Like Julia
“Her voice changed like a bird’s: There grew more of the music, and less of the words.” — Robert Browning
I was in a play once, playing the role of a middle school English teacher. The director who cast me didn’t know when he cast me that I’d been teaching middle school English for three years. I thought, this will be a cinch. I’ll just act like I normally do.
After a few weeks of rehearsal, the director lost it one day.
“This is theatre. It has to be larger than life,” he yelled. “You’ve got to act!”
I knew how to act. I had a trophy from high school to prove it. But I didn’t know how to act like I was acting like a middle school English teacher. I only knew how to be one. I couldn’t do it any differently even when I tried.
“It’s boring the way you’re doing it!”
Ouch.
I decided to drop out. The director wasn’t happy and I wasn’t enjoying his jabs. I told the man cast as my husband that I was going to quit.
“You can’t,” he said. “We’re too far into rehearsals for him to recast. Just do what you’re doing. You’re doing fine.”
That helped. We continued rehearsing through Thanksgiving, through Christmas, New Years, and finally January 16th rolled around. Opening night. Dress rehearsal the night before had gone well. We were ready for an audience. Nerves were comfortably subdued, or so I thought.
When it was time for my entrance, a curious thing happened.
I walked on stage to speak my first line, and my voice came out a full octave higher than usual. What? I could see the surprised look on the face of the man playing my husband. I could feel my face flushing with fear. Yikes! What do I do now?
What I did was struggle to stay in that same voice for the next hour. It would have been totally wrong to switch voices after that initial delivery. I sounded like Julia Child, but at least I was acting.
The opening night of “Sylvia” was probably our best night. The surprising voice that issued forth provided just enough tension to keep things interesting. Sounding like Julia Child was definitely more theatrical than sounding like myself. But it was a lucky accident caused by opening-night jitters. On all subsequent nights my voice came out as it normally did, and we fell naturally into a mode that felt more like rehearsal than live performance.
I love it when life serves up little happy accidents like this one.
We like to think that we are so in control of ourselves, when that is not always the case. The lesson for me is that when things don’t come out the way we intended them, just go with, whatever it is. There is always the chance that something better than we hoped for will occur.
Synchronicity
There are several coincidences related to this story that capture my attention. One is my being cast in a stage role that I also performed in the work world. I heard about auditions while mindlessly switching radio channels in my car one day. I knew nothing about the play when I showed up for auditions, and the director knew nothing about me.
Another coincidence is the date of the opening — January 16th. That trophy I won in high school was for my role in an Ayn Rand play titled “The Night of January 16th,” a courtroom murder drama that allowed twelve members of each night’s audience to serve as jurors and thereby choose the ending. I played the role of Magda Svenson, the housekeeper in the home where a murder had occurred. Magda’s Swedish accent came naturally to me for some reason and was the reason I got the best actress award.
Robert Browning’s quote seems uniquely suited for this post as well, for it was the sound of my voice in both plays, not the words, that made each performance unique. Her voice changed like a bird’s: There grew more of the music, and less of the words. Both Magda Svenson and Julia Child had voices that exuded musicality.
Finally, there is the fact that after posting this piece, I picked up my copy of this week’s The New Yorker and found a six-page article on Ayn Rand, which brought me back here to talk about synchronicity. Some things are just too obvious to ignore.
I love it when life serves up happy little coincidences like these!
November 18th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Yes, synchronicity…for me, this is a major way my intuition works…when I am pondering something, or something is bothering me, I will sometimes experience major synchronicities like this, and I always try and pay special attention…it’s not always clear at the time what is being signaled, but eventually it usually is…part of the narrative of our lives, I think…
November 19th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Hi Lisa. The Rumi poem that you loved got me thinking about peak experiences. There is as much to learn from these as from the valley experiences in our lives. I’m reminded of your post on the earth’s most sacred spots. What a high that must have been to see all those places! Whether it’s a narrative of life or a cosmic script, it’s all so very interesting, especially when synchronicities catch our attention. I agree that they seem to be tied to intuition.
November 20th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Beautiful story, Brenda.
Synchronicity is intuition. As we let go of the confusion of beliefs and thoughts and stuck patterns, we can see that we always had intuition. It’s the quiet, thought-free intelligence which sees without the restriction of beliefs and assumptions.
Really great story and very nice wrap up. Enjoyed it!
November 21st, 2009 at 11:25 am
Thanks for the compliment, Kaushik, and for your continual reminders that thought-free intelligence is our most powerful asset. Stage performance is a lot like that. You get into a zone where you’re hardly thinking at all and it’s sort of blissful. Autopilot navigation off the stage is similar. It lets us notice more the things around us.