The Performance of a Lifetime*
I AM still shaking, and it’s been four hours ago, but I knew I needed to write this down and capture the feeling.
And the truth was…I didn’t feel anything. When I was on-stage, performing, singing, acting, telling the story. When other people were playing, and I was listening and watching and clapping along and laughing. Or even afterwards, when I was shaking the hands of all the volunteers (thank you for helping out!) or the audience members (Thank you for coming! Please come and watch us again! It was a team effort!) or just everybody I knew (Come join us on stage!).
There was no thought, there was no time to consider, there only was. And I remember breathing again, only after it was all over.
Bare-metal. Instinct. Muscle memory and reflex. I tried to recall what happened, what I was feeling, how I was thinking — it’s a blank, it’s a blur, except for tiny vignettes and flashes of moments.
There were so many instances I could have choked. That’s what stood out for me — I looked back at what I did and felt: Man, I would have totally panicked if I were to do it now. I’m only feeling the nerves, and desperation, and anxiety now.
I want to remember that moment, that frame of mind, those two hours when I left everything behind for a single thought:
I just want to put on a good show.
WE were afraid, uncertain, nervous — playing in a ‘competition’ against other teams. It really wasn’t about winning, or looking good, or showing up the others. You learn pretty quickly as a performer — there will always be another show. I often quote another performer who explained once that:
I do so many shows, it doesn’t matter if I have a bad show. There’s always another show.
Somehow, tonight, it became really important to put on a good show. There was a sneaking suspicion that the deck was a little stacked, that the faux competition really was, and that we could try our hardest and not get anything.
There was, I admit, a teensy touch of anger that we felt.
A scene I really, really enjoyed in a movie came from X-Men First Class. I’m a fan of stories about outsiders, rag-tag underdogs assembled and working together, and the contrast, the love-hate relationship between Xavier and Magneto was always fun, but I remember the way I felt the first time I watched this scene, and (having just re-watched it) I feel like it was a moment of storytelling genius:
A man (one of several ‘special’ people) has just used magical powers to defy physics after another special man used magical powers to make him remember something sad and happy — the premise, I’m well aware, is ridiculous. Yet, for me, the scene was truly sublime, showcasing a perfectly balanced moment between rage and serenity.
And perhaps that’s what I felt tonight — a moment of mindfulness, of peace from all my disquieting thoughts or a need to fill the quiet.
The applause doesn’t matter.
To deliver a good performance is not the same as having the audience enjoy themselves or like the performance. When we exceed our own abilities and play to better than our best selves, the audience will find something to appreciate — you can fool some audiences sometimes with half-arsed performances, but the audience are smart, and can tell when you really pour energy and craft and dedication and put everything into it.
And that’s why I felt it was the performance of a lifetime —it wasn’t on TV, I’m not making any money, and people have already probably forgotten. But the applause doesn’t matter.
I put my heart and soul and back into it.
We all did.
And that’s how we put on a good show.
A long time ago, someone smarter and funnier than me said this to me. It was after a show, when we were peeking in to a stand-up comedy corner and all the comedians were trying to out-funny each other and competing, and miserably failing because they left each other to die onstage and hung each other out to dry:
None of us are as funny as all of us.
And it contrasted entirely with everything we’d been taught about Improv — support each other, play as a team to deliver a show (and not steal the limelight for yourself) make each other look good and bring out the best in each other.
There’s a beautiful irony that tonight, with a team of stand-ups, we worked together as one:
None of us are as funny as all of us.
Come watch us; we are the Latecomers.
