Sightless in Saratoga: Actor learns to trust others

For years, I didn’t know what stage fright was I  could  stand backstage, hearing the chatter of hundreds of people, or stand onstage with the audience’s eyes on me alone, all without feeling the slightest nudge of anxiety or fear.

That changed with this year’s fall play “Pride and Prejudice.” Some of my drama friends said this shock was because I was assuming a dramatic role that was very different than my customary histrionics, but in reality, it was probably because I was doing the show blind.

Let me clarify: In order to correct my extremely bad vision, I always wear a retro pair of tortoise shell glasses. “Pride and Prejudice” is set in the 1800s. So, I had two options: create a clear anachronism in the production — the modern-looking glasses — or sacrifice my vision for two hours.

And, before you ask, contacts were not an option. I have no interest in sticking plastic into my eyes. I’m scared that they will get lost and never come out and that I’ll develop a disease and grow some weird fungus and start seeing everything in various shades of green and — you get what I mean.

And so I spent the entire duration of the fall play seeing only vague blobs of color. I learned to differentiate each person based on their overall color scheme — my romantic interest (Zach Grob-Lipkis) was a leprechaun-y green, my sister (Emily Ludwig) was a pale yellow, etc.

However, I wasn’t the only one who needed to make changes in my acting. The entire cast learned how to keep me from walking into walls and falling off the stage by gently directing my in the right direction and putting glow-in-the-dark tape on sharp corners. I had to place all of my trust into the people around me and hope that they didn’t inadvertently kill me.

For some, this may have been an easy feat, but I do not trust easily. However, after the first rehearsal, when I walked into a table, knocked over a plant and nearly fell off the side of the stage, I realized I was helpless without the guidance of my castmates.

It was truly a transformative experience, having to put all of my well-being and safety in the hands of others. Even though I would rather not repeat this experience it did create a sense of trust and closeness with my cast that I do not feel with many other people.

By the end of the show, we were a well-oiled machine, and any fear that I had of messing up and embarrassing myself had disappeared. I was finally able to enjoy being onstage doing what I love. I learned to be OK with not having control, and trust that others would guide me where I needed to go.