I am sobered by how difficult it is to get people to my show on emotional addiction called “Eroticized Rage“. About 15 people showed up, half were from my class. I’m sobered by how much work I have to do with my show. I want to create distinct scenes and make them come alive, not just narrate my story.
It’s weird doing a show about overcoming addiction while still coming from an addicted place.
I was taken aback that there was so little audience response to the things I was saying. They seemed stiff and uncomfortable. I saw them yawning and shifting in their chairs.
I want to make it more physical, to actually do the things I’m talking about. Experience the rage and my other emotions in the moment instead of coming across as disconnected. I want to create more individual scenes with distinct beginnings middles and ends so people feel they are there in the moment with me, with more details and less narration.
I want to act it out more, to try to embody other characters aside from my dad.
I want it to be a one-man play and less of a speech.
I’m watching my show from last night and I’m struck by how I’m rushing my words. I’m rarely in the moment with what I am saying. I’m frightened and rushing. I wonder why I can’t slow down and experience what I’m saying, emotionally connect to it, receive the emotional feedback of my audience and relate to them? Instead I have this material to get out and it’s almost as though my audience is irrelevant to me. I hate it when speakers treat their audience like fodder but I might be doing this.
I still feel as tense as I did last night on stage. I think I’m daunted by all the work ahead (on myself, on my writing and on my performance).
I’ve never for a minute doubted that my parents loved me and were dedicated to doing right by me. That confidence allows me to do things like my play and my blogs. Us Fords have an unshakable sense in our own righteousness when expressed in our speech but it is accompanied by an underlying conviction of our utter worthlessness and undeservingness of love and our abject fear of strong emotions, human complication, and negotiating relationships.
I’ve never had conscious resentment against my parents. Yet I have this volcano of rage just under the surface of my consciousness that surely relates to my childhood. So I’m trying to untangle this in therapy, locate my feelings, and then I can move on to release them. Making categorical moral imperatives such as “You can’t blame your parents” sound great, but I’m not sure how useful they are if they lead you to ignore and push away your feelings (conscious or not) and to deny your reality of how other people’s decisions affected you, though getting stuck in resentment is a death sentence. Get clear and release is my goal.
I wish that five minutes into my show last night, I could’ve said, “This is harder than I thought. I want to tell a dirty joke right now and feel relief.”
YYY says: I am glad that I follow your blog, because it made it easier to follow the path your life has taken as laid out in the show. You may want to work in more expository and transitional parts to make your story more accessible. This is extremely difficult to do within the time limits of the one man play structure.
I don’t know if you watched Julia Sweeney’s “God said ha” play, but while she is able to paint a word picture of her parents that really subjects them to ridicule and how harmful much of what they taught her was, she also is able to convey deep fondness and compassion for them. I know from speaking with you, that at least at this stage of your life, you have fondness, respect, insight, understanding and gratitude toward your father and (step) mother, but that did not come across at any part of the play.
