Going blank

It's every stage actor's worst nightmare: Drawing a blank.

After weeks or months of rehearsals, you're all set to go on stage and perform for the paying audience. Your adrenaline is pumping before the show, your props are set; you've double-checked them..maybe even triple checked them. The curtain opens, the lights come on, and everything is going smoothly...until you completely forget what you are doing.

Oh, it's happened to me alright. After years of having a bad dream before almost every show I've done t he nightmare became a reality. Prior to this I looked at it almost as a ritual. I'd be in the middle of a deep sleep, when suddenly my dream would take me to the stage with me forgetting every word I had memorized. Each time it was so real. But then I'd wake up, realizing it was only a dream. I just wish that was the case from December 2008 while performing as The Grinch in Max & The Grinch.

There I was, performing the Christmas-time show on stage at The Forrest Nickerson Theatre in Winnipeg. Everything was going well as The Grinch. I was jumping up and down, as animated as any Grinch could be, when I spun around to say "NO!" in Little Cindy Lou Who's face. Oh the, "NO!" came out fine - but the rest did not. I was eye to eye with Faith, who played Cindy. And my mind went completely blank. Fear and terror took over me as I looked at her, through my half-prosthetic face with eyes that screamed to her, "I FORGET MY LINES!". Of course being The Grinch, there was not a split second to lose, not a split-second to slow down. So I kept saying "no!" "there's no way!" while trying desperately to figure out where I should be and what I should be saying.

But suddenly it came back. I remembered where I was supposed to be. I kept going. And so did Cindy as she made her way to the box where I was and kept going. It was at that moment I realized I skipped a page - at least - of the script. As I tried to figure out a way to go back and do the part I missed, I realized that I couldn't - it'd be too complicated. Plus the parts that I skipped was just extra Grinch banter that didn't hinder the story at all.

Needless to say the audience never caught on. And neither did Max, the Grinch's 'humble companion'. Glad at least one of us knew the script! Just another moment of major adrenaline in the world of live theatre.