Theatre Life and the Miracle of Time

I have been thinking a lot about time lately, whether I've realized it or not.

After I updated an album of theatre photos, my husband smiled while perusing the pictures and said, "I love how many of these I was a part of." He then proceeded to count the productions we'd worked on together over the years, and something occurred to me:

We all mark our lives by way of story.

You might be able to locate, say, February 2010 in the files of your memory by way of a new job started, or a convention attended or a friend made or lost. Those are all stories. Mine are just a bit more, well...theatrical, that's all.

I can find February 2010 because that's when I was Anne Frank. And the world around me for a time had her journal scrawled upon it.

My husband made me realize that I have an awful lot of milestones tied to theatre. WE have an awful lot of milestones.

Looking through the album...there's the first time he ever saw me (on a stage. In a deer costume!). The string of shows we worked on together as we became friends. (And for him: the string of shows that led him to realize I was the one for him.)

We got together during that beautiful, 4-person "Lear."

We went away to get married during "Wind in the Willows" when I was an insane little stoat (when I came back to perform after the whirlwind weekend, a tiny "Just Married" had been added to the back of the tiny car that was one of my props).

We found out I was pregnant during "Taking Steps" (and while my character may not have taken any steps at all by the end, me? My husband? My life? We took terrified and thrilling baby steps. Out of a plane. Into a world so new, it continues to reveal itself to us).

For me, there is the very poignant duo of shows to mark the end of my selfhood as I knew it ("Anime Momotaro") and the beginning of mamahood (bizarrely, but perfectly...you had to be there:)...an all-girl "Titus Andronicus.")

This is how I know I am in the right profession: the stories that give my personal timeline its shape and color and vibrancy and meaning are mine AND someone else's. That person may have really lived, or may only have ever existed in the imagination of a playwright, but they become a very real something to me, and they walk with me for a few paces down the path. Heck, maybe they even create that next little stretch of path.

I read a beautiful play recently where a character angrily proclaims that she is NOT what she does.
And then she takes it back, and admits to being angry because she IS, indeed, very very much, what she does.
If you have kept up with this sporadic blog, or if you even just peruse its titles, you can piece together a mostly loving but overall tumultuous relationship to theatre. "Mostly loving but overall tumultuous" might also be how I'd describe my relationship to myself, if you caught me being carelessly honest. I AM what I do. That's why it's so hard. My marriage sprang from this, my child is tied to this. Yes, I could give it up tomorrow and forge a whole new path. But there would forever be that near-decade of Tia-as-Theatre.

And I don't see as I'd ever stop being grateful for it...for all those "friends," however strange or unlikely or eerily "me," on my timeline.  

Exhibit A: "Strange friend" - Youtha the Stoat.

 

What a nut.

I'll smile tomorrow.

There are times 

times like when you are having to look for another apartment after a mere two months in a place because the unusually wet winter sprung difficultly-fixed leaks in your new home - leaks to shock and befuddle your landlord

there are times

times like when you are looking for that new apartment and finding that, in the past three years, you have been priced out of your neighborhood and, in fact, everything that seems not-cruddy - not paint-peely and secretly-moldy and possibly insect-ful and definitely characterless and questionably safe - is juuuust out of your financial reach

there are times

when you step back in attempt to see the big picture and what you see is an awful lot of begging... begging for the work, then begging people to come see the work...lather, rinse, repeat...
 
when "artist"
seems like

THE WORST DECISION I EVER MADE.

 

Dear Us

Our little family moved this weekend. We moved from a one-bedroom apartment to a two-bedroom. Sounds like a lot of extra room, right?

Hubby and I each had some form of panic attack as our many (MANY. WHERE DID THEY ALL COME FROM???) boxes got crammed into the new space by our sweet friends. There was barely room to walk through the place. And separately, we each felt the same thing: shame. We felt suddenly ashamed that our friends were there to see how small the place looked…how pitifully we were providing for our growing family. We felt ashamed that our move was not to our own house or even a nice, spacious apartment, but to a tiny basement apartment under someone else’s home. It felt, in that moment, pathetic. It felt like we had failed. Or, at least, like we had definitely not won. Or were maybe not even playing the game right.

Some form of this moment occurs now and again for each of us. More frequently now that we are parents. I am feeling the need to pick both of us up.

Our son will grow up with *love.* Love from his parents, from his extended family and our friends. He will *see* love. He does not need thousands of feet of real estate in which to feel the love, and witness it.

Our son will grow up with joy. He will feel it, he will witness it. He does not need thousands of feet of real estate in which to laugh, and hear our laughter, and see our smiles.

Our son will grow up with art.

Our son will know that he is important.

Our son will know that his mom and dad, too, are important. They are important because they love.

We are not failures. You got that, Matt & Tia? People who love, who laugh, who foster beauty in whatever tiny way at all, those people can never be pathetic, or pitiful, or failures. There is nothing to pity in people like this. Quite the opposite.