I'm A Chaser

Some further tales from the theater world…

The long hours of tech rehearsal went by in a flash. There were some small personality conflicts happening. This is going to happen when you lock 12 people in a stuffy basement together for a large number of hours. It was very minor, and ultimately pretty damn funny, but the director felt the need to intervene and try to bring peace to a battle that honestly seemed like the sort of thing siblings do to entertain themselves on a long car ride; the kind where the dad threatens to pull the car over and engage in some socially acceptable child abuse and the mom tells dad to keep his eyes on the road in a tone that implies that everything wrong with the family is his fault.

Everything was fine. Some people got a little cranky as the hours wore on, but again that’s bound to happen, and can usually be repaired with a well placed dick joke.

Saturday night after rehearsal, I had agreed to do a reading for a friend who is a playwright and actor. I had originally worked with her in The Crucible a while back and have done a staged reading for one of her plays. She is one of the sweetest, open and caring people I have ever met. We passed each other while I was walking home last week and it jogged her mind to have me come read for a one act that she was submitting for a contest.

Now, already I would crawl over a twelve foot high wall of rotting wallabies to help her out, and as it turned out she was also recruiting one of the actors that I’m currently working with to also do the reading. She did not know that we knew each other, that we have an easy rapport, that we have kissed on stage a number of times.

Oh man, it just felt good. No stress, working with an actor that I work with (and work well with) already, a funny script with characters that you can just sink your teeth into, a writer who was tickled to hear her characters brought to life…

And in between readings we sat and talked about art and writing and acting. And it was one of those conversations that can easily turn to one of those annoying cases of verbal masturbation, but we kept away from the self congratulatory bullshit. I was again struck by a sense of how lucky I am to be part of this community, how fulfilled. We talked about how art is important, about how it feels when you’ve been unexpectedly touched by a work, when you know that you have performed something that has touched people – whether it’s to make them laugh, or hold their breath in anticipation, or empathize with someone who never even existed. We talked about what we expect from other artists and what we need from other artists, and as the sun was turning down to a brilliant end of day orange and we sat in a circle in this small and comfortably warm studio apartment, it became easy to believe that art could change the world.

Can I get an amen?