I’d be a nauseated, shivering, hypersensitive mess off stage left ( or right, depending on the show), repeating my first line over and over in my head, sometimes mouthing it with sufficient breath to keep from fainting, to keep my lips limber and battle ready, but mainly concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, step by step, and making it onto the stage when my cue came.
There was never a show – (and i was in the busine
ss for over 40 years) – never a performance when i did not have that momentary flash of doubt as to whether i would actually ever make it onto the stage…maybe i’d trip or miss my cue altogether. There was always that stage fear-induced moment when i doubted.
It was a cold, dark and paralyzing moment. Chilling.
But then….somehow…magically it would seem at times, i’d break through that wall and -poof!- there i was in a warm pool of light, everyone’s eyes fixed on me….and my body would immediately go into warrior mode and i would relax, ready to engage…relax as if i had been immersed into a warm soothing bath….the lighting became my refuge, the other actors my immediate family, the occasion joyous, and i could feel my breath re-entering my body – or rather entering the body of the character i was portraying. I had allowed my hard work to take over, and i remembered i actually did know the lines and would do what i had so laboriously rehearsed. But it did not feel like labor.
It felt like home.
Always.
I feel a light on me, that golden warm light from a spotlight, an overhead lico , a bank of floods from off sides of the stage, and i would feel a comfort like no other. I am at home in the light. Especially if that light enables me to be seen by an audience i am there to entertain, to lighten, to make laugh. The warmth of that stage lighting feels as familiar to me as i imagine amniotic fluid feels to a fetus.
ANd it is the same when i am n the sunlight, as my spending most of my youth in the direct glare of the most sun i could get…i need light…but now i know exposure to the sun causes skin cancers, and now even that joy has been taken from me….no more sunbathing for old me…old decrepit, fading but still enjoying life me….
Now when i am in the sun, it feels like i am destroying my skin …it used to feel like i was helping it…time and science have proven otherwise.
BUT – and this is true….the lights of a stage appearance do not cause skin cancer…at least that i know if..and so i remember with fondness the joys of being in al the spotlights of my youth.
It is true: i have loved nothing more than being in the spotlight…except maybe where i am now…a peaceful, quiet and solitary journey into who i might really be.
My silence these days is golden and i can only express myself in the writings i do daily for Creative Caffeine and for myself…I am discovering dozens of journals, half completed, filled with blank ages waiting to be written on…i have not enough time in what life is left to me to fill all those pages…but, i guess I’ll die trying.
Im glad to have such a talented partner this week…i hope to hear from her soon.
Meanwhile, back to dreams of the stage spotlights of my youth. My journals have recorded every golden moment.