This is Actually Happening/EVENT

I wrote this during tech for the apprentice showcase

I wrote previously that theatre should be an event. Theatre should, as Anne Bogart said, make us lean forward. Eric, the marketing director, came to talk to the apprentices a while back. WCP’s marketing thing right now is all about having an EXPERIENCE. He told the apprentices that an audiences EXPERIENCE of the show should start with the marketing. Should start with the poster, the first flyer they get, the first advertisement they see or hear. I mean, the thing for the website is “your experience starts here” I think that’s brilliant! If I could thematically decorate the lobby of the theatre to go with every show (without it getting cheesy or campy, which I’m not sure is possible) I would. It’s an event! It should feel like an event. It’s why I like to get dressed up a little when I go to the theatre. This is something special, different, a gift.
Do you ever have those moments where you suddenly think to yourself: “This is actually happening!” ? One of those, “this, right here, this moment that I am breathing in. It’s real. This is actually happening”. We spend so much time watching TV, watching movies, in front of our computer screens that we become numb to reality. We walk around in a daze, not really noticing the world around us. Every once in a while we have an experience that shakes us out of it (see WALL-E if you want to see extreme examples of this situation). Of course there are the near death experiences that shake us out of these numb dazes, but these are not the kind I would like to focus on right now.
The first time (in my adult life at least) that I really had one of those moments was at a concert. We were seeing this band called Nathan Asher and the Infantry, it was late at night, in a small smoke filled bar, I was hanging out with people that were older and cooler than me and I had just had my first shot of whiskey. Suddenly in the middle of the concert, I realized as this huge sound rolled over me that all the people in the room had their faces turned to the stage. The light from the stage fell across all of them and we were, all of us, jumping on the same beat. We were all there, having that experience together, feeling the same music press against us, breathing the same smoke filled air, moving to the same rhythm and it just hit me. This is actually happening. This moment, right here. This is happening. This is real.
It happened at several concerts after this, a couple of plays, and several moments on stage, or behind the stage. But they are rare, these moments. It hadn’t happened in a while, though. I mean, I was working at a doctor’s office before I came here, and then I got here and was, well, overwhelmed, I guess, by the whole thing for a while. But then Tryst happened. Tryst is a show that makes me have one of those moments. This is actually happening. Whether it was during tech or during one of the several shows I have seen, every time something happens where my breath catches and the only sound in my head is “this is actually happening”. Every night is a new show, a new experience, a new event. Even if I can’t sneak in to see it, even if I can’t stay glued to the monitor, even if I am working through the show I will catch some line, some line that they say differently, some emotion resonating in their voices that freezes me in place. This is actually happening. This magnificent piece of theatre is happening above me right now, people are experiencing it, and for this one small moment, for whatever reason, so am I. For that small moment we are all connected. This is actually happening. Do you think they know? Do you think they have any idea? Do you think they would believe me if I told them? No. But they do and they are, and it’s just . . . a constant reminder- in these last dwindling days when I spend a lot of time thinking I don’t want to be here – that I am so lucky. I get to be here and daily be affected by art. By passion. By silliness and wonder. I just. I feel like I’ve been overstating myself in these last couple of blogs, that the more I say how wonderful the show is the less meaningful it’s going to be, the less sincere it’s going to seem. But it’s not about giving compliments. It’s about what theatre should be. Is the show perfect? No. Is there any show that is perfect? No (and I don’t think there should be, or else what do we have to strive for?). Do I still have some problems with the script? Yes. But these two actors achieve what I think theatre should achieve. They make me breathe differently and notice it. And the design and direction behind this show achieves what I think theatre should be. An event. And experience. What more could I ask for in my last weeks here?
You know what else reminds me that I am lucky? These apprentices. I’m sitting here in their tech right now. You guys are all going to think I am the biggest freak, I have never liked tech before getting here, but now I do. I love it. I think it’s because I spent so little of my time in the theatre here. So once I get to spend so much time in the actual theatre I notice the difference in the air and the energy and I love it. I love every second of it. I love the affect it has on everyone. I loved the tech for the intern showcase, too. I loved sitting in the audience watching those people I had spent so much time with in the last few weeks be on that stage under those lights for the first time. I love watching what Julie could do with so little time, and watching the miracles Ashley could work with someone else’s light plot. It was amazing. Fascinating. Moment after moment of “oh my god. This is actually happening. I am actually here in this house tech-ing a show that I am a part of, and then, oh holy Jesus, I am actually on the stage. Look at this. This is actually happening.” And then performing. Performing on that stage, getting the laugh, knowing my friend Lormarev was out there to see it, and my apprentices, and oh . . . This is actually happening. It didn’t feel like it had afterward, but I knew that I had that moment, and that was all that mattered.
And now these apprentices are getting to experience it. They are beautiful. This showcase was a struggle, a drama, of course it was, they are teenagers. But then again we had some drama and struggle in our showcase to. But they came together. I look at them, and they are together, on stage, working towards something together. And that’s what it is all about. My friend Matthew Earnest who directed me in one of the most fabulous theatre experiences of my life, told me that the audience comes to see the actor go through something. I want to see you go through something, I want to watch you take a journey, struggle through something. I want to see you experience something. In watching the actor go through something, the audience gets to experience something. What I don’t think my wonderful apprentices realize is that this show they are getting ready to do is brilliant because we are watching them work towards something, go through something, and do it together. We are literally getting to watch them come together as a group in a way they have not done so far this summer. We get to watch them tonight. Sure it might mean more to me since I have spent all summer with them, but I think it will come across. As the realization dawns on them, as they go through the experience of realizing on stage what exactly it is that they have done, what they have achieved, the audience will feel it, they will realize it to. It will make them breathe differently. This is what it is about. Coming together for a common goal to create and experience larger than ourselves. This is what it is about. This, right here, right now – This is actually happening.