"The Absence of Light"

Hello all! It honestly hasn't been that long now that I'm thinking about it?? It's been what, two weeks? But it has been such a full two weeks since I last got a written post done that I can barely keep up.
Okay, so here's the update on life. I will try to keep it brief.
As you pretty much all know from the last post, I will be pursuing theatre in college, which is fun enough. It. Got. BETTER.
I will be majoring in creative writing at Southern Utah University-- old news. But NOW I have a double minor in film & screen studies and, once I get registered for it, theatre arts! Guys, it is so perfect. I really want to do work in those fields, but I don't know a lot about them, especially film. I can't wait to learn how to make beautiful art. (Guys. In the theatre minor I have to take a class JUST FOR SCRIPT ANALYSIS. I think I'm crying.) College is going to be an actual dream. In the words of my dearest, Alexander (as written by Lin), "I have so much work to do."
We wrapped up the rest of high school. I was given my final recognition for being in choir and color guard. I had my final party with my senior class and with my choir. And I even somehow avoided dropping out of high school. I GRADUATED. Yes, I am a high school graduate! It's honestly so wild. Thank you so much to everyone who's been really supportive of me. Like, this is a big deal.
By the time you guys read this, I will be on family vacation! We're going to visit my great-grandma in Boise, who we haven't seen for over ten years! I'll also have seen Newsies for the third time on stage, the second time live. (One time it was an event done in movie theaters, with Jeremy, Kara, Ben, and Andrew as the leads. It was perfect.)
Oh, and me and Em decided I'm taking voice lessons in college? I honestly feel highkey good about it. Yay singing! I mean, I don't know. I figured I would mention it or something.
Okay, so many of you have seen the blog's latest video, and I'mma use this post to give a little more backstory to it. This year I took an imaginative writing class  and it was honestly a highlight of the year. One of the many things I learned was the difference between a story and an anecdote. An anecdote is what most people think is a story. You tell your friends about an event. But a story is pretty much the same thing as an anecdote, except by the end your listeners understand some sort of change that occurred in you, or how the event affected you. We listened to some stories from The Moth, an event where people tell a story (not an anecdote) to a crowd of people for four to five minutes, which is honestly really cool; we heard some good stories. As a class we thought of a bunch of topics we could tell a story about, and narrowed it down to five we could choose from. Our goal was to write a story to be read out loud, that was four to five minutes long. No shorter, no longer.
I had a few problems with this. The first one? I thought (once I had chosen a topic) that I would end up underwriting and have to add more. Once I finished my first draft of the story, I tried reading it out loud. It was six minutes and forty-one seconds long. I had to cut out A LOT to make it fit within the time limit. I'm not kidding when I say I overwrite literally all the time. As you all can see from the video, it turns out I still went over time.
However, we never ended up sharing it in class. I was always going to share my story with you guys once we'd shared it in class, but we never ended up doing it. So this is a story just for you, family, friends, followers, and fans.
Here's my second problem. I kind of misunderstood the goal. I thought we had to write a story for each topic and share them all. The topics were "Broken Hearts", "Sudden Realization", "Mysterious Death", "The Absence of Light", and "The Perfect Family". For the first three topics, I easily thought of a story to share. I had a small concept I could consider for "The Perfect Family", but to be so honest, not really. The thing I had a REAL hard time choosing the topic for was "The Absence of Light". Which is funny, because it's the one I ended up choosing. I really couldn't think of any good story to write about that topic.
Eventually I found out that I only had to choose one story to write. Which was good, because a lot of the stories, upon thinking about it, would have been really hard to share.
Anyway, one day I was thinking about my time in the theatre that year. I really enjoyed my experience there. And I was thinking about the way it felt once the lights had dropped. I love that feeling. It's so exciting and tense and beautiful. And then I realized, "The Absence of Light". My experience in the theatre was the perfect story to share.
Since it was written to be read aloud, I thought I should make a video of it first. But I also wanted a written version. So here it is. I hope you enjoy it, and I love you all very much.
--Lizzo
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My last year of high school I finally auditioned for my school's musical. I really wanted to do well, because I really wanted to do the show after all those years of people trying to convince me to do a musical. I was also up against a lot of talented people, and I knew that.
It turned out that I did do really well. I didn't only get cast in the show, I got cast as one of the characters. Her name was Iris, and the second I saw my name next to hers I felt a connection. Walking in with a full awareness of everyone else being better than me and having no idea what I was doing, I guess that alone was kind of like being in the dark. One day some of my friends were joking about forgetting how to use mic tape. Little did they know that the mic check process had been giving me anxiety attacks for days.
Being there got less and less scary. I wanted to do really well in the part, so I worked really hard.
 I had my lines memorized within weeks of getting the script, over a full month before they were due. I constantly thought about how Iris would react to the things around her. We were required to think of a secret our character had. I thought of two. To become my character, I even studied ballet terms and how to kiss a guy-- both things required of my character, and both things I had never done. Being on stage stressed me out less, as did being in the theatre at all. Costume runs and mic checks stopped giving me anxiety. I even learned how to do my own makeup. Things got a whole lot brighter.
One of the beautiful things about the theatre is that it's literally entirely dark. The magic that the setting of the theatre creates is amazing. When we started runs with the tech, the feeling of the lights dropping, of waiting in the dark for the music, was the most awesome sensation in the world. You could feel the tension of everything sitting on edge, waiting for the show to start.
Opening night, the figurative darkness and the literal darkness kind of combined. That night there would be an audience. My first time playing a character in a musical in front of an audience. That knowledge was terrifying.
All that day getting ready, I had this weird kind of nervousness constantly popping up. As I put on my makeup, as I put on my costume, as I put on my mic, as I checked my mic, as we stretched and warmed up our voices, as we did our circle to get hyped up, and worst of all, as we waited. While we were busy I could laugh through the terror, but waiting was nearly unbearable.
Finally the time came. There were about five minutes left until showtime. We all gathered in the wings. I was between excitement and fear at that point. In the end, they were kind of the same thing.
We all prepared ourselves, knowing this was finally it, the real moment. Then the magical thing happened: the lights went down, and the entire theatre was dark. The energy, the tension, the anticipation was tangible. The silence was so thick it was almost loud. We all sat there in the black non-light, waiting. That felt like forever. Then the music started, you could feel the production come alive, and all my friends went onstage. You see, my character didn't appear for quite a few scenes in the show. By the  end of the first song, I was the only actor backstage.
You would think the audience applauding after the first scene would have made the audience seem real to me. I mean, I did know at that point that they were there. But it really hit me four scenes into the show. I was waiting backstage with my friends, with still a few scenes left until my first one. One of the actors made a dreadful pun about peanut butter, one that, having heard it nearly every day for three months, was only moderately funny, if that. When I heard giggles, soft laughter coming from the audience, I was in shock. There they were, a live audience, reacting to the things we were playing out on the stage in the moment. Laughing about stupid peanut butter jokes I had stopped laughing at long ago. We were doingt a live performance. There is no feeling more beautiful.
Finally, the scene before mine came. I was waiting backstage for my character's big introduction. The terror, which had subsided as the show played out, was back. As the actor on stage sang, with every note my nerves grew and grew stronger and stronger. Then the song was over. Only a few more lines. Our music director started playing the notes that cues me in.
At that point, I did something I probably shouldn't have. They say the house will be so dark that you won't be able to see them out there. I had been performing long enough to know that wasn't true. As I walked onstage and took my place, where I would be the center of attention, I took the whole thing in. Being onstage, as someone else, with people paying to watch me. I took a small look around, just absorbed the audience and their presence. It wasn't big enough for anyone to notice. I watched the video of the show afterward and even I didn't notice, and I'm the one who did it, so it must have been really small.
After I took in the audience, the fear was gone. Even though I was pretty new to acting, I had been performing for years. I took in the people sitting in the dark, then removed myself from them. I let go of Lizzo and became Iris.