Vulnerability & Theatre
(I wrote this as a piece of automatic writing on July 20th. I’ve decided to post this without much editing because it’s very vulnerable making and so a good first step into embracing that what makes me vulnerable.)
Theatre is where I practiced being vulnerability. My ability and willingness to be vulnerable. It is where I have felt most comfortable telling people my fears, my feelings and my secrets.
And I haven’t felt myself get close to that feeling for a few long years. I haven’t gone into a rehearsal room to feel, talk, show, write tell or share in too long a time. Instead, I have felt myself close up, scared.
I got scared of what other people would think of me when I got particularly poorly with my anxiety disorder. And I did. And I lost my ability to be vulnerable. I lied, about being okay. And so I think I lost being in touch with theatre in the same way.
I stopped treading the board of my emotional landscape. I stopped feeling the heat of the lights focusing on the intimacy with myself. Or the cold wash leaving me vulnerable but free. I told other people’s stories but left mine unsaid. Fearful of what those who loved me would say if I admitted I had gotten ill again.
I have recovered in leaps and bounds and then relapsed in bounds and leaps.
When I got ill again and I got anxious again and I thought “Oh no, It was always just me. I was always broken”
As quickly as I had put myself together I broke myself apart.
So, I lied. I stopped being vulnerable to my friends. I stopped being vulnerable to my family (unless things got really too much) and I stopped being vulnerable on stage. I barely stepped on stage. I stopped feeling like I was being me.
Because being me is actually being emotionally vulnerable. It is opening up. It is answering “How are you?” With the truth.
It is using my emotions as a compass, a guide, a blue print for performance and art. It’s letting my anxiety, a force of great difficulty in my life, to lead me to questions, letting my thoughts go all over the place to be collected later. Making connections, finding parallels, seeking images and metaphors and the poetry between then.
I miss being vulnerable. I miss getting in touch with my heart. I miss doing it for an audience. I miss the indulgence. I miss feeling connected. I miss being seen. I miss being me.
I have found myself through theatre on many occasions. It was my world as a child. My own private game. The funny thing, is I struggle with loneliness as an adult but as a child I was usually fine with it. I belonged to myself. I flourished being alone as I did with being with other people. I had my make belief, my weirdness, my stories and my imagination.
Theatre, drama, plays, stories and puppetry have brought me out of myself and my anxiety. I enjoy my life through the theatre i make. I see my life. I see my history. I see myself. I feel myself.
Last night, as I as asleep, my M.A Degree certificate nearly fell on my head and it woke me up with a shock, a big fright. I’m going to take it as a sign. I haven’t made a proper piece from scratch since my M.A and I keep feeling a little humiliated by that fact, a little more scared to start since then. But I’m taking last night as a sign. To wake up and make. To be alive. To find myself again. I’m brimming with words today. And ideas. And the ache to be vulnerable again. To actually celebrate that. To try and reconnect with myself and to others and to be really vulnerable. To be less caught up with the idea that’s there is something wrong with me and so something to fix. What I need to do ‘fix’ myself is actually an act of destruction, to break down the bit of me that has been putting up walls. That has tried to hide myself away, the bits I thought were bad.
I need to stop rehearsing who I am and trying to make it perfect. I should be out performing something sloppy, but with all my heart and soul. I need to rekindle my love of making and trust myself. But I should also just allow myself to have the ability to be beautifully, gently and kindfully vulnerable. That is my skill. I got scared of it. But I want to reconnect with it. For a long time i have ben feeling lost and searching for a fix. And it was my ability to feel lost and still earn and be okay with it. So I am trying once again to return to theatre-making. My first teacher. And becoming me again. Vulnerable, playful, curious, anxious but creatively, gently and passionately so.
This is a slightly indulgent piece but it’s in hope that someone else might have been feeling the same. And maybe this post is the sign in the middle of the night
