Working on the script right now has got me reaching for all kinds of distractions. In my stuffy-head-cold state, I’m allowing the distractions in.

I spent half the night reading “Dance to the Piper”. It’s an Agnes de Mille autobiography, but she devotes much (maybe most) of her prose to describing fellow artists who influenced her, from her father in the movies to Martha Graham to Anna Pavlova. These portraits are punctuated by stories of de Mille’s struggle, constant obstacles and financial peril, and eternally thwarted success.

For a young, self-producing artist, it is not a heartening read. (I’m just over halfway through the book; perhaps it brightens up later.) Agnes published this book in 1951, and things are much the same now as then as far as available money to fringe arts.

What consumes me as I read it is that all the great artists that Agnes had the fortune to run across in her formative years as a dancer are described as temperamental, unstable, and slightly insane. Few of them have business sense. The people that she describes as even-keeled and successful are people whose work she does not bother to comment on.

And I ask myself, is it necessary to be insane to be great? And I ask myself, from whence comes this private certainty that I myself am destined for greatness? And I ask myself, am I insane? And reluctantly conclude that I am not. That I am sane and therefore mundane, and therefore no tormented artistic genius. That I am not driven to mad distraction by intense contemplation of my work. That I would rather compose a blog entry than wrestle with a difficult bit in the script, which I have been avoiding all evening by reading about insane genuises. Genii.

And I ask myself, am I willing to face failure after failure after disappointment and continue to do the work, as Agnes de Mille did? She ultimately won acclaim and made real strides in the field of dance. But her name fades pretty darn quick…I would say that of the people who inhabit this country, maybe a third know vaguely who Martha Graham is? And of those 33%, maybe a fifth have even heard of Agnes de Mille, and maybe a tenth of that subset know that she is a choreographer. I don’t, myself, know anything about any of her work except what I am learning from reading her autobiography, and I am a person with a peculiar interest in this sort of thing.

Yeah, yeah, so obviously you don’t do this for fame and recognition. You don’t do it for money. You don’t do it for the respect of the public at large, who recognize performance on Broadway and very little else as a measure of success in the theatrical world. You do it–right? Because you must, because somehow it makes more sense to do this than anything else. But what is the reason, the real reason?

If I wanted to reach more people, I could be making film or music or even TV. So I can’t claim that I want to change the world, really. There are more efficient ways of doing that.

I would say I went into the field where my talents lay–but the truth is I’m a bright young lady with lots of talents, and there are many fields in which I could do well that have nothing to do with theatre. And as an actor, I’m only competent on my best days. As a playwright, well–here I am, script open in another window and neglected while I ramble on to the 8 or so people who read this. About my own existential angst. Oh dear, I just suffocated in my own pretentiousness and pompousness. And now I’m drowning in my self-pity and choking on my self-conscious irony. Argh, the recursiveness! I’m stuck! Heeeeeeeeeeeelllllllp!

But returning to the central point: why do theatre? When people ask me I say it is because of the relationship between performer and audience. I think it’s the same as with dance and live music performance and any other kind of activity that involves a performer and an audience being in the same room at the same time. And I can’t say anything about that that doesn’t sound utterly schmaltzy. (Is that the right word for corny and saccharine? I’m not up to par with my pidgin Yiddish.) But there’s this energy, right? This…uh, yeah…this vibe. …and it has to do with generosity, on the part of both the audience and the performer. And…I think that live performance just makes everyone in the room more human. Even bad live performance. I think.

But damn it! I’m making that up. I do it because I like it. Because when I came offstage after my first guitar recital in first or second grade, I was so buzzed I still remember the way my footsteps echoed in the empty school hallway on the way back to the room we were using for tuning. And I really want my reason to be grander and less ego-driven than that. But I think that’s really it. I do it ’cause nothing else makes me feel quite as alive. And right after using the word ‘generosity’ in the last paragraph, here I am saying I just do it for me. All for me. All the time. Mine. ME! I don’t do it for anyone else. I don’t even particularly care if the work I do is earth-shattering or important. (That’s a secret, by the way, that last part. If you confront me with it I shall deny it vehemently.)

And I was saying to David the other night that my favorite thing on Earth is when life works out so that I get to do exactly what I feel like doing, and it accidentally makes someone else happy.

I hope Claytie doesn’t still read my blog. She’d repudiate me. :-p

Love and selfish generosity,
Alissa