Acting is great fun

MY FAIR LADY: Professor Henry Higgins (Mike Chambers) coaches Eliza Doolittle (Delanie Specht).

Silence fills a crowded room on the other side of a thin veil hiding the actor's small world.

This is the world I've inhabited for the last few months. As the play begins, my heart leaps to my throat and it feels as if my insides are knotting in equal parts trepidation and exhilaration.

Then the veil tears apart at it's center.

My breath comes in one long and practiced inhalation. Suddenly, I am no longer myself. I have been reborn. I am a son of the stage, born not as a mewling babe but fully formed like Athena sprung from Zeus's head.

Lines of dialogue given to me are no longer merely verses on a scrap of paper. They are my thoughts, my own sparks of divine fire. The voices, inside and out, grow still as if calming for the coming storm. I find the center of my very own hurricane of passion and calculated precision.

Then the eye passes and the fury of concentrated emotions bursts forth as if lightning from a thunderstorm, having, if I am talented enough, the same awe-inspiring effect that yellow bolts tossed from the sky have upon others.

Even just writing about the joys and sorrows I've felt at the hands of the stage and it's wardens brings goosebumps to my arms and an extra beat to my heart.

Truly, if you were to ask me what being an actor or what acting means to me, I'd have a hard time saying anything at all.

It is not a subject about which I could speak lightly.

This is my second year acting in the joint Anderson/West Valley High School Musical program. It is, in my opinion, a most fantastic tradition of excellence and camaraderie between two historically rival schools.

Something that Mrs. Dutton, the director, said when we first met has always stuck with me. "When you sign up here, you're no longer Anderson or West Valley. You're just another one of my actors."

That one simple sentence, more than any flowering words that could be pulled from old books of ancient scholars and dead poets, embodies the spirit of our production and its entire cast.

Coming back again this year, I was sad to see how many of the friends I had made in past years were gone, either graduated or moved away, both teacher and student. Not seeing Mrs. Sutter here, for example, her first absence in many years, especially makes it seem as if something is missing.

If she reads this, I hope she knows we all miss her.

Even though a lot of people have moved on and left, many new people have stepped in to take their places. The tone and feeling of this production remains the same.

When we enter those large glass doors to the Anderson performing arts building, we are family. Our bonds are not of blood, but of shared purpose, struggle and time. There isn't a person I've met these last two years that I regret knowing. Realizing now how swiftly the sands of time shift through our fingers, I hope that in another year from now, after I'm gone, my fellow actors will fondly remember me and the time we spent together on stage.

This year's performance of "My Fair Lady," for myself and several others, will be the last performance of our high school careers and very possibly of our lives. Naturally, we hope to go out with the biggest storm this town has ever seen.

To all who took the time to read this, I hope that you will also take the time to come and see our show and enjoy it.