What I’m Built For
What I’m Built For
The experience of being back onstage after many years away has not been quite what I expected. I’m not getting the major highs or the “Do they like me?” lows. The major feeling is a sense of being built for it. In performing again, I feel a sense of relief at doing what I’m built for. It’s a strange feeling actually, because I have largely set acting aside to focus on other lanes of theatre, as well as other arts — and to suddenly realize how much I am still made for performing is disruptive.
It’s like I’ve realized I’m one of those Lego kits that are designed to make one thing. I’m the set that makes, say, a helicopter and when I’m in helicopter form, it all makes sense. I know what those blade pieces are for and where all the window panels go. It all goes together. Like just your regular Legos, you can put the Legos in a set together in unexpected ways, but really, they’re created to do one thing. The Legos in a helicopter set are built to make a helicopter.
It occurs to me that when I’m doing other things — things like writing or directing or podcasting or whatever — I’m still a helicopter set. I’ve just rearranged the Legos into some other form. The blades aren’t helicopter blades, they’re swords or skis or something. I’m just a deconstructed helicopter. I’m an abstract helicopter. I’m a director, sure, but I’m a director made out of performer Legos.
There’s something unsettling about realizing how built for performing I am, how much of a helicopter. It makes me wonder if I ought to return to it. Should I get headshots taken? Start combing Backstage again? And yet — as built for performing as I am — as much of a helicopter I am — I am not built for the business of performing. It’s like, I’m built to be on-stage and in a rehearsal room but not built for any of the mechanisms that get actors there. I’m a helicopter — for flying through the air of performance and rehearsal — but auditioning and marketing all take place under water and I am not a submarine Lego set. My helicopter set doesn’t rebuild for submarine shapes. Those blades that serve me as a helicopter cause big trouble on the submarine.
I learned I wasn’t a submarine a long time ago — but I’d forgotten how natural it is to be the helicopter I was built to be. It is easier to be a helicopter in helicopter form than to be the creatively put together expressionist helicopter in some other form.
I think this is probably true for many artists — that there are things we are built for — and even if we do other things, we are still made for the art. Most actors are built to be actors and even if they quit, because they’re not submarines or whatever, they’re still actors — just an actor Lego set in a lawyer form.
What I’m pointing at here is something much more fundamental than enjoyment. I feel like — outside of the arts — people think we do these things because they are fun and we enjoy them. Sometimes that’s the case, sure — just the way a pilot sometimes finds it fun to fly a plane — but doing something you’re built for is not as simple as doing something you enjoy. It’s feeling like all your pieces align into the thing you were made for. Sometimes it’s not even fun. But when you’re a helicopter Lego set, that blade is to get you off the ground. Each piece is there for a purpose — and that is to fly.
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Originally published at http://artiststruggle.wordpress.com on February 16, 2020.
