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Things I Can't Ask My Date

by JACKIE KRUSZEWSKI

Brian is an actor. He took me to an off-Broadway opening at American Airlines Theater one recent Tuesday night, followed by an opening-night-celebration dinner/open bar at the B.B. King Blues Club nearby. If he had given me an itinerary of the evening beforehand, including mention of the "red carpet with paparazzi" entrance, I might've laughed aloud at such a clichéd plan to impress a suburban girl like myself. I had already slept with him, hadn't I?

But I forgot that the neon glow of Times Square - vis-à-vis my conception of being inside a Super Bowl halftime show - can open up to a moving art form known as Theater, built upon a craft known as Acting, which sometimes happens inside an airline-sponsored theater. An art form that, at some point, almost all of us thought we might flourish in - become famous and universally adored, buy a château, languish comfortably in the satin of fame, lend our face to makeup lines and charities, inspire the masses, and defy all our families' expectations of mediocrity. I forgot that I was genuinely impressed, and amused, and vaguely envious of Brian's world.

Some of those theater dorks you knew in high school actually went and studied drama in college. Then a smaller few of them moved to New York and went thousands of dollars into debt for grad school at Tisch, where they learn to stay afloat in the acting world AND, perhaps more importantly,  prove to casting directors that they are serious enough to go thousands of dollars into debt to be in the business. The occasional high school drama dork even loses their acne, keeps their hair, generally grows into their faces/voices/personalities, experiences amazing luck and becomes famous. But that's another story.

Then there's a vast lot of them who make do in theater, commercials and bit TV parts. They might have a couple agents, one for commercials, one for theater, one for TV. They float on and off unemployment. They pay out-of-pocket for bottom-of-the-barrel health insurance. Their parents bite their tongues supportively and buy them iPhone plans for Christmas. They reach 30 without knowing whether they'll ever have a steady income, yet more convinced than ever that this is the life for them.

I attribute this necessary self-delusion partly to the fact that they all hang out together - mostly in the little town of New York City. Some, like Brian's friend, consign themselves to production jobs in sleek, professional shows like the one we saw, and they hand out free tickets to their grad school friends, who in turn crowd around afterward congratulating them for being involved in such a brilliant show - "Those programs you designed were amazing!" Brian and his friends immediately sequestered one of the tables at the after-party that was on the stage of the B. B. King. I couldn't help but joke about the hubris of the aspiring young actor crowd staking out a table on the stage when Blythe Danner was present. That joke didn't go over well.

Neither did the joke where I told Brian that I'd thought he was gay the first few times we hung out. (If I had a nickel for every former boyfriend who once thought I was a lesbian, I'd have at least 10 cents.) He seemed perturbed by the revelation. "I know you're not gay now though." We went to our separate homes that evening and that was the last time we saw each other.

Oh yes, the play. Road to Mecca starred cinema Spiderman's wet-eyed aunt ("With great power, comes great responsibility, Peter") and 2 other tony-looking and Tony-award-winning actors, whose feats of line memorization and voice projection I will never attempt.

In 1970s South Africa, the young, progressive schoolteacher visits her older friend, a free-spirited Afrikaner widow. This is a pure friendship, we are asked to believe, that stands as a model to platonic, soul-completing romances everywhere, built on serendipity, on benevolence, and on the mutual appreciation of surrealist, Warholian lawn sculptures. (Just go read a summary, OK?)

Miss Helen and Elsa Barlow fawn over each other, they fight, they search themselves, they save Miss Helen's house and freedom from a meddling but affectionate pastor, and they realize deeper truths about themselves in the sepia-tinged glow of Miss Helen's apartment. Candles are used as a metaphor for the light of self-realization, and we know who the good guys are because they disagree with apartheid. Suicide, abortion, racism, love - it's all here, and it was a compelling, beautifully-acted play.

Brian held my hand through the entire second half. I had bought us overpriced wines before the show started - "don't worry, I have the money," I said. He leaned in at some point during the show to tell me it was a "fixed set," meaning everything was on a slight inward angle making the audience feel more ensconced by the scene. "Notice how they haven't moved the chairs at all - that's because the legs are cut on an angle." I felt duly ensconced.

While Elsa and Miss Helen were crying over their love for each other on stage, I was wondering if I could ever love an actor. Sure, he was personable, fun-loving, confident, complimentary, and a good lover. He had taken a Xanax before he came - I tried not to be appalled that he would volunteer that information so soon - but he had taken a Xanax for ME! And yet, he lived in a world that I couldn't help but view as if through a snow-globe.

Actors are not artists. I've dated Artists - they are wild and driven by some deep, creative impulse that makes them all the more attractive. They are the conduits through which art is created and their bodies are these tempestuous, bipolar tangles of wire that can magnetize as easily as they can electrocute.

Actors, though - actors are themselves the Art. Their personalities, their mannerisms, their style, their affectations - they have cultivated themselves so thoroughly by the time they're my age that they are polished, concrete versions of the person they want to be, even if the insides still run on anti-depressants.

In the end I never got to ask my many questions - how do you pay your bills? Why do you have a picture of yourself as your background on your blackberry? How do you afford a blackberry? Have you ever written a cover letter? Will you ever quit acting if you're not at a certain level of steady income by a certain time? Did you just take me to that play because you knew your ex-girlfriend's sister would be there? How do you have the self-confidence to submit your constructed Self to the brutal process of auditions on a regular basis? Will you marry me and raise our children and let me support you and your dreams?

Instead, I emasculated him piece by piece - shrugging off the price of theater wine, being overeager to buy dinners, joking about thinking he was gay - and I deserved the radio silence I got from him after that Tuesday night. Actors are men too, it turns out. And I shook his neon, snow-globe world a little too hard in my attempt to marvel at it.

But the play was lovely.

Just, lovely.

Jackie Kruszewski is a contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in New York. This is her first appearance in these pages. She blogs here and here and twitters here.

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