I Am What I Am — and I’m Still Becoming
I turned 61 on September 6. I’m not entirely certain how that happened.
I am a 61-year-old man who plays with puppets, puts on costumes, pretends to be other people, and occasionally convinces groups of otherwise sensible adults to do the same thing.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I’m also quickly approaching the first anniversary of my retirement after 25 years at The PAC. My life today looks very different from the one I imagined a year ago. Some changes were planned. Some weren’t.
I’m also living on my own now. Allison and I are in the process of ending our marriage, amicably and with enormous affection after many years together. Life is complicated that way. Relationships change. Families change. We change.
And just because love changes doesn’t mean it simply disappears.
God love her, Allison has even been helping me run lines for the character I’m playing right now.
Which brings me to La Cage aux Folles.
This month, I’m appearing as Albin and as his considerably more glamorous alter ego, Zaza, in Pandora Productions’ La Cage aux Folles.
If you know the musical, you probably know its great anthem:
“I Am What I Am.”
Pandora recently used that song as part of its Give for Good campaign and asked members of the company to record ourselves performing a little of it in whatever way seemed most authentically us.
So naturally I sang it with a puppet. A puppet of myself.
Because apparently at 61 I have stopped pretending to be a grown-up.
Actually, perhaps I’ve finally figured out that I don’t have to.
That’s one of the things I love about Albin.
Albin has built a life with Georges, the man he loves. Together, they have raised Georges’ biological son, Jean-Michel. Albin has loved this boy and helped raise him as his own.
The three of them are a family.
Then Jean-Michel announces that he is getting married. His fiancée comes from an extremely conservative family, and Jean-Michel suddenly fears his family won’t measure up.
More specifically, he’s afraid of Albin. So he asks him to disappear.
It’s easy to look at La Cage aux Folles and see the feathers, sequins, drag, dancing, and outrageous comedy.
But underneath all of that is something achingly ordinary. A child is embarrassed by his parents.
Well, who hasn’t been there?
And a parent who has loved that child desperately suddenly discovers that the child he helped raise is ashamed of him.
Who among us hasn’t wondered, at one time or another:
If people really knew everything about me, would they still want me?
That question reaches far beyond this outrageous farce.
I think it’s something most of us carry around. I certainly do.
I’m a 61-year-old retired theatre maker who apparently isn’t particularly good at being retired.
I play with puppets. I act. I direct. I write.
I gather people in rooms and ask them to pretend to be people they’re not because somehow, in that pretending, we occasionally discover something true about who we are.
And then we invite a bunch of strangers to sit together in the dark and watch.
For a couple of hours, we ask them to leave their own lives behind and enter somebody else’s.
To laugh at someone they might never have met.
To worry about someone they might never have understood.
Maybe even to recognize themselves in someone they had assumed was completely different from them.
Theatre reminds us that the distance between “us” and “them” is usually much smaller than we’ve been led to believe.
We live in a moment when we’re constantly being told how divided we are. We are sorted into categories, camps, generations, religions, political persuasions, neighborhoods, identities, and demographics. Entire industries seem to be dependent upon convincing us that the person on the other side of some imaginary line is fundamentally unlike us.
Then along comes Albin. Flamboyant. Emotional. Funny. Temperamental. Loving.
A drag performer who just wants his family to love him.
Suddenly all those labels don’t seem quite as useful.
Because beneath them is someone asking for exactly what almost everyone I know wants:
See me. Know me. Love me anyway.
Maybe that’s what “I Am What I Am” means to me at 61.
Not: I’ve got myself completely figured out.
Good Lord, no.
I’m beginning to suspect that never happens.
Maybe it means:
This is the person standing in front of you today.
With all the history.
All the mistakes.
All the changes.
All the ridiculous puppets.
All the people I’ve loved.
All the things I’ve lost.
All the things I’ve yet to discover.
I am what I am.
And I’m still becoming.
So are you.
And maybe we could all spend a little less time demanding that other people become something more comfortable for us.
Hold the people you love tight.
Look for something familiar in someone who seems unfamiliar.
Find the thing you share with the person you’ve been encouraged to believe is completely unlike you.
Because I suspect there’s far more holding us together than tearing us apart.
That’s certainly what I’ve found in the theatre.
And it’s what I hope you’ll find in La Cage aux Folles.
Pandora Productions’ La Cage aux Folles runs September 18 through October 4 at the Henry Clay Theatre in Louisville “click ‘Read More’ in the link below to see which performances feature Troy Bell and which feature me.”.
Come see us.
Come laugh with us.
Come meet Albin and Georges and Jean-Michel and this wonderfully imperfect family.
You may discover that they’re not nearly as different from yours as you thought.
As for me?
I’ll be there. Sixty-one years old. Playing pretend. Still figuring out who I am.
And oh, so very grateful that I get to share Albin/Zaza with you.
