蘇珊娜·施奈德/Suannen Schneider
Seventeen years ago there were thirty of us, all aged around 20, and dreaming of a really great career in the theatre. We had good reason for dreaming. After all we had been chosen from hundreds of candidates and accepted for the Salzburg Mozarteum's three drama classes. That meant something, so we felt talented and important.
We probably all were talented, to a greater or lesser degree, and inexperienced too—in love with acting and convinced that our ability would bring us to the great theatres of this world. We wanted to serve great art, and great art deserved us. That is how we thought then.
Everyday reality looked rather different. The first lesson we had to learn was that drama students kiss and hug always and everywhere. The great figures showed us how. We fell in love with all and sundry, and smoked whatever was offered to us. A year later, when new pupils turned up, we proudly presented ourselves as advanced drama students.
Instead of declaiming Schiller and Shakespeare on stage we first had to learn our craft. Fencing, tap-dancing, singing. Throwing and catching imaginary balls. Recognizing, with closed eyes, fellow students by their hands. What all that had to do with great art only became apparent to us very slowly. We wanted to be on stage. When we were at long, long last allowed to walk the boards, we quickly understood that a dark stage could be the loneliest place in the world.
It is not at all easy for outsiders to comprehend what is supposedly so difficult about learning a few sentences by heart and then presenting them. Of course there is stage fright, but what else? The most complex thing of all is simply walking across the stage. One never quite gets that right. A person crossing a stage is not simply someone walking, but a person acting a part. But what part? That is the problem.
The initial euphoria soon gave way to sobriety. Anyone honest with him—or herself could already ascertain whether he merely believed in the immensity of his talent or whether he really possessed it. It was not difficult to see in oneself and in others who was burning with passion for acting and who only had a flickering talent—because for three years one was preoccupied with nothing but oneself, with one's feelings, voice, body, and the inner barriers which some could surmount and others not. But it was easy to deceive oneself to begin with since for a while passion can be a good substitute for lack of talent.