Earlier this month I went to see the final dress rehearsal of “Evita” at Circle Theatre.  My friend Todd Lewis is playing Juan Perón in the wonderful production, but starring as Evita is Jolene Frankey, a woman I was doing a show with exactly twenty years ago.  She was but a little girl in that show, and now she’s a grown woman, a mother and a superb singer and performer.  To me it does not feel like that much time has passed… it’s startling.  (Oh, and Todd isn’t so bad, either.)

It brought my thoughts since then back to that time.  It was a critical point in my life.  Through those five years of experiences I was able to enjoy life and conquer some of my innermost demons… but it came to an abrupt, painful end.

The early 1990’s found me fresh off of my education, but not yet focused on what I wanted to do with my life.  I had my computer skills, which gave me enough employability to land and keep jobs, but no solid plan on how to utilize them.  So I fluttered around like a butterfly from job to job, not really caring too much what I did as long as it brought a paycheck.

I needed a social outlet, though.  My social anxiety was turned up to 11 at that time, and the jobs I had did not provide a great deal of human interaction.  Todd and I hung out a lot back then, doing various creative things together, and I decided to follow him into the world of community acting.  I had performed a small part in “Flowers for Algernon” a couple of years earlier for a small acting troupe, and decided to give it another try.  I joined him at an audition at Actors’ Theatre for a production of “Les liaisons dangereuses” (Dangerous Liaisons).  Todd got the role of Danceny, and while I got the part of a servant, I was happy enough to be part of the production.

It felt good to be with the “in-crowd” for a change – in school I never got to roll in the popular circles.  Now I was doing something that was creative with talented people and garnering applause and appreciation each night.  I remember feeling more upbeat at the time, and less burdened by my perpetual issues.  While I didn’t have any illusions that this was going to lead to some career either on Broadway or Hollywood, I think I felt that it was going to help me break out of my shell at long last and be a likeable, respectable person.

After the performance had its run, I continued auditioning for new shows.  While doing performances escaped the anxiety, auditions were another story… they were absolutely grueling.  To prepare, I’d get the scripts as early as I could and CONSTANTLY run through the parts I desired.  I’d often find a hideaway at work and run through the lines over and over, trying different inflections and tonal qualities.  Job duties came second – though I thankfully never got fired because of it.

I didn’t get many parts, at first.  I think I tried out for six or seven shows with no luck.  Once I was offered a small role in “Six Degrees of Separation”… as long as I was okay with being naked on stage.  I passed on it, though I kind of regret it when thinking back.

I landed another role in “A Flea in Her Ear” at Grand Rapids Civic Theatre, again with Todd.  It was another small part, but it was an opportunity to be on the bigger stage in town.  Again, I enjoyed being up in the spotlights, doing something that was admired by the public.  I remember the director Paul Dreher telling me that the waltz I did for the curtain call was “the worst he’s ever seen”, but I didn’t let a little criticism stop me from flouncing across the stage to the crescendo of applause (though I did take proper waltzing lessons several years later).

After that, I hit my stride and roles started coming in.  I got a couple of bit parts in some smaller productions.  I did some professional acting (for MONEY!) in a couple of promotional shows for Amway.  I got to be Popeye for a local parade.  I did a mystery fundraiser.  I even got involved in Civic Theatre’s acting school as an instructor for a time.

Two shows stand out from that time in my mind:  one was a small two-part dinner theater production up in Sand Lake (at Madame Babe’s, sadly no longer operating).  The first half, “Laundry and Bourbon”, was a show about the women and the story from their point of view, while the second half, “Lone Star”, involved the guys and their concurrent antics – of which I was a part.  I was a wimpy guy name Skeeter Fullernoy, a nebbish little guy who had done something pretty bad with a car and didn’t know how to tell the other two guys.  I had to adopt a whiny southern accent that probably sounded like a screeching marmoset to the dining audience.  Skeeter also smoked – or attempted to – so I had to puff a few for the first and only time of my life.  It was great fun with my two costars Jason Marlett and Ed Nelson, and great direction from Mary Kron.  Jason still knows the lines to the show by heart to this day.

The other was “No One Will Marry A Princess With A Tree Growing Out Of Her Head”, a children’s show at Civic.  Penny Notter handpicked me for the role, the only time that ever happened to me (she must’ve felt the evil goatee I had at the time was perfect for the nasty wizard I played).  Being evil and over-the-top was sheer delight, especially in a children’s show.  At the autograph session after each performance, the children would go through a line by the front of the stage and get autographs from the actors (in character).  Some of the kids, upon approaching my spot in line, avoided my character by CLIMBING OVER THE SEATS to the next row to maintain a zone of safety, and then climbing back to get autographs from the actor after me.  It was bliss.

That show started the full year of theater for me, where I did really nothing but shows in one way or another, and the experience started to turn darker.  I did “Annie” next, an arduous run that involved me having to learn ventriloquism – and then having to perform it unamplified to a large audience while I had almost completely lost my voice.  I immediately went into another children’s show after that, “Alice through the Looking Glass”, and followed that up by doing crew for the first time on the show right after that.  I was living and breathing theater… to the exclusion of all else.  The seasonal job I had at the time had not been renewed for budget reasons, and I didn’t really pursue another because I was so busy.  All other interests and goals were sidelined.

Because I was really only hanging around actors day and night, my whole social circle involved them.  While many community actors are warm and friendly people, others can be narcissistic, opportunistic, and very cliquey and elitist.  It was my bad fortune to be around many of the latter during that final year.  I had no adequate defenses.  My sense of self started shrinking pretty rapidly, and I found myself feeling probably the most alone I have ever experienced.

To top it all off, I had accepted a position as a member of the orchestra for the final Circle Theatre performance of the 1995 season, “The Secret Garden”.  While I had been part of a band previously and I was competent at keyboards and piano, this was my biggest challenge yet.  I was handed at least a hundred pages of musical score to run through over the summer.  I wasn’t all that strong at reading sheet music – I had always been a better “play-by-ear” musician.  I thought I could take it on, though, and come out the better artist for it.

But the world caved in on me that summer.  Mounting pressure to find a job, emotional fallout from friendships that were blown to pieces, and the stress to be worthy to play my part of the musical score all pushed me up to the edge of the precipice.

Then, one day, it pushed me off.

For the first and only time in my life, I attempted suicide.  I took 37 high dosage sleeping pills, put myself in bed and expected to never wake up.

Instead, I woke up to my mother shouting.  I was incoherently babbling and my mind was all over the place, and she was frantic.  I was taken to the hospital and, after admitting my actions, got put up in the mental ward of Gerber Memorial for two weeks.

Nobody outside my immediate family knew about this incident.  In fact, this is the first time I’m mentioning it publicly.

I also want to say that this was no particular person’s doing but my own.  Nobody is at fault but me.  I put myself in that position and allowed it to get that bad.

After being released, I was still faced with the upcoming show.  I kept quiet about my personal detour and it was now very late in the rehearsal schedule.  I did my best to complete my absorption of the score and be as ready as I could be.

“The Secret Garden” was a wonderful show to watch, and everyone performed beautifully for the audience during its run.  Backstage, though, it was war.  Egos were at an absolute maximum.  Conflicts were plentiful.  The actors and the orchestra were always at odds.  On top of it all was me trying to keep up with the other musicians each night to produce the aural magic, and to simply keep my head on straight.  The musical director, Linda Missad, was such an incredible trooper through it all and kept the whole thing together.

By the final performance, I was physically drained and emotionally inert.  The joy that I had experienced in theater had evaporated completely.  I skipped the cast party and went home.  I collected all of my souvenirs from the show, threw them in a pit, and burned them to ashes.

The next day I got out of bed and formed my IT consulting company.  I’ve been doing that ever since.

For a long while I avoided thinking about theater and my time acting.  It felt like a deep chasm in the course of my life… a scar on my soul.  Part of me wanted to tell myself that it was just a temporary absence, but years kept rolling by.   A couple times I attended an audition halfheartedly to see if I could get into the groove again, but really never felt it.  I stopped seeing shows as well, and let a lot of the connections I made grow cold.  It wasn’t my life anymore.

In the twenty years since, I have tried to analyze and rationalize my involvement with community theater, and my young adult years in general.  I think it really all boils down to a sense of identity – a yearning to have definition… to know who you really are and perhaps who you hope to be.  I was desperately looking for that identity, something that would prove to myself (and the world?) that I wasn’t just an uninteresting person leading an uneventful life.  I ASPIRED.

But I let that become my ONLY identity.  I let the box I put myself in be my sky and ground and refused to see beyond its sides.  I let the people that I associated with judge as to whether I was worthy as a human being.  I let it very nearly destroy me.

Nevertheless, as there are even in the darkest of journeys, there were bright spots along the way… and perhaps those are what will stay with me as the bad spirits slowly subside.  There were good performances that I’ll always cherish, good roles that I’ll be glad to have played.  There were also good people, too; people without agendas, without spite who, like me, just wanted to bring color to the grayness of life – and enjoy the hell out of it.  I have slowly reconnected with many of these people over recent years.  I’ve also started attending shows regularly again, not only to recapture the thrill of the live performance but to watch those friends of mine and how they’ve grown through their experiences.

Will I ever set foot on the stage again?

I’m not sure.  I have done a couple of spontaneous “man in the back” film roles that only required but a few hours of my time in past couple of years.  However, my business is now the current focus in my life, and it does not allow for the weeks and months of devotion that a good theater performance can require.

But never say never.