Center Stage Youth Theatre

Posts Tagged ‘Monday Night’

This past Monday I went and auditioned for a local community theatre’s production of Gypsy.  I don’t audition for much of anything any more; my passion now is for directing and I often lose patience with acting.  But once in a while a part will come along that I
have always wanted a crack at, and Mama Rose in Gypsy is one of them.

And you know, it is so good for directors to remember the way it feels to be up there in front of everybody baring your soul and singing your heart out.  It takes a great deal of courage for young people to put themselves out there and let their guards down enough to do their work on the stage.  I felt that again last Monday.  I was here in a new town, in a new theatre, didn’t know a soul in the room, but when I got up on the stage I was in my element again and I knew it.  And ok, one of my notes slid out a bit sideways – a terrible moment for sure! – but still I felt that old feeling, the one that I felt when I stepped onto a big stage fir the first time in 10th grade.  This was where I was  meant to be.

And I know this is what our new young actors are feeling when they get up on that stage.  They may not even have known it was something they were missing, but you can see it in their eyes, and I hear it from their parents so often. “He loves coming here. It’s the ony thing he’s ever done that we didn’t have to fight with him to get him to go back to after the first time.”  They feel at home, and they feel they belong.  And when they are up on the boards for the first time they look around and see the lights and the curtains and the empty seats waiting for the audience and they know they are where they need to be.  And slippery note or no slippery note, that’s how I felt last Monday night.  And it felt real good.