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Monday, June 9, 2014

Tonys 2014

It is 2:40 AM, and though, I am physically exhausted... I am wide awake!

If you know me at all, then you know I claim the day of the Tony Awards as a national holiday. I do not take them lightly. No one is to bother me on this day unless you want to discuss predictions, outcomes, performances, etc. It holds a higher value than Christmas to me. I've even been known to call the theatre church. If theatre is church, then Tonys Day is Christmas and Easter mass combined! It's that big of a deal for me. I go to the extent of taking the day after off work because I KNOW this will happen.

I'm awake... wide awake. I want to take on the world. I want to challenge any and every thing that tries to hold me down.

So... I sit here. I'm home from a wonderful night of Tonys viewing at my friend Jon's home, and I'm thrumming. The energies around me are palpitating. I'm alive. I'm full of inspiration and creativity. I want to create. I need to create. I need to celebrate this wonderful thing we call live theatre with the world!

I'm naturally pessimistic. I see the world as half-empty most times. People annoy me. I hate everything. In fact, I am usually against all sorts of social affairs, but this one is different. This is full of people who are like me in a way. They see and recognize and accept the wonder in the ability to show "people" how "people" are or should be. We are speakers and writers and lovers of truth in it's purest form. Most people find that an odd statement. My parents were often those people. "It's pretend." "It's make believe." "Playing dress up." "You need to grow up." ETC. We've all heard those phrases. But, it's not pretend or make believe or dress up. We do not need to grow up. No one tells a scientist to stop exploring. (Well, except for creationists.) It's hard to imagine that I live in a part of the world that preaches, literally, to live your life based entirely on faith, but will ridicule you for acting or composing music that isn't faith-based or writing your life down in a way so that it can be shared and maybe reach someone who is going through a similar struggle.

I said to my friends tonight that I often feel as if "my mind is too full of creativity to be contained in this small town." I asked them if they feel the same way. They looked at me with "DUH" written across their faces. However, if I asked this of most people from my hometown, they wouldn't understand what I was talking about. They'd think I was crazy.

Theatre is educational. Theatre is life. Theatre is truth, even if you do not want to accept that truth. It has taken me a long time to accept some truths I have learned in the theatre community or through a show I have seen or worked on. Some truths I still have a hard time accepting those truths. Sometimes I do not believe I deserve to chase my dreams. Sometimes, I have a hard time accepting the fact that the only person sabotaging my life is myself. But, at the core of all that, I am set free by theatre. It may suck at times. I might take such lessons for granted, but theatre has granted me the ability to do the one thing I know I can do. Share a little bit of truth, whether it is mine or a certain composer's or a playwright's. As Street Singer said in Brooklyn: The Musical "Every fairy tale holds a little truth, and every truth... a little fairy tale."

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