Theater is life.
I do not mean this is in a new age meme way but in the sense that when people work together to create art on stage you, as an actor, are essentially playing at God.
You create life, you end life, you live life. You bring meaning to words on a page and give a purpose to the characters and are your own innovator when it comes to the way these people live their lives.
Life is a chain and in this chain we make choices; we fall in love, we fall out of love, we work, we play and we forge relationships with the people we meet.
Now when you look at real life outside of the stage, one does not really get to decide where life takes them but in the theater it is up to you, your fellow actors and your director.
This part of acting always got me.
The idea that, while the outside world was chaotic and uncontrollable, I could have a hand in creating different worlds for people to see was always inviting to me.
Then that idea moved from thought to practice.
Getting on stage for the first time, I felt godly. I felt every bit the omnipotent being I had envisioned in my head and I truly felt the weight of the world I had created. I took a bow with my
I have always felt odd calling acting my “art.” Part of that being that I feel silly calling myself an artist. The other part being that it has never felt like art to me.
It has felt like breathing fully, like being alive, like an extension of myself. But never art.
I think that I always had an idea of what art was and for that to be challenged and for that idea to change the way I perform, shook me. I started seeing my movements like strokes on a page, my words adding color to the scenes and my emotion hopefully evoking something beautiful within the audiences.
I started to think like an artist and perform like I was one too.