I am used to that look.
The look I get when I try to explain how someone like me, introverted and generally averse to attention, becomes an actor.
Of course, after years of training in, well…talking, I don’t come across as introverted or quiet. Most people over-generalize actors and create an image of them as attention hungry, overly exuberant, always-performing types that are heat seeking missiles for the burning flame of the lime light.
In fact, that persona is very real in the acting world. I have met many of them, clambering like puppies over each other to get attention. They feed off each other, impressing one another with funny quotes, impersonations, and bang on performances from famous movies or plays, fighting like lone wolves for the top, as if there were room for only one. We need those artists. Without their drive, passion, and near inhuman capacity to endure physical and emotional torture for the sake of the Theatre, our entertainment world wouldn’t exist.
However, in the shadows, behind the curtain, or in the back of a dark, vibrating theatre audience are the Quiet Ones. Those that never would compete, those content to watch because watching is their passion. Absorbing others. Feeling their stories. The Quiet Ones search relentlessly for moments in which to lose themselves. The ultimate entertainment. Finding the stories and being part of them.
Then comes the moment when the Quiet One discovers the stage. What could be a better escape than actually being in the story? Being one of the characters. Going with them where they go, seeing through their eyes, feeling all the Feels in their heart, mind, and body. Imagine: every goose bump is yours, every hair-raising, bone tingling, stomach clenching, heart bleeding, anger razing, tear sheering feeling is yours. The kicker is that you’re safe knowing that the seed of the Quiet One lay inside the character and when the Feels have been felt, the Quiet One can safely go away and hide in anonymity once more.
The Quiet Ones may easily become addicted to this type of escapism. But the theatre, for all its rewards, is hell. Rehearsals are torture: the raw pain of exposure is intolerable at times and the competition feels like nails raking down your face. The journey to finding yourself in the story can resemble Frodo’s climb of Mt. Doom in Mordor. And your spirit feels like Frodo after carrying that darn ring for three epic movies. Not to mention even the best directors and casts can seem like an army or Orks after a grueling and disappointing rehearsal.
But on opening night you don your armor piece by piece, one corset, character shoe, or bobby pin at a time. The audience is full and the air is thick. Moving to your place onstage in the dark feels like walking through water: your fingers comb through the energy, your face is washed with it, your body is pulled, pushed and moved by it. The fullness of the night spins like a current around you holding all those nerves in, like the casing of a bomb. A bomb that you hope will go off. And when it does, all those moments in the Quiet One’s life when you purposely hung back, stood beside or sought out solitude are forgotten.
For those who’ve never been onstage here’s what it’s like. The lights fade to black. Very black. There is nothing of you left in this kind of darkness. You brush the curtain aside and make a break, silently, for your place on the stage wondering why you decided to do this to begin with.
And then light. A light so bright you can barely see the audience. You chose instead to feel them. And the light is warm. If it isn’t, you need to find your light. Move a little to the left or down stage until the heat hits your face. Because when you find that spotlight that was hung, gelled, and brightened just right to capture your face, your body, your moment, you know it. You forget the audience, you forget rehearsals, you forget yourself.
Then the story takes you. Together with every human in the theatre you go crashing deliriously through the energy and story like riding a long, wet slide.
Nothing compares to the exhilaration of dancing between the character and the actor on stage and behind the set for two hours.
Nothing compares to the human connection.
Nothing compares to the job of being the instrument of the energy in the room and playing a piece for all to feel. Then the brutal, battering, beautiful art that is the theatre changes you.
Black. The clapping. The lights come up. You see the audience, you remember your rehearsals, you remember yourself and you shrink back into the quiet world you like best. But you know you would risk all the Feels again just to be back in the light.
Because in the light there is no me or you. We become one story. Perhaps if everyone knew what that felt like, to be one story, to feel the warmth of it, we could set a larger stage for a better story.
So this is a call to the Quiet Ones. Forget yourself. Get on the stage. Find your light. Be part of the story. Brave the people. Let the brutal, battering, beautiful art that is Life change you. We need you. There is no story without each other.
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