In The Wings

Last night I lay awake with a terrible, twisting feeling that ripped my guts to shreds.

What if this play I'm in, Pride and Prejudice, is the last play I'll ever be in?  

I've always had this notion that, of course, I would be in other plays.  Like how we think we always have another day to live.

But what if we don't?

It hit like a bullet, straight to the most sacred parts of my soul.

Like a flash back, I starting seeing my last plays.

All of the sudden I'm back in my Shakespeare play.  We only had one week to pull off a professional performance of As You Like It.  But it felt like a whole life time.

The stage is light up in a dim blue light.  The actors on stage are trembling through their words, and the audience is still.  I'm in the shadows, watching, waiting to enter.  That black curtain and newly painted stage and clusters of props, like a little boys toy box, I've never felt so at home.  I don't want to go.  Right here, in the shadows, I feel purposeful.  Like that feeling I got when we found our house in the mountains, I've finally come home.

Once one comes back from an experience like that, life just feels like mud.  I had a repeat of that experience after I came back from a writing camp. 

But what if it was all just a fluffy feeling?  That acting is all fluff and fun, and there's no point or depth to it?  It's all pretend any way. 

It's easy to hear about a missionary who made a difference in peoples lives, but rarely will you ever here about an actor who made a difference in peoples lives.

I exist to serve God and help people.  And he's given me a passion for acting.  Now what?

My mind went back to another play.

I'm in Our Town again.

I'm the stage manager, so I'm supposed to introduce the play and set the scene.  The feeling for the play.  A dry humored, somber, real kind of feeling.

But we're all a bunch of high school/middle schoolers, and half of us have never even been in a play before.

I sit on the chair, behind the curtain.  The spot light shines through, giving it a red glow.  It looks like Christmas.  Squimp is the only other person on stage, waiting in the corner to pull back the curtains.  I listen to the voices in the audience talk, and I try to recognize some of the voices.  My legs are numb.  My hands can't stay still.  I've forgotten how to breathe.

I've been praying about this play for a long time time.  Gods given me a part, he's given me these few words to say, and I want to make the most of it.  I want them to walk out of this auditorium like I did when I first saw this play.  Changed. 

So I pray again, behind that curtain, a few seconds before the light went down and the curtains drew back.

The stage light is blinding.  The audience below are darkened and disappear as the rows go back, like smoke.

I'm not me any more, I'm the narrator and I don't know anyone in the audience and they don't know me.  I dust a few chairs off and make then look straighter, and I smile with satisfaction, looking into the audience.  All at once, they giggle.

I did it.  I've caught my audience.  

I've hooked there attention and they're interest, and they giggle although I've done nothing very interesting or funny.  

"This play is called Our Town." I said.

I say many speeches throughout the play, and more then likely they wanted me to stop talking and move on to the actual story.  I'm not even a technical character in the play.  But they look at me.  They leaned forward.  They laugh.  They nod.  And not everyone in the audience was attentive to the dull things I was saying, but for those few people who were, it was all worth it.

I've gotten people I've never even seen before come up to me with they're thumbs in their pockets like I did on stage and say, "This play is called Our Town."

And it wasn't just me.  It was our whole cast.  The audience talked about how they loved the characters, and how it effected them, and cried when Squimp started singing, or Emily enters through the crowd, or George kneels by his wife's grave.  Simple things.

I've been in many plays.

But the Shakespeare play changed my life.

And Our Town also changed my life, and gave me the opportunity to share the change with others.

So I go back to the question, is acting really worth it?  Or if this is my last play, was acting really worth it?

Yes.

Does God want me to continue acting?  That's up to him.  I have absolutely no clue.

If I die today or tomorrow, I think people would think I was a simple person.  She didn't do much.  She just sort of, existed.  But maybe they'll remember my simple things, like, "This play is called Our Town."

"Machines never come with nay extra parts.  They come with the exact amount they need. so I figured out, if the world is one big machine, I couldn't be an extra part.  I had to be here for some reason."

-Hugo