I'm performing at a friend's fundraising event tonight and I am quite nervous. Excited! But also nervous. I've been given full artistic license to do whatever I want. I could go on stage and pluck feathers out of a [dead] chicken for 6.5 minutes if I wanted to. But that's not really what I have in mind. I've prepared a very personal piece, and I'm insanely nervous about presenting it. I'm worried people won't 'get it', I'm worried about being cast as one of those 'bizarre artsy people'. And on the other hand I'm super pumped to be able to express myself in a way I haven't been able to before, haters be damned.
Performing is something I used to crave, and I'm not sure if that's ever really gone away or if I've just gotten better at ignoring the feeling. Being a musical theatre enthusiast, an active choir member, one of the few students willing to do 'improv' at my school, and a vocal student for 9 years, you get used to being on stage. So you'd think. I perform rarely now and I still get the shakes right before the curtain goes up. But as soon as the lights are blinding me, and I can't see the audience so much as sense that they are there, I am calm. I do the things I've rehearsed hundreds, dozens or only a couple of times. I throw myself open to be judged, praised, mocked, ignored. But when the lights go down and I step off stage, whether the audience is enthusiastically applauding or clapping out of politeness, I feel the rush of adrenaline. A lightness I can't accurately describe permeates my body. I feel I have done something important, in a relative sense.
So I remain nervously excited for tonight, trying not to think of it too much. I'll be posting pictures of the evening on my twitter @FrittanyAlexis if you're interested (and I know you are). And for now let me share my favorite pictures from this week. Happy Weekend!!!
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