My fellow actors and I have a saying between us: “Livin’ the dream.” This is the most common response to the question, “How are you?” and it answers a lot.
We went to school because we were chasing a dream of becoming more than we were. At one time or another we were inspired to become artists, and we undertook an educational challenge that would hone, amend, and strengthen our talents. I became an artist because I wanted to inspire in other people the same dynamic experiences that books and movies and music and television and video games invoked in me as an audience.
When I was in middle school my primary inspiration was Star Trek. I owned a copy of the Star Trek Technical Manual and a copy of The Klingon Dictionary. I wore a Next Gen communicator pin on my jacket. These things pulled the fantasy out of the television and allowed me to carry it around at all times; though the ownership, display, and perusal of these materials did nothing for my popularity. I was already an outsider due to my physical size (I was six feet tall by the age of twelve), and my non-mainstream behavior served to keep my schoolmates at a distance that was, if thin, certainly palpable.
Worf was my favorite character because I felt I could best identify with him. He was an outsider. Physically different from his colleagues, intimidating, and had no one to share his passions. For Worf those passions included duty, honor, and the culture of his ancestry. For me those passions included what was deemed to be (among my schoolmates) a derisive nerdy sub-culture with which – like Worf – I could rarely find someone who shared it.
Flash forward twenty-two years. I’m at the end of my academic career when a classmate passes on an audition notice for A Klingon Christmas Carol. This . . . this was nerdiness doubled. No, trebled. Someone had taken the Dickens classic and merged it with a far future epic. Of course I had always wanted to be an actor on a Star Trek property in my youth, but what were the chances of that? Now I was not only a trained actor, but a trained martial and stage combatant as well as experienced in studying various foreign languages and English dialects. Never had I been in a better position to tackle any role as this.
When I was cast, I did the most epic happy dance ever.
My first involvement with the play was to attend the 19th annual meeting of the Klingon Language Institute. Three days of hanging out with people who . . . there are no words. Dedicated fandom doesn’t cover it. Jovial souls isn’t strong enough. Kindhearted doesn’t scratch the surface. I was also extremely impressed by the level of intelligence; I have a Master’s degree, and I’m pretty certain I had the lowest level of education in the room.
As inadequate as these words are to describe the people who attended the meeting, imagine what it was like for me to finally discover this group of people and count myself among them. Also in attendance was Marc Okrand, the linguist who authored the Klingon Dictionary which had been sitting on my bookshelf since my thirteenth birthday.
No aspect of what you may call “nerd culture” is compartmentalized. A Klingon Christmas Carol finds the intersection points of two beloved classic properties and blends their worlds, strengthening the individual value of both. My small contribution was, after spending three days building up the nerve, to ask Dr. Okrand how to say “Your argument is invalid” in Klingon, thus creating a tighter bond between Star Trek and one of my favorite internet memes. I’m proud to say that the phrase
So awesome.
Rehearsals for the play began about six weeks after the KLI meeting, and again the feeling of coming home washed over me in a way I’ve never felt. I’m in a room full of people who are both professional actors and Star Trek fans. One of the first things we did was, at director Eric Van Tassell’s suggestion, to introduce ourselves by talking about what things we’re nerds for (sports, hobbies, stories, and so on). Historically this is the kind of thing I always kept quiet about, so being in a room with nearly two dozen like-minded people was so refreshing and relieving. I found comrades-in-arms on so many topics I’ll be stunned if I don’t walk away from this production with new lifelong friends.
The first week’s worth of rehearsals exposed an even deeper well of appreciation for this production. The script contains references not only to classic Star Trek tropes and ideologies, but also contains one of my favorite quotes from Shakespeare. We had two language intensive rehearsals, four hours apiece, with a third on the way. We aren’t merely learning to pronounce this language, we’re learning vocabulary and conjugation and sentence structure. We have movement rehearsals as well, which aren’t merely stage combat intensives, but also examinations of how this culture of Klingons walks, stands, sits, marches. None of it is easy, but I learned a long time ago that nothing worth doing is easy.
And this show is certainly worth doing. Of all the things that I adore and have been inspired by in this production, I was most struck by something Commedia Beauregard Artistic Director Chris Kidder-Mostrom (who is also the playwright) said to us early in the process. Why do we do this show? We do it because it affects lives. It affects the lives of the people who do the show, and it affects the lives of the people who see the show.
Never have I heard a more altruistic reason for doing art. We’re going on a journey together, the artists and the audience, and we’re building an experience that will leave us all changed for the better. Being a part of this production is both a validation of the child I used to be and the adult I’ve become. This show is a validation of every child and former child who has and will bear witness to its execution. This show is worth every drop of effort, and I believe in it with all my heart.
Today, when my colleagues ask me “How are you?” and I answer, “Livin’ the dream,” I’m honored to say I’m actually living several dreams at a time. And perhaps inspiring the birth of new dreams as well.
Qapla’.
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