Stagecraft

Jan 8 2014

An actor constructs himself
from the outside in.

It starts backstage,
where the costume mistress
plucks it off the rack,
make-up stained
and stinking of old sweat.
Which you will inhabit, temporarily,
scripted, and blocked
the audience lost
in the footlights' blinding glare.
Comforting yourself
to imagine them all

undressed.

Sometimes, a reflection catches your eye,
and for a moment
you can't tell who.

Sometimes, you hover in the flies,
looking down
on your disembodied self.

Sometimes, you are hollow inside,
nothing left
of the soft-bodied creature
but its exoskeleton,
your hard protective shell.

And there will come a time
when you go dry.
When the blood
rushing past your ears
drowns out the prompter's panicked words.
When you say what you've always thought
ad lib,
in the inner voice
too rarely heard.

And when the curtain drops
what you should have done from the start.
Flesh out
the bare bones script,
the inner life

of back-story, motivation

id.

When you shed
your perfect disguise,

in a heap on the green room floor.
When you dress yourself
from the back of the closet,
the call of fashion ignored.

Or in hand-me-downs,
accepting the baggage

and civil wars.
When the big stage door
swings shut behind you
locking from the inside,
and you walk clean away.

Because your understudy
can fake it just as well.


I heard someone describe an article of clothing, or some kind of accessory (a purse, perhaps?) as a "signifier". We present ourselves in a very calculated way, constructing an image. (Even I -- dressing for comfort, with no thought to status or affiliation or artifice -- make a clear impression. Although in my case, a rather authentic one of total oblivion!)

I've also heard many actors talk about constructing a character from the outside in: how powerful a transformation they undergo simply by slipping into a costume or under a wig; how a simple disguise protects, emboldens, liberates. And then, of course, there is the old saying "the clothes make the man." (Which, to me, is another way of saying there can't be much of a man there!)

The appearance we project to the world can be confidence-building. It can be a powerful instrument of personal re-invention. But it can also trap us: in conformity and convention; in fear and superficiality. The more authentic interior life can be denied or neglected. You can feel like a fake and an impostor, in a prison of your own making.

So in this poem, the actor on stage and in costume is a metaphor for the unexamined life. Which is a lot more enjoyable way for the reader to hear what I just said without descending into the preachiness and sanctimony that would be all too easy here.