Personal Narrative Draft – You’re Doing Great Sweetie
Conquering a fear is one thing. Admitting your good at something, is another element entirely. History’s “great people” may have found a way to persevere alone, but maybe, like the rest of us, they relied on the people closest to them.
Mildly upset. My stomach was only mildly upset. However, I was going to the dark place in my mind. It’s that place that we all have, where we focus too hard on a particular aspect, and all the things that could go wrong suddenly go through your head. All the insecurities that once whispered, now seem to run screaming through your brain. As, I have learned to do over the years, I locked them in a place inside, one sure to burst one day, several years down the line, but I digress. I opened my eyes, and lifted my head, and reentered the safety of my friends.
I wouldn’t have guessed it three weeks earlier, but these strangers were now my friends. It’s funny how that can happen after seeing each other every night for an entire month.
The walls around me were completely white and unappealing, a stark cry from the paintings that lay against them. I only believed this to be true. For three weeks we stared at their frames because we were told not to touch them. I suppose that is a small price to pay for college students to be allowed to stage an entire play in an art gallery. Our adviser Taylor Clemens would tell us that the total worth was somewhere in the “millions.” Though I didn’t believe him.
That being the belief however, the art was untouchable. It was stacked neatly against the wall, and all we had were metal folding chairs. As I began to hear the people filling in the seats outside, my mildly upset stomach became more uneasy. I seemed to be the only one. Everyone else was to busy with their own chaos.
“Five minutes to places,” Grady would say, relaying the message from Jason, the stage manager, on the other end of the headset. “Thank you, places,” we would all respond. At least once a night, one of us would respond, “Fuck you, places!” This of course led to laughter – under our breath, as the audience was not allowed to know about the turmoil backstage.
Eric and Khiana, two of my fellow cast mates, would sit silently on their phones. Every once, in a while Eric would hold in his own loud laughter, and Khiana would give a sarcastic smile toward the current jokester. In the corner, Madison was shoving a beard on to Grant, cursing about how the hair refused to stay on his perfectly clean cut face.
In itself, this was its own comic relief. Behind their chaos was a leather chair, one coveted by each of the cast members. Grady would say, it’s “the comfiest chair he had ever sat in.” He even contemplated taking it for himself, and I think he was only half joking. All this happened before we learned that the comfy leather chair was actually a piece of art, valued at $6,000! Now, Madison and Grant stood with makeup, fake hair, and glue, not two feet away from the “art.”
Though, I now counted them all as my friends, Madison had been my friend long before I was cast in Two Rooms.She, herself, had felt a lot of stress over the past month, having to pick the costumes for each character, as well as memorizing her own role. But there was no doubt that she was our leader. “You’re doing great, Sweetie,” she would say to the cast. Although, sometimes as a sarcastic way to lighten the mood, she would also say it to keep our spirits up.
I remembered this vote of confidence as the lights went down. She then admired her work on Grant before pulling her hair back into a pony tail and walking to the curtain. She was the first character to emerge. And, through all the immense stress that she once had. I found myself comparing her nervousness from a week earlier, to the stone cold focus on her face at this moment, and wished I could have the same.
As she left, the role of leader turned to Grady, who had removed his headset and got on his phone, though he always kept an ear on the stage, so as not to miss his cue. He always had an ability to lighten the mood, maybe it’s because his role was the smallest. His reactions to the comic banter backstage could make a joke ten times as funny, while the tension would drop by half.
It was at this moment that I began to realize the funny reactions that soothed me were from jokes that I had made. In fact, most everyone laughed at my jokes, or general clumsiness, which was not always purposeful. The jokes arrived at their best when I noticed others to be under an intense amount of nervousness or stress. For the entire month of August, stress mounted on nearly all of them as their other extra-curriculars began, along with the school year. My own stress had been minimal, I went to work, then showed up at night and did what I do best, act. As their friend, I knowingly, or unknowingly, was helping them ease themselves into this night from the moment tension rose on the first day of rehearsal. However, it was now I who needed calming.
Checking on my props for my first scene, I felt as though an ocean was throwing my innards up and down throughout my stomach. However, I could not focus on this, as I was to distracted by my own heartbeat. I must have been breathing hard as well because Khiana, the quiet one, was now looking at me. “You’re gonna do fine,” she said, smiling. I was not aware of my obviously loud nervous habits, but before I could ask her how she knew I was systematically falling apart, I heard the lines leading up to my entrance.
As I headed for the curtain, I took one final look in the mirror. I didn’t want to move. I realized that I had never actually acted in front of an audience, no one that mattered anyway.
I had surrounded myself with film and acting for 21 years. I believed I was good at acting, but I started to wonder whether or not I was just good at reciting movie lines.
As I heard my cue, I was then overcome by a sense of duty, to finish what I started. This carried me through the curtain.
It was somewhere in the the middle of my entrance that I remembered that I was the only one without acting experience. This had been a source of worry from the beginning of rehearsals, but now, it was assuring. We had helped each other along for so long that I realized, those with experience would help me along if I got on that stage and fell, figuratively… or literally. At the moment I had that realization, the lights were on me.
I couldn’t have known then that the fear would quell each night to a conquerable nervousness. I also couldn’t have guessed that I would be nominated for an Irene Ryan Acting Award. I would eventually realize that this was, in fact, something I was good at. What I did know then, however, was that it was the people surrounding me that helped me get up on the stage, as I hope I helped them through rehearsals. So, hold to what you’re good at. If you find yourself unsure of your abilities, ask the people around you for help. They should point you in the right direction. And, if you find yourself in the dark, and in need of focus, remember, “you’re doing great Sweetie.”