The Circle of Life

I spent two weeks traveling around parts of Europe with my younger daughter this summer. She attended her first sleepaway camp in Nancy, France while I worked and visited with friends. We were supposed to come home last Friday, but I extended the trip so I could attend a heavy metal concert I had missed a month earlier because I was sick

As a bonus, we got to visit my daughter’s former nanny, who now lives in London with her husband. And, as a preemptive “I’m-sorry-for-taking-you-to-a-heavy-metal-concert, and thank-you-for-attending-it-with-me” prize, I took my daughter to see The Lion King at the Lyceum Theatre in London’s West End.

I had seen the film version of The Lion King numerous times over the years, but this was my first time seeing it onstage.

It was spectacular.

There were songs I didn’t remember from the film, and I loved the way the production used the entire theater to tell the story. Actors and puppets entered through the aisles. The landscape itself seemed to move. In one scene, a row of performers emerged from beneath the stage wearing patches of grass on their heads, creating a living field through which the lion puppets could run.

I especially loved the puppetry. The production used so many different forms: shadow puppets, hand-and-rod puppets, masks, and full-body puppets attached to visible performers. The puppeteers did not disappear behind their creations. We could see their faces and bodies. Rather than diminishing the illusion, their visibility made the characters feel more alive.

I watched as an audience member, but also as an actress and fellow puppeteer. I found myself studying how the performers shifted their focus, how they used their bodies to extend the movements of the puppets and how they allowed the audience to see both the character and the human being bringing that character to life.

(And yes, I am already thinking about the show I might make after Condemned to a Life completes its upcoming runs. I can’t help it. One project is rarely finished before another begins knocking on the door.)

The following day, my daughter reconnected with the nanny who had cared for her and her older sister for three years and had become a member of our family. It was lovely to hear how her life had progressed and to watch her and my daughter create new memories while reliving old ones. My daughter was once a baby in this woman’s arms. Now she was sitting beside her, talking and laughing and sharing pieces of the person she is becoming.

And that night, my daughter and I attended a System of a Down concert.

The band has enormous meaning for me. My brother introduced me to System of a Down when we were younger. It was one of the few things we consistently shared.

Over the years, their music has carried me through heartbreak, loss, grief, sorrow and joy. The lyrics take on different meanings depending on what is happening in my own life. I return to the band when I want to feel close to my brother, whom I may never see again.

I had to stop typing for a moment after writing that.

We shared an entire childhood. I know the person he is underneath the pain, fear and illness that have consumed so much of his life as he has struggled with schizoaffective disorder. I want to hug him. I want to tell him that I love him. More than that, I want him to be able to understand and receive that love.

But I cannot make that happen.

So I hold the people who are still close to me even closer. I love them harder—sometimes to a fault, as you’ll see in my solo show—and I try my best to remain present for the life that is happening in front of me.

That is why seeing System of a Down with my younger daughter meant so much.

She does not know all the pain and sorrow I carry inside some of those songs, and she does not need to know. The music also carries joy, energy and release. That was what the two of us experienced together: jumping, dancing, screaming and laughing in the middle of thousands of people.

Something that once connected me to my brother became something new that I could share with my daughter.

The past was still there. But it was not the only thing there.

My favorite moment in The Lion King takes place toward the end of the story, when Rafiki finds an older Simba.

Simba has been running from his home since he was a cub. His uncle made him believe that he was responsible for his father’s death, and Simba spent years hiding from guilt, shame, and fear.

I can relate. I have done my own share of running.

Simba tells Rafiki that returning home would mean facing his past. Rafiki responds by hitting him on the head with his staff.

When Simba demands to know why he did it, Rafiki says it doesn’t matter because it happened in the past.

Simba points out that it still hurts.

Rafiki does not deny that. He does not tell Simba that the pain is imaginary, that enough time has passed or that he should simply get over it. “The past can hurt,” he says.

Then he tells Simba that he has a choice. He can continue running from the past, or he can learn from it.

That distinction matters to me.

Learning from the past does not mean pretending it was acceptable. It does not mean finding a silver lining in every terrible experience or forgiving everyone who caused harm. It means deciding what we will do with what happened to us.

I created Condemned to a Life from my own experiences: childhood neglect, addiction, brain injury, mental illness, incarceration, motherhood, shame, survival and the complicated love between siblings whose lives took radically different paths.

I did not create the show because I have resolved all of those experiences or discovered the correct lesson hidden inside them. I created it because acting allows me to take experiences that once left me voiceless and turn them into a language I can use to communicate with the world.

Onstage, I can examine the stories I have told about myself. I can embody the people I have loved, feared, blamed and tried to save. Through puppetry, I can even stand beside versions of those people, holding them, speaking through them and, even allowing them to speak back.

That is part of my responsibility as an actress and storyteller: not simply to expose pain, but to transform it into something another person can encounter. Something that might create recognition, conversation, or even connection.

The work does not erase the past. It gives the past somewhere to go.

I also created this show because I want my children to grow up knowing that they have voices. Their voices matter. They can use them to tell the truth about their experiences, to survive adversity and, perhaps, to help someone else feel less alone.

I hope that my daughter will remember our vacation, and how we grew together and maybe strengthened our bond through racing to catch trains, struggling with foreing languages, getting lost in random neighborhoods, eating ice cream, meeting people, splashing in waves, fighting over one more stuffy, and playing endless hand games (some that I taught her from my childhood and others that she taught me).

That is the circle of life, I suppose. We inherit stories, games, wounds, music, and love. We carry them for a while. Then we decide what to pass on, and what to transform before we do.

Now that I’m back in Chicago I am going headlong into rehearsals for Condemned to a Life, which premieres at the de Maat theater at Piper’s Alley on August 13. I am performing three shows in Chicago before bringing the show to New York City as part of the United Solo Fest. If you are able to attend, I hope you can make one of the shows and share it with those you think might be interested. If you would like to support the production, there is still time to make a tax-free donation at Fractured Atlas. For now, I need sleep (part of my circle of staying alive). Lots of work ahead. Cheers.