During my first year at UCSD, our voice teacher, Ursula Meyer, asked to see me demonstrate one of the vocal tools we’d been working on to give some individual help. Once I’d done so, her only note was simple: “You don’t have to work so hard or give so much. Remember that you don’t have to put on a show. You are a show.” And in that moment, she’d encapsulated perfectly the lesson I was tasked with nearly every day of my training at UCSD: Simplify, find ease, be truthful and honest in each moment. You don’t have to put a shiny bow on your work to justify the space you take up. Just be.At first glance, the role of Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream seems like one that would be a perfect fit for me: bold, brash, funny, whimsical.
It also seems like a role that would be the perfect vehicle to fall back into every habit I’d spent grad school trying to break myself of: Puck’s a showman at heart, so playing Puck posed a challenge–how do I remain simple and grounded when playing a trickster sprite with supernatural powers, also envisioned in said production as a flamboyant and fierce drag queen?
The answer was simple: return to the training and remind myself that the actor’s duty is to be our character’s advocate in the creation of the play, and as Puck’s advocate I had to remember that Puck is so much more than glitter and wings. Puck–at least in this production–is a person, with wants and needs and love and fear and pain. So, using the tools I’d acquired was essential: living in the truth of the experience like Richard taught me, trusting that my body is as advanced a thinker as my brain like Stephen taught me, wielding the text as a rapier like Marco taught me, finding ease like Eileen taught me, transforming my voice and speech patterns into those of another like Eva taught me, and finally: trusting that I am enough and allowing my voice to flow free and unencumbered, like Ursula taught me.
When Midsummer finally premiered, I got plenty of kind messages from audience members, but the biggest compliment came from one of my castmates, Rebecca Futterman. It was in response to the final moments of the play, before the iconic closing Puck monologue–specifically, the look on my face after Oberon and Titania left arm-in-arm. Her message read simply: “Oh my god, the look on your face…Puck was in love with Oberon.” It was a choice I’d made in my own crafting and never shared with the director or my castmates, and Rebecca noticing was all the proof I needed to show that in the moments onstage that require it, I can still use the tools I’ve had since childhood and “put on a show”–but in the moments that don’t support such showmanship…I can just be.