[By way of ‘flipping the script’ a Voice Arts participant and first-time performer in the Third Act programme’s end of year show, We Wrote This, reviews the experience from the stage.]
You only get to go on stage for the first time once, and this is it for me, at BATS Wellington.
Four minutes to go and the time is dragging and speeding up at the same time – oh please, who thought this was a good idea? OMG. I can hear the Director’s introduction, the audience are restless, the cast is gripped. We glance to each other – why are you smiling? I mean someone could die!
Back stage in the labyrinth of our own thoughts… waiting for the moment when the stage lights will illuminate our very souls… oh heck this is agony … Then woooosh! We hit the boards – in the dark – and we can feel the audience through the numb sensation … a few coughs, a bit of shuffling … and bam, lights up! The prologue ‘dumb show’ complete – we’ve got this!
And then a missed cue! Dead air. Oh shit! We’ve always nailed this bit! Hell, what could go wrong? Nothing and everything – and they are right … Then like seasoned pros we pick it up and save it and we’re away, like wild horses galloping over the distant horizon, into the light, into the night. And there immediately with us, willing us on, are 80 extra people on stage with us… The unseen in-the-dark-people, the shufflers, the laughers, the coughing people – oh what bliss! WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER! They are willing us on and uplifting and in the moment; they are so in this with us and our feet don’t touch the stage… We float…
Then suddenly, my moment of fear: we are at the bit I’ve been dreading and still haven’t come to grips with even in the last four weeks of rehearsal… But what? Suddenly it’s alive, suddenly its comedy, suddenly I’m on top of the world and I haven’t done a thing and Kenneth (my character) is going for laughs and there’s more after that… I reckon if we’d had done another couple of nights Nicola (our director) would’ve hit Ken with a stick and told him to do less, but the same. LOL … and life changing and affirming!
We are the 9 on stage, united by the theatre god. We are the together people that will remember our first and second audience for ever. We will take yous to the grave … Kia Kaha! Thank you whoever you are there in the dark … We love you.
Personal stories, our stories, our truth… You laughed, you cried with us… You give us the silence space to be a dropping pin and the roar of hope to be the rest of our lives …
The 45 mins are gone far too soon as we complete the premiere performance of We Wrote This and my one-time-only acting debut.
Waka Attewell