Through an odd set of circumstances, my first job after Penn State was at a Christian theatre in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Sight & Sound was a huge place, with a stage twice the size of Broadway houses and seating for 2,000. They had state of the art light and sound and scenic equipment and had made their way to a 500-person strong corporate theatre company as a for-profit Christian ministry in less than 20 years. In many ways, Sight & Sound represented a lot of ways I wanted to go a different path. They were unlike most theatre companies (which are nonprofit, non-religious, small) and the money I made there was pretty decent for a young married man just out of college.
It was an incredibly diverse Christian environment, working there. We had all stripes of Christians on staff, and healthy debate flourished there, I felt. I got a broader picture of Christianity there than even my years at WVCS could give me. I began to feel more and more okay about the kind of Christian I was – seeking, open-minded, church-averse but socially fearless, kind, and wholly committed to Jesus’ teachings.
Things with Teresa seemed okay at first... I knew her well enough to know that I made a commitment and was going to stand by and see her through. I thought it was only a matter of time.
I left Sight & Sound after almost two years. The corporate culture seemed to be somewhat in conflict with Jesus the man, I felt. Most people I worked with understood exactly how I felt, but they had faith in what they were doing there and stayed. I was sad to leave the people there, but eager to do other things. I played my first professional leads that summer at a summer stock north of Lancaster in Mount Gretna, Pennsylvania, the commonwealth’s only surviving chatauqua village. I played Mozart in Amadeus. I threw myself into the role, and got reviews that said I was “more appealing than Tom Hulce” in the Oscar-winning film. Reviews aren’t everything -- a month later, in a different role, I was critiqued as being unlikable in an unlikable role. What does a sensitive young actor do with that? It's a chicken and egg conundrum... was it my fault or the role's fault? I tried to shrug that one off. But, if you ignore a negative review, logic sort of indicates that you should probably ignore the positive ones, too. I suppose I absorbed both of them. And, frankly, the good notice made me feel better than the bad one.
Midway through that summer, though, Terri and I were floundering. I wasn’t home nearly as much as I’d been, and it seemed that when i was home we were wholly disconnected... One friend recommended a marriage counselor to us. I thought it was a good idea.
Counseling saved our marriage in the short run, and changed my life. I realized through counseling how the edgy extremity of my theatre life, practically a requirement of the field as far as I felt, spilled over into my marriage. I had always been a kind and sweet person, and gentle, but the persona I felt I needed to be a successful actor seemed aggressive to Teresa. I also was advised by the counselor to stop trying so hard to fix everything with Teresa, and to let her either come to me with her needs or to let her slip away. This was hard for me to do, but I did it.
I wound up working for a small company in Harrisburg, Gamut Theatre Group. Gamut was devoted to classic stories and classic plays in a tradition owing at least in part to the ideas of Joseph Campbell, the famous Classics scholar. It was operated by a husband and wife team who valued relationships and family. I thought Gamut could be a home for Terri and I. Everyone I met there was warm and understanding, but they also seemed grounded. The extreme edge was a bit less sharp here, and the idea of normalcy was present. That’s unusual for a theatre, believe me.
Terri came along. Then she got some tough news.
In January of 2006, her dad was assigned to leave in July for an 18-month stint in Kosovo with the National Guard. As America’s troops were shuttled to Iraq, Guardsmen were being called to fill their posts in places like Germany, Korea, and Kosovo.
Teresa’s relationships with her father and with me were kind of all she had to go on. The idea of her father going away when we were in such a rocky place was more than she could bear.
She stopped going to counseling... With me, though, she was able to talk a bit. I didn’t get angry with her, like I had so many misguided times before our counseling sessions. I was, finally, there for her when she needed me in a healthy way, not needing to fix things and not judging her for things that were not her fault. I tried to be as positive and encouraging as I could. And I knew that ultimately, this fight was hers, and not mine.
She decided to go home to be with her dad for a month before he left. She told me she had been dependent on male figures her whole life (her dad, then me) and needed to break the cycle. She told me she didn’t know if she was coming back.
Two weeks after she left, she called to tell me she wasn’t coming back. It was over.
We signed divorce papers in August of 2006 and the marriage ended legally in November.
I was hurt. I was upset. But I wasn’t angry, so much. We’d gambled and lost. I felt I pulled her into something she wasn’t ready for. And now we both were paying the price. We had no children, so that made it easier. I had a chance to try again, to live a less extreme life.
I stayed at Gamut for another year. My colleagues there were like a good little family for me. They supported me quietly and helped see me through. The realities of life alone became clear, though. I needed to get off this roller coaster. I needed to leave the theatre as my full-time occupation. I’d met a handful of people in the business who could balance the demands of it healthfully, but I felt I was not one of those people. For me, theatrical success only seemed to happen when I was in an emotionally difficult place. At Gamut, we all acted in shows, had an administrative job with the company, and taught theatre classes to kids. I found the teaching to be as enjoyable as anything I’d ever done.
I applied to a graduate program at Penn State, a one-year teaching certification and Master’s program where I would student teach at State High. I was home again.
I still grieve losing Teresa. But it is hard to see it as her fault, or mine, or anyone's. We both tried, and we both failed each other at too many points in the journey. She remains a beautiful, lovely person, and I believe in her still. I think she can become the person she knows she wants to be, and I have reached the point where I can see that she made, in spite of my protests, the best decision for us both.
The extreme lifestyle is not for me. I can’t go back, and I don’t want to. I want a normal life. I want a normal job. I want weekends. I want a little house somewhere and a retirement fund. I want kids. I’ve told people that after my divorce I looked at the goals for my life, and a career in theatre was the only thing I could check off of the list. And I think, so long as I had stayed in it full time, it was all I would have been able to do. I've worked at several other theatres over the years, and played roles (Mozart, Hamlet, Henry V) that I never expected to play. I've taken Asylum 11 to fringe festivals and colleges and other companies, and I continue to tinker with it from time to time. I'm proud of what I was able to accomplish, but I am ready to go in a new direction.
I am still optimistic. But I am redefining. I want tranquility. I want peace. I want quiet. I want comfort. I want my job to be about helping other people, not showing what I can do. The theatre was about connections for me – with fellow actors, directors, and audiences. It wasn’t a selfish pursuit, it was a passionate one. But often, people not engaged in making it their living misunderstand. People make assumptions that actors need glory, attention, recognition, fame. What if actors just like being in plays? What if not being themselves for a few hours is more fun? What if nobody comes to the show and actors still have a good experience? What if $200 a week salary is enough for a while because an actor is doing what he loves? It got to me after a while, constantly trying to defend my career choice as something giving and truthful to others who stereotyped it as something selfish and lying. I knew they were wrong, but their accusations made me self-conscious. And I wasn't in acting to feel self-conscious. If anything, I was in acting to feel the opposite of self-conscious. I wanted to lose myself in those moments of being the "other."
I hope to teach theatre, though. I want to be able to show young people some of the magic of the field that captivated me. I also want to present to them my own story honestly, so that they are fully aware of the double-edged nature of the field. But ultimately I really believe my theatre experiences did me much more good than harm.
Wounds heal, scars remind me of lessons learned, and stage lights illuminate something inside of me. Now I hope to help others find their own story.
"He leads me beside still waters / He restoreth my soul." - Psalm 23
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