Sometimes Life Happens

The course of true love never did run smooth.

Lysander, A Midsummer Night's Dream

Right now my class is teching William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life.  Last night while I was sitting at  Nick's bar, we were holding for whatever it is that you hold for in a tech and I remembered the first show that I saw at UNCSA.  It was The Kitchen by Arnold Wesker.  It was in the round, just like Time of Your Life, and this is why I will never forget it:  All the objects in the kitchen were space objects.  I was sitting in front of the butcher, who kept carrying in these huge hunks of meat and cutting them up.  Except there was no meat there; my intelligent mind told me that there was no meat that the knife was going through...but there was definitely meat there.  It was huge and big and difficult even for this huge muscular man to carry around and cut through.  Sitting at the bar, I started to cry a little.  When I saw The Kitchen, I was a perspective.  I hadn't found out yet if I had been accepted.  I remember the intense feeling of pure need I had to be on that stage.  I didn't just want it, I needed it more than I needed food or water.  And last night, there I was on that stage.  Complaining about why we were holding, that my heels were hurting my feet, and that I was hungry.  Why would I ever complain?  I'm having a love affair with my biggest crush. (P.S. - this picture is from On The Razzle, which was last term.  It is on the same stage, The Catawba.  I'm the cupcake).

Lately, I've really been questioning how much of my life I have truly dedicated to my love.  How do you weigh it?  I have dedicated 85% of myself to theatre, 10% to my family and friends, and 5% to myself?  It seems ridiculous to try figuring it out, let alone to be considering it in the first place.  I have known from the beginning that I am not one of the people like our Dean Gerald Freedman; he has given his entire existence to his craft.  He never married, has no children - the work keeps him alive.  I want to be one of those people, because I love the theatre.  It is my civilization.  Sometimes I try to trick myself into thinking that I am one of those people.  But I am not.  This term has made that very clear to me.

I feel disappointed in myself.  Something inside me says that I will never reach my full potential as an artist if I don't eat, sleep, and breathe it.  And by that, I mean using the lunch and dinner breaks in my 17 hour days to work on my scripts and think about the lives of my characters.  I just can't reconcile myself to do it.  I must have time to give to myself, whether that means enjoying a pretty day, going to the gym, watching mindless television, or reading a book.  It feels just like any relationship when you spend all your time together; I feel smothered.  The more time that I spend working on these things in time that I feel should be, or needs to be, my time, the more I do not want to work on it. 

Even though I love it.

--Jasmine Anne Osborne

Comments

[Joe]

If you don't take some time to live life a little, and live only FOR your acting, you won't have the breadth of human experience to bring TO your acting. Just a thought.

[Justine]

I totally agree with Joe.