You guys,
It was opening night and I barely knew my lines.
The night before, I sat on my bed in my renovated garage in Marina del Rey, snapped a picture of my script and posted it on Instagram with a caption that read, “Opening night tomorrow! Ahhhh!!!”, then drank a bottle of wine and passed out. (At some point during the night when I inevitably had to pee, I walked across the yard, past the fig tree, up the three cement steps, and into the house to use the bathroom.)
Now we stood on stage under bright lights as our director, Paul, looked down on us from the lighting deck. He had us come in early to rehearse a chaotic scene where all twenty people in the ensemble cast stood on stage and fired off lines on top of each other—and we just couldn’t get it.
I looked around at my castmates. Everyone looked the appropriate amount of nervous for opening night, if they looked nervous at all. I tried to look normal—like them—but felt an inappropriate amount of panic. Up until this moment I tried not to think about opening night at all, tried not to think of a theater full of people watching us, watching me, perform.
Plays weren’t even my thing. I wanted to be on screen. I wanted to be in movies. I wanted to be famous. But recently I’d seen my friend perform in a play and she looked like a real actor up there. She even cried in one scene. If I wanted to be a real actor maybe that meant performing a show for three weeks without pay. It’s not like I was booking any paid films, anyway. After three years in LA I had only two student film creds to show for it. I was barely acting.
So I stood on stage before opening night of a North Hollywood production as a LEAD (in an ensemble cast, sure, so everyone was basically a lead, but a lead nonetheless) and battled two insistent opposing thoughts in my head:
One: You don’t deserve to be here. You are not a real actor. Everyone else here knows what they’re doing.
Two: You do deserve to be here! Buck up! You got this!
The battle raged on until I heard my director yelling something in my direction. By now he was up on a ladder, fiddling with the lights so I couldn’t see his face. “Huh?” I said, squinting into the brightness where he stood.
“Yea, exactly,” Paul said. He then let me know, in so many words, that he couldn’t hear me, that I had no energy, and that I sucked. (He didn’t say that last part—that I sucked—but he might as well have.)
I responded by repeating my line (“So we’ll see you at callbacks?”) in the most over-the-top, loud, cheesy, bad-acting way I could muster.
There was a pause, then Paul said, “Charlie, are you mad at me right now?”
I let out an exasperated laugh. “No, Paul, I’m not mad,” I said.
“I’m trying to help you,” he said.
“Yea, well, I’m just working with what I have.”
“Well it’s not good enough.”
I can viscerally remember that moment I said, “Yea, well, I’m just working with what I have.” There were too many eyes on me in a moment when I was too close to tears, in a moment when the director was telling me—telling everyone—that I didn’t have any place on that stage. It was one thing to battle the voice in my head but I could not come face-to-face with an actual person telling me the very thing I was so afraid of—that I wasn’t supposed to be here. So I diverted my eyes to the floor, became indignant, and said, “Yea, well, I’m just working with what I have.”
There was a short break before the show started and I needed to get out of there. A dark question sat in my subconscious: Was I just acting like I was an actor? I bolted outside and ran into my castmate, Abby. She was heading out for a quick drive and asked if I wanted to go with her. I sat in the passenger seat of her truck with my arms crossed and told her I was fine.
“Yea, you’re not,” Abby said, as she pulled out of the parking lot. “Let it out.”
So I did. I took all my self-doubt, self-hatred, and self-sabotage and deflected it into one big blame-fest on Paul. This was his fault.
Abby and I stopped for coffee and drinks and a pizza because we needed one as a prop, then I thanked her for letting me vent.
“It’s all good,” she said. “You have to get it out. We’re gonna T-Swift it up in here and everything will be okay.”
“Uh, T-Swift it?” I said.
Abby turned the volume up on the car stereo. “You better not tell anyone about this,” she said. This does not leave this car. This never happened.” It was 2014 and Shake It Off had debuted earlier that year. It blared loudly from the car speakers and we scream-sang the entire song.
That night I performed my part. I said my lines. I don’t remember how I acted. I only remember feeling like I survived it.
Afterwards I rewarded myself with a bottle of wine, drank away the residual nerves, and celebrated my opening night success. Then I passed out.
—
Until next week,
Charlie
P.S. Much of the style of today’s piece was inspired by the late, great Caroline Knapp’s book, Drinking: A Love Story. Stay tuned next week for the newest Memoir Snob episode on my favorite memoir so far. That’s right, I said it: Drinking: A Love Story is my new favorite memoir (which means The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer just moved to the No. 2 spot).
Charlie, I was experiencing a different rhythm, style, of your piece today, and then you mention it at the end! Recently I have been ruminating on what I think is the most important relationship in our lives, that being the relationship with ourself. And how important it is to move through life with a supportive arm around ourselves. Were you working with all that you have? Yea. Was it good enough. Yea, in the moment because it was all that you had.
BTW, listening to the podcast now. Thank you for including the link! And for being all that you are.
Hahaha Camilo, I’m so glad you enjoyed my most cringey line. It’s why I wrote it three times.
And dude, I am T-swifting it up RIGHT NOW, and have been since April 19, and will be, on repeat, 24/7, until December, when I will finally stop listening to The Tortured Poets Department and switch to Christmas music.