The Actor's Prayer
O God of Thespis and Guardian of My Divine Spark,
Let me play tonight like the child I was
Before I converted my talent into commodity
And sold my soul to Mammon.
O let me banish from my heart and mind
The overwhelming Image of Myself
As a Great Personage of Immense Personal Appeal
And permit me enough selflessness to find
Some living contact with my fellow players.
Prevent me, O Thespis, from savouring those moments
In which I believe I excel
And for which I shall be eulogized
By the keenest intellects of the public prints.
But rather let me "make" my moment
And glide effortlessly to the next.
Devoid of self-indulgence and cramping self-esteem.
Give me the strength for forgive
Those of my fellow players
Who, using guile and evil stratagems,
Attempt to upstage me or cut-short my laughs.
Take from me the rage that I shower
Upon unsuspecting heads of ASMs
As they chatter in the wings before what I
(and even you, all knowing Thespis) must admit
Is one of the truly great entrances of the evening!
Guard me against the sins of gabbling
And the desire to malinger,
The urge to dawdle and extend my part.
(For even the milk of human kindness
Should not be milked for art.)
Let my flies be fastened and my spirit-gum firm.
Let me walk upright in my togs
And fear not the chatter of misplaced furniture
The tardy light-cue,
The absent prop,
Or the orgiastic cough of the women in the front row
That coincides, as if by design,
With recitation of my best line.
Let me not tarry too long at the curtain-call
Nor smile too greedily at the public's plaudits
Nor glower too rudely when they choose instead
To vent their spleen about my head.
Give me, O Thespis, the will to carry on
Despite unanimous "pans"
And the poison of friends whose backstage faces
Make me feel that being in a turkey
Is tantamount to terminal cancer.
Let me be reminded
(If indeed if be forgot)
That Art feeds off life
And that a theatre,
No matter how rich its atmosphere
Or splendid it's fasade,
Is surrounded by smaller edifices
Where normal men and women
Boil coffee and burn toast.
Let my life be my art
(My art never "my living")
Let me live my art
To that point of the sublime
Where I can truly say:
It is for life that I ply my art
And for the perfection of my life
That art is worth plying
My Art, the living,
My life, the dying.