I’m at an age where you start to look back over the choices you’ve made in life and wonder what might have happened if you’d done things differently. This does not necessarily denote a midlife crisis. One need not do this wondering from a negative place. You don’t have to look back on your life as a waste. But if you’ve lived enough years, it’s natural to wonder, “If I moved this domino here, and this domino there, what does the new pattern look like?”

When I graduated high school, I intended to be a journalist, specifically a sports journalist, perhaps as a precursor to becoming an author. (It’s been known to happen.) After my first year at college, I changed my major to theatre. I spent the next thirty years involved in theatre in some capacity, even if it never became my profession. It’s been seven years since I last appeared on stage, and I honestly can’t picture myself ever doing it again, for any number of reasons that I won’t go into here. Suffice to say, I’m done with theatre. But that doesn’t come with a lot of regret. In fact, it comes with a lot of gratitude.

I honestly believe theatre has been more influential on my writing than anything else. Writing is clearly an exercise of the mind. Theatre, on the other hand, allows you to inhabit the worlds being created. It’s a three-dimensional exercise. And it’s impacted my writing in any number of ways.

Dialogue is the most obvious. I find dialogue rather easy to write. (Not that every bit of dialogue I write is brilliant, but it comes to me rather easily). Actors get a sense of what lines sound good to the ear and feel good in the mouth. It gives you insight into how characters respond to each other. It gives you a sense of which lines will land with an audience or sum up a moment. It also gave me a feeling for the rhythm of a scene. Where to put the pauses, so that a particular line or word is heightened in importance. I can’t think of an area of my writing that has been more influenced by theatre than this.

The ability to tell a story is another benefit. Where you direct the audience’s attention, what bits of information you provide in a particular scene, how to pace something for best effect. If you introduce a gun in Act I, the damn thing has to be fired by Act III. (Thank you, Mr. Chekhov.) 

And beyond the “C should follow B which should follow A” mechanics of the plot, working in theatre gave me the ability to explore an emotional arc, to think about where a character is at the start of their journey, where they will wind up at the end, and the connective tissue between those two points. Practically everything I know about storytelling, I learned in the theatre.

In this same way, I learned about telling a story visually. What a character DOES can give you as much insight as what they SAY. What physical habits do they have in general? What habits do they adopt in certain moments? Also, what does the setting tell you about them? What does it tell you about the mood of the scene, of the story? Frequently when writing a scene, I close my eyes and visualize the action. Years in theatre have made the process more vivid than it might be otherwise.

Similarly, theatre not only allowed me to feel what the characters are going through in a given moment. What drives that particular gesture or habit? Where are they at, emotionally? What do they WANT out of this moment? Goals, tactics, stakes. Thoughts, emotions, reactions. Many of the items in an actor’s toolbox can become items in a writer’s toolbox.

In the end, I have nothing but gratitude for what theatre gave me, even if my time participating is done. Writing is the thing that is most important to me and my years in theatre was the most formative and impactful experience on my writing. I simply wouldn’t be the writer I am now without it.

So, allow me to offer a very fond So long and thanks for all the fish to theatre. I’ll be at the Retired Actors Home, Community Theatre Wing if you need me.