THE SHOW MUST GO WRONG
The joy of being a former stage actor is spotting when the show goes wrong. I should be clear—I’m entirely nervous for the actors and want them to have a great show, but I can’t help but spot the often minuscule errors and mishaps that happen throughout: someone forgets a cue, a prop is missing, a line is stumbled over or forgotten, the wrong backdrop was lowered from the ceiling. What makes theater so compelling isn’t the “Where’s Waldo” ability to spot errors, but watching what comes after a mistake—how the cast and crew respond to things going wrong.
Because in the theater—as the saying goes—the show must go wrong on.
I know—it sounds condescending to look for all the foibles of a production, but I find the best shows are ones when something does go awry. Don’t believe me? There’s an entire slate of plays written with the premise of performances going wrong:
It’s a strange thing to consider: Why do we find joy when some things go wrong, but are devastated at others times?
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TWO TYPES OF RATS PEOPLE
Still connected to my recent undergrad superpowers, I researched for possible answers and came upon a fascinating study involving rats and exercise.
Uysal, N., Kiray, M., et al. (2015) conducted an experiment that measured the stress hormone cortisol in rats who voluntarily exercised versus those who were forced to participate. The voluntary exercise group of rats was given access to a running wheel and could choose to use it freely. The involuntary group of rats, however, were limited to a motorized treadmill and were forced to run at the same time as the voluntary group chose to exercise. This gave both groups of rats the same amounts of exercise time, effort, and distance ran.
The results were surprising. The involuntary group of exercising rats showed an increase of cortisol, the stress hormone, after running, while the voluntary rats showed all the benefits of exercise as well as a boost in serotonin—the “feel good” neurotransmitter responsible for decreasing stress, improving sleep, mood, and a myriad of other benefits.
In other words: The same exercise was performed by both groups of rats, but one group thrived while the other suffered.
Exercise isn’t considered “fun” for so many (especially running–which the rats might have felt no matter how appealing the running wheel or type of treadmill), so what was the difference?
One interpretation from this study was the impact of one group’s mindset: If running is seen as a freedom instead of a requirement, the mind views the activity as pleasurable instead of stressful.
Not that any of this is a convincing argument for why anyone should pick up jogging. “If rats can like it, so can you!” isn’t going to convince me to buy an expensive pair of runnings shoes, just as a rat can cooking at a 4-star Michilin restaurant doesn’t inspire me to make ratatouille.
But hey, if you MUST run—you might as well find a way to enjoy it.
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GO FOG YOURSELF
My favorite performance from the past year was Grand Valley State University’s fall production of “Dracula: A Feminist Revenge Story, Really”. The small Blackbox theater’s production was set in foggy Transylvania, complete with gothic gargoyles and castle doorways.
And an ever-present layer of fog blanketing the stage floor, thanks to a pair of water vapor fog machines stationed behind the seats.
My date and I sat in the back row, in front of one of the fog machines veiled by a thick, velvet curtain. Every ten minutes or so, the timer triggered a whining noise, like a sprinkler sputtering to life before the water eeks out of the nozzle. The fog kicked up a notch when the characters of the play—including the rootin’, tootin’ southern drawl Van Helsing , the vampire hunter, complete in cowboy leather vest, boots, and chaps (for creative purposes, I guess)—traveled to Transylvania.
“Oh,” said my date, who suddenly disappeared in the seat next to me because of a sudden plume of fog. The fog machine behind us malfunctioned and couldn’t turn off, turning the entire production into a miniature scene from Stephen King’s The Mist—except instead of encountering mutated swamp monsters, there were only college actors reciting lines with an overplayed British accent.
The horror.
Then: At the start of the next scene, as the fog rose about the audience, Van Helsing said, “Hey ya’ll, listen up! Dracula might be over yonder! Freeze—I bet you can hear ‘em if you stay reeeaaall quiet!”
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
The fire alarm rang to a deafening shriek.
Per protocol, the audience was asked over the loudspeaker to calmly head towards the EXITS to stand outside until the fire department arrived. It was raining that night, on a cold October evening, so my date and I huddled under the pavilion of a nearby study hall, watching the audience stranded outside the theater doors cover their fancy going-out hairdos from the trickling rain (we were instructed to leave all their belongings in our seats—in case we valued a jacket more than the life of someone next to us, which was entirely possible at GVSU).
After the fire department deemed the culprit a faulty fog machine (which was then severely punished per university policy: being charged full price instead of a student discount), the actors finished the rest of the show after a slight rewind to the previous scene before the fire alarm sounded.
The show wasn’t great. The theater smelled like dry ice. The night was cold and wet. And I questioned whether I knew anything about feminism by the end of the play.
And, yet, I remember thinking on the rain-soaked trek back to the car: Isn’t this great?
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GO FORGE YOURSELF
The skeptic in me has problems with “just have a more positive outlook!” It doesn’t apply to everything.
Clearly, if circumstances involve war, disease, imprisonment, abuse, or any other life-threatening circumstance—clearly Eric Idol’s sing-songy “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” is meant to be satirical.
Looking on the Bright Side doesn’t make sense for everything.
And yet, it does.
Maybe an asterisk should follow any life story that turns out relatively happy, but it is part of the human journey to find the meaning in the mess of our lives. I’m often struck by Andrew Solomon’s TED Talk about forging meaning. He states, “We can endure great pain if we believe it is purposeful.”
Oftentimes, the trick of life is in recognizing that the oddities and tragedies we experience have no obligation to make sense. The great fun of the human experience is weaving a narrative that makes it all—for lack of a better word—livable.
So, on a cold and rainy night in October, watching a play as campy as it was cringy about Dracula and feminism, and being shrouded by a fog machine on the fritz—
I had a great time.
The show goes on either way, I figure.
Uysal, N., Kiray, M., Sisman, A., Camsari, U., Gencoglu, C., Baykara, B., Cetinkaya, C., & Aksu, I. (2015). Effects of voluntary and involuntary exercise on cognitive functions, and VEGF and BDNF levels in adolescent rats. Biotechnic & Histochemistry, 90(1), 55–68. https://doi.org/10.3109/10520295.2014.946968
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Wishing everyone as well as you can be. You’re not alone out there,
