Begin Again

Have you ever walked out onto an entirely empty stage in a theater where live performances take place? A stage swept clean with just a hint of never ending saw dust in the air. Typically, a lone bare light bulb on a stand, roughly eye level to an adult, allows you to barely see into the far corners. It always has a cathedral hush even when the ceilings aren’t that high.

No matter if I’ve never been involved with a particular stage or seen a show there, if I step out onto any theater’s uninterrupted stage, I can feel the history. The ghosts of shows past are there. You can feel them. It’s one of the things that I find exhilarating about being the Theater. I love walking across that empty space, exciting Christmas morning butterflies in my stomach every time. And the feeling never goes away. I could be involved with a stage for seasons on end and the feeling never goes away. A bare stage says memory.

A bare stage just after a show is taken down can also feel cathartic. No matter how the show went. If it went well it will be tinged with a bit of regret that something so wonderful is done. If it went not so well, either because the show didn’t turn out well or the cast and crew were hard to work with, it can be a relief at a commitment completed---new Freedom. Whatever the case may be, the stress dissipates with the final broom strokes.

Nervousness about remembering lines is gone, even though chances are you’ll remember them for months to come. That prop that was so essential for the second act ---the on that would cause the world to screech to a rotational halt if it wasn't where it was supposed to be----is placed back on the dusty shelf to be the little piece of bric-a-brac it really is. Everything that was so oppressively important, like an herd of self destructive children that couldn’t fend for themselves, becomes no more than torn ticket stubs in the bottom of your pocket.

New Years is kind of like that too.

Then, almost instantly, the bare stage becomes expectation. The Empty Space excites parts of me that yearn to fill it. I guess that's the disease; the addiction. When your nature abhors a vacuum.

That's where I get into trouble. Thinking that if I can think it, I can make it happen. And the complicating compliment to that--I seem to have the ability to make people believe in me. "Come on along on the Magic Bus--I can take you there." I can't tell you how many times I've been like Kermit in the Muppet Movie (the Jim Henson Kermit, not this travesty that lives on in his name---you can't take the soul from the puppet and expect people to just buy into the sugar coated zombie)---the scene I'm thinking of is the one where Kermit is in the desert talking to himself (literally) and wondering what he's gotten himself into, and all these people into in the bargain. Suddenly worried in mid-flight that you're may actually be piloting a Hindenburg of your own design. I have been in that situation more than a few times.

And I guess I'm launching to that destination in the sky--again. Still so sure I can build a castle up there. Looking out to 2007, right out of the gate, I'll be directing a show. I don't know what show yet. The one I had in mind fell through--they aren't giving license in the U.S. right now. They're trying to get something going in NYC. But it's the first time in a while. It'll be interesting.

Not to mention that I've got the Bear's Bday party at the end of this month, a Talent show that I'm helping Kitten prepare her song for, tickets for the family to the Lion King tour on Feb 3 (thanks Mom!), my wife's surprise Bday party that she found out about right after that, a coffee house performance of a night of Speech team scenes I'm producing end of Feb before they go off to Districts, coaching kids for a Fine Arts Festival, Easter Service, ----and then, oh yeah, this play.

Dang, this empty is getting kind of crowded.

In the meantime we know what everyone's real distraction is, don't we.

Yeah---the MacWorld Keynote on Tuesday.

You can almost feel the status quo shifting under you feet---can't cha?