To the Cast after a Cancelled Performance

author’s note:

When there’s more people onstage than in the audience, theater becomes an intimate experience.

Don’t ask me how I know.


TO THE CAST AFTER A CANCELLED PERFORMANCE

Tonight only one came to see your play.
Another disappointment
in a career filled with frustration.
Some of you may now be wondering
if you should finally give up the stage.

I can empathize:
After all these years
my songs have yet to fill the seats.

Yet despite the hard labor
I keep giving birth—
another child is another child to love.

Nonetheless, I sometimes imagine another life—
a good life, a life of value—
consider this plain fact:

when the lights go out
people call the electrician not the actor.
I could have brightened the lives
of poor people living in the shadows.

But I know from experience
essential drives do not disappear:

Put a plug in a geyser
and the pressure just builds—
eventually, you’ll explode
in a rush of hot raging water.

A glorious moment
that ends too soon
as the pretty white plume
falls right back to earth
then disappears into steam in mere minutes.
Leaving nothing behind.

Yes, you might feel relieved
but just think
of what you could have given instead—

if you’d kept trying to express
what you feel stirring within
you might’ve eventually stirred many.

Or at least that fellow
sitting alone in the front row.
He wants to know what you’ve found.

Of course, sometimes you want to stay
in a life that gives your life so much life
but the wise one within says:
no—time for you to go.

I say: you must obey
but please find other ways
to express your creative drive.

Five years from now
I don’t want to see you steamed—
I don’t want to hear you say:

“I should have stayed in the theater.”

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