Monday, November 29, 2004

dichotomous struggle

I'm not a doctor. . . Or a fireman. . . I work in the theatre. . .
Which is not to say that my work is unimportant. . . But it is not life threatening. . .It is not more important than spending time with my family. . .

~found this in somebody's blog. I like it. it resonates for me.

I had a dramatically theatre-filled day:

  • I woke up to about 20 Jewish women in my living room courtesy of my mother, which is more than enough DRAMA, let me tell you.
  • I went out for lunch with Dave and Natalia (both from the theatre)
  • I missed Ruddigore rehearsal - causing great drama amongst the cast :-)
  • But I missed it to do some lighting tech for a local community theatre - they were doing Shrek 2 - how cute!
  • This evening, I applied for a position at Factory Theatre - this is very exciting for me! We'll see where it goes!
Anyways, yes we all know how much I love theatre. The thing that I struggle with a lot is that as much as I want to go to rabbinical school and become a rabbi, there is a huge part of me that wants to make theatre my profession. I'm so torn. I know that I can do community theatre even if I become a rabbi, but I don't know how fulfilling that would be.

I can envision myself as a rabbi and I worry that I'll lose all touch with theatre (aside from watching it). But then I envision myself as an actor/director/designer and worry that I'd be straying away from something that I've wanted to be since I was eight.

So there's the dichotomous struggle. I like that phrase - I used it in an essay last week. I also used the word "expunge," and that really impressed my prof!

Any suggestions? And please don't tell me I can do both, because it's really not feasible. And I'm not asking for people to tell me who or what to be, I'm just at a loss and I have been for a few years. Help?

4 comments:

Jesse said...

the scary thing is I kind of do need to decide now - I'll be applying to HUC next spring... the horse is starting to catch up with the cart.

Anonymous said...

No, you can't do both. But you do have the power to be happy with what you choose. All I can tell you is to try your hardest to be happy with whatever you choose, and to extract from it it's full potential.

Knowing you, I know you will make whatever right decision YOU think is the right one, and you will be amazing at it.

Jesse said...

thanks! too bad there's not a real existential detective agency as in I heart Huckabees. Which is now quickly rising on my "fabulous-things-about-life-o-metre"

Anonymous said...

Obviously this is a very big dilemma for you.. as it would be to anyone. All I want to say is.. yes, you've wanted to be a rabbi since you were 8.. but you do have great talent as a designer/actor, and soon to be director. Why not try the "impossible" (as most would say), and pursue the theater dream... if it happens to fall through, then you'll know it wasn't for you... and you always have rabbinical school to fall back on.