THE DOCTOR IS IN

Doing the Thing I Think I Cannot Do 

I am more than a little intimidated by my new musical theater class. The teacher is brilliant, witty, and a highly accomplished performer herself; and most of the other students seem Broadway-ready to me. After the first few classes, in which I performed well enough, but far below the level of the class, I thought seriously about transferring back to my old class, where I was comfortable. 

But the teacher is warm and encouraging, and the other students are friendly and supportive—and I remembered how frightened I was in my first class, and how I thought about dropping out, and how glad I am that I didn’t. It’s because of that class that I was able to even walk into this one, and actually get up and sing on request in front of a new teacher and a bunch of accomplished strangers, even though my voice and my knees shook a bit. 

Besides, as Lorraine, my new teacher, said to me, what I’m seeing in these students is a finished, polished product. They didn’t come to her like this; they came, like me, with vocal training, good potential, and hope. She sees that I have the first two, and assured me that if I keep up the third, we will do wonderful, exciting work together. 

So I committed to do everything she tells me to do. Which is turning out to be harder than I thought. 

Last week, she told me I was done with the song I’d been working on. She said, “Next week, I want you to bring in a song you really love, that you can engage with on a deep emotional level.” 

At home, I went through all of my music. I talked to friends. I couldn’t identify a song in my range that I feel that way about. I like all of the songs I sang in my previous class, but for the most part, I chose them for technical reasons—to stretch my range, to learn to belt, to conquer my fear of Sondheim, etc. 

So I emailed Lorraine, outlining what I saw as the problem: the music I really love is totally inappropriate for me: Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughn, etc. The songs for someone like me leave me lukewarm. Did she have any suggestions? 

She wrote back immediately: Why not Billie Holiday? Why not Sarah Vaughn? If you truly love a song, it is the right song for you. 

Okay. That is a challenge, but that’s what I enrolled for. I emailed back that I would bring in “All of Me” this Monday. 

She wrote back that she wants me to prepare it as a mini-scene, to dress in costume and set the stage, and cast myself as “Susan the temptress, Susan the seductress.” 

My first reaction was, I couldn’t possibly. But I made the commitment, and I will. I’ve already written a short scene to play out with a fellow student, in which he, a married man, has returned to his wife, and I’ve asked him to meet me to “talk things over,” but really to get him back. I’m practicing what I would do to make that happen. 

And I’ve decided not to feel ridiculous, a scrawny 59-year-old gray-haired woman staging a seduction scene and singing a torch song. This is theater, where anything can happen. And it will do me good as both a singer and a writer to stretch myself this way; to get into the head of such a different character. Besides, I promised. 

I’ll let you know how it turns out.   

 Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself, she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. She is the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity (Seal, 2007). Her Career Coach column appears every Monday on Inside Higher Ed's Mama, Ph.D. blog, and she is a regular guest panelist on Litopia After Dark. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com. 

Comments

[Cathy Beaudoin]

I follow your blog and loved this post.

[Stephen Rogers]

Hey Dr. Sue,

Creative promises are the best kind of obligations. As long as we dno't back down, we can force ourselves to stretch and grow.

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