The Only Thing We Have To Fear, Is Fear Itself

I'd like to thank Nick Lee for writing this. If you enjoy this, you are encouraged to check his website out.

It starts in an old dusty gymnasium-turned-theatre in St. Macartan’s College, where Declan, the tenacious purveyor of this most excellent blog and I attend school between the years of 1994 and 2000. 

There is a dangerous moment in the theatre which I never discuss with other actors. It’s too dangerous. I can count on one hand how many times I’ve known it to happen. But the first time it happens to me is in that dusty old gymnasium-turned-theatre. 

I am performing in a dress rehearsal for the school play. A dress rehearsal is the final rehearsal before performance, for those who don’t know. Some say a bad dress rehearsal means a great first night. Which is bullshit. But it’s comforting if you make a balls of the dress rehearsal. It’s often the first time you wear the costume, the make up, and the lights are on you. You experience the heat of the stage. You can’t see anybody in the auditorium any more. Sometimes props aren’t available. Maybe it’s the first time you’ve used a prop you’ve been miming for six weeks. Sometimes lights or sound effects aren’t in place or come in late. Everybody is figuring it out and it is nerve-wracking. The key is not to stop - to keep going as if you’re playing in front of a paying audience. 

In our play, Juno and the Paycock - a classical Irish play by Sean O’Casey, myself and another actor prepare and eat sausages. It’s part of a long comic scene near the beginning of the play. My character, The Captain, prepares the sausage. There is a lot of dialogue and funny lines. I scold the other character, wagging my sausage on the end of my fork at him and he scowls back. 

Then it happens.

Suddenly, without warning, everything, every single thing, seems completely ridiculous. Ridiculous. He looks ridiculous. I feel ridiculous. None of this is real. It looks like I cooked the sausage because I put a raw one on the pan and take a cooked one out. But the sausage is cold. This is not fooling anyone. Why are we doing this? Nobody is going to laugh at this. Nobody is going to believe that I’m 60 because I have a little talc powder in my hair. 

And what happens is … I laugh. And because I laugh, my fellow performer laughs. Hiding it at first, we stutter through our lines, choking on cold, if cooked sausage. Eventually unable to hide it, the words dry up and we laugh and laugh. The director roars at us from the auditorium. We muster sincerity and continue through the scene.

But we only last a couple of lines before we fall back into hysterics. 

Eventually we realise everyone is standing around watching us wondering what the hell is so funny. It’s late at night. The show opens the following day. There are still sets to paint. Why are these guys wasting time laughing through the play? Then it gets worse. I know it’s serious. I know everyone needs us to pull ourselves together and get on with the play. My voice quivers, as if I am laughing or maybe I’m crying. I can’t tell any more if I am laughing or crying. I am laughing but I do not think it’s funny. I know it’s not funny. I am scared. I am laughing because I am scared. 

The director halts the rehearsal and summons me to the front of the stage, where I sit, mortified. He tells me it’s been a long day. Then he says something I will never forget. He says: 

Tomorrow the audience will be here, and it will steel you. 

I nod. I retreat to the dressing room under the stage. My castmates tell me tomorrow will be better.  I don’t believe them. I have never heard of a show which stopped it’s dress rehearsal because the lead actor could not say his lines because he laughed so much. I am so ashamed of myself, I cry. Though, at this point I have ambitions to be a professional actor, I know now that I am scuppering those ambitions.

The next morning I wake up confused. It’s 11 o’clock. School starts at 9 o’clock and more rehearsals start at 10 o’clock but I wake up at 11 o’clock. My mother tells me I have been rehearsing so much that she decides I should sleep in. It is an unexpected kindness, and one of those things you never realise you need until you get it. I am still afraid, but I’m not going to back down. I will not pretend that everything is funny and laugh my way through it. I accept the fear as a logical response to standing up in front of hundreds of my peers and I steel myself. 

When I walk into the auditorium, someone else is speaking my lines. I go into my dressing room and without urgency pull on my costume. There is a moment when my character, The Captain, leaves the stage to change his trousers. The student reading my lines comes off stage, into the back stage area, we call the wings. He sees me. He is delighted. Relieved. He wants to talk to me, know if I’m ok. Like the captain of a fuckin B52 I give him a short sharp nod, he knows I’m going back on stage. He offers me the script. I don’t take it. I know the words. 

The moment I walk through that door, the lights hit me, bright and hot. The tension sits in the air, like humidity. I hear the questions in all of their heads. Is he going to get through this?  I feel the danger, the ridiculousness, the fear whirl around me like gyre of hellish terror. But I am not myself. I am The Captain. 

It feels like taking off. I do not smile for three days. The play takes off. We transport the audience back in time. They roar with laughter and the silences are chilling. I sit on the stage afterwards and people come talk to me. I have no ownership over what happened. I am present, in the moment. That’s all that matters. Especially with fear. I am in the moment. I am here. It’s hiding from fear that’s worse than fear. I face the fear now, I feel the danger. I sit on the stage after the play and I tell myself, I’m going to do this. This is going to be my life, My job, my work. That’s when I know, I already am a professional actor.