Saturday, July 09, 2016
The Post Show Blues: Maybe It’s Just Me
OnStage: Whenever a show ends people always have that “post show slump” when they realize the stage is empty, the wings are clear, and the cast is gone. Whether you enjoyed the cast or not you still have spent months working with each other and now you probably won’t see most of them ever again. That can be very tough, especially if you’re like me and have over-attachment issues. When a show completes its run there is still so much energy flying around and no way to get rid of it. We can try to satisfy ourselves but nothing will let us reach the same satisfaction as performing.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
"The Post Show Blues" does happen a lot, and it hits not only performers on stage. At school when I was doing tech I usually got pretty sentimental after a show ended, and even more after the final party when we finished the strike. But thankfully final exams generally followed closely behind, and I've got enough homework and other stuffs to keep myself busy. However, I could imagine that as one chooses theatre as a professional job, he or she needs to make a choice: whether to devote his/her full attention into theatre, and suffer through the empty space when there's no performance, or to stretch out and get more well-rounded, to take more roles in life. The author of this article chooses the first one, and it's reasonable for many professional performers. In fact, this attitude is usually a requirement for remarkable achievement in theatre. Nevertheless, the other choice is not necessarily bad. One big advantage of being a performer or a techie is that you enjoy more free-time, and have more opportunity to enrich your horizon, not confined by your job. You can always travel, learn a new skill, meet new people in another production, or do other theatre-related things in your free time. Anyway, it's inevitable that a show will one day end, and it requires us to move on with an optimistic and progressive attitude, which is also a thing that motivates and encourages us to grow stronger.
I have definitely felt some pretty hard bouts of "Post-Show Blues," however, oddly enough I find that every more show I work on, the less emotional I get when one ends. I think as each show goes by, I'm becoming more experienced, and each show individually feels less special, which makes me kind of sad. I strongly relate to the author's view, how they feel they have nothing left when a show ends. Shows, even with schoolwork happening, take up the majority of my time, and I put so much of myself into them, that once they end, leaves me feeling very empty and purposeless. I like being able to come back day after day to solve problems, so once a show ends I'm left with nothing to make me feel like a useful part of my community. And of course, the end of a show means the end of our micro-theater community; all the same kids will never all be together again with the same closeness as before.
“Theatre is all I have.” It is a bold statement that I really resonate with. Of course I have school to focus on too, but theatre is the thing that I love doing above all else. When one show closes, all I can do is try to patiently wait until the next. It is difficult for me to shift back to reality once a show ends, because I am left wishing that the show is my reality. When I pour all of energy into a production, seeing it end makes me sad. It probably makes me sadder than it should. It feels like all of that hard work was for nothing. I know that is not true, and I have to remind myself that the hard work really did pay off. Just because the show is over for me, doesn’t mean it has not affected anyone else. The show could be the reason someone in the audience decides to pursue a passion for theatre. It helps me to remember that I will never know about the impact a show might have had on someone, and that although the show is over for me, people will remember it for a long time.
I relate to this article a lot. I always feel as if schoolwork is the thing that I'm tasked with doing, the "discipline" part of my life, so that I'm able to do theatre, and when theatre ends and schoolwork is all I have left, it's super difficult for me to apply myself to it (even though my school works like Coco's and we have exams soon after a show ends). I don't work in the professional world, so I'm still able to hang out with the people who were in a show with me after the show ends, but it's always a reminder that these people are graduating and I won't see them anymore, I'm going to graduate soon, I won't be able to hang out with this group for 40 hours a week, etc. I think another part of post show blues is losing the show itself. Theatre is in the moment, and sure you can buy the DVD of it, but it's not the same. IF you work on a film, you have the end result to watch over and over as much as you'd like. In theatre, you finish a show, immediately tear it down, and move on like nothing happened, and that can be hard. I always think I'll get sick hearing the musical numbers 900 times or watching a scene done 18 times in a row in rehearsals, but I never do. One of the biggest parts of losing the show for me is losing the art that we've created and because of that, also slowly starting to lose all the memories I made through making the art.
“Post show blues” are terrible. Almost everyone in theatre feels them. I know I get hit with a version of “post show blues” hard after almost every show, and it knocks me out for a week, usually. The fact that I always get stress-sick after a show probably also doesn’t help my post show blues. I also relate to this article in that theater is my life. I honestly don’t remember what I did with my free time before theater. In a given year I maybe have a total of three weeks when I go home when school gets out. Most of the time I have rehearsal until 5, which really means 6 because I have to close up the theater. As much as I might complain about having to stay late, and having to stay up until 1 in the morning to finish homework, there is nothing I would rather be doing.
I certainly get the post-show slump that the article refers to. Even if it was a show that I didn't love working on, I find that whenever something ends I find myself at loose ends for a bit. I Really don't know why, but I think that it may just be the nature of theater, where a show is going like a freight train to opening, and then after that it's like a freight train all over again until closing, and then after closing there's that night of strike and it just stops instantly. I think that is definitely a shock to the system, and in addition I have realized that I'm kind of a mess when I'm not busy, and that the well-defined schedule and purpose of a show for me fills that need to be doing something. I'm curious about other people's explanations for this or why they think it happens to them.
Post a Comment