The One with My Dirty Rotten Audience.

With a week to breathe (and as promised two posts ago), I have decided to take the time to share what has been going on in my life over the past few months. A game of catch-up. I may not capture every detail in this one post, but I'll do my best to remember and recreate as much as possible. I'll start from where I left off.

Before I returned from my hiatus, my last post was on May 27, 2011. This was twelve days before I opened Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Some of you may recall my reservations mentioned in that post about playing Christine and the struggles I had during the rehearsal process in discovering the character.

I hate to say it, but validation is a powerful thing. And as a performer, I look for it in almost everything. It has certainly gotten me into some trouble regarding my self-esteem in "real-life" situations, but that's not what I'm getting at right now. I'm talking about the power of an audience's response. Since I started blogging just a little over a year ago, I didn't really get to tell the story of the most overwhelming experience I have ever had as a performer.

(I certainly hope that as I explain this, no one misinterprets this as "gloating" or an "ego trip.")

From the second I read the script of Sleepy Hollow to the very last moment of the very last performance of the show, I knew that the song that my character sang in the second act was very special. Brilliant, even, in its composition - the music and the lyrics. I felt extremely grateful for the opportunity to take on the challenge of being the first to play Gusta Tenbrook, and I took it very seriously. In February of 2010, the cast was invited to perform at the regional level of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival in St. George, Utah.
When the performance in St. George rolled around, I think it's safe to say that the adrenaline was at its peak for most of the members in the cast. I know that the auditorium seated about 1,500 people and that the applause from the very beginning of the show was louder than any audience we'd had at Weber. This absolutely pushed us to give the best performance the show had seen. The song I sang was called "Vanished," a sad recollection of my character's past and revelation to other characters and audience members of a development in the story's plot. (You can watch a video of the song in rehearsal here.) Typically, after the song ended, the audience didn't applaud. There are just those moments in shows where no applause is needed. However, in this particular performance in St. George, the audience reaction was quite the opposite. When the final chords of the song faded, there was a small second of silence before the applause began. I can't really explain it, except to say that it lasted for well over 60 seconds. It took the next line in dialogue to stop it. I stood there during those 60 seconds, utterly and completely overwhelmed. I even fought to hold back a smile.

It validated so much for me as a performer. The show had been in the works for over six months; the writers had done re-writes and changes and everyone involved spent countless hours on the entire production. To me, that applause was validation for every single second we had spent on that production. I may be the only person who feels that way, but that's the power that applause had for me. That made the swine flu, the tears, the hard work, the frustrations, and the lack of sleep all worth it.

I promise I have a point behind all of this long-windedness.
When the Monday/Wednesday/Friday cast opened Dirty Rotten Scoundrels on June 8, I still wasn't in a good place with Christine. I still felt like no one could possibly see me as Miss Sunshine; I still felt like I was grappling with who to make her. While I made sure to be as consistent as I had been in rehearsal, I still had so many reservations and questions. Was I doing the character justice? Would people like me? Was I cast for more reasons than just because I am a singer?

Because, yes, when you perform... those things do matter. At least to me.

There's always that moment that things click. Whether it's a note you hit in rehearsal that you never hit before, whether it's that dialect that you feel you finally perfect, whether it's that line you finally don't have to refer to your script for, whether it's that costume you finally get to put on. OR whether it's that one line you say that makes you realize that, thanks to how the audience reacts, you did something right. That's exactly what happened.

One single moment during that opening performance allowed me to make Christine who I had dreamed of her being. It was a stamp of approval on the work that we'd done, that I'd done. And, in a way, permission for the character to grow into who she needs to be. Maybe this makes me seem like a self-serving performer? I wish I could say that how the audience responds really doesn't matter to me. But sometimes, when you doubt yourself, it's exactly what you need. There really is power in feedback. I can't doubt that.

After that moment, I worked and worked still, but in complete joy. That moment allowed Dirty Rotten Scoundrels to be the most fun I have ever had in a production. I can't feel too guilty about that.

After all... applause is the receipt, not the bill.

The One where I'm a Robot.

Well, it's been almost four weeks since my last post. I wasn't kidding when I said that I had fallen out of the habit of writing, was I?

The truth is, and it didn't hit me until I actually said it out loud today, I'm just sort of closing my eyes and running through the hubbub that is my life right now. Because I'm always on the go, my sense of caring and my sense of expressing emotion has sort of flown out the door.

As I've said before, movies and plays and television shows and books rarely make me emotional/make me cry. I am touched by them; I am sometimes even changed by them... but very rarely do I find myself choking back tears because of them. I think it was because I could remove myself from them. Because I found things in my own personal life to be so emotional and so beautiful and so sad and so maddening, those things in books and movies and plays just weren't important.

And the strangest thing has happened over the last few months: the exact opposite is happening to me. Where I used to bawl like a baby over my personal situations and opportunities and struggles, they fall by the wayside and I let myself forget about them. And now, movies and plays and musicals and books and TV shows are where my tears are shed.

And because of this, I feel like a robot.

Not a sad robot, of course, because I'm not sad. I'm just jaded. In a world full of color, I am black and white. I am cut and dry. Disenchanted. Blasé.

I don't want that anymore. I want the things in my personal life to touch my heart the way that they did before. I want my emotions to feel absolutely tangible. What I really want is balance. A life that I don't take for granted but also a life that I have a handle on emotionally.

You won't know this because virtually no time has passed since you read that last sentence... but I have been sitting here staring at the computer screen for over twenty minutes, trying to decide what to say in regards to this dilemma. After this brief internal dialogue, I am more than positive I have figured it out.

Now, what I'm about to say is not said to cause any hurt feelings. I know my saying that doesn't make it all better, doesn't make people not feel hurt, but I'm hoping to say this in a way that will remain sensitive. I'm also hoping to say this in order to help myself better understand the situation. Like I've said before, saying it out loud (or, in this case and many others, writing it) gives me a clearer view on what I'm dealing with.

Yes. I am acting this way/feeling this way because it is a defense mechanism.

My circle of friends has completely changed. Over the last year, save a very special few, I have all new friends. I remember when I first felt it; it was when I came back from Texas after Christmas. It had started to dwindle for a little while before that, one by one, but the Great Friend Apocalypse happened in January. My roommates, my classmates, the people that I truly considered dear friends started to drop like flies. I felt abandoned by these people. Luckily, by that time, I was well into Tale and had developed new friendships. I didn't feel horribly lonely... just horribly confused.

I know that I changed a lot. I know that my confidence had risen leaps and bounds because of my weight loss. I was a sorry, sad sight before I made the decision to make a big change in my everyday life by treating myself better. I did what I had to do, and I was happier. It's amazing to think that during the times that I was SO unbelievably sad all the time, I had those friends around me to comfort me, to laugh with me in order to make me feel better, to listen to me. And then I got happy. And no one cared to listen anymore. I can't help but think, "Misery loves company."

These were people I truly believed I would hold onto for a long time; I invested a lot of energy into them, a lot of emotions, a lot of care. I laughed with them and cried with them and hugged them and played with them. And then one day, they were gone.

This isn't the blame game. I know that my "new personality" was a little overwhelming and perhaps a little sudden. It was, however, something I wanted to share with the people I loved. But when I turned around to share it with them, and with a smile on my face, those people were no longer a part of my life.

So, I shut down. I became a well-oiled machine in social settings with these people. I allowed them to slip away without even the smallest indication of a fight on my side... which, if anyone knows me at all, they know that isn't like me. I hold onto people and I fight to make things better. But for some reason, I felt like it was unfair, and therefore futile. I developed somewhat of a "bunker mentality" of robotic emotions to keep myself from getting hurt.

And the hard truth is... I did that to myself, and now I have to fix it.

This has been something that has been weighing on my mind for some time... something so small as my losing weight has changed so much of my life, more for better than worse. I only know what I feel: my life is better.

And the fact of the matter is that true friendship is deeper than any appetite and greater than any waist size. I need to recognize that I have those sweet friends that I care most about around even now.

That's what's important and that's what will help me feel.