There is no greater feeling, artistically speaking, than seeing the fruits of your labor-- be it as a performer, standing on stage taking in the applause of the audience, or as a director/choreographer, hearing the audience’s response to the work you’ve so meticulously put together. Each year, I work tirelessly on multiple shows for anywhere from one four months, perform them, and move on to the next (or, if I’m really lucky, to a period of relaxation!). Before beginning the next project, however, I always have to find a way to mentally and emotionally let go of the one I’ve just completed, whether I danced in it, directed it, choreographed it, or some combination of the three. Abington Heights’s version of Les Misérables: School Edition was no different.
Some may think me crazy for using such a strong word as “mourning” to describe the decompression period or letting-go process one goes through after such an endeavor, but I can assure you, it accurately describes the feelings someone involved in the production experiences. During the preparation and rehearsal process of just about any show, the cast spends a large amount of time together. The week of the show, actors and directors spend just about every spare minute in each others’ company. Inevitably, new friendships are made between people who maybe don’t see each other on a regular basis, with the cast and crew becoming more like a family than friends. The euphoria of opening night, when you finally get to perform the work for a live audience, and the bitter-sweet emotions felt during your last performance, realizing you will never again perform this show with the exact same group of people, both add to the emotional rollercoaster that is being part of a theatrical production.
The next day, all of that emotion starts to fade. The audiences disappear, your fellow cast and crew members return to their own lives, and the directors turn back into Spanish, Chorus and English teachers once again. Something that has brought you so much joy, self-fulfillment, and maybe some aggravation is now over. To make things worse, you even have hours and hours of free time to dedicate to thinking about how great the entire experience was-- what you learned from it, what you would do differently next time, and which moments you wish you could experience again.
However, that experience, as a whole, will never happen again. And in order to fully appreciate what it meant to you in a personal, professional or artistic sense, you must give yourself time to feel the joy in that it happened, the loss in that it is over, and the realization that this unique experience you have had with a certain group of people will never again happen.
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