I've seen God in so many things: nature, school, people, animals, the vastness of space, sunsets. But I never found anything mystical in theater. I've seen, heard and felt beauty, joy, sadness, but never God. Theater is something that appears entirely man-made. It's a completely human element to our society. Each element of theater in itself seems majestic in a Godly way, but when we piece them together, it seems forced by the hand of man.
I had to search for God today.
I sat on an uncomfortable stool in a tight, hot, sticky sound booth, trying desperately to make the system stop making that horrible thudding, popping sound every time a CD ended or I paused. For hours I'd been sitting there, sweating waterfalls. Nothing worked to make the popping go away. Other than that a CD would read "Error" until I took it out and put it back in again, and then Liz was dealing with the light board next to me, mumbling incoherently about cues and dimmers. It was tense and angry and heated to work in the sound booth, so I stumbled down the three curved steps with glow-in-the-dark tape on them into the theater so I could breathe. I thudded down onto the nearest bright red chair, staring blankly into the deep black space of the stage.
I wanted God to be there, to help. And I couldn't find Him. There was nothing that indicated "God, look here" with a neon arrow next to it. There wasn't an opening in the ceiling with a beam of light, or a big beautiful moth to come land on my knee, or even Josie to come in and smile at me when I needed her most. There was nothing Godly in there; it was all human - hot, sticky, sweaty, and blubberingly human.
And then later, as I went to close the window blacks so we could run our cue-to-cue, I saw light dribbling onto a few measly spiderwebs. There amongst the dust and residue of old socks, on that old window sill, I found God. He was just smiling coyly at me, whispering that I was able. I was able to find inspiration, strength and my own ability in something tiny. I photographed it as my own proof to myself.
This evening, when I jinxed myself and the whole production by merely thinking that everything would run smoothly and perfectly, the disc again read "Error," so I ejected it as fast as I could and shoved it back in, and the wrong music came on. It was the other piece that came out instead. One CD had stuck to the bottom of the correct CD. I hurridly ejected it again whispering "Oh shit oh shit! It won't play it won't play!" By now our dancer had come on and begun her dance, the lights had come on with no music and she'd gone off... twice. Once when it read Error, and the second time when the wrong music alltogether came on. So now, with our third go-around, the music was all ready, then the light board wouldn't read the proper cues. So instead of a blackout we needed for the end of the 7th dance, we got the bright green cue from the 4th dance. And Liz, being the brilliant light designer that she is, manually made light changes for the rest of the show, as I sat sobbing silently in the next seat.
God somehow made it back there, in that tiny 2'x4' sound booth, by telling me to "breathe" with Liz's voice. That was the only thing that held me together. That and Katey our stage manager coming into the booth from all the way behind the building, in the dressing room to rub my back and say that it wasn't my fault, but the heat's. I couldn't do anything about it, so I shouldn't worry about it. And everything worked out OK. Somehow, God only knows, God made it to our opening performance.
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