Melancholy

Theatre is a lot like traveling. You stay at this really cute B&B for a month, and just as you're growing familiar with the room, learning your way around the city, just as the local barista is starting to remember your order (grande latte, extra foam), you blink - and it's time to leave. Fin.

In the world of live theatre, the sequence goes more or less like this: For several weeks, you slog away with about twenty other people, memorizing lines, delving into characters, building sets. Your weeks of work culminate in two or three days: a couple of night shows, a couple of matinees, and then it is over. De-construct the set, return to a normal sleep schedule, and it's done.

Of course, you still see each other in the hallways. You smile when you pass. But it isn't the same. This is both the most beautiful and the most sad part of the performing arts.

In the second grade, I read Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo. In the book, the characters eat these hard candies called Littmus Lozenges. I always imagined them to look like butterscotch candies, but according to the book, they tasted like strawberry and root beer and sorrow, all in one candy wrapper. The flavors shouldn't have gone together, but somehow, they worked. At one point in the book, Opal, the narrator, elaborates on this:

"I lay there and thought how life was like a Littmus Lozenge, how the sweet and the sad were all mixed up together and how hard it was to separate them out. It was confusing."

I credit Kate DiCamillo with teaching me one of my favorite words and concepts. Melancholy. The most recent show I was in was The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Backstage, waiting for our entrance, a few of my friends and I were talking about our favorite words. I said mine was pond. Oh, wait, no, pond and melancholy. My friend Luke was confused. "Doesn't that mean sad?" he asked.

Yes, it does mean sad, I said. Technically. But to me, melancholy is the word that describes the meeting of sorrow and sweet. It's the Littmus Lozenge. Take, for instance, the cast party at Village Inn we had after our opening performance. I sat in a sticky-syrup chair and watched my friends. Lianna and Genna were laughing. Julia's eyeliner was melting. Luke and Alex and James were comparing baby pictures. Austyn was eating a Cliff Bar, and I was memorizing. I was memorizing what it felt like in that moment, at midnight in a diner in the middle of suburbia with the people I love. I was memorizing the temperature. I was memorizing the way the street lights peaked through the blinds and how they looked like stars if you squinted. I was memorizing the fatigue and the joy and the drunk-on-life-ness of it all, and the smell of hot chocolate and artichoke hearts in omelettes. And it made me sad. I knew I'd miss it. I knew I'd miss them. But that sadness is also what made the night so happy. Does that make sense?

I often feel like I'm eating a Littmus Lozenge. When I'm happy, I'm sad because I know it'll be over soon. But that sadness reminds me to be present, to enjoy every moment because every moment is fleeting. I won't get a midnight diner night like that again. I won't feel more loved than I do now. Melancholy is my default state. In wake of a show ending and another beginning, I feel it a little bit extra. I will miss the headaches the freshmen gave me. I'll miss the rehearsal-induced, sleep-deprived haze of tech week. I'll miss Lianna's blue contour and Jackson's red scarf and Amelie's unicorn headphones and Jordan's eye-liner freckles. I'll miss it all, and missing will turn into reminiscing, and reminiscing is my gratitude. I am so grateful, for all of it.

And in my gratitude, I am sad, but it's a happy sad, because life is beautiful and it keeps moving me along, and it keeps feeding me Littmus Lozenges, and I am so completely in for the ride.

With love to the cast, crew, directors, and Kate DiCamillo,
Maya

Photo by Maya's Family, Photo by Nabila Fauzia on Unsplash, Photo by Daniel Schludi on Unsplash