ticking and we can't get the door open.

And I run to find Mark through the intricate stairway/hallway/back way system in the arts centre and I do some door banging and SOS miming and eventually he comes. But he can't open the door either. So we take one of the back ways and all this door drama is seriously not in my Actor Preparation Technique handbook and so when BOOM the audience arrives, BOOM all the lines of the play vaporize right out of my head.

When you forget your lines in theatre, you're not supposed to say so. Especially not to an audience. Definitely not an audience of actors who knows you aren't supposed to say so and who also isn't dressed for minus-10 and snow. They would really rather if you hurried the f*ck up with this crap show, lines or no lines, thank you very much.

But honestly, I was at a bit of a loss since the opening monologue is where I, all by myself, alone in the snowy, cold wilderness, explain the overly-complicated concept of this piece. It's like the longest monologue of all time. I swear. So yeah, maybe at one point in going-down-like-a-DC10-desperation, in the grip of my-brain-is-a-sucking-vacuum-of-nothingness, I might have squeaked the words, "I forgot my lines." Twice.

And then that horrible silence happened. The one where the audience people are standing there going, 'Honey, I don't know your line either and even if I did, I'm off the clock. Sorry.'

I stood there, my heart pounding in my ears, the adrenaline poisoning my blood, but still no words came. And then, through the panic, came a miraculous oasis of calm. I realized there was something really human about what was happening. I mean, aren't all of us out here...alone on the stage of our lives...at a bit of a loss?

Oh, I think we are.

But I couldn't linger on the humanity of it for very long because a beacon of light was gradually emerging in my head. Soon my formerly vacant brain was FILLED with words, glorious words, honest, true and right words: "Go take a running jump off this rooftop and end this sweet, sweet hell."