I’m not talking about the drama of flamewars and *-fails that propagate over the internet and spawn a near-infinite number of blog posts and comments. Or the drama that ensues from gossip exchanged late at night in the bar at a writers conference.
I’m talking about theater, and how grateful I am for the years I spent in theater when I was a teenager.
When I was in elementary school, probably about 10 years old, I signed up for a week-long summer drama workshop. (The one held at Red River High School in Grand Forks, ND, in the early 1980s. If you know about it, you know how awesome it was.) It was quite possibly the most fun I had ever had up to that point in my entire life. I signed up for the same workshop the following summer, and had even more fun. For the next eight years or so, any chance I had to get on stage, or near a stage, I grabbed. I did the high school musicals, danced my way through community theater productions of Annie Get Your Gun and South Pacific, and entered talent shows just for an excuse to get on stage again.
Ironically, for me the stage was a safe place. I got teased a lot in elementary school. I was a shy nerd, and we all know how well that goes over. (Then there came the day I discovered how different I was from the other kids. During silent reading period in sixth grade, all the other girls were reading Sweet Valley High books: 90 pages and pink. I was reading Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010: four hundred pages with a glowing blue fetus on the cover.) I would have been happy being invisible during those years. But that drama workshop was a refuge. We were encouraged to be crazy, to act like animals, to write our own skits, to dance and sing and run around like mad people. Goofiness was celebrated, cleverness applauded. On stage, under the lights, I could be anything and no one made fun of me. I loved that.
Fast forward fifteen or so years. I started appearing on panels at science fiction conventions, doing readings and book signings, and recently I’ve started teaching at workshops and giving talks about writing. And you know what? I don’t get stage fright. I prepare, I learn my lines — and I go out on stage. I’m playing the part of author in public. And there’s part of me that just loves it, because it feels a little like all the theater I did as a teenager. I love being able to switch into that mental space of thinking, “I’m on stage now, and I’m going to have a great time.” (This also explains why after a couple of days at a convention I feel like I’ve just done a performance of South Pacific, singing and dancing all the parts myself. Exhilarating, but can I sleep now, please?)
Most places have some kind of theater going on. Community theater, acting classes through local colleges and universities, dance studios, and so on. If you’re nervous about public speaking, your first book signing, or any situation requiring you to “perform” in front of strangers, I recommend taking an acting or improv theater class or workshop. It will give you skills that will help you get out in front of people, and will give you the ability to get into the right frame of mind — of donning an actor’s mask that will let you be “author in public” for a little while. Public speaking may never be fun for you, but it doesn’t have to be agonizing.
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