Travesties

If you want to talk about the acting company

Let’s talk about them in technical terms, okay?

Because that’s what I feel comfortable in

We were doing Travesties last season

Our forty-night

And I started thinking of all of them

In this way

This very specific

Sort of

Purely technical way

Because I really don’t have much interaction with them

Aside from these ways

Not once we’re working on a show together

I just keep things technical

So one looks good in this light

One can’t handle props

One gets blocking backwards—all the time

One gets sort of sing-songy if you ask her to do an accent

One complains about his costume constantly

One never complains about his costume even when he should

One is usually miscast

One is underused

One is slowly drinking himself to death

One is looking for a way out

One is trying desperately to stay in

One is this

One is that

That’s the problem

With looking at things

From a purely technical standpoint

You really can’t do it

They’re people

I mean, they’re actors

But they’re still people

And I feel like sometimes

We---and by ‘we’ I mean me, but other people too—

We sort of forget that

We get mad because they’re sensitive

Because they’re all so sensitive

Because they all seem one way

So general

So generic

The picture of a stereotype

The difficult actor

But then one pulls you aside one day

And says—

In this sort of tragically insecure voice—

‘Was I good?  That thing, that thing I just did—was it good?  Was I right?  Did I get it right?’

And sometimes they even say—

‘This time.  Did I get it right this time?’

And you just want to hug them

Because they’re really just kids, you know?

They’re really just sort of…big kids

Big kids who can never seem

To find their light

And you have to forgive them

You have to forgive them

For just about everything

Because, you know, they’re just actors

They don’t know any better