The Actor's Nightmare

The actor's nightmare has always been very simple: he is thrust onstage, before a large audience, and he has absolutely no idea what his lines are. There is a long, awful moment as these people all stare at him, blinking, waiting for what he'll do to entertain them, and then the actor wakes up sweating.

Oh--and often in this dream, the actor is also naked.

So on Friday, my dayjob held its office Christmas party, and I was subjected to an almost perfect version of the actor's nightmare. Somehow everyone kept quiet about the fact that at the Christmas party, the new people are expected to get up and perform something, so it came as a complete surprise to all three of us. Easy enough for the other two: they're not in The Biz, and they're not as invested in the whole notion of performing well. One person sang two short verses of a Christmas carol; one sang "My Darling Clementine" while substituting "Honey bunny" for every word. (No, really.) And then it was my turn, and they just wouldn't let me squirm out of it.

Now bear in mind, I quit the acting game several years ago, so it's been a long time since I had to go to an audition. Thus everything I used to keep in my head has pretty much left my head, a piece at a time. Thus I really couldn't come up with anything at all--unless you think Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech, the only text I could remember completely, is appropriate holiday fare. (I damn near did it anyway, out of sheer spite.)

Also bear in mind: phoning it in was not an option. If you put me in front of an audience, I cannot help taking very seriously my responsibility toward an audience, a responsibility that boils down to two simple words: don't suck. Even if I'm not an actor anymore, when I find myself in front of a crowd, I always find that although the monologues may have faded, the Don't Suck ethos still has a potent grip.

Long story short: I sucked. The only piece that came to mind at all was the Scarecrow's song from "Wizard of Oz," but I didn't have time to go through the verses to make sure I knew them, and once I got up there I almost immediately skipped to the wrong place in the song--which made it very hard for people who were trying to sing along. A funny happened, though: as I hit the line "If I only had a brain" I suddenly found myself ad-libbing "Then I wouldn't work here!" which got a laugh, and I realized that a whole avenue of improv had just opened up.

Still. At that point I couldn't even remember the structure of the song, let alone what any of the rest of the lyrics were, and it's hard to adapt lyrics if you can't remember what they were. So no, I did not strike out on a path of brilliant improvisation like Ella Fitzgerald when she forgot the words to "Mack the Knife," instead I just wrapped it up as fast as possible and sat down, as fast as possible, wiping the sweat from my brow and desperately hoping that the person with the camera phone (Twitchy, as it turns out) hadn't recorded the whole damn thing. (She had.)

But hey, at least I wasn't naked.