The World Is a Stage

It's funny what can bring back a reverie. For Marcel Proust it was a cookie (prompting the terrible joke "When is a madeline not a cookie?"). For others it's a song on the radio, heard again for the first time in many years. For me, I found it was a theatre review in the New York Times.

Ben Brantley's review of the current revival of "12 Angry Men" (TAM) in today's issue of the Times was suprisingly evocative. Not because the review was so wonderful--he gave the play a pretty good review and the writing was up to his usual standard. It was more the very subject, the play "12 Angry Men" itself. See, when I was a junior in high school I was in our production of "12 Angry Women". Why the change in title? I went to an Orthodox Jewish High School, where the girls' school was over a mile away from the boys' school. If ever the twain did meet, it would mean the end of the world. So our plays had to be either 100% female role, or we women played men, as I did on 2 occasions. Our director found a version of TAM rewritten for 12 women and got the play OK'd by the administration. The same administration had, a week prior, nixed a production of "Steel Magnolias" under the assertion that it was too crass for young Jewish ladies to perform. Sucks, because I was all set to play the Shirley McClaine character, Ouiza.

The play itself was alright. Some of the casting was highly suspicious since these girls couldn't act their way out of a paper bag, to quote the director. But I suppose he had to choose from the pool who auditioned. By Junior year, I had been every production my school had put on, and I was a bit of a shoe-in. However, it's always a battle for one of the leads and I landed Juror #3, the main antagonist who gets to have a lovely breakdown at the end of the play after all her hopes and dreams are shattered by the idealistic Juror #12 (actually I don't remember which number the protagonist is, so 12 is really arbitrary). My director decided that my character should be doing something with her hands at all times and so I had to learn to knit. Since I have the hand eye coordination of a llama, I ended up creating a giant woolen knot by the end of rehearsals. My mother never forgave me for ruining the sweater that woolen knot started out as.

But more than reminding me of my performance in a middling high school play, it reminded me of how much I used to love to act. Till I and my expectations grew up, I had wanted to act for a living. I never wanted to be a movie star or any type of celebrity, but a theatre actor famous to a select and elite few. I wanted to play the Shakespeare greats and even dabble in musical theatre. To do all of this, I realize that it takes talent. Real talent. Not the sort of talent it takes to get the lead in a high school play. And who knows? Maybe I had that talent at one point. But I'm sitting here remembering that when I acted nothing else matters, even having no talent. It was just me, the other actors, and that invisible fourth wall. I've had roles where I had to address the audience, breaking the 4th wall. There was something magical about sharing those moments with a crowd of hidden faces, lost in a sea of blackness.
Maybe I got some sort of validation from acting that I can't get from real life. Maybe I really am just a drama queen and I crave the attention. It's probably bits of that tied in to the fact that it was just a wonderful thing, being able to create these other characters in other worlds. I could be anyone and do anything and yet still be myself. Sometimes, the audience was tertiary. If they weren't there I'd still be able to be those people and experience those emotions...doing it in front of an audience just made me seem a bit less like a crazy nut talking to myself.

Even all these years later I still miss the adrenaline rush and those few seconds before the curtain rises and your heart is literally in your throat. And I miss those few second right after the curtain has dropped for the final time on the last night of the show and you can finally stop worrying about forgetting that last line in Act One or when to interrupt someone's monologue and just be satisfied that you put yourself out there and did it. Nothing I've done in my life since has been able to give me the same feeling and I know that at least I was lucky enough to have been there a few times and taken those final bows.