Beer sloshes onto the stage.
Burps interrupt slurred Shakespearian lines.
Rosy-cheeked actors in extravagant Tudor attire and low-heeled slippers masterfully maneuver around the previous scene’s discarded Lone Star cans. Their co-star is becoming drunker and drunker, the scenes sillier and sillier, the lines wildly further and further from what the Bard initially penned.
And the show must go on!
I sit alone and yet united in a packed-house audience that howls in gut-busting laughter and thirsty roared demands (provoked at designated play intervals) for the specified drunk to get even drunker!
Above the comedic chaos reigns a disco ball, glittering in the theater’s rafters ahead. I notice this detail because I want to notice and cherish every detail of this night.
It’s my first weekend in Austin.
I move into the exhilarating hustle of Austin only knowing a few acquaintances. My work at the nonprofit hasn’t officially begun, so those first April days are coffee-shop-hopping, finding exceptionally well-priced Himalayan salt at H-E-B, and feeling exuberantly enthralled by just the dreamy blue sight of the city skyline, my city’s skyline.
Austin and I honeymoon. I drive with the windows down, proudly showing off my sleek new Texas license plate. GPS narrates the roadways of my new life. My heart booms in wild awe that this vision of living here is now a full-fledged reality.
And in my lovey-dovey Austin phase, I’m sweetly spotlighted for my newness and extended an act of royal kindness.
A fabulously fun theater friend learns through the worlds of social media that I’ve relocated to Austin and in a lovely gesture of generosity, swiftly reaches out and connects me to a friend of hers who too lives in Austin. And without skipping any beats, this Austinite actress messages me with a free ticket to the hottest show in town: “Shitfaced Shakespeare.”
Tonight my gracious host stars as the caring backstage assistant for the pre-show chosen drunkard and fashionably wears cat ears and bewitching whiskers.
She sparkles in a vivacious confidence that expertly keeps the sputtering shitfaced actor safe from falling off the stage and manages the rowdy crowd with snappy comebacks and quick-witted jokes.
After the show she whisks me away to the next door café, Spider House. We mingle and merge with the twinkle lit charm that is old school Austin. Eclectic antique décor (such as an array of clawfoot bathtubs with beheaded cupids balanced on their porcelain rims scatter along the edges of the outdoor patio) deepens the fantastical spell of existing in an unworldly place.
In a booth under cobweb covered lightbulbs and Texas stars, she shares the full warmth of her attention. I bask in deep appreciation for being seen, for being ushered in with bright-hearted hospitality. The luminous kindness and magical creativity of this intoxicatingly poetic evening continues to glisten and spin, like that disco ball I find myself under once again.
Fast forward three years, and now I stand in the same ballroom that hosted the riotous Shakespeare play.
I am alone, again.
And I am comfortable with my aloneness.
The vast ballroom appears sober, cleared of chairs and the stage empty.
I look up at the disco ball, the hundreds of carefully placed mirrors reflecting my past and present self. Through the reflections I see the amplified significance of that silly, carefree shitfaced evening. The laughter enlivened a passion for theater, for a performance style that spirits mischievously away from the lines of a script. There’s a hinted seed of what-will-be improv, but it’s not on my radar, yet.
I see my misplaced career self in wide-eyed admiration and secret longing to be on that stage, to exude a smart and spunky playfulness that resonates because I sense that it’s also within me, desiring to shine forward.
And that creative shine does leap and propel me forward, right here into this moment, where I am now also given the radiant opportunity to direct the spotlight onto young improvisers, talented creatives. Now, I get to offer luminous attention to youth as they ignite and fortify the brilliance of their imagination.
I dare up onto the stage.
From this perspective, I watch my Austin life over the past three years unfold. I could have never written the course of events; my Austin life was beyond my limited dreams, a reminder that I don’t need to know the how, I don’t need to try to make things happen.
I just had to show up and trust and lean into the feeling, and one of the leading feelings motivating my move to Austin circled around confidently claiming and communing with my creativity.
The honeymoon phase with Austin has ended and dramatically matured.
This maturity provides the objectivity to view the lived scenes with grace and heightened understanding. And also, I catch a familiar voice, a whisper from the muses behind the curtains to once again trust. Trust my feet into the emergence of a fresh scene, one my Austin life has prepared me for, and one my soul calls for me to answer.
I spin in the same spot where beer once stained the stage. Dizzy and clear-hearted, I bow and prepare to exit. The disco ball winks from the audience. In the shimmering quiet, I feel that old blush of Austin love embracing me, seeing me off into unknown, unscripted, soul-led scene.