PPSD

Pre-Production Stress Disorder:
The result of Murphy's Law as applied to theater.
Everything that can possibly go wrong, is.

But rather than allow this unfortunate condition to cause me to become homicidal, I've decided to wax philosophical for a while.

Why do we, as human beings, elect to subject ourselves to situations we know will cause us inordinate amounts of stress? Theater, after all, is nothing but pure drama. In the most profoundly negative sense of the term.

We do it, quite simply, for one of two reasons.

1. We need stress - tension, adrenaline, what-have-you - to feel alive.
2. To prove to ourselves or to others that we have the balls necessary to claw our way through whatever unholy hell life has thrown our way.

I fall under the second. Whatever life - or the theater - manages to throw at me, I will not fall. I will triumph. It may be bloody, messy, dirty, involve tears and sweat and every other bodily fluid known to man, but I will. not. fail.

It's a holdover, I think, from being the kid that everybody picked on. There are other psychological options to that, of course. To become intolerably shy. To become so socially awkward people stop picking on you because they want more to avoid you. To attempt to force yourself to blend in, becoming miserably unhappy because you have no idea who you are or what you want. Or - my personal choice - to send a big finger in the general direction of the universe.

I've gotten better over the years. This mysterious thing called "maturity" has made me far less inclined to lash out unpredictably at everyone and everything in order to keep them from attacking first. But I haven't lost that streak that just wants to pile on the punishment until it gives in to the awesome power that is my pure tenacity. I believe it's called "stubbornness."

Well, that's what the theater is about, for me. About being the only member of the technical crew. About being director, designer, prop mistress, costumer... until I can't really think straight. Now don't get me wrong, I could do this to myself with only one or two hats, instead of the six that I seem to be wearing at present. And I'd probably do a better job. But I do a bang-up-enough job at all six that, since I don't have anyone else to wear those hats, I can manage it.

But I don't go into theater for the applause - they don't applaud the person in the booth in the dark - or for the accolades. I go into it because it's something that I can do despite all conceivable odds. And I think many technicians do the same. We all have horror stories. And we love them. They are our bear-slaying stories, our tales of manhood, our first kills. And every time we find ourselves in another impossible situation, we swear we'll never do it again.

And then, when a few days or weeks or months have passed, we forget the tremors, the screaming, the tears and blood. And then we start thinking about jumping back in. About the rush of watching our little creation unfold on a stage beneath the pretty lights, dancing about in a sparkling costume that only we know is held together with glue and tape and string that we're fervently praying will hold long enough.

But we also know that if it doesn't, the string and glue and tape alone will be a triumph. Because there is magic in the string, magic that maintains the illusion of other-worldliness even when the tape falls off and the sequins trail across the stage. There is magic just in believing that this place, this two-hours' traffic of our stage, is, for a fleeting time, real.