Opening Night

Theatre gives me back to myself. The strange stillness between “places” and “curtain” is still a moment of grace; possibilities still whisper like ghosts across the dark stage. I feel like a ghost myself. I forget fear. It is a kind of death, to walk onstage without the weight of my own shape. It is a kind of birth, to reclaim the raw and uncomplicated right to be the bright, solid center of the universe, even if it is just for a moment, or a minute, or an hour and a half. I want to be the woman whose voice came out of me tonight. I want to walk in the world with the flame of spirit flicking above me. I want that moment of grace to descend upon my entire life, turning everything to that silence, and then—

the lights, the exhalation, and the first echoing fall of my heel on the black boards.