​There are moments, and then there are moments. This, the itchyantagonistichorrifyingglorybefore feeling remarks the latter. I am deeply in the midst of the moment before the moment. Backstage, why: The scene is dismal. It’s a criminy shock of a scene. Angst, like dust, drifts in pools through the dark, dank, stale air. The air is warm and stuffy and it makes the act of reciting lines, poring over the lines of the script, in one’s head, or even aloud, dangerously harried. The warmth emits this claustrophobic sensation. I can barely describe it. It makes me want to take an index finger to the collar of my shirt and yank it away from my neck. It makes me want to shave my head. It makes me want to jump into the waters of a beautiful, crystal clear grotto and face the stalactites above me. What are my opening lines? Ah!

 

O, mother. O, the dreary dread. O, we cannot put down the family dog. The family dog has honored us nobly.

 

Remember. Remember.

 

Mr. Antlers. The consummate visage of theatre-core. A thin, white pescatarian of about fifty who stands before his actors with a shaky fist and who sounds out, slowly, so dutifully slowly, borrowed words from boring tomes. Quotes Henry James, the Bible, George Orwell, and ancient monks. Sighs often. His walk is unnatural. I picture him holed up, squirreled away among the roots of an underhill underhome, sighing as he flips one page over to the next. I picture Mr. Antlers before a civilized fire–something conical and tame. He shifts curtly, coughs, adjusts the bridge of his glasses, farts and frets and annotates gamely with a ballpoint pen some scholarly-seeming wisdom. He’s as arcane as Dante’s layers of hell, but darling about it.

 

O, mother. O, the deadly dreary. O, the family dog has suffered so. We must honor our Toto honorably.

 

What are my opening lines again? Find the script. Flip to the middle, where THE BLACK SHEEP enters, stage left. The dog’s name is Sebastian, not Toto. Deadly dreary is wrong. It is, dreary dread. How can I remember these lines? They’re written in a dead and dreary language. An insufferable tongue fraught with references to the Apostles, Epistolaries, the faraway courts of Kings and Queens, and the horrors of childbirth. But I cannot mess it up. This is my moment. In last year’s play, I was THE TREE. I anchored my feet down to the stage and stood there with inflexible stiffness. Doreen, my acting Coach, recommended I consider the inflexible stiffness of all the different genuses of formidable trees when approaching the psychology of a part such as mine. Sycamores, sequoias, redwoods: embody their grandeur, Goby. Embody it. In my performance, I had hoped to bring this real life-like, sturdy, immovable quality to my role as THE TREE. It must have worked. Since then, I have been upgraded from the role of THE TREE to the role of THE BLACK SHEEP.