Two-A-Days

Two-a-days.

The bane of corner-backs and dance captains.

It was a term I first heard my brother use during his high-school football years. Two-a-Days referred to the last few weeks of practice before the football season began.

The team would practice for four or five hours in the morning and return in the late afternoon for another four or five hour practice. Remember that the start of football season is late August and the heat was at best, blistering.

The boys would suit up in their post-industrial armor and head out onto the field. Bash themselves into testosterone adrenaline ecstasy, hit the showers, and then after a hearty lunch, suit up again for the slaughter. These days are remembered fondly by the old timers like soldiers who have lived to become generals. Champions have been made, children have been killed.

I used to apply this term to any weekend when both a matinee and an evening show was scheduled. It brought a certain amount of manliness that I desperately needed as I stood in the wings, dance belt squeezing my genitalia, costume stiff with hours old sweat.

Two-a-days always . . .

. . . Always . . .

Almost always, resulted in two bad performances. The first performance stank of cowardice. We would hit our marks, sing our songs, pause for for the laughter, and listen carefully as the laughter began to crest to resume our dialogue. All the time remembering to save a little bit extra for later because there was another show that night. Another show that would be populated with a larger more invested audience. An audience not filled with silver foxes, but with our friends, parents, and critical reviewers.

But no matter how much we saved for the second performance, no matter how professional we professed to be, our metabolisms weakened by the steady diet of coffee and cigarettes always got the best of us. Our voices would crack and our physical movement became nothing more than adrenaline fueled exaggeration.

Two-a-days were artistic suicide sponsored by the local rotary club that need all those candy-bar sales at the end of the first act.

Dropping a perfectly thrown pass might lead to the gentle ribbing in the bars at the end of a hard day at the mines . . .

But fucking up on stage could cost you a career.

My god, how I hated two-a-days.

One time I had six shows over the course of three days. Two-a-day friday. Two-a-day Saturday, and then on the fifth show during the second number I twisted wrong coming out of a somersault on a raked stage. For two performances the entire cast had to drag me on and off the stage as if I was limp corpse that still had to sing and dance. I did the final song on Sunday night with three courageous dancers holding my body steady in front of a microphone before carrying me off the stage as if I was a dead soldier who could not be left to defilement on the battlefield.

But in the middle of my theatre career I discovered how to perform a two-a-day.

Which is to say:

I didn’t think about it.

I practiced the same routine for the matinee as I would for the evening performance. Which is to say, I didn’t think about it at all until the hour before. I would warm up the same way, I would check my props at the same time, I would find the same technician and thank them for their hard work. I would drink copious amounts of water and pace back and forth in the hall behind the stage. I would repeat my first few lines over and over again, because once I found those first lines, the rest of the performance was rhythm and muscle memory.

No one ever really taught me. I just figured it out along the way. Had there been a mentor in those days, I might have made something of myself that is different than who I am now. Not good or bad, just different.

I saw a show the other night. A show, that I’m afraid to admit, I was not looking forward to. It had been a stressful few days, and frankly, I suffered the kind of exhaustion that only a man in his pre-mid-life crisis years can feel. I was hating everybody and everything. Nothing was working the way I had dreamed it would and I needed about ten hours of battery recharge time.

But it was my niece’s final performance. A show that she was proud of. A show that she wanted everyone to see. And there will be more than enough sleep in that sleep of death that I’ll be damned if I’d let the world beat me into that kind of submission while there is still food in the fridge and money in the bank.

And so I went.

And so I was glad.

The show was fantastic. A high-school performance none-the-less. The music was good, the dialogue breathed with life, the direction was tight, and for the first time ever I saw a group of teenagers look comfortable on the stage. Sure, there was the kind of community theatre glitches, kids miss-cast, high notes that only a professional singer should really try in front of an audience, but none of that made much of a difference when I could walk into the theatre and enjoy myself. I’ve paid ten times more for half as much entertainment.

It was the second performance of the day and final performance of the run. And yes, it was obvious that two-a-days can be brutal even to well fed energetic youth. Voices cracked, costumes showed their stains of sweat, and the orchestra really needed a conductor whose hands weren’t trapped at the piano keys.

But then there was my niece.

She radiated. She exuded. For the first time in the years I’ve seen her perform, she seemed at home upon the stage.

Sure there were the technical flaws of youth. The lines delivered too energetically. Songs and choreography with too much sexual innuendo for a sixteen year old girl to perform comfortably (at least in front of grey foxes and christian family members). But even when the orchestra fell wildly out of the pocket, she remained steadfast and strong. In fact it wasn’t until after the performance, when I could congratulate her with a big hug and having felt her adrenaline fueled heart beat, could I even see the effects that the two-a-day had on her.

Somehow, she had, by sheer osmosis, delivered a two-a-day, that had taken me years to learn how to manufacture (Techniques that I have subsequently forgot). Melina is going to be an artist. How she will navigate the rest of her life is a mystery.

The irony here is that artistic apprenticeship is dead.

There is no one, I repeat, no one, who could take her under their wing and guide her beyond who she is now. What she does with her artistic life is up to fate, luck, and tenacity. In that order. Because she only has control over her tenacity. Sometimes luck will find her and move her to the next universe, but it is ultimately fate that will decide.

And that’s not fucking fair.

Even I, who has been blessed with a lineage of artists, a palpable talent, and the drive to work, can only guess what at who I am and where I stand.

So I have only this to offer, as mentor, uncle, comrade;

Seek to work only with those that are better than you. The people on your level and at your heels are beautiful and wonderful, but they teach you nothing, except how to be a better teacher and friend. At worst, they feed your ego, and your ego needs far more bruising than feeding.

Never stop practicing. It takes six months to regain what you’ve lost with during one month of apathy.

Lend and borrow with equal aplomb, for you will need to learn how to do both, often.

Mentors make lousy lovers. But feel free to take advantage as the last act before you move on.

And lastly, to thine own self be true,

especially when you have been blessed with a partner who respects all that you try to do, but doesn’t allow you to wallow in your own bullshit.

I’m proud of you kiddo. I’m scared for you. If I can be there for you, I will.

Love
Uncle Josh