Hold on to Nothing

Christmas came with palm trees and more torrential downpours this year: a little disorienting, but we still managed to have a pretty festive celebration at the retreat. On Saturday, I performed a play I’ve been a longtime fan of: a stand-up style monologue by David Sedaris entitled “The Santaland Diaries,” Sedaris’ ode to holiday consumerism and chaotic insanity through the eyes of a somewhat sarcastic elf at Macy’s. I was nervous to perform. It’s been over two years since I’ve been on a stage, trying to hold an audience’s attention. In the interim, my body’s undergone an immense transformation. More nerve-wracking was working solo in a new place where I know very few people. In New York, I’d have had my base of talented directors and designers to collaborate with, not to mention at least some semblance of a stage manager. Here, I was a one man actor/director/designer/producer. Oy.

The night before I was set to perform, I was a wreck. Nothing about the play felt right. I had performed it for several people; it felt dry, contrived and—worst of all—dishonest. If there’s one thing I pride myself on as an actor, it’s being honest. I was anxious to make a good impression on new friends, and worried they’d be bored and uninterested. So I filled my performance with a lot of distractive gimmicks. It was obvious during the rehearsal that all this extraneous work took focus from the heart of the piece; the moments where it really worked had been simple moments when I was just sitting with friends, telling a good story. I went swimming that night. It’s become one of my favorite things to do here. Ear plugs and goggles make me relatively gone from the world, so I glided under the stars and the moon, back and forth, meditating. In a flash, I knew what I needed to do to make the piece work. It was something I had written on the front of the script. “Hold on to nothing.”

The next day was spent turning the performance space, a giant living room-style area in the upstairs of one of the communal spaces, or Hales, into a Christmas lounge. A few good friends and I went out of our way to make it a cozy, intimate lounge with small tables, candles, sofas, pillows, Christmas lights and hot chocolate and freshly baked cookies to boot. When I entered to perform, I grabbed a stool and took it to the center ring. I told the audience what Christmas meant to me. It’s a time of giving gifts of self. The community at Kalani had given me the gift of a place to rest and restore. This story was my gift back. And then I shared, simply and joyfully, the story of the elf at Macy’s. No work, no effort. I stood when I needed to stand, drank water when I needed a drink. I stayed honest. At the end of the night, people left with bellies aching from laughter, and a few had tears in their eyes. The warmth it generated, when I got over myself and decided to share a story out of joy instead of fear, has amazed me over the last few days. And I take great pride in knowing that I had everything to do with that.

Next up: how about a dramatic reading of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” set in this monsoon?