The Golden Handcuffs
“I’ve acted out my life on stages with ten thousand people watching. But we’re alone now, and I’m singing this song to you.”
Performing eight shows a week is no joke.
When I was in Chicago doing theatre regionally, performing eight shows a week had it’s challenges. But I never found myself unable to manage it. I never felt burned out. I was always excited to go to work; and “work” never felt like work. In Chicago, actors usually move from show to show. Having that variety in the work was exciting to me. I was always fulfilled and excited to start a new project with new people every few months.
When I got to The Lion King, I realized that doing eight shows a week in a show as physical as The Lion King, on an open ended run, was a mix of positives and negatives. On one hand, here I am doing this amazing role, in this amazing show, telling this amazing story for 1,700 people each show. On the other hand, my knees hurt so bad I could barely take the stairs to the subway, my voice was doing crazy things, I was newly married in a new city and I never had time to hang out with anyone or make new friends. And I was exhausted.
As much as I loved performing in The Lion King, for the first time in my career I started to feel burned out, overwhelmed, tired, unfulfilled and stressed out. Isn’t that just crazy? To finally book the job of your dreams and to realize that it isn’t fulfilling you in the way you expected. Don’t get me wrong, I am now fulfilled by The Lion King and my role there, but it took work to get myself there. I wanted my job to feel fun again.
In order to achieve satisfaction from my stage work, I had to dig deep and understand where the dissatisfaction came from. I was in pain, so I addressed that issue first. I went to physical therapy and pilates and I got stronger. I booked a recurring foot massage appointment every Friday and that helped relieved building tension before the five show weekend. I found an amazing vocal teacher and addressed my vocal injuries. I started to feel more confident on stage and started believing in myself. All of these things worked toward feeling satisfaction from the work I was doing on stage, which led to me feeling satisfied overall in my life as a performer. I talk candidly about my experience with burnout in this video.
If you ever find yourself stressed out from your work, take a step back and figure out why. For me, it was a mix of needing more strength to keep injuries at bay, but also more confidence to feel satisfied that my work was good enough. If my work was good enough, then by association I had to believe that I was good enough. Once I fought those demons of self doubt, I was really able to enjoy my work. And that is an incredible blessing.
Cheers
Adrienne