Thoughts about acting and music inspired by a Patrick Stewart interview

I saw a great interview with Patrick Stewart last week. I believe it was part of a news broadcast, perhaps PBS, but I distinctly remember that he talked about feeling comfortable when he acted because he didn't have to be himself. He could be somebody else.

As much as I love watching acting on stage and in movies, acting has never been something I was good enough at to feel truly comfortable doing.

Standing on a stage wearing a costume has never shielded me from feeling like a person (me) standing on a stage wearing a costume, and trying to remember where on that stage I was supposed to be at any given time.

I spent two years as a drama major at a fine arts camp, and, as such, had roles in a few plays. But all my roles had songs, and I never felt like I was "acting" when I was singing. In Junior High School I was part of a circle of friends who were really good at acting, but despite my great love for all things having to do with the musical stage and my two summers of experience, I never managed to get an acting part in anything. I loved being a policeman in Pirates of Penzance and loved being part of the chorus of flower girls in Marriage of Figaro, and I knew every single word of every song in Anything Goes from my perch in the offstage chorus, but by the time I entered High School, I knew that my future in the theatre would be in the orchestra pit.

I am perfectly comfortable being heard but not seen. One of the best parts about playing in the viola section in orchestra is that nobody sees me, and when I am being heard it is always in combination with other violists (making up a “super viola”).

But I am also oddly comfortable playing violin, viola, or recorder on a stage alone or with other musicians. One reason is because I don't care if I am seen or not, and the bigger reason is that I become the music I am playing, and in the music I feel safe. It really doesn't matter what my personal personality is. All that matters is making the music come alive, do what it needs to do with the most integrity possible, and safely come to a close. If all goes well I have taken my colleagues and the people listening on my journey through the piece at hand. I can, for a brief time, leave the personality-laden part of myself on the ground, and use my physical body (including my brain and heart) to move the music I am playing through the air, to be experienced by anyone in the room.

I think about the act of writing music in this Stewart-inspired context, and realize that I want nothing than to more to write music that will free people like me from themselves. I want the physical part of playing the music to be as pleasing to the musician at hand as the aural part.

Sometimes hearing a midi rendering of something I have written reminds me of looking at a mirror and seeing a familiar face (oh you again), but when I hear a human being play something I have written (either live or in a recording) the same piece of music can sound completely new to me. That lets me know that I have done my job as a composer.

The very idea that someone (or some group of people) could "use" a piece of music that I wrote as a vehicle for expression of something that goes beyond "personality" (individual or collective, theirs or mine) is very exciting to me.