Started pre-production work on my one man show: GHOST ON A STICK. One of my tasks was to come up with a nice, short summary of the play for the festival.
That meant rereading the script. Since I last revised it in January 2012, I hadn't read it. Sent it to tons of people hoping to stir up interest or get it produced somewhere. But over a year had gone by and I avoided looking over the work.
Why? Didn't want to get my hopes up and revise it another time unless there was a specific goal in sight, I suppose. But the real reason is that this play frightens the hell out of me. Being a semi-autobiographical account, there's some raw, embarrassing truth on those pages.
So I read the script. Bawled like a baby. Identified some of the clumsier moments, and expressed disbelief with how wickedly the last third unfolds.
And days passed. Today, I checked in and tried to figure out why I'd been feeling so shitty yesterday and today. Shut down. Unable to focus or summon the will to do any self care. Wasn't until I dragged myself outside to go walk in the forest that it finally made sense.
It's a weight of overpowering shame and guilt.
At the time most of the events in Ghost happened, this was me:
I was poor as hell. Felt immensely ugly. Ate unbuttered toast and water for every meal at home for a year. Looking back on 2000-2010, I see how much of a selfish, abusive monster I was. And it sickens me. So much time wasted. An acting career stalled by fear and self-doubt. Thousands of people treated like garbage. People I loved that I let down in small, irreparable ways.
Like to say that, with a decade behind me, that I wouldn't be so callous now, that I wouldn't treat a job as a license to hurt complete strangers because my life was spiraling out of control. That I'd be a healthy, welcome part of a relationship. But I really don't know if that's true. Since then, I haven't had a relationship last longer than a month and a half. Today, I strain so hard to be a decent person even when I don't feel like it, but it feels like a rotting mask about to cast off at any time.
And with the news that Ghost is going to be a living thing with a world premiere and a production staff and people to watch it, new levels of fear and shame emerge. Who the fuck do I think I am to steal together parts of my life and my friends and loved ones and throw it out there for people to see? How arrogant and selfish am I to go out and beg the world to help me finance this story? Who really wants to see me and this play anyway?
Finding solid answers to those questions will be my project these next few months.
The heart of Ghost On a Stick is this: We each want to believe, so fervently, in a sense of control and recognizable order. It's what keeps us from screaming and screaming with the realization that we shall one day cease. Yet, there's always that singular moment for each person where it's clear that the construct we've made in no way matches up with the commonplace horror of what we eventually experience. A healthy person learns to redouble their kindness and appreciate what pockets of love they receive. Or, in the case of this story, they can become savage, sharpen their skills and enjoy how well they can torture people, burning themselves out with the misguided belief that work will set them free.
Somewhere in that summary is a powerful, essential piece of theatre. Got four months and crew of wonderful people to find it.
