Showtime

You see, this is how it goes:

My own life in progress; schoolwork and friends; family and worldview; prom and a wonderful girl—somehow carve out a little time.

Take this time and build a little house with it, or perhaps a bridge—just to show that I can build even just a little. After a late night, manage to summon the energy to show my little bridge to the audition judges. It’s just a little time; and I have my own life anyway.

Months pass and still am I caught up in my own life.

And then it begins. You must understand this next thing: that the threshold of the stage (of the stage in its entirety, in its backstage and in its choir room and in its practice lobby) has through long use taken on a magical property. Have you ever thought it queer that all magical items in myths are first possessed by great heros? Magical swords by great warriors? Magical grails by great healers? Magic is simply the state of an item (and perhaps a person) once it has done a thing so many times and with such glory that purpose and function are fused beyond the skill of a craftsman; only then is the subject of sufficient singleminded focus as to allow a pursuit of a perfection.

But I digress.

Walking onto a stage strips you of your life. Perhaps the right sort of sight would reveal dozens of ghostly twinklings surrounding a breathing theater, reuniting with bodies thereinexit. As well it confiscates the time of the universe devoted to you; but this it keeps for a future payment.

And so the process continues for weeks. At the outset, bodies are starved and beaten when stripped of their lives; but then a new life comes to gasping within them. I have always said this: “Writings are alive.” Merely peruse not a script; it will be dead to thee. Rather, breathe deeply as you watch the little twinklings hate and make love; and see if you do not feel an embryo growing within you.

It is this which happens during the weeks of preparation for a play. And when each twinkling finds lungs for breath, a new creature emerges. It is a picky species, and an expensive one too: it costs many factors the rent of a man for even four days of vitality; and it is toward this cost that the confiscation goes.

And then the day of birth arrives. A picky and expensive species, yes; but it births fully grown when fully paid with time and with sweat. And it births painlessly, for the labors are already past. Backstage, in dressing and make-up rooms, the midwives prepare, the father, hoping for the best, steps away to watch the birth (for finished is his part).

But yet remains a debt on the rent of this creature! Worry thyself not, for streaming into the parking lot and through the doors and into the house are a multitude seeking to donate their own time to make up the outstanding charges (many of them leave their lives as well, to be equally filled by the Life of the Creature).

The birthing Creature cries in an orchestral harmony. And then the actors and the audience participate in an intricate and involved effort, a cooperation to bear this Creature safely to light: applause heightens adrenaline heightens applause. So it breathes.

Perhaps the outside world melts away, theatre and earth schisming just as person and life. I would not know for my life has never bothered itself to tell me upon our reunion.

And then the Creature presents itself for approval at the close.

On the following day begins its adult life; it before required time to force and to bribe rent from the universe for
existence—but now it receives voluntarily-given space in the mentality and society of humanity at large. The Social Creature
invites the Theatrical Creature for a visit—it is no longer a tenant but a guest. It lives in the discussions, reviews, and recommendations of other bodies yielding yet more time to it. And audiences stream in to participate in this Creature.

On the final day, it is laid rest. Its rent has expired and can now live on only as a guest of humand minds. It is lovingly destroyed, albeit with some reluctance. Actors hold in their hands wood that held them high, details that supported their image, textures that accented their roles; and release the specifics of their role. Eventually, the Creature will cease to be viewed from only the vantage point of the character played; it will expand to a sort of subconscious absorption of the sights of the other actors. The dances and lines will be forgotten, and my own life will resume. But the Creature will remain vibrant.

A wanted guest.