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Theatre is, by it's very nature, a self indulgent undertaking...
If you're going to watch, you will leave there thinking about how what you just saw applies to YOU.
If you're performing, you spend your entire time on stage, even if it is just one moment, wondering how the audience is perceiving YOU.
Can this be unlearned?
We do it in our every day life, too.
I am the mother of four beautiful, gifted children. That isn't hyperbole, ask anyone who knows my kids. I take great pains to remind them (especially my left-handed daughter, Regan) that not another person on earth spends as much time thinking about her as she does. Stands to reason. Everyone is really thinking about themselves, if they're being honest.(I love to paraphrase Simon Cowell)
Fanny Brice is the main character in Funny Girl. That makes her the focus of much of the audience attention. I have spent more time in the past few weeks thinking about myself, Fanny,and the audience perception of ME than I am comfortable with.
Spotlights & microphones have always been two of my favorite things, but on my terms.
I am very uncomfortable with the glare of scrutiny that is on the process I am undertaking because it requires a level of self indulgence that I DESPISE in others.
Anything I say seems disingenuous when it is heard through the filter of "Theatre Chatter". Compliments that I sincerely appreciate require more than a "thank you", but what???
When people who I know and love (cast mates) ask "Are you okay?" I feel compelled to say "This isn't about me," because it isn't, but it is in this case about what I'm doing.
I must accept that for the next three weeks, much of what is going on is about me in that context, but I have to know that when I release it to the audience, it will be about them, and if I've touched a place in their soul that allows them to say that seeing Funny Girl in Fountain Inn was worth their time...Time is the one thing that we have a limited amount of and I want everyone to feel as though time in our Theatre was well spent.
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