Disclaimer: I do not own the character Neil Perry from the Dead Poets Society.
Summary: Neil Perry cannot understand the concept of stage fright.
Stage Fright
Neil Perry cannot understand the concept of stage fright. To be uncomfortable in the spotlight, to wait in the wings with choking apprehension… he knows nothing of this. The other actors in the play complain of it, but it's as foreign to him as another language; they may as well be speaking Greek. The stage feels perfectly natural to him. It's the only place that does.
Are they afraid of forgetting their lines? Neil isn't. He's forgotten his lines once, one single time in an early rehearsal, and he covered it so well that the director didn't notice. Later he confessed, and the man patted him on the back and said that Shakespeare himself wouldn't have realized. Neil doesn't drop his lines- he never falters at all. He never misses a beat.
Fear of the stage? But on the stage, he is at home. You can never be afraid in your own home. He's afraid at his house, of course… but it's not the same thing. Often he wonders if he might have the opposite of stage fright; life fright, or something like that. The stage is untouched. The stage makes sense. It is his escape, and nothing can frighten him there. Anything can frighten him elsewhere.
It's the choreography of everyday life that he can't stand. On the stage, there seems to be a purpose for everything- the audience sees everything it needs to. But in life, so much of it is pointless. Maybe it's all pointless. A routine of commonness, a dance of endless, meaningless shit. Nothing can change that. And no one understands.
On stage, there is forgiveness. Purity. It is not him, but his character. There is an ultimate freedom. Who could be afraid of freedom?
As opposed to life. With traps and scares and snags every five steps you take. That's what he can't handle. That's what he hides from. The pain and the agony and the loneliness… the threads of life. But he folds them away, manages them by expelling them all on the stage, where it is not him, but a mask, and he can bear his pain and cry and scream and no one calls him a child. He needs his escape.
Neil Perry cannot understand the concept of stage fright. It is the real world that frightens him.