Strike

In a community theater, the show doesn’t end when the curtain falls. In fact, that’s when some of the hardest work begins.

Like most theaters of its size, Mitchell ACT doesn’t have a paid staff to clean backstage and disassemble the set. Once the last show is over, actors go to the lobby to greet patrons, then head to the dressing rooms to change into work clothes and remove makeup, all the while hearing the whine of drills and thumping of flats as volunteers stack them against the back wall. Once our lockers are in order, we go out to help tear down.

That’s the moment when a show is over for me—the instant I walk up the steps, as I’ve done countless times for entrances during rehearsals and performances, and don’t see the familiar pathways through props and curtains. Instead, I see the work lights glaring down on the dissection of our creative space. The magical world it has taken weeks to create and months to inhabit comes apart in a matter of hours, almost as if it was designed to be so.

I usually cry a little and hope no one sees. And then I grab a drill.

A little over a week ago, I participated in this deconstruction ritual for the last time at Mitchell ACT. After a fantastic run with an incredibly talented cast and crew for Paul Slade Smith’s Unnecessary Farce, we had to dismantle the two adjoining hotel rooms in which all the action takes place. Two hours after taking our bows, the stage was bare again, and we went our separate ways.

Only strike wasn’t over for me. I went home to strike a life I’d lived for a decade.

***

I’ve heard more than one motivational speaker compare adulthood to a three-act play. Act One is about building character, discovering who you are and want to be. Act Two is the season of power, when you grow into your potential and make your mark before turning toward legacy building in Act Three.

Fine, I guess. But when I look back at three decades of being a grown-up, it doesn’t feel like three acts of the same play. Rather, it feels as though I keep jumping from one show to another. I spent my young adulthood living themes and variations of Dumb and Dumber, engaging in antics and oblivious to the world and full of decadent idealism—”So you’re saying there’s a chance!” As midlife rolled in, I woke up in the Barbie movie, dissatisfied with the false utopia narrated by those for whom things have worked out a certain way. I asked a lot of questions and insisted on better answers than what I’d been handed.

Turns out that, outside of Barblieland, people don’t love having their pretty thoughts disrupted. And so I moved on.

The day after we wrapped Farce, I picked up a 20’ U-Haul and loaded it to the brim with the material representations of what I call my life. Bittersweet doesn’t even begin to cover it—the staggering callousness and cowardice of institutions I once believed in, the unwavering love and support of so many people who meant so much to us over the years, the effort to hold those things together in my head and heart. Everything I loaded in that truck has a story behind it. I tried to cull out the bitter and keep the sweet, There’s a lot of work left to do on that front.

That life won’t be completely dismantled for some months yet. Denise is finishing up a job and won’t join me in Kentucky until later this summer. And the kids are staying in the region to go to college, which means we will be frequent guests of Allegiant Airlines for the foreseeable future. Besides, we have too many friends left in Mitchell to sever all ties.

Still, packing that truck was hard. Pulling away from my family harder still. That show is over, and god, has it been hard to watch that life being unmade.

***

During this last run of shows at ACT, I got into the habit of coming early and staying late—partly to maximize time with friends and partly to give myself time alone in that space that was my lifeline these past 18 months. I didn’t want to leave without being present. I didn’t want to exit without being grateful. It hurt sometimes, but I’m glad I did it.

Of course, strike is the necessary precursor to the next show. As I write this, friends a thousand miles away are preparing for Gilligan’s Island. I wish them well, despite my raging FOMO. And I’m glad we cleared the stage for them. Another story needs to be told.

I know the same is true for me and my family. As beautiful and tragic as our time in Mitchell was—and make no mistake, it was both to the extreme—we’ve got to write a new script and workshop the details. The creative process will be just that—creative, and a process. Thankfully, we already have a large cast of characters eager to help us along.

I don’t know what this next act/show/movie of my life will turn out to be. But I do know that, in the face of so much failure, love has held us together. And so this move is not a crumbling. It’s just time to strike. Now the stage is cleared, the materials are at the ready, the work is only just begun.

And the show must go on.