Too old not to do this

To me on my 58th birthday:

“For the past few weeks, I have been kicking up my heels (literally) as Aunt Eller with a cast of young professionals in a regional theater production of the musical, “Oklahoma!” During a typically intense production week before the show opened, we had a couple of “ten out of twelve” rehearsals (12 hours of rehearsal with hour breaks for lunch and dinner.) I had the thought, “Whoa! I’m getting too old for this.” Then I had an epiphany–a really big realization. “No! I’m getting too old NOT to do this!”

This  is what i have trained for 50 years (if you count elementary school music class and school pageants.) This is what I do. This is what I teach. This is what I breathe. There are no guarantees of tomorrow, no upside to waiting until….waiting until……waiting until….. what? My years onstage as a ingenue turned into a few leading ladies and momgenue roles (sweet secondary roles like Mrs. Darling in “Peter Pan”.) Then, in my 40′s the roles were limited and I turned to academia and concert work. While satisfying in their own way, I missed the madness and intensity of immersing myself in a character and role with only a few weeks from cast meet-and-greet table read to opening night! A decade rolled by and the siren of the stage called me back again. “This. Now you are ready. You are old. You can play the character roles that delight, inspire, and season the story. You are not the center. You are a supporting character to enliven or ground the story. You are Mother Abbess, you are Aunt Eller, you are Martha, you are Mrs. Potts,  you are Jack’s mother,  you are the Bird Woman. You are this.”   Perhaps another definition of character role is that you have to have lived long enough to have built some character and made mistakes and lived through them. 

Sophia Loren said “There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.”

So though my feet hurt, I will move and dance and be on stage. While my mind can memorize pages of dialogue and scores of music, I will speak and sing on stage. While my ears can hear, I will listen to the director, my fellow players, the orchestra, the laughter, and the applause. Though I am physically exhausted, the adrenaline of creating and being will carry me to the end of the show. And when “this” is over, I will cheer on those relentless, dedicated performers who continue to do “this” day after day, show after show, because a world with art is  kinder, gentler, curious, thoughtful, passionate, funny, fascinating, ephemeral, and lovely.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go soak my aching old muscles in a nice Epsom Salt bath.”

Originally published on Tumblr, 2015