Members of New Opera Theatre Ensemble (the opera company I founded in 1988) have been meeting once a week for an hour via Zoom ever since the pandemic arrived. During the hour we spend together online, we often improvise musical etudes. One great byproduct of the pandemic has been reconnecting with this bright brilliant endlessly inventive musical family that I've missed but that now live scattered here and there. Pictured clockwise from upper left: Vicky Pittman (Keene, NH), Mary Ann Lanier (Northampton, MA), Jon Rosenthal (San Francisco, CA), Roland Tec (New York, NY), Merle Perkins (Boston, MA), and Sylvie Stewart (Nashua, NH).
During Pandemic Pause, I've been consciously pushing myself to get out of my comfort zone artistically. What does this mean for Rolando Teco? Well, I've always enjoyed performing to a point but I do suffer from exaggerated stage fright. Sometimes my performance anxiety grabs hold of me mid-morning and doesn't let go until the moment I'm taking that final curtain call at night. It's one of the many reasons I never seriously considered acting or performing music as a career. The nerves (mine, to be exact) might've consumed me.
To a degree, the safety of the barrier that is Zoom by way of my laptop has let me experiment in this arena more than I might be comfortable doing otherwise.
Anyway, when the first email from Gaven Trinidad came in inviting folks to participate in a virtual open mic co-hosted by New York Theatre Workshop and Poetic Theatre, I didn't immediately move on as I might have were it any other year. Let me pause here to observe that just about 6 months before the pandemic hit my friend Yvonne Delet and I had gone to a Moth Slam at Housing Works and I'd put my name in the hat to tell a story. And I was a bundle of nerves. The beer I had did little to calm me. They pull the names out of the hat at random and throughout the evening. When the first name was called that began with an "R" I almost choked from fear. "Don't call my name, please don't call my name" I heard myself whispering.
But then an interesting thing happened.
They called my name. And in that moment when I registered that they'd said "Roland" I was filled with an unexpected emotion.
Joy.
And I got up and told my story and it went well and I was runner up and when I got home, I grabbed a big 5x7 pink index card and scrawled on it in Sharpie:
As nervous
as I was, the moment they called
my name, I was
T H R I L L E D
I keep that close to my writing desk because it reminds me not to disregard, diminish or debase that part of me that craves the spotlight. It's real. And maybe it's become a little too defended for comfort.
So thanks to Gaven and the NYTW open mics during this past year I've been nurturing that part of me and having a blast doing it.
So yesterday, they moved the open mic off of Zoom and plopped it right down on E. 4th Street in front of LaMama and across the street from NYTW and I said yes and I showed up.
And I sang. And I was improvising. And naturally, as happens with improv, there were ideas I began and did not complete, there were moments of awkward uncertainty and there were a few moments of shared joy between me and the musicians and the audience seated at small tables on E. 4th Street.
Bottom line, they ain't seen the last of me. I think I may do this again.
