If you're a churchgoing person, then I bet there was a time when you felt inflamed in the spirit. (Maybe that time is now.) You were a recent convert, or maybe you finally came of age and started to understand the faith of your childhood. Your religion was a source of instant joy and comfort. You were part of a family. You knew the rules, and you liked them, and you were ready to dive in headfirst.
I never really felt that way about my own Christianity, no matter how hard I tried through my teen years. But when I saw Mr. David Schallhorn's spring 1989 production of The Glass Menagerie, I knew my future. I'd done theatre before, even made it to the State Finals in Oklahoma interscholastic acting tournaments, but until one perfect moment at the end of the first act, I was a mere hobbyist. When the lights fell on a perfect tableau, I was devastated. I GOT IT. This was how theatre could and should be. It grabbed me by the soul and screamed truth in my face. It challenged me to wrestle my angels and win transcendent blessings from on high. I discovered my calling.
All through undergrad college at ECU, I lived on stage. Everything else was just a warm-up. I couldn't dance, I couldn't sing all that well, but I could make an audience explode into hysterics by reading a phone book. For a Witness kid from Crowder, Oklahoma, this was revelatory. I could make grown men weep with a dip of my chin. Hell, I thought I was the Baron of Cool. And even if that was mostly just me surfing on a wave of self-delusional bravado, it worked. For a few golden years, I was a star. That was my house, and no one could touch me.
Then came grad school. I ran into a professor I'll call K. K was easily one of the smartest, most knowledgeable people I ever met; and believe me, Gentle Reader, that is saying something. He taught me lessons about acting and directing I will never forget, deep insights I quote frequently fifteen years later. He was also, or it seemed this way to me at the time, a complete lunatic. I'm pretty sure he had a drinking problem. I know he left weird notes in my mailbox. Some students were genuinely scared of him. Others worshiped him, even as he lurked around their houses. He was allowed to resign two years later in lieu of firing, and as I left that university, so did he--failing upward, to one of the best regarded drama schools in the American Ivy League. I learn from Google he's moved to another program since then; but he's still working in theatre education, and a few years ago, he won a major award for teaching. Good for him. Believe it or not, I mean that. Whatever demons he faced, I'm glad he was able to slay them (apparently), for God knows he had plenty to teach.
I remember the day he explained a liminal space. To a psychologist or philosopher, a liminal space is a point in spacetime at which an individual stands on the brink of deep personal transformation. The stage, K murmured, is such a place, and so is a church. It's a sacred space where we all agree as a culture that the rules can change unpredictably. When I walk on stage, my boundaries expand. I'm free to get furiously angry or fall in love with someone who isn't my girlfriend or laugh at the abject pain of a child or cry for the clown with a pie in his face. (To be sure, K explained, it's just as important to remember the rules change back the moment an actor leaves. Forget that at your peril, he warned, and he was right.) That made sense to me. In an even deeper way than the Greeks may have imagined, the stage became my holy place.
K taught me true professionalism and self-discipline. He taught me there's a right way to do things and a hundred thousand wrong ways, all of which were tried long ago and found wanting. He taught me how to be real on stage, meaning really myself, feeling dramatic pain in my core, truly suffering as the sacrificial lamb of catharsis. He taught me I was one semiquaver in a grand historic symphony that stretched from stories around campfires in caves to the million lights of Broadway.
Unfortunately, K also taught me to be so hypercritical of myself that it burned nearly every thread of joy from what had once been the love of my life. Or maybe it wasn't his fault after all. Maybe it was mine. Maybe my failed marriage (1998) or my grand disillusioning tour of the movie and TV businesses were responsible. Oh, who knows? I can't blame K for everything. He's still living the theatre life. He still feels the old joy.
Which is not to say I never enjoy theatre. On the contrary; I often adore it while I'm sitting with the audience watching it. I dig directing and sometimes even theatre gossip (aka foolishness). I still feel that old familiar actors' enthusiasm for isolated minutes in performance. But there's no question about it, there hasn't been enough joy in my work these last few years to compete with all the minor annoyances and inconveniences of a life in the thespian arts. Will that change, I wonder? Is it something I need to fight through, or have all those years of book-larnin' conspired to rob me of the thrill of my religion? These days I'm usually just going through the motions, and I have to say I miss the old fire.
If not theatre, then what? If not an actor's life, then whose? Who am I without the quest that inspired me? Who am I without my favorite religion?
I read somewhere that any time Jack Lemmon went on stage or stepped in front of a camera, he first whispered to himself, "Magic time." I adopted his habit years ago. I truly want to feel that magic again. Having it close all those years was one of the finest things about being me, and probably about knowing me as well.