My most common nightmares are “actor’s nightmares”.

• I am told I have to be on stage in an extremely short period of time to perform a large Shakespearean role. (It’s always Shakespeare.)
• Everyone else involved with the production is perfectly accepting of me coming it at the last minute and has every faith in my ability to memorise five acts of blank verse in 10 minutes / 5 minutes / during my costume changes.
• The theatre is either a wildly large auditorium with a very baroque architecture — the architecture in my dreams is always baroque — or in some bizarre non-traditional setting. I once dreamt we were doing A Midsummer’s Night Dream outdoors at a huge Swiss chalet. Except there were sequoias at this Swiss Chalet. And a drive-in movie. So I assume it wasn’t really Switzerland.
• I’m panicky, but completely ready to buckle down and learn the lines as best I can in the 7 seconds that I have. (I mean, I don’t really have a choice do I? They can’t really do the play without a Hamlet. Or a Henry. Or an Oberon.)
• Someone always comes along and involves me in some intricate and dangerous intrigue that takes me into some underground complex (or something underground-complex-y) and I completely blow my chance to learn my lines.
• Then, a stage manager finds me and drags me out of the underground-complex nook I’m currently in.
• Suddenly, the scene shifts and we’re in the wings of the theatre.
• And then I’m pushed out.
• And I have no idea what to do.
• (A variant at this point is the addition of a musical number that I don’t know, can’t sing, and all I can do is impede everyone’s choreography. Which I do.)

I’m not an actor anymore. I haven’t acted in five years. And yet, after all this time, my subconscious still manifests my anxieties to me through the theatre. And it still freaks me out every time.

Don’t worry. I didn’t have this dream last night.

But… it seems that freaking comic strips about actor’s nightmares can also make me anxious:

• Slow Wave: “Othello”

Now I’m going to be jumpy all day. Great.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 23rd, 2005 at 11:41 am and is filed under me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.