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Tomorrow night is the opening night for the first straight drama production I have been cast in in almost 20 years. Sometimes when life hands us setbacks - in my case the tumors - it also hands us a way to keep the ball rolling. Even if its sideways for a while. The level of strength required to sing is too much for things like chemo and lacerated abdomens, but acting IS possible.
Yet it has been an experience at times unnerving.The energy level is some what different, and keeping the smokers away has been a trial. But for so long now I have allowed the music to determine all the boundaries, from energy level to movements to entrances, I am at times lost. Because I tire much more easily these days, I miss such things giving me the lift I need. No, a script is not remotely as merciless as a score; there is no need for absolute perfection. You can pause if you must. But when my energy flags and my concentration wavers, I also do not have the comfort of a chord, or a particular series of bars to remind me of what I am about, and what I must find, to guide me across that range of emotions and that blinding stage, where the audience is just a black maw.
I am not unaccustomed to long periods of time alone on stage- that is what defines the job of a principle singer.
So, in its own way, tomorrow will be much like it was when I was 5 and a half, and doing my first lead role in anything on a stage. It will be almost as novel, as fresh, and I wonder if it will also be as invigorating. Will I fall in love with it all over? Will I get lost in the opening of a new well funded theatre, or will I simply pine for what i have become accustomed to? How far have I evolved in the shift from drama to music to opera and back to drama again? Is this just temporary, or something more permanent? After all, I have agreed to do my first film, another new experience.
I have mys suspicions, seeing as even in that first production, I loved the singing most of all. Perhaps it is simply " this too, shall pass, daughter."
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