A little more than two years ago, I quit working on
stage as an actor. I was having some
gaps in my memory that were potentially show killers.
I’d been on the other side of this thing. I’d seen fellow actors crumble under the
strain. I’d watched from the audience as
well. It’s a terrible thing to see,
perhaps glimpsing another human being’s worst moment. The audience is somewhat dispirited and the
other actors feel bad for their castmate, while the actor whose mind went blank
at a most inopportune time will likely never forget it. Some never recover from it. I remember a show where I stood across the
stage from a man with a lengthy monologue that just wasn’t coming. No amount of prompting returned him to a place
that was familiar. It was the second
night of a three-night run. We waited
breathlessly to see if he would return for the third performance. He
did. The same thing happened again. It’s one of the bravest things I ever saw. Brave, but excruciating.
I’ve heard from many people that there are things I
can do, memory exercises, repetitive drills, et cetera. Ultimately, I’m not willing to work at a
skill that had always come easily to me.
When it becomes work to participate in a hobby, I opt out. I was at peace with my decision to quit…or so
I thought.
About a year ago, in the midst of a riff on something
topical, my wife, Miss Kitty, remarked on my ‘performance’. When I told her I didn’t understand, she
laughed at me again. “You perform for me
all the time,” she said. “Don’t you know
that?” I honestly didn’t and told her
so. “You do. You start doing voices and other characters.” I denied her assertion, while Kitty just
shook her head and turned away.
It wasn’t even a week later that I caught myself doing
exactly what she said I did. All it took
was a laugh from her and I was off.
Faithful reader, you and I may have both visited the dry cleaner today.
Maybe we both had an item lost. Perhaps
you even mentioned it to another person.
But with me, there is a protagonist and an antagonist, a narrative curve
and a denouement. As long as Miss Kitty
keeps laughing, that is.
Obviously, Kitty was the audience of one for a small
collection of epic rants and the unwitting hostage of any number of pointless
ramblings. It didn’t bother me, as I
figured we were in this together, hiding a spouse’s peccadillo beneath a mound
of pretense. Wrong again.
We were driving, Miss Kitty and I, with our 20 year-old
son in tow, to a comedy concert an hour away.
The chance to see Steve Martin again and Martin Short for the first time
was our mission. I began quoting Steve's
lines from an album that is now nearly forty years old. When I got my first laugh, I was off to the
races. The lines, the pauses, the
musical interludes, I remembered them all and recited them faithfully. Eventually, my youngest, Dan, tired of the
monologue. “He’s performing, isn’t he?” he asked his mother. Kitty sadly nodded her head. Dan exclaimed, “Nurse! We need thirty cc’s of laughter, stat!” We laughed at his observation, but I have a
little something hanging over my head. My
son is no doctor, but the observation was keen.
If the medication doesn’t work, I may be headed for
open-mike surgery.
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