In The Wings

(where we talk about what's good to do)

Behind these curtains are other curtains, black ones made of cheap-ish fabric, velveteen and dark and the cloak the sides, or wings, of the stage where the performers stand and wait for their entrances.

In improv you don’t know exactly when you’ll be exiting or entering, and you don’t have a real sense of plot regardless, so you stand in clumps of people, listening to whatever is happening on stage so that you can create continuity, add color, feel out where you are or aren’t needed.

It’s a child-like feeling, being back stage in the wings hidden by curtains, like these two boys I saw today hiding in a Japanese Maple. They crouched underneath it and I bet they were in a world far, far, from here; a made up imaginary world in which none of us boring adults existed, their parents at a mesh metal table having espresso and croissant.

I remember exactly what that kind of thing felt like.

Being backstage, in those wings close up on people I barely know, is like that. You learn a person in a wholly different way after performing with them. It’s intimate and sensual, performing with someone. You breathe with them, you connect with your eyes and telegraph ideas. You smell each other and feel warmth or chill off each other as you are in the dark, in the dense sound of backstage, surrounded by black curtains.

You learn who uses Altoids, who gets quite and withdrawn before a show, who needs to bounce out their energy. You know this one, well he does huge broad characters and that one, she is subtle and oblique but sees more than the rest. Him? He pushes plot forward, and he has an off leg so you never come around his bad side, and her? Well, she’s good for a dirty joke and a bawdy song made up from scratch, but my god don’t get in her way when she’s coming off stage, you’ll get smashed.

You learn people in this very unique and not entirely HR approved way. It’s important though. You learn the things that matter, in a way, way more than what someone does for a living or how they mow their lawn or what their college degree was in. You learn how to count on them even if you don’t really get along, which is a weird combination but improv (and theatre) is probably the only place I’ve experienced it.

I stood tonight in small building, on a small stage, in the black curtained wings and I breathed in and felt the people around me and I lost time for a second.

If I could add up all the moments of my life spent in just those positions, I wonder how much it would take up? Years probably. At least a year of time spread out over 35 or 40 years of me fucking around on stage and behind those scenes, in rehearsal rooms, and each moment is a precious drop of sense memory and there is nothing like an actor’s life.

I was on social media and saw this video going around. Some podcast/vlog about leadership or some shit like that, everyone talks about leadership these days and really if we are being honest, no one knows how to lead. It’s just an impossible position to be in, no one can really bear it, not for long. Leadership twists people up like you wouldn’t believe.

Anyway, this video was some lady talking about how don’t do (for a career) what you think is best, do what is easiest. Meaning, I assume, find that which creates an easy flow, right? Don’t be a doctor because your parents think it’s noble, or don’t fit your round peg into a square hole because of money, do the thing that creates ease inside you, and that is easy to get out.

Which is like…sure. Sure, Jan.

Improv? For me? Emceeing events, holding space on stage for stories? Performing? By far that’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done, in terms of flow. Writing? Sometimes that’s the same way. I was talking tonight to a new friend about my time performing in Austin and I performed A LOT. Like…I can’t tell you how much but it was constant, and I loved it. It was the most fulfilling time for me.

I wrote too, like so many places. My own website, magazines, weekly papers.

But I didn’t make money at it and that’s where that speaker’s thesis falls apart. Or, well, my own skill at taking what was easy and getting paid enough to live on for it. That part isn’t the easy part come to find out. That’s when you get a manager who thinks you goofing off on stage could be worth some money, honey and he’s gonna go out and get you gigs.

I never found out if I could get there. I wish I had tried harder. Harder at what was easy. Because the easy stuff seems so hard to get to these days. And I want more of it, even if it costs me instead of putting money in my wallet.

I stood in those curtains, breathing people, breathing play, and I forgot about all the rest of the things I really would like to forget and we told a story the group of us, and it was a good one. Impossible that it could happen right? But we did and that’s where I’ll dream tonight.