theatre@dartmouth, part III

Rehearsals were exhilarating. We never stopped working, except for the five minutes the Actors' Union granted us, always reaching for something more, digging for something hidden deeper, cutting away the unnecessary movements, inflections, getting to the very heart of the thing and pushing it as far as we could. I learned to pace myself, to discover something new every time I ran a scene again, to look into the eyes of my fellow actors and say my lines to them honestly, as though I were speaking them for the first time. Stepping out of rehearsal, the Georgian majesty of the under-lit Baker Tower would strike me, and that image in the faint unrest of the evening would make me Antigone for the rest of the night.

The other actors were incredible -- we worked with each other, really with each other, without any sense of competition or personal interests. There was only one goal: to create something beautiful and living out of text on a page. After rehearsals we were exhausted, and trooped off to Collis to laugh over cups of pasta and stolen mozzarella sticks. I was so unused to this atmosphere -- in high school, theatre was a competition for recognition, interactions with your fellow actors was overshadowed by the tension of an ongoing power struggle. This was the exact opposite: we relied on each other, trusted each other onstage and off. And I suppose the most remarkable thing about it was that we didn't all start out as actors. One cast member used to joke to me about this being the first time he'd ever even been to a play -- he was a senior, looking for another fresh experience before graduation, and I'm still but a freshman, who's wandered in and out of shows since age seven, and we still find ourselves wound up in long conversations whenever we run into each other. Some were theatre majors, some varsity athletes, freshman, seniors, men and women, but we all bonded over our collective goal.

It was this atmosphere that made it okay for me to be guiltlessly alone. The day of Opening Night, I woke up draped in this strange feeling, as though someone had changed something in me while I was asleep and I needed to figure out what it was. I realized that I wanted to be Antigone -- all day, that I must only be Antigone. The grey sky beckoned me outside and I wandered around town, stepping into shops and speaking to no one, imagining that I had just come from burying my brother, my brother Polynices, and finally, PB&J sandwich in hand, I walked to the dressing rooms behind the Bentley Theatre, praying to Dionysus that my method acting would carry me through the show.

In the dressing rooms, I acknowledged my fellow actors, and we talked lightly of the audience, of the food at the Hop, of our days, but I chose to be essentially separated from them. I had nothing to prove, no reason to try to prove it, and so I wandered the corridors that so cleverly encircle the theatre, walking on my toes and spinning in circles, trusting the cast to understand that each had his own way of preparing.

Backstage, I thought I would die. It hit me over and over again that I was performing at Dartmouth. At Dartmouth, at Dartmouth, at Dartmouth. That my friends were there, my very best friends in the whole world who'd never seen me set foot on stage, waiting to be impressed, waiting to see the result of all those forgotten dinners and unattended parties. But whenever I looked up, someone was there to smile at me through the blue-lit darkness, and when actors walked by they'd ruffle my short hair or pat me on the back, and I knew that there was nothing more that I could do -- I was safe.

As soon as I walked out it was brilliant. The lights shone like they never had before; the faces of everyone I knew jumped out at me immediately from the seats surrounding the stage. My lines took on a new purpose, a meaning that had before only resided in potential: I had a message to convey, I had someone who needed to hear it. The people I loved were around me, and I let myself fall unhesitatingly into my character's struggle, because they were there to catch me. I cried onstage in places I never thought to cry before -- I was struck by it; looking into the audience, I'd see a face, an expression, and I realized that we were doing it, we were doing it right, all of us, because everyone was listening to us, everyone wanted to hear.

When we bowed I knew we had done it. Nothing had gone wrong, and the next night and the next matinee I knew nothing would either. We succeeded because of the effort we put in, because of the pieces of ourselves we invested, because of the amount we allowed ourselves to grow. And the best thing, I think, is that we'll always be that 'we', and there'll never be another 'we' quite like it.