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There’s a point, reliably, in every show that I’ve ever worked on in which I realize that not only am I a total fraud as an actor and/or writer, but all of my collaborators know it too, regret including me, and are simply not mentioning it to me in order to avoid hurting my feelings.

I’m told that this is common, and that it is a delusion. I’ve read books about it and heard the stories of wildly successful and brilliant people who claim to have a similar experience. But in my case, tonight, right now, I’m certain it’s accurate.

Of course everything I believe about making art supports the idea that how “good” I am at it matters not at all. The ideal Alissa doesn’t care about that and goes ahead and does what she wants to do anyway, and keeps trying to make better art. But the real Alissa gets her feelings hurt at her companions’ perceived belief that she’s the weak link.

This is not something I particularly like about the real Alissa. I’m pleased to say that at least the real Alissa does keep going and trying to make better art, even if occasionally she wonders if her time would be better spent doing something she could make progress at, instead of continuing to bash her uninspired, unenlightened head against a door that will never, ever open, or at least not often. But somewhere in my childhood the value of perseverance was successfully instilled, so. Here I am. I’ve been in theatre continuously since I was nine years old. Almost twenty years.

I really ought to be good at this by now.

I’m writing this mostly to get the demons out, to shame them into nonexistence by shining the light of the public consciousness on them. I do not want a flood of emails from you, my beloved family and friends, telling me that I am not a fraud. If I’m in this mood, I won’t believe them, and if I’m in a more balanced mood, I won’t need them. But I do sort of want an email or two that says: hey, I feel that too sometimes.

Am I alone out here? Oh, God, I might be. That would be really embarrassing.

The sad thing is that the real glory of theatre is totally separate from all this what-other-people-think-of-me, how-good-I-am crap. But it’s buried underneath, and just now the pile seems so high and thick that I can’t see the pure shiny stuff hiding at the bottom. I don’t know when I’ll ever see that again. I can’t tell if I’m lying to myself that I ever saw it before.

I’m pretty sure I’ll stop feeling this way at some point before the show is done. I’m equally sure that I will feel this way again during the next show I work on. I think maybe the work I have to do in this life is to accept this feeling, allow it to be part of me forever, and keep going. I think trying to make the feeling go away makes it worse.

It makes me think of one of the stories of the fall of Satan. (Thanks, Jason, for telling me this one. I still have your book.) In what I think is a Sufi version, God made the angels first out of His divine love. He told them that they were second only to Him, and that they should bow to nothing else in creation. Then God made man, and, apparently forgetting or revising His former edict, told the angels that they were second to man, and should bow to man as well.

Satan’s love for God was so powerful that he couldn’t bring himself to bow to man. He wanted to remain faithful to God’s original command, and, being made of a part of God himself, could not subject that sliver of God to a creature of clay. God, not known for respecting fiddly arguments like that or really anything other than immediate obedience, cast Satan from Heaven.

To Satan, Hell consists of separation from God’s love.

I’ve lost track of theatre’s love. I don’t know whether I disobeyed some command—perhaps it was Thou Shalt Not Care What Other People Think. But I’m feeling a little banished today.

Anyway. The project’s going well. I really like our play.

Yours in exile,
Alissa