BWW Blog: Alyssa Sileo - Funny Thing: What It Means To Be a Thespian, or At Least To Me

I get a kick out of the riskiness of this business.

This is a craft of coexistent community and individuality, which conglomerates all previously-existent tints, genres, and attitudes into a tellable community of players. At any moment--subject to shifts and additions to the catalogue. These expansions may prove to be time-eaters or talent-greeters; projects can unveil one's purpose or frighten them into submission and subsequent retreating from the arts.
I'd call it pretty volatile.

Even for the most eager risk-taker, theatre's a daunting province. To have the inclination to bare yourself under hot lights without knowledge of the audience's tastes, mind, not even your own tastes, we're all works in progress, is straight bizarre...

Why do we keep at it, then?
This is usually how it goes: I am a devotee until I am a practitioner. Maybe a luminary one day. There's that pesky maybe, a thespian's best friend and demon. It's a question, that just NAGS and NAGS-can I do it?

Will I ever do it?

We keep at it.

Theatre culture is something of the stars and the stars' admirers-literally and figuratively, because it takes a fanatic and rose-colored glasses wearer to commit to this atmosphere of teetering. Because it's a pitting of now against future, an entering a scheme with Prospect holding your hand. We are the waiting, we have this grand vision in our minds-now, just to transfer it to real-life and set it into bodies, set-pieces, and budgets.

Sorry for a bombardment of heavy qualifications.
Truth is, as a Thespian, I'm not afraid anymore of the words I assign to these airy concepts. It is all my innocent grapplings, these temporary queries. Quite honestly, I'll write it off as choices, (my favorite excuse,) because character development is a process, because this is a business of process, and I am aware of my unknowing, and that very knowledge is what can kill the scariness of the question mark.

Confronting the longevity, uncertainty, and adversity of this craft with acknowledgement curbs the fear.

That spotlight can be on fire, or you could be the ardent flame of nerve.

There's ands and ors, there's determination within yourself that change the course. There are individual decisions and comprehensions that go along with a Thespian Life, but, I now present to you another one of my tenets-this is not a selfish art. This is an art wrought entirely for the erudition of those involved and those witnesses to the playing. We're a silly hopeful lot, we believe in a discoverable joy, we suggest, we sing to the sad, Hey! Think you're gone from happiness? Not to shoot you down, but that isn't true, because here is some, have some of mine. We are in the business of swapping life-bits. We are in a business of questions, I am in the business of taking atmos and commanding a room of rapt belief in that nitrogen.

This Fantastic We is the battle armor I have going into the war of the hot mics and honest lights; to be part of a society of craftspeople is the sure sign art isn't dead and won't be any time soon. This business of process means repetition, drafts, a start and a guess. To experience solidarity amidst your wrestling with art, absurdity, and the abstract, is analeptic. Lapine said it best. No one is alone. I say it next, best or not, you tell me-No art is lone.

And what piece to take on? What areas of study to tackle? With a group of artists you can play a darn streetlamp. (And I can be Harpagon, Lombardi, and Tevye in a competition setting. All sincerity here.) But, in all seriousness, in this craft of intrigue, we discover our identity by portraying others. By becoming everyone else, we tailor ourselves and say I will take this, I will allow this, I want to be this. I like where this can take me.

I do allege, we're all works in progress, and theatre's a spectacular parallel to selfdom. We unlearn this notion of "necessary perfection." Because, looky, secret: convenience is where theatre dies. Nah, theatre plays hard to get, it's all like, You're gonna achieve this goal! Just wait until you think you can't, grind some more, and ride it out until you're over the hump! It's that simple!

Anyone who's taken to the stage floor knows this nettlesome tenet.

But there's nothing like the two seconds after completing a competition piece that was hellish to formulate.
Nothing like setting up a cabaret that proves to be the night of nights, a celebration of our senses.
Nothing like performing self-written pieces, these songs and stories that in their crafting, turn from scars to victories.

The abrasion that gives way to finesse.

This is a business of process and therefore we aren't finished. Equity rehearsals may have distinct rehearsal curfews but the creative journey doesn't, there is no sleep to wit. Tenacity isn't a dormant creature and when someone is an artist because they feel so inclined to be so, the moment comes when you address yourself, out loud, because we've gotten to that point, Okay, me. I'm not done until I'm done. I'm doing this because I must, this is a business of necessity and there are demands from myself that sting. There are demands that paralyze but there's more inside of me than I know, theatre's told me that much. Because you go to see a show, and say, "There is nothing better than this. Happiest I've been; boom done." And then you go and see another show and layer after layer of joy is pared, the chemical reaction of air and hindsight yield discovery. I can assign a parallel of Theatre to Self and if there's always more Theatre to be played, there's always more You to be ascertained. It's a flippant mix of accountability, pluck and the Tuck Everlasting soundtrack on repeat, the Kinky Boots soundtrack on repeat, the choreo of Fiddler on the Roof danced in your laundry room and every quote you've heard pro-actors say in their TED Talks about temerity because you know in your heart, it's true, there is future space for your dreams to transpire, your head just doesn't understand it yet.

Anything you put this much soul into is bound to present itself in some way, honestly.
Oh, dear theatre kids and their hearts, too big to rationale.

You become willing to allow yourself as many major chords as it takes in order to scare away the minor chord bone structure and confidence paucity we humans are born with. That stuff'll get all glittered and hairsprayed up and scurry away from this powerhouse Act 2 number we've been practicing.

This is a craft of passage.

(And to assign such a lofty goal of perfection to theatre is unfair to the very grounds this practice is wrought from. Come here, show yourself on this floor, as much as you're ready to bare in addition to what you not yet understand.

So I will accept this art of patience. This art of beauty. This business of honesty. My passion of grit.
My life of ardor.)

What helps me eke out this behemoth is my fellow Thespians. What keeps me on the ball and demands creation from my willing fingers is the community that advocates for more smiles, more emotion, more art. I value my battle armor and my band of believers.
My dear dear troupe, brightly denying reality, because that's when we start to get to the good art.

Thespian is as essential to my identity as my many nickname variations. This is all this business is, collecting names, saying, I can do this, and this, and this, and I wasn't always able to, but this art of process does some funny, risky things.