I am on a performing hiatus.
My last show closed three weeks ago, my next project doesn’t go into rehearsal for nearly six more weeks. This isn’t a long time, especially not in the performing world, when droughts between bookings can last months, even years.
I am grateful to have a project to look forward to, and grateful for memories so fresh from the last one that I can still feel the mic tape residue on the back of my neck.
I hustled for jobs during the holiday season, auditioning as far back as the spring for gigs that are opening right now, playing familiar stories and songs to packed Christmas houses, audiences desperate to feel merry + festive + spirited.
None panned out, though. Some callbacks came and some didn’t, but no bookings. This is the most common outcome for a performer, something we’re conditioned to expect—so well-conditioned, actually, that when you do book a job, it feels like, “Are you sure? You didn’t mean the girl who went before me?”
Though I licked my wounds for a while, I’m grateful (there’s that word again) for the rest. Grateful for the time with my family, for the chance to read bedtime stories and have a little laying-around time. Grateful that my holidays won’t be as rushed as my summer and fall.
And yet…
There comes a time in every period of rest where I forget what I can do. I don’t know if this is a universal truth or something that is just recurring in my addled brain, but inevitably, at some point during my period of rest, there will come a moment where I think, “Wasn’t that a fun thing, what I used to do? Too bad it’s all behind me. All over now.”
I realize how dramatic that sounds.
Actors are the only artists whose art depends on the work of others. Painters can paint, dancers can dance, but unless you are the kind of actor who creates his/her own work, an actor cannot just act without being granted the opportunity.
But writers can write, and I am also one of those. So December, as she looms in all her bedazzled glory, will be dedicated to health + family + writing, three things that are supremely important to me that have been given the short end of the stick over the last few months.
And I’ll try not to forget the rest.