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Blogs by Christine Boyce
Relearning 8/12/2005 2:52:59 PM
I studied theatre and English in college. It's been only a couple of years, but I've changed a lot since then. I had more enthusiasm for English lit and for theatre when I was younger than I do now.
It was more magical then, or seemed that way--but so were a lot of other things.
I used to feel absolutely elated after a night onstage--even as a beginner in the very first stages of learning to act, not sure what I was doing right or wrong.
After the show, the whole world would seem to have a glow. I'd be dancing around, singing. My mind would seem to move very fast. I'd have an urge to talk, and socialize, and write.
I've had a chance in the past couple of years since college to observe people acting. I've been in a position where I was the one taking down the blocking--the stage manager--as I worked side by side with a professor who more or less assumed I couldn't act. Or couldn't act well, in any case.
The actors I observed were great--professional, experienced. I got to watch the play develop, and contribute a little in my way, though my tiredness and depression were getting in the way of that. My self-esteem, which was actually very high when I left college, was plummeting. I was losing confidence in what I could do, even as I made baby steps towards doing what I really loved--theatre.
I lost many of my illusions, I think. The illusion that theatre is always an ecstactic experience, or that working in theatre is never a business experience. The illusion that I can never get to a point where I make a mistake or series of mistakes that will get me labeled incompetent.
I'm a procrastinator who likes to be considered responsible--a big contradition in terms, right? The thing is, if I think I really need to do something, I'll do it. And if I'm actually feeling energetic and not exhausted, I'll be able to do ten times more.
It's the ten-times more part that I really identify with. I don't want to live my life doing the least I can get by with--especially since those low points in my life are linked to me wanting to chuck the whole thing as worthless.
I want to live in a way that makes me feel valued and alive. That includes really seeing and sympathizing with and valuing others--it's not selfish. The thing is, depression makes you sink into yourself because you become so sick you're unable to think of anything else.
