With a word backstage

When the audience becomes silent

You could hear the sound of the safety pin

holding together your costume

Drop

Curtain

Applause resounds and lights search

for the actor who will set

The entire play into constant motion

Combustible verbalizations catch fire stage right

stage left

We stand waiting

waiting to create

to express or inform

Truely, it makes no difference to us because

we are actors

We tend to seperate

whoever we once were

and become who we are meant to be

As demanded by the director

We are vehicles intending to portray

the human condition, as written on a page

Someone once questioned

"To be or not to be"

Actors are not given the great choice

for we must be

Picking apart skin from flesh

tearing at our souls

Searching for emotion in the void of a stage

tossing every tragedy we have ever read about

every sleepless night

every moment we were bullied or lied to or heartbroken

Like salad in our souls

We feel every bit of it run together

Tasting blood, we begin

Crafting stories and teaching others how to feel

Because we show them how

which is perhaps the most important job in the world

Empathy is the very core of the art

for we must show the masses

How to dance