It feels a little strange and also so normal to be going to a theater again after taking a year off. We open tomorrow night, and because it's a ten-minute festival and we didn't go through the intense rehearsal period that normally would have taken place for a full-length play. I don't feel 100 percent ready. For that reason I know I'll be a bit nervous tomorrow. Plus it's a new theater where I've never acted before...just trying to get comfortable in a new environment.
It's been a long road, and a year ago I didn't know if I ever wanted to step foot on a stage again. Community theater got to be too spotty, too incestuous (not that regional theater or Boston theater won't be; I just don't know the peeps yet.) But the standards in community theater just weren't there anymore. The director of the production of Buried Child I was in right before I quit went to see the Nora Theater's production, and he emailed me to say that he thought that I and a couple of the other actors in the production I was in were more interesting. I wrote back to him and said that I didn't think we were that good, and that the experience wasn't pleasant for me at all, and that because of that I was getting down on myself even more than what's normal for me...to the point where I had one mega-destructive night where I hurt myself and a lot of other people. But, I said, I'm glad he liked it.
That experience taught me that I do know what I'm talking about in the theater, and God love the beasts and children who think they're doing good work...that's really up to them, and my only beef with them is that, as long as they don't know what's good, or if they're not 100 percent honest with themselves and accept compromises, they contribute greatly to the downfall of theater.
Oh, you're asking: what's good, my arrogant friend?
The real trouble with community theater in the Boston area is that it's basically a bunch of relatively talented people putting on shows for themselves. The majority of the audience on any given night in your local community theater is composed of friends of the actors. Or worse, "theater people." And of course they're going to like it, or if they don't they're not going to tell you, or they'll cut you a wide margin of slack. And that makes for some really lazy actors. If all you're hearing is how good you are, well...that's pretty good for the ego.
I'm not saying I'm perfect. I'm not even saying I'm any good. (God, why did you think I didn't act for a year? I didn't want to be guilty of subjecting audiences to the same drivel I'd been dishing out for so long.) I'm saying that I'm making an honest effort to grow as an actor and complete the bargain an actor makes with the audience every time he or she is on stage, and that's to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances.
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