None ever found a thing to praise

I came home to my empty, dark apartment emotionally drained and exhausted from rehearsal. I wish I could say I felt the fatigue from a satisfying emotional journey left on the stage; instead, my weariness came from behind the scenes drama and self-doubt. I felt myself beginning to wreck. Even though it was well past midnight, and I longed for the five hours of sleep I could clock before my 5:45 AM wakeup call, I turned to my dearest friends: my books. I ran my index finger across their spines, and although I expected to pull Shakespeare off the shelf, my finger stopped on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. I pulled out Bayard Taylor’s translation of Faust, collapsed in my leather armchair and flipped open the tattered cover to a random page, which read:

In young, wild years it suits your ways,
This round and round the world in freedom sweeping;
But then come on the evil days,
And so, as bachelor, into his grave a-creeping,
None ever found a thing to praise.

How appropriate! - I concluded. On any other day, I would comment on Martha’s ironic flirtation with Mephistopheles, as the foil to Faust’s advances on Margaret. Yet, last night, this passage spoke to me on another plain. In the context of my mood, I wondered how I had let myself get into this slump. Have I been wandering too far away from auditioning for quality theatre? Have I lost my ability to adore my work? Or perhaps the stress of dealing with Faustian actors, in all their arrogant and ambitious glory, is taking its toll on my sensibilities as an artist. I have said it before, and I will probably have to say it again: there is nothing more ruinous than a selfish actor. I need to ward off this destructive energy and focus on the positive as I move through the chaos of today’s activities - After all, a bad dress rehearsal means a great opening night!