REEL LIFE
by Alex Wright
Objects of Affection
I
have a stuffed Piglet on my bed. It was my character’s main prop in Uncommon Women and Others, and every time I look at him, I am reminded of the incredible women I met during that production. Maybe it’s my sentimental side, but I tend to always take props from shows so that I can have a piece of that character with me. The end of a run inevitably feels like a death. I hug and kiss my castmates and crew goodbye, and I thank my character before burying them away in some hidden drawer inside myself, their shade continuing to stain my personality for a few months after closing. It seems appropriate to talk about this link because a good friend of mine took his life this month. Losing Ryan was devastating, to say the least. I often think about his parents, sitting up in his boyhood room, surrounded by the relics of his life. Shoelaces. Trophies. Sneakers. I thought about what they did with his things. Did they just bury them in a drawer? Does giving these things away somehow deny the life he led? Ryan and I did theater together in middle school and high school. Let me tell you, he was a volcano onstage - an eruption of energy and joy. He lived his life the same way he performed—full throttle, to the brim with love. Perhaps that love just overflowed a bit, those emotions became a bit too consuming, and he was lit on fire by his own energies. He didn’t pursue acting as a career, but his family told me that those productions were some of the happiest times of his life. I feel like actors experience a thousand little deaths. Nothing is ever permanent in this world, but as actors, our performances are only alive in the moment they’re being created. And we are so alive in that moment. We can have a whole lifetime of emotions and energy wrapped into a two hour play or a two minute monologue—the adrenaline rush of reciting Shakespeare and feeling the iambic pulse mimic your
heartbeat, or performing Chekhov and breathing in all those pregnant pauses. It’s no coincidence that so much of acting deals with breath—you breathe in your partner, breathe in that moment, and exhale out your intentions and actions. The art and beauty of theater is that it is alive and racing every second of the way. I think it’s why I always get a little down after the closing of a show, and why I feel like I need a relic to hold onto. It keeps the show going somehow and lessens some of the sting of impermanency. It’s all so fleeting; I will never create that magic with that cast in this time of my life ever again. Nothing is permanent – not art and definitely not life. And while actors may experience all these little deaths, it only means that we get to live that many more lives. Nothing makes you feel more alive than looking death in the eye. Ryan’s parents reached out to me before his funeral and asked for some photos of him doing theater in high school. They wanted to have them play during the slideshow. I think that’s how he would want to be remembered—not by shoes or posters, but by his roles as an actor. He was alive and on fire when he was acting. Acting was one of the best parts of Ryan, and I know it’s the best part of me. BLEEP 15