Feeling: enlightened
Listening to: Nick Drake - One of These Things First
Reading/Watching: Holy Smoke, with Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel

I have come to an important decision.

I am giving up on theater. Particularly musical theater.

This comes from much thought and self-examination, and culminates in an epiphany I had tonight.

I started getting into theater in middle school because it was another elective choice, and I was not in any way athletic, and didn't feel like renting an instrument. I found I was decent, because I was smart enough to memorize lines, and moderately theatrical, given the opportunity.

I did a bit of silly side-parts in high school, mostly old women, characters, comic roles who were on stage briefly, or chorus members in a musical, because I was a good singer, and a horrible dancer, but I bulked up the soprano section nicely. I loved performing. I loved the costumes, I loved the people, I loved the camaraderie, but it didn't always love me. I became frustrated with how my height, my weight, my looks in general got in the way of my dreams, because in the world of small theater, a pretty face and cute figure will get a girl much further than any real talent.

(Yes, I know, we've all seen Funny Girl, but you know Barbra doesn't exactly make people gag, and the reason women love it is because a less-than-perfect woman gains overnight success and a hot European husband, and really, how often does that happen in life?)

I went to college, attending a university whose undergraduate program was roughly two-thirds the size of my high school. Counting the graduate programs and the law school, St. Moo beat out Hometown High by a couple hundred students. While there, I was noticed for a few decent roles, a mix of nuns and whores, background parts, anything that didn't require particular beauty or charisma, but called for someone who would show up for rehearsal and remember their lines. Again, I loved every minute. I had my ups and downs, trying to juggle my requirements as a music major, an honors scholar, and a human being who needed sleep with the demands of college productions which rehearsed for three months and performed for three weeks, tops.

After graduating, I was rootless. I had a fianc� and future plans, but no job, a dozen resum�s, a thousand filled-out applications, and a handful of frustrating voice students. I sang my gig for the synagogue and my Sunday mornings at the Greek Orthodox church, but it left me with far too much time to reflect on how much of a failure I was, college graduate with no real job. Mon coeur was willing to carry the bulk of the bills, mostly because he was too much of a saint to tell me to get off my ass, and I looked desperately for something to keep me busy and make me feel worthwhile.

I found community theater. I thought it might be my salvation. Who knew, perhaps I had a chance to work my way up. After all, I was exercising and losing weight, I had a role in a show that required some dancing and I was handling it, and people noticed that I had a good voice. Maybe all I needed was patience, and I could actually get somewhere with it. I could eventually be like the women I saw growing up, wearing the gorgeous costumes and spouting the perfect lines, getting the laughs and winning the tears.

I kept trying. And I had some rare successes, and more common failures. I had a very good friend who encouraged me to keep trying, and for his sake, I did. It was his entire life, and if I wanted to spend time with him, that was pretty much the only option. We were in two and a half shows together, all things told (the half being a show he had to drop at one point, and never bothered to come see my performance).

It was fun, but more often it was disappointing, and frustrating, and made me spend a lot of time looking in the mirror and hating myself for not looking the way I should in order to play the leading ladies. I just wasn't believable as the one the leading man wanted. I was too tall, too heavy-boned, too fat, too ugly, my nose was too big, my forehead was too low, my hair was too frizzy, and on and on.

On the other hand, when it came to singing, that I always had dead-on. I was the leading lady without breaking a sweat. I sang soprano, I could handle everything from Purcell to Copland, and all I needed to sell "desirable" was make a pretty sound, and the audience would buy it. I got paid to do it. I had people come up to me on a regular basis and flatter me to the point of embarrassment.

There's a reason my voice teacher at grad school was so thrilled to hear me. He said "I hear a voice like yours, and I get so excited, because all I want to do is just play with it and see what it can do." He threw everything at me, and I did it all, until my teaching laid me low and I knocked my voice out of commission with illness and stress.

There's a reason, while we were recording the practice tracks for the students' region music, that the studio manager said "Okay, we need to finish this in the next fifteen minutes," and Antoinette would retort, "Don't worry, it's Katie. She'll do it in one take." Because my 'practice round' was usually pitch-perfect, unless I hiccuped or was startled by a weed-whacker outside the "studio" garage.

There's a reason, when I walked into rehearsals for high holy days at the synagogue, that I was greeted with a room full of smiles and hugs and fervent "we missed you last year"s. Even tired as all hell, with a cold clogging up my throat and nose, I could still float a D-flat and nail a cadenza ending on a high B. Even out of practice, I am still damn good. And it doesn't matter what I look like.

Matter of fact, Kim the alto soloist turned to me and said, "You look lovely. If you get any smaller you will melt away."

And I thought of all the hours of agonizing, because I wasn't thin enough to play Magenta in Rocky Horror. I thought of all the times they put me in the back, because my footwork wasn't pretty, but I could lay out a C6 without breaking a sweat. I thought of all the times I was passed over, for not having the right "look," or being eight inches taller than the hero.

In that small room, which was low on AC but full of amazing, amazing music, I remembered what I'm worth. I heard my voice blending into the weaving, gilding along the top the way it always does, and there was no one hiding me in the back.

So, Theater, you've been interesting. You introduced me to new things, you made my heart pound and my knees shiver, you made me feel new and sexy for a while, but in the end, you were a fling. You made a terrible mate, putting me in the back row, underestimating me, using me, letting me down over and over. You broke my heart and I forgave you because I wanted to please you so much, but I'm worth more than this.

That's why I'm dumping you. You won't know well enough to miss me, and I'll only miss you for a little while, but at least it's been educational.

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