Never Walked In High Heels

I’m not sure why whenever I know that I am beginning to perform for an audience, the tension in my body escalates to an extreme degree. I consider myself a rather laid back person and with my disability I am notorious for having rather floppy muscles and overly limber movements. However, you put me on stage even as a trained actress and everything in my body grows nearly as fixed as concrete. This is particularly odd because in my daily life, walking down the street in stiletto heels, leopard print coat, wheelchair and flaming red hair a number of people are looking at me at all times. Even then, I am on display even though I am not necessarily “performing.”

The tension tends to creep in onstage as all of a sudden I attempt to fulfill everyone else’s expectations, please everyone via show rather than attempting to complete the task in front of me. In its simplest form, acting is about communicating ideas, which I should be relatively decent at as a writer. However, I find myself suddenly wanting every word to be clear in a way that is almost unnatural, I want to be sure I fit in on stage, shine, and be noticed. This of course calls in the eternal question that every actor must struggle with, who exactly am I performing for? Here the stereotype of the vain and self absorbed actor is at its root. If I am performing for the effect of self aggrandizement my own narcissistic qualities begin to weigh upon me harder than lead balloons. It is impossible for any actress, regardless of her talent, to please anyone. It is impossible for every performer to be completely understood by every audience. It is impossible to create the same perfect performance over and over again. However, these are the unreasonable standards I attempt to set for myself whenever I am in the wings waiting to go on stage.

Or is it, I perform for the stake of examining man, what it means to be human and the questions which inevitably plague us all. This is the reason why I am attempting to perform at all. I have set out to complete an unreasonable and impossible task. To examine mans’ questions and dilemmas is of course, equally impossible. One would go insane attempting to do so night after night after night in a two hour show. After all, we are called actors, not thinkers, emoters or (some of us may wish otherwise) even philosophers.

After having several weeks of attempted performance and fighting the unnatural tension of my own body I can see that I perform because on some level regardless of what is called the “prime mover” I was created to be a performer. Everything about my experience, my dreams as a little girl, high school aspirations and studies in college, point me in that direction. This means that it is not necessarily on stage opening night with bright flashing lights and perfectly choreographed sequences in which I accomplish my goal of performing. Being a performer can be fulfilled within the four walls of a rehearsal studio, making the audience myself, God and whatever other invisible beings may exist as important as any West End audience or Broadway crowd. Whenever I attempt to slag something off as just an exercise or a simple reading requiring little to no skill, I must then question what it means to be a performer. And realize that on its face, a performer performs simply because, she cannot help herself. She was created for it, even when the audience seems completely invisible.

I was walking home one grey Sunday afternoon, when I met a young man, who happened to attend my church, he was bringing his gas canisters to have them refilled for his boat. I was on my way home battling the grim London rain and unexpected cold weather, where as is often the case with Sunday afternoons, I fully planned to curl up with my television and to watch a plethora of movies, among them seeing that I was feeling particularly spectacular this weekend included Priscilla Queen of the Desert, The Birdcage and Mrs. Doubtfire. I informed him of my plans and immediately invited him to do likewise.

“Oh no I don’t think I would enjoy those movies at all, they’re not really my type.” I suggest that maybe he would come over and watch The Birdcage, a good mid 1990s film about the importance of family values regardless of your background. He backed up even more, immediately gave an excuse and started walking the opposite direction.

I like movies about men who dress up in drag and come across other strange beings in the human race, all of a sudden my life looks incredibly normal compared to three female impersonators making their way in a giant tour bus across the Australian outback. They calm me down and remind me in a way that romantic comedies and action films can’t, that absolutely nobody’s life could be remotely classified as normal if put under much examination. Many people I know can’t stand the strangeness of these movies even within the safety and comfort of the darkness within a cinema. These people I suppose look for films where everything is normal and expected. Films that reflect their values and their lives, which like it or not, are usually greatly different than my own, or, on the other hand; these people are looking for depth and poignancy in every film. A moral lesson that can be repeated in both Sunday school and on the steps of the Washington D.C. Capitol Building, more power to them. I guess when I pop a DVD into my television I’m looking for some way to remind myself that despite the extreme strangeness and oddity among people I find in my own life, its all going to be okay.

Looking at movies such as The Birdcage or Mrs. Doubtfire and honestly listening to them (indeed that’s the key) one can see a host of family values being supported and portrayed in a much more real and dare I say honest way than many of the Sunday school films produced by so-called “Christian” film houses. Their’s not the typical problems and dilemmas that are repeated over and over as new and exciting plots which test us as barometers of moral courage, indeed if the situation is black and white, just about everyone regardless of name of faith/god he worships can determine the right end of the path to take. The situations that test us in real life as well as the situations that make us think when we are telling stories, are the sticky ones. Filled with uncommon characters and circumstances, that don’t follow the Sunday morning curriculum. They don’t look nice in a suburban atmosphere, and they may never make you popular in school.

Perhaps the greatest virtue of all, be it family value or otherwise. Is the willingness to admit that one’s life is not ideal and even more shockingly, not perfect. This is the thought that we as Americans routinely revolt against as we visit our car washes and do everything possible to make sure our homes look like they belong on the covers of magazines. There is an ongoing pressure in the Western world that I see where a person has to be absolutely justified in his actions and blend in with the rest of suburbia around him. If you fall into this trap, ultimately everyone runs your family as you run around seeking approval from the people you know.

A willingness and almost preference to look odd to outsiders be it the way you dress or how you behave is almost a trademark of moral living. It is these people who refuse to look like everyone else, thus making us all take a second look that also refuse to look for praise be it from a fellow stripper or your small town minister. Being anything less complicated than the divine creature you were created to be is surely short changing yourself in order to live up to someone else’s expectations. Such is never acceptable to any all knowing creator or life force that has put specific energy into building you into the being that you were created to be. In terms of everyone else, when looking at the force that runs the universe in its eyes, the opinions of your next door neighbor hardly matter. After all, it is impossible to place judgment on anyone else until you know the complex characters that they too were created to be.

Those Who Used to “Teach”

It is often said that those who cannot do, teach. And as some members of my family would like to add, those who cannot teach go into education. But embarking on conservatory training I discovered that there are teachers who cannot do and teachers who can no longer do. Both often make splendid teachers. The teachers who have given up there own performing careers due to age or ailment are often times the most giving of their time and the most insistent on perfection, creating a rare combination of encouragement and admirable standards. All too quickly the image of ancient ballet teachers hobbling on canes comes to mind. People who have seen performance for what it is as well have seen their own careers dissolve through circumstances beyond their control and have thus rededicated themselves to improving other individual’s forms rather than other individuals chances to get into the industry.

A particular conservatory instructor comes to mind. He is an individual who was well known in his day as an incredible Shakespearean actor when, after a stage fighting accident during one summer, lost the use of his left arm. That was the only extent of his injury, however it was permanent and as a result of having a single limb immobilized had to give up his craft.

Sometimes I sit in the back of his class listening to him lecture or give advice to those of us performing and I often wonder what he thinks when he examines me in his studio. An injury, which from my perspective seems extraordinarily small (although I’m sure from his point of view, it was anything but negligible) ended his career decades ago and here I am more bound in my body than he is now despite his age, embarking on a professional acting career with the insistence that disability and physical condition does not matter. He, unlike some of my tutors never offers me a detrimental word or insists that I despair regarding my impending doom as a starving artist. His standards are set as high for me as anyone else and he insists that I can be trained.

I look at him lead the class in warm ups and articulation exercises and more often than not, I am struck by the constant reminder of my ultimate goals of being in art. I dream of a world where having an “imperfect body” or being seen as more representative of the human condition. I have a vision of a world where people take as little notice of physical differences as most people do different races and the insistence of segregating the disabled because they are different is labeled as “hateful” as racism or homophobia, and I believe that it is art, particularly acting which will help our society reach these goals as it normalizes differences and forces our world to look at situations and people which many would otherwise not run into living within their own suburban plan. I want to create art and act in pieces that reiterate over and over that losing the use of a single appendage is hardly reason to bow out of the industry and take up teaching as a consolation career when one is regarded some great tragedy occurs.

I sit in his class daily and come to the conclusion that I would hope if the same injury happened to my teacher today, he would keep acting, even in the face of adversity and insist that he belonged on the stage and his talent did not disintegrate as a result of losing the use of a single appendage. I want to help create the world in which he never had to quit due to an accident that was merely an unfortunate circumstance. I can’t help but wonder if, after the accident, he too yearned for a world where art could incorporate the realities of life.

There are few stories told today about women. An inspirational story has to have someone such as Sandra Bullock in it in order to sell, and even then there is something about these female characters which seem either glossy or angular; a rough mock up of what a woman might possibly look like. Recently, I’ve been looking for a fictional female character that I wanted to emulate. This meant finding a woman who was strong in the face of adventure and gentle in the eyes of loved ones. This is how I rediscovered Mrs. Kay Miniver.

Mrs. Miniver was a film produced in 1942 and follows one woman’s adventures during the opening of the Second World War. What would no doubt be looked down upon as being “a common housewife” by many today, provides the heroine ample opportunity for courage, grace, grief, and even humor within an ordinary backdrop which produces a most extraordinary life. Between the open communication she shared with her husband to her fierceness in finding the joys in life even in difficult times, we watch a rare sight in the unfolding of this movie. We see a woman in the fullest sense of the word.

We are bombarded by images of two types of women today. Surprisingly, I’m not talking about the vixens and the angels, which you’ll hear feminist academics drive on about at intellectual conferences. Rather, I see the two poles of femininity today as being victimized or being controlling. She must either have no strength left within her that she must depend on someone else to be happy, or, she must be steely and cold, demanding that someone else make her happy. Neither makes for a particularly stable or happy individual.

Today I think we see the controlling woman as the standard rather than the other. A woman must have her life put together and have a goal beyond her family which, she will, come hell or high water, succeed with. I’m a career woman myself and I’m not saying that a housewife is somehow superior. But the grace of a woman, I think, comes from fully facing the challenges which are in front of her… all of them. What makes Mrs. Miniver so special is that she can be facing a German gunman in one moment, and overjoyed at the return of her husband the next. For her, there is no point in fantasizing how life ought to be, when there is so much to discover within how life is.

In the movie, there are no sex scenes or cleavage shown, nor is there any room for a damsel in distress fainting at the most climatic moment. In this way, Kay Miniver’s story is remarkably modern. Oddly enough, I think hers is a life which most women have in front of them, were we not so preoccupied with fairytale endings and Hollywood love scenes. What we learn from Mrs. Miniver is that it is not in making things how they ought to appear which leads to a life of beauty, but in accepting things as they are. Or in the words of another admirer of Kay Miniver, “: What goes to make a rose, ma’am, is breeding… and budding… and horse-manure, if you’ll pardon the expression. And that’s where you come in…”

No doubt about it, Susan Boyle’s singing performance last week was impeccable. It was one of those acts that can only come from years of calloused hands, broken dreams, the refusal to believe you’re above cleaning toilets, and an incredible fire, which will not let you back down in the face of rejection. And, she showed her talent successfully with one of the most overdone songs in musical theatre. Young singers mostly lack the depth sing honestly, without “performing”, and drama school students are often too idealistic in what the profession “ought to be” to even bother trying to be that open. I know those looks of dread from the judges; I have seen them in auditions and in drama school. The refusal of the teachers to admit that one is talented – the insistence that she be handed a tambourine when she can compose a concerto – is exactly why I dropped out of training. Pre-judging is the standard of my industry. 

In the aftermath of the shock, Youtube, blogs, and chatrooms have lit up talking about her performance. “We were wrong,” they say. “She is amazing”… The praise goes on in the type of circular talks, found only in our modern cyber communications. And then I saw a post on a disability-related message board which disturbed me. The title was “Susan Boyle: is she one of us?” It then explained the numerous ways that Ms. Boyle could be seen as disabled, how she was affected by prejudice, and how this triumph was a call to arms for disability arts. By the end of the post, I marveled that the singer could even get out bed in the morning, she sounded so deformed. Then came the torrent of replies and threads: “yes she is disabled,” “no she’s not disabled enough,” “I’m more disabled than she is, and I can sing better, why wasn’t I on?” Again, I am reminded how much I am disturbed to see people choose to crawl on their bellies when they can still remain upright with some dignity. 

Here’s a thought: She is one of us. She’s human. 

What this situation highlights is everyone else’s discrimination that occurred after she opened her mouth to sing the first note. In my mind this hindsight discrimination is even worse than the discrimination which occurred before she sang. She is qualified to hold her own among the best, yet the people who posted such responses choose to see her only in terms of what she is not, rather than what she is. In addition to such practice of logic being bad scholarship, it flies in the face of equality and liberty.  You cannot be a mainstream success by focusing on what you cannot do. This is why “disability art” will forever be on life support from the government. It is not the conditions into which you were born that define who you are. In fact, they don’t even make you interesting. Instead, your actions make you who you are. Ms. Boyle could have captured disability culture if she said, “Oh well, this is the best I’ll be. Let me define myself as disabled and sell a few records off the sympathy of others.” She could have compromised her vision and had it much easier. But she didn’t.

She captured the world instead.