a poor player

Dunkirk NY – Well, with eight months of writing lost, I figured it might be a good idea to get back on track just a little bit. Adding a post tonight, which is my night off, seemed to be a good project. And to be honest, I did the post-a-day thing back in November, and the loss of most of those posts are nothing to get upset about. The world will not be a worse place for the lack of a post or two of mine.

I came to the realization the other day that I let a lot of theatrical events go by without comment, most noticeably the Tonys (if there is one post I regret losing it was the recent one I wrote on the Arties in Buffalo). I am also not finding much of interest to write about. I attribute this to the fact that most of what I had been reading about isn’t particularly pertinent to me personally. It may be pertinent to my students, and I do feel a need to stay relatively on top of things so that I can address issues with some modicum of intelligence. But I am coming to realize that my interest in things theatrical, at the most deeply personal level, is beginning to fade.

Much Ado About Nothing opened this past Thursday, and starting tomorrow I begin the three-week six-shows-a-week marathon that is the run. We got a somewhat clumsy review in the Buffalo News (I found it interesting that the print version of the newspaper headlined the review “A Clumsy Effort”, while the web headline is “Music Distracts in Much Ado.“). But all of that notwithstanding, of more interest to me is that I am not all that excited about the show. It’s pleasant enough, sure – but not exciting. Almost routine. I was talking about this the other day to an old friend from my undergraduate days who worked for a time as a stagehand on Broadway, and he said to me, “Well, it looks like you’re finally a professional. It’s only another job to you.” And he’s right. I do not get the deep personal satisfaction I used to get. I am not slacking. I’m doing the best job I know how in order to give the audience the experience they came to have. But when it’s all over each evening, there is little personal satisfaction in the evening’s work. I might just as well have made 100 widgets in the widget factory.

This is discouraging. I have built not just my career, but my personal life around theatre. In fact, as I sit here and write this, I realize that at this point in my life, I don’t have anything else in my life other than theatre. No hobbies I can think of. No particular activity that I do when I don’t do theatre. I did have a passion for computers in the early days of the internet when it was all brand new and presented an intellectual challenge, but technology has advanced so far and so fast that computers are no more fascinating or challenging than my kitchen blender. Ten years ago writing this post would have taken some skill and some coding effort; now it’s just a matter of entering it into the text box and away it goes.

Unlike the vast majority of theatre folk who have to have at least another job on top of what they do in the theatre to break up the monotony, my day job is all about theatre from morning til night. When I think, I think theatre. When I write, I write about theatre. I don’t have enough experience and expertise to write about anything else. When I think about writing a novel, it’s about a theatre company. I think about writing plays. When I think about research or writing some sort of academic book, it’s about theatre (a comprehensive traveler’s guide to the country’s Shakespeare festivals, for example, or a book on the teaching of acting). My recent attraction and flirtation with upper administration in higher education no doubt comes from the fact that it would not involve doing and talking about theatre every single minute of every single day. I am actually looking forward to the bureaucratic aspect of becoming department chair and attending meetings on enrollment management and assessment!

I think this is a dangerous thing, but I think at the moment I don’t quite know what to do about the situation. I am forever telling my students to cultivate and maintain a life outside of theatre so that you won’t become stale or lose touch with everyday things in life. While my kids were young and in the house, they were always a distraction, and provided a good outlet. I could always take one of them to a ballgame or play catch or watch a swim meet they were in or something. But with them all out of the house, that distraction is gone. I tried baseball umpiring for a time, but that strained my lower back in a way nothing else did, so I had to give it up after four years. Besides, finding enough free time from my theatre commitments made it tough to schedule games for me. If I have a passion for anything else in life, baseball would be it. Perhaps I should investigate becoming a play-by-play announcer or just work as a summer job doing anything for the Jamestown Jammers (Retirement Fantasy #4 – get an apartment within walking distance of Yankee Stadium and become an usher).

Today is the first day of summer, the longest day of the year. Many people celebrate the day, and rightfully so, because it indicates the fullness of life on the planet. It’s warm, things are growing, people are out and about, all manner of animal and insect life is out there tearing it up. We’re at the top of the cycle seasonally. But of course, from this moment on, the days get shorter and shorter. It’s a few months before you really start to notice that, but it’s there nonetheless. I feel a connection to that theatrically, as if my theatrical “season,” even while I am at the top of it, is growing shorter. This vague sense of disinterest is probably one of the early warning signs.  -twl