My City Was Gone
- lisa Stathoplos
- Mar 8, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Mar 7
My City Was Gone
My city….. is gone.
I visit. I see ghosts. Streets I walk don’t match the vision in my mind’s eye. Broad vistas blocked by new, modern, and often aesthetically unappealing structures — buildings in which I strutted and fretted have disappeared or become unrecognizable — housing a cyber start-up or yet another craft beer pub. Some stand forlorn, empty.
I’m forlorn, empty. The people I knew, worked with, played with, gone. I’m displaced, lonely, longing for someone, something, familiar. I call out. No echo finds its way back. Lost in time. Lost to time. Lost to the place that once was “mine.”
It’s like the end of that movie about seeing dead people. I don’t belong here anymore.
I’m the one who’s gone.
The ghost is me.
How do you reconcile loss without ownership? How can I claim a thing that was never really “mine”?
Oh, the city is still there, but the place, as an actor, I’ve called “home” for more than forty years is not. I’m an outsider looking in. Certainly the critics, directors, writers and handful of actors with mutual respect for each other who had my back back in the day, who knew and appreciated my work and worth, are gone. They seem gone anyway. How do I know? I can’t get a job. Well, not in this city. There’s a twisted irony; it would take a book to explain and it almost makes me laugh. But, long into my seventh decade, it’s much more likely to make me cry.
Did I trust someone I shouldn’t have with a private truth? Are there false rumors? Is it pettiness? Forfeiting of forgiveness? Am I, Goddesses forbid, deemed “difficult?”
If I hear from the twisting twisted “grapevine” that someone, particularly a woman, is “difficult”, I’m intrigued. “Difficult” women are likely interesting, talented, and have rare qualities: authenticity, passion, honesty. Things I revere.
I run into audience members and critics occasionally. Some remember me, miss my work. I feel momentarily affirmed.
Oh, hey, look! That brick and stucco building just there, hidden behind that looming and ugly new hotel? Thirty seven years ago a ragtag crew of New York and Maine actors, along with our visionary director, launched an upstart theatre company in that black box space and took this city by storm. Oh, see that ancient little church on the corner of State and Brackett? Fresh out of college, my first professional gig was with another group of New York actors who landed in Maine and decided they couldn't leave. They pulled me into their fold. We staged everything from Shakespeare to Mamet to Durang in that intimate church's inner sanctum.
Ah, dammit. See now, I’m reminiscing.
There are two things I hate talking about: one is acting. The other is acting. Okay. The other is Celiac disease. But, actors on acting put me to sleep.
I’ll get back to “my city” in a minute; I’m gonna let “Celiac disease” hang in the air.
Actors on acting. Ugh. I don’t want to talk about “my process” or “my career’ — which is long and lucky — I’d rather chat about what you like to do with your spare time or whether we should go for a bike ride or sledding. Unified Field Theory! Krishnamurti’s Think On These Things. If, to a fruit fly, one day is like ninety years.
When talk show hosts have celebrities on, I’d like to hear about their personal adventures and lives outside the world of the stage or cinema but, invariably, they wax breathless on their latest project and how incredible it was (fill in the amazing or horrifying here) to work with so-and-so. Bored, I saunter into the kitchen and blithely fill the dish sink whilst longing for someone inspiring. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Marie Curie — that cute kid with the glasses philosophizing on the internet.
I’ve trained as an actor since I was seventeen, had a vibrant career, defined success my own way. I never kept up with the latest from Broadway, films, awards — though I have garnered a few. Scripts intimidated me — often still do!
At Theatre school I was in thrall to my fellow Theatre majors who seemed tuned in to all things “acting.” I was just plain clueless. And awkward. It’s not that I didn’t care — well, unless it was. Deep down. Maybe I saw the perplexing conundrum from the start: you spend years training, developing skills to help you authentically play someone who is not you, and lose the time, opportunity, and experience of just being in the world — living life, meeting a wide variety of people, doing a cornucopia of jobs, traveling, having a life outside the theater. Where would I draw from if not all that?
And yet, I diligently studied the greats, the craft, but had a whole other life — a second professional career as well.
And, auditioning is terrifying, wrenching. Humiliating — especially long into a successful career. Nevertheless, and, as much as scripts often bewilder me, if you throw some words on a page at me, explain to me who the character is, well, sure, okay, I’ll take a whack at it. I'll summon something. Something authentic. Hopefully, compelling. Real.
I adore "cold reads" — pressure’s off then. Given a part and assuming the director has vision — a big ask; it’s a singular gift — the work will be both challenging and rewarding.
And that’s when I dig in like a mad dog. I take "the work" pretty seriously. Homework, research, script analysis, questions, questions, questions, will be my mantra until show Closing. For example: I spent two years studying every book and shred of film on Maria Callas before ever setting foot into a rehearsal for McNally’s Master Class. Oh, yeah, and I was terrified.
Once the final curtain drops, though, all is gone like the wind. I’ll remember zero lines and very little of the experience — except if it felt successful and collaborative. My love of theatre work is largely because of its ensemble nature. Ensemble has been my driver, my aim, for all these years. The star system leaves me cold. Plus, it’s stupid. The craft of making a whole world come to life means lots of players doing their parts — both in front of audience and behind the scenes. I appreciate all involved.
It’s a weird art form; you can’t really do it alone.
Back to “my city.” It never really was my city, though I worked routinely within its perimeter, formed critically acclaimed companies in it. Now, I have no place in its theatrical world; I am invisible, not wanted, not an “it” property anymore. It’s hard to believe. I never took for granted that I’d get work, but I always did get work. It’s difficult to have spent an entire adult life studying, training, working, and teaching in a field only to realize you're not “in the club” anymore.
Well, let’s face it, I was never in the club. My life was separate and I kept it that way. I lived elsewhere. I had children, a husband who fished out of a cove far from the city, another career, another life.
Aging guarantees losses in spades. The pile grows high. Loss to death, divorce, loss of friends, lovers, students, work life, loss of purpose, meaning, connection. Each new loss tossed into our burgeoning rucksack of memory pushes us to busting. We lurch about lugging oh so precious, invisible, cargo.
I didn’t know what I “wanted to be when I grew up.” College was a mandate my parents instilled in me when I was very young. When I finally arrived at university, uncomfortable in my body and searching blindly in my soul, longing for love and acceptance outside my stable home, the only thing I knew to do was act. “Act’ as in the theatre — the stage — the one place I could hide problematic “me” inside someone else’s skin. I quickly discovered I have some skin in this game. I can be pretty good at it. Everywhere I went, from Maine to Boston to Berlin, casting directors, critics, audiences, noticed.
Like I said, I’ve been lucky.
And now I’m talking about acting. Ugh.
But, I did think it would last.
Such an unwelcome surprise, my own ghost, preceding my death, haunting me. Reminding me of all that is no more. Making me miss the city I thought would always be “mine.”
My City Was Gone, The Pretenders
Copyright © 2025 lisa stathoplos Slay Me, My Hapless Darlings
