Masquerade

Maybe you have seen The Phantom of the Opera. if you have, then you might recall that the first scene in Act Two began on a grand staircase in the opera house. everyone was dressed in extravagant attire and adorned with a mask held over the eyes and nose- so that nobody could identify who anyone else was. this kind of costume party is called a masquerade.

i am currently in the cast of my high school's spring musical. this past weekend we were able to showcase all of our hard work in three different performances. i love performing, applying over-the-top make-up, and wearing pretty costumes. to me, the only downside to putting on a show is the waiting behind scenes. you see, when the cast is not on stage, we are told not to make a sound. i do not enjoy this, but whenever i am faced with this command of silence, i find that the only thing i can do to occupy my time is to think.

so on opening night i began to observe some of the other actors and actresses sitting in silence around me. i wondered what they were thinking about. i wondered what they would do when the curtain fell and everyone went home. i wondered if everyone loved doing this just as much as i do. and then one of them got up and ran onstage. i listened to him act his part. he is a wonderful actor. at that point i realized how natural it is to me (and probably to everyone else who loves performing) to go from a state of quiet submission- to bigger than life characters. it is something i can do without thinking. this is acting. this love of being someone who you are not, doing things you might never ordinarily do.

now this is all very fine and good. for an actor. but is it such a good thing for someone to have the ability to jump into a different state when the going gets rough? as i continued to sit behind the curtain i tried to identify times in my life when i was faced with something i didnt want to deal with and 'acted' my way out of it. surprisingly enough, i came up with a few situations right off the bat. like the time when i was a little girl and my mother told me to clean my room- to make the task go a little faster, i pretended to be the servant of a princess. i was cleaning her room, not mine. now that one was innocent, but as i continued in my thoughts i began to remember times in my more recent past when i used this 'acting technique'.

i was once again in trouble with my parents. i had done something very very wrong. so when the lectures came, as i new they would- i tuned out. i nodded when there were little silences and threw in a couple 'im sorrys' here and there. and when it was all over- all i wanted to do was run. i wanted to get out of my house, out of celina even. but i couldnt run. it was late, and i had been banished to my room. 'What could i do?' i simply couldn't stay in my room, with nothing to accompany me but my thoughts- this angry whirlwind racing through my brain. i would lose it. i would cry. and i couldnt cry! that would mean that they would be back to say, "We love you, honey, but we just dont know whats gotten into you! You never used to do things like this!" and i certainly didnt want to hear that again. so i didnt think. i was somebody else. i totally removed myself from the situation- making believe that i was just fine, that i didnt have these problems that they were accusing me of- making everyone else see the Andrea that i wanted them to see- or rather- the Andrea i knew they wanted to see.

do you see the difference between the young me 'acting' my way out of a bad situation and the older me doing the same thing? when i was younger, my play acting stopped after a few minutes or hours, but when i got older i play acted for days, months. i never let reality hit. i just acted until i finally saw how disgusting i was becoming. my life was becoming one big masquerade ball. nobody really knew what was going on behind the scenes, behind my mask.

at this point i am backstage again- still thinking about acting and if it is a bad thing to use in real life. and i concluded, yes. acting can be dangerous if i use it to hide myself from everyone else. wearing my mask only created more hurt than what i had started with.

Yet i dont believe that i will be acting my way out of anything anytime soon. My days of only showing the world my masked face are through. i dont ever have to lie again. really, thats all i was ever doing in the first place. lying to people about my emotional identity. but now i know that i am not that disgusting girl from before, and i am thrilled to just be me.