Last night I had the privilege to attend a friend's theatre performance. It wasn't a full-fledged staged production, just a simple row of chairs lined up along an oversized, white column-rimmed fireplace in a lovely old room at the Scottish Rite Masonry in Portland. It was the first "official" reading of Hamburger Square, a Robbinhood-esque musical with music adapted from the Beach Boys. The music was good, the atmosphere cozy, the company phenomenal. I laughed, I thought, and I missed my theatre days.
I'm currently caught up with the weekly production of a 12-page university newspaper. Trying to find the interesting stories around campus or at least those affecting some portion of the Western Oregon population. Most of all, I'm trying to report truthfully (well, we might fudge once and awhile on finding photos that "fit"), but the quotes and the facts are always reliable. But thinking back a few years...even to auditioning at SPU or directing the children's choir musical production at church, I remember the chance to adopt a different persona. To imitate the walk, the carriage, the laughter, and thoughts of another. To stretch imagination to its boundaries. When we used to create dialogs in my 1st and 2nd year German class, Frau Heaton would always tease our creativity with the line, "It's not lying, it's acting."
The life I'm leading is satisfactory and fulfilling, but what about the thrill of being someone else--for an hour, a night, during the run of a play? The chance to explore new horizons and invent novel interpretations. And as I was walking along the street this morning, I realized that I had included theatre as my means of integrating into the community, should I be accepted for a Fulbright next year in Germany. The realization made me smile. I was already thinking about it this summer. Sure the itch might have been provoked by recent conversations and companions, but they weren't the instigating cause. Back at the Metropolitan Children's Theatre camp held at LaSalle High School all those years ago, the directors told us the three keys of theatre: observation, imitation, and improvisation.
As a journalist and as a writer, those tools still come in handy...when I need to find the perfect descriptive word for a poem or the unique detail for a story. But what I really want, tonight, as the clock nears the witching hour, is to live out another moment of magic on the stage. To jump out of my reality into another--not forever, but for awhile. The swirling masquerade, the adrenaline of performance, the thrill of live enactment. It's a wonderful feeling, being on stage.
I miss it.
