Spotlight

So last month I really did something to bust through my fear. I performed in my Alma Mater's production of  Vagina Monologues. The Monologues were written and performed by Eve Eisner and became a movement to give a voice to and end violence against women. Productions are performed globally during "V-Season" and the money raised benefits local organizations involved in women's issues.

I'd like to say that my reasons for becoming involved in this play were purely altruistic. They weren't. Not even close. I feel it is a good cause, yes, but the day I saw the casting call and went down to audition, was more about winning the bet I had made with myself that I would never really go through with it, and if I did, I would totally suck and they would laugh me out of the audition and of course everyone would be so much better than me instead of a desire to help women. I promised myself that I would at least show up to the audition. The rest I would worry about later. 


So I auditioned... and  got a seven and a half minute monologue. Over seven minutes on stage. By myself. In front of a theater full of people. Holy Shit.  What did I just agree to do?


My piece told the story of an elderly woman's embarrassing, shameful experience with the local "good- looking catch." She recalls, "I got excited, so excited, and well, there was a flood down there." After her date calls her a "stinky, weird girl" she goes home and "closed the whole store, locked it, never opened for business again." And except for some wild dreams about Burt Reynolds, she denies her self any physical intimacy declaring it highly over-rated, confessing,  "the idea of flooding made me too nervous."


 I began to really love this woman, feel for her and understand her. I wanted to do right by her, to tell her story and have the audience really understand what she had given up and the shame that had cause her to do so. I was so afraid of letting her down. I had been entrusted with her story and I was determined to tell it in a way she would be proud of. Maybe because I'm struggling with keeping my own fear, shame and whatever else from letting me experience...well, anything.


My director was extremely supportive (as were all the women involved in the production.) When she asked me if I was nervous about performing, I told her no, because I was pushing the fact that I was going to actually have to PERFORM this piece in public right out of my head. Denial is a beautiful thing. I was just focusing on learning my piece. The fact that all the work I was pouring into my piece was supposed to culminate with me performing on stage, in front of people?? Yeah, just picture me putting my fingers in my ears singing "La La la! I can't hear you!"

There were moments during this journey that warmed my heart and spurred me on: The first read- through when I looked around the room while I was delivering my piece and everyone was leaning forward interested in what I had to say; the compliment I got from a professional actor;  the audience's response that let me know that they got the deep sadness of the piece; an audience member telling me that I made her cry. All those moments buoyed me up and made me believe when I didn't, or couldn't, believe for myself.


The last night of the production during the last moments of the piece and the woman I was portraying confronts her shame with anger, "are you happy? You got it out of me, you got me to talk" she stops talking, shamed once again for sharing a moment she has been sure, for 50 plus years, no one but her has ever experienced.


In that moment,  I stood in the spotlight and re-lived all the single steps that made up this thousand mile journey. Something about it being the last time I would perform this piece, and that particular moment in the monologue, that moment of vulnerability that  finally leads to connection, collided inside me and I let that vulnerability wash over me.


I felt the emotion showing on my face and for once, FOR ONCE,  I let it show. I let all the emotion wash over me uninhibited, sent it out to the audience and then drew them in with me.

I felt my face crumple with tears, and was reminded, all at once,  of a picture of me at my wedding with the same emotion on my face. I saw the stage and my beautiful ballerina, smiling as she danced on the same stage and my son, as he sang his heart out at the school's talent show, and as he learned to wrestle. I heard the words to Taylor Swift's song Fearless. The moment stretched on , expanded and I heard the advice of one of the directors, "just enjoy it" and so I did.  My memories filled the theater and led me back to the stage ready to give my last line, a line that was not just her line, or my line but was now our line, our story, "I've NEVER told anybody that before. And I feel a little better now." I let the warmth of the spotlight thaw that which had been frozen in fear and I realized that I had finally done it. I was living. Fearless.