EmotionalResponse .

Simply said, CARNIval became an emotional rollercoaster. Overall, it was one of the most difficult, demanding, doubtful and stressful things I’ve ever been a part of. But at the same time, I’ve never had so much pride and confidence in some of my work. The stresses associated with CARNIval weren’t necessarily “bad”. It was stress and hell and awesome all at the same time. The stress that it brought on was relieving I found. It was an escape for my mind to head to a lot of the time because it had brought on so much to think about. Before the process began, I had a lot of expectations. I saw the idea of creating something from scratch a challenge, but never anticipated it to be as much of a challenge as it was. I expected myself to be great. Not only great, but proud as well. I expected to have ideas coming from every aspect of my thoughts that all made sense and were somehow relatable to whatever topic we chose. I never anticipated the nerves, the lack of confidence and self awareness, and the amount of blood, sweat and tears that the process demanded from me. I never expected for the process to literally consume my life for 4 months. And that’s exactly what it did. The start was difficult for me. I was unable to make the connection between my ideas and the actual words to describe them, which was frustrating. My thoughts were so scattered. At that point I found myself questioning my position in the class because they had never understood my ideas the way I had wanted them to, therefore I was just a mess that even I wouldn’t have wanted to have to listen to. I found that pictures seemed to work as time progressed to explain the vision I had in my head.
At this point, I had made the personal decision to not let my pain, and everything associated, define me throughout the course of this play. This was set to be the first thing done “for me, by me” since the accident and I would refuse to allow myself to be stopped or held back by pain or being defined as “the damaged one.” Continuing through with that was a lot harder than I had thought. The play was a huge contributor towards things I had discovered about myself around the time which consisted of a lot of realization that my pain had become a large part of my identity and did in fact impact every aspect of my life, including the writing process, rehearsing, and even finding my voice within my character. That struggle continued throughout the course of the play, bringing with it positive and negative realizations further shaping who I am to become.
The next challenge that arose after figuring out our story line was choosing our characters. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to play the lead because I didn’t see myself as “hero” in any context of the play. I was decently sure that I didn’t I posses the strength and drive in general that the “hero” character would have. In full admittance, it blew my mind the similarities in perspectives and interests between my own and Caroline as expressed by her monologue. (which in the end turned out fascinating to watch played back in front of me by Haley). By this point, theatre arts had brought on a lot of self-reflection. I was unable to settle with a character title for quite sometime because I was unable to find myself in any of the suggested titles from our class. I wasn’t tender enough for mom, or connected enough to the artist. I struggled for a while with finding “some connection” between myself and a title and I was unable to find that. The class suggested I stuck with doctor because that’s where they saw me best so I figured it was my only hope. I was extremely doubtful though because once again, I did not want to be defined by my pain , but I was unaware if I was the only one who noticed or even cared about said connection. I figured if I settled with the title, I could find myself within as time grew. And I’m not sure if that was the right choice, but I went with it. As I looked into possibilities for my character, the epiphany of mercury poisoning from paper helped me bond with my character because the sketch began to seem more defined.
One of the biggest challenges I found was finding my “niche” once we got on the stage. For some reason my confidence levels speaking when standing on the stage disappeared and for the first little while I had shut myself out from the audience. Finding the “crazy” within me to take on the role of the doctor to the fullest extent seemed so out of reach as soon as I stepped on the stage. I understood the concept of “being” rather than “acting” but applying that to our play was a lot more difficult than I thought at a personal level. Over the long weekend, about 2 days before the play opened I forced myself to sit down and write out the similarities between Doc and myself. I initially thought the only thing that Doc and I could possibly have in common was the “medical aspect” which is exactly what I was trying to avoid interfering with the play. I finally realized that the problem I had with becoming Doc was the fact that I was scared of facing the similarities that I had been blind to acknowledge. I couldn’t settle into the crazies that Doc possessed because I feared that if I allowed doc to express her crazies, that my own personal “crazies” would shine through to the audience in a way that I wasn’t willing to portray. Laying my secrets out on stage in a fun/ twisted way was something I never thought I’d allow myself to do, but at the same time, portraying my own mental illness through a character that is meant to be accepted as one who is comedic is scary. “Becoming” Doc was more centred around acceptance by the end of it. I had to come around and find my confidence on stage through expressing those vulnerabilities because that it was the audience will cling to and learn to fall in love with. So many mixed emotions because at times the similarities would become uncomfortable. Once becoming Doc successfully, for the first time I was able to openly show the “crazies” that I had known in a fun way that the audience could accept and even relate to in one way or another figuring everyone has their own crazies. So I went out on stage and turned both Doc and I’s crazies into fun. We were playing and I couldn’t have taken more pride in that by the end.
By the end of the show, I was unsure of my response to the similarities between the two of us: whether I was proud of pulling off the character so well (or so I saw it), or whether I was ashamed that I could. Hearing feedback from people after the shows about how they’re “worried that I can ACT crazy so convincingly” made me nervous, even though their voices were full of playfulness. At that point I had feared that I had left too much on the stage and the open vulnerability would then cross from Doc over to my own life. Stepping back a couple days later, I had come to see that the success of Doc and achieving her crazies was nothing more than something I was to be proud of. I’ve never been faced with quite a challenge of the same sort. Doc turned out to be nothing but a fun release and even though I struggled so much “becoming” Doc, I’m glad I pushed through with her.
Walking the halls of school the next days to hear groups of friends talking about how much they enjoyed our play and talking about what they would do if they were in our situation was one of the most rewarding things I could’ve heard. The pride that fallowed the play knowing that I was a part of the creation, and I overcame everything I had to face within the process was something I hope I can hold onto in some part of me for the rest of my life. That feeling of pride and confidence in my work was something I’ve never felt in quite the same way, and I pray that the feeling quite like I had those fallowing days will stay with me for the rest of my life whenever I think about the crazy journey of our CARNIval.