7 Life Lessons Learned Behind the Curtain
How Being Involved with the Stratford Theatre Festival Prepared Me to Fight Cancer
Well, there’s no beating around the bush now. I have cancer. Still do at the time of writing this and there’s a lot of scary things surrounding this and a LOT I am learning. To go from being someone who makes a living running 9 theatrical shows a week while going to the gym and never having even gotten stitches to having one of the most serious medical conditions possible resulting in needing a massive surgery and transplant and learning to eat and talk again is jarring.
And I keep hearing how weirdly well I’m handling things. Don’t get me wrong, I am INCREDIBLY scared of what the future holds and what my new normal is going to look like. But as unready as I feel, I also am ready to just move ahead and see where things lie once I have my surgery. It’s intense and it’s surreal but there’s been a LOT of things helped me get into this mindset of moving forward and though being unsure, getting prepared for the steps ahead. I realize it’s going to sound weird but I do feel like one of the things that helped prepare me to be able to face this was returning to my theatre roots.
Here’s how I mean…
Things WILL Go Wrong…
It doesn’t matter how often you do a show, how much you rehearse, and how much you just WANT it to go well. Things go wrong. An effect that is supposed to appear during the top of the show leaves a performer dangling with no context before going to pitch black for several minutes. An actor will forget to put on their microphone in the dressing room and not only can we NOT hear them onstage but now the audience CAN hear the backstage pages going on from stage management (because yes, my non theatre readers, there’s a whole other show going on backstage that you have no idea about and I’ll get to that too…). A scripted prompt directed to the audience not only doesn’t get the anticipated reaction but also causes the audience to actually start arguing with each other while the cast tries SO hard not to break character.
These are things that have ACTUALLY happened and that’s just the very TIP of the iceberg of things that have gone awry during my theater career.
It’s not dissimilar to the unexpected wrongs that happen in life. A car breaks down. A partner cheats on you. You get diagnosed with cancer in your 30’s. Ok, the last one is a tad more specific but you get the drift…
Here’s the thing - You know what happens when something goes wrong in theatre?
You take it and roll with it. You can’t go back and change it so you have to accept it and adjust accordingly. The crew keeps the show going and the effect is quickly forgotten as the lights return and the audience is immersed in the world of the play. The actor stops the show to apologize for their mistake and it not only endears them to the audience but becomes a wink and a nod through the rest of the performance. The cast gets the show back on track and the audience feels like they’ve done their part to have contributed to the show and everyone backstage learns to anticipate this new potential reaction to the prompt.
Sure, it’s not what you planned but you have to find a way to learn from what happened and keep going. The world doesn’t stop because something’s gone wrong. It sounds cruel but you just have to adapt and keep pushing ahead. Sometimes it’s a real shame that it ruined what we thought would happen and other times it weirdly makes a show another level of fun or beautiful.
You can’t plan for things to always go perfectly nor can you really plan for when shit hits the fan. But you will get a better “show” by not clinging so much to what SHOULD have been and instead adapting to what is happening NOW.
When Things Go Wrong, Remember Your Track
I spoke about this in my theatre kid article but you may hear people that work in theatre say, “Oh I’m working 3 tracks this season” or “Yeah, this track this season is crazy! Some of those quick changes are NUTS”.
I will do more of a glossary article at some point but essentially a track is the path you take to do your job backstage. Sometimes you specifically are tied to one person, sometimes to an area, and other times you are all over the place because you are just traveling to be wherever you are needed most. Also, a quick change is notorious in the theater world, where in a VERY short amount of time, you have to complete either a wig or a costume change or both. You’ve probably seen them on social media and they’re not dissimilar to when a pit crew takes on a car during a NASCAR race. A track can have multiple quick changes in it which can make it really challenging, or in my little inner theatre kid brain (or ITK brain), really fun.
When things go wrong in a show and derail you, you can get back into the flow of things by finding your place within your track - LITERALLY getting back on track.
I guess you could say a track in life is like a purpose or the goals you set for yourself. It could also be your values or belief systems - saying God or faith is your track sounds a bit bonkers but I think that’s what people cling to when things go wrong.
My “track” is LITERALLY doing my track - aka coming back to this life I’ve been building and this job and the gigs I love so much. Yes, I won’t be the same after all is said and done but most importantly, the prognosis right now is incredibly positive in that it’s curable. So getting back to my track, continuing to create this dream life here in Canada and getting to express myself creatively is my track I will be working to get back too once I have my surgery and no matter what unexpected hurdles life continues to throw my way, getting back to my track is what helps me get through it.
You Can Do a LOT in Little Time
Thankfully during this season at Stratford, I had other people also in their first season right alongside me and when looking at some of the changes before our first rehearsal, we were saying “7 minutes?? How are we ever going to get this all done?” Now post-opening and so many performances under our belt, we are like “7 minutes? Oh man, I have time to go to the bathroom, go upstairs, hell, I may take a nap.”
Yes, it’s an exaggeration but not by much. Time is wild backstage and it’s even wilder to think you can tell a whole life story in two acts where characters fight, fall in love, dance, sing and live happily ever after (or not). There is so much that can change and shift SO quickly. And that can be said about life. It’s shocking how quickly things can change - from good to bad to good again. As awful as getting your diagnosis at such a peak moment of happiness, I can’t help but feel like for every step backwards, it leads to two steps forward. It doesn’t FEEL like moving forward but when all is said and done it is SLOWLY moving somewhere.
I am still quite young, and in that time, I have lived in three countries, travelled, graduated from two post graduate programs, fallen in love, had my heart broken, took on a Fortune 500 company and won (though doesn’t always feel like a victory), changed careers, made friendships, lost friendships, survived a violent assault, battled with my mental health, found a dream job, expressed myself creatively, adopted a cat, stood up for myself, learned, lost, loved and so many other major and minor moments. In the grand scheme, this will impact me the rest of my life but the pain and the surgery itself will pass sooner than I realize. It may not be 7 minutes but looking back, I can just add this to the list of my GOD, look at what I’ve done in just this small bit of time?
Take a Breath
In the middle of all of chaos that is backstage at points, it’s easy to get turned around. And especially during a quick change, when a pin for a wig isn’t going in the way you need it to, suddenly you start to panic, you ONLY have so much time, the actor now probably hates you, stage management is about to come and say we have to go, the whole production is going to be ruined, the audience is going to boo YOU and-
You take a breath. It seems counter productive but it’s true. When starting to spin out, the best thing you can do for yourself is just take the breath. It’ll help you refocus and SLOW DOWN. Again slowing down seems like the opposite of what you want to do but the slow down allows you to steady your hands, and be more sure of what you’re doing.
The same can be said when dealing with this cancer journey. The amount of times I’ve spun out thinking things like, “Oh my god, what if they never give me my surgery date and the cancer spreads and now it’s in my brain and now they have to take my brain and how am I going to take care of my cat when I have NO BRAIN ANYMORE?!”
You can overwhelm yourself with all the possibilities and the worries and the overthinking. Trust me, I am at least on the town council of Overthinking-ville; I have been there in my brain and back. It’s not always about having the solution, fixing the problem or making it all make sense. Sometimes, it’s JUST about taking a moment for yourself, 60 seconds just to breathe and to remind yourself that you may not have done THIS before, but you have done other tough things. It may have been John Lennon who is attributed to saying, “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” As long as you can take a breath, you are capable to changing things, maybe slower than we like but that is what the breath is for.
It’s Ok to Feel The Emotions
I was often accused of being TOO emotional and TOO sensitive growing up.
The one place I always felt I could express such BIG emotions was theatre. No matter how big you acted, if it connected truly to the character in an authentic way, it never actually felt too big.
The world can tell you to be less, to stop being SO much and to just stop sharing SO much because god, it’s just SO cringe…
But the more I bottled up who I am, what I felt, and what I needed, the more frustrated and angry I became because I didn’t know how to let people in. Yes, it took a crazy life journey to get to the point that it’s not that I don’t entirely care what people think, but learned to trust the fact that at the end of the day, I’m the person at the end of the day who has to live with myself and in this body and in this mind. If I don’t acknowledge my own emotions and feelings of what’s going on, it’s not going to get any better. And if anyone else has a problem with that, well, guess they aren’t going home with me at the end of the night anyways!
My own body has betrayed me and it’s confusing and scary and honestly kind of funny in a fucked up kind of way. But ignoring these feelings, not the mention the physical feelings of it all, isn’t a healthy way to cope. Theatre also taught me to be in the moment and for me, that’s led to me being open and honest, not just about this but about other areas of my life. My hopes, my dreams, my fears, my disappointments. And while yes, it’s too much for some people, it’s connected me to others in a way that feels more connected than before because turns out, other people have emotions too (should I pull the Nicholas Cage gif again?) So it’s OK to feel emotions and even ones that sometimes conflict each other. If we didn’t, what would the human experience be? And without that, wouldn’t our stories be SO much more boring?
Remember You Are Working with People & You Have No Idea What’s in Their Story
The stories on the stage aren’t just the ones being written in the script. And yes, there are a LOT of things theatre people will know, even if you think you’re hiding it. Who is dating who, who isn’t getting along with who, etc.
But it’s hard to know everyone’s story, all the struggles and triumphs and bad decisions and dumb luck that got them into this theatre in Stratford, Ontario. That’s both the beautiful and awful thing about theatre - there are just SO many stories that can be told of the cast, crew and audience that walks through our doors, it’s a shame we can only really focus on one on the stage at a time.
A lot of people have told me that I don’t SEEM sick (some in a flattering way and some almost seem accusatory). I don’t blame them; I seem really fit due to working so often in an active job. My cancer is localized to my mouth which means the rest of me (though continuously drained) is still capable of doing a LOT otherwise right now. I am in so much pain but I can still put on a smile and laugh and right now, I can sing and talk, which is unfortunately not going to be the same soon so I am doing even more of it than I usually would while I still can. But like I said before, I am quite honest about how I’m feeling to those closest to me. I admit when I’m scared, I admit to my pain. And sometimes I overshare (ok, likely it’s more than just “sometimes”) but it’s still not ever really going to be enough for everyone to know my full story.
A relative said that maybe this will teach me empathy which I wanted to be like, “I didn’t need cancer to teach me that.” It was theatre that did; it taught me that we all have our silent battles and victories and upsets that we do not always show. That sometimes we hide our pain behind a character or share the joy by watching a live performance. I will not always know someone else’s story but I try to give people as much grace I can until proven otherwise because just like me, there’s often a misconception of what is being happening beneath the surface level. Which leads to my final point…
You are not alone
It’s so easy to shut down when you’re facing something that feels … well, unfaceable. There’s of course the pride factor, not wanting to ADMIT things have gone wrong. And the shame of even when something is out of your hands, what could I have done differently to have not landed in this situation. Hell, there’s a LOT of complex emotions and like I said before, it’s ok to feel it all. But sometimes it feels like others won’t understand.
And honestly, they may not.
But just because someone doesn’t understand EXACTLY what you’re going through doesn’t mean they don’t want to try. The amount of support from people I’ve received from the Stratford Festival has been unreal. Not always because they know what to say but because they can’t begin to understand what I’m going through and for that, they want to be there in the ways they CAN show up.
It’s not just the theatre people; it’s been friends, family, and even some surprising people I never expected to get support from. But again, to tie it back to this article, I can’t say theatre didn’t show me that you can sometimes find yourself in difficult and dark situations and the people who sit there with you in it may not be who you expected but what a difference it makes to not be in it alone.
Wherever you find your community - be it friends, family, common interest groups, support groups, your religious ties, etc. - lean into it. It’s scary to be vulnerable, admit you need help, or even just have the spotlight on you for a moment. But a heavy load is so much easier to carry when there are others even taking the tiniest bit of the weight. As hopeless as you may feel, that no one will understand or that no one will care - I promise you, there will always be one person that does. And even while I deal with this, if I can be that one person for someone else, I am not going to let cancer be the thing that stops me from being me and being there for those that need me. Just one person can do that and from there, you never know how far that support can go.
So remember, you are NOT alone and I will be there with another article next week!
Mare,
You are a very wise woman! I applaud the way you are dealing with your situation with such positivity and maturity!! xoxo
Beautifully written. Love you ❤️