“David? Alfred. What the hell am I gonna do?!” The voice on the other end of the phone was immediately recognizable — infused with the flamboyance of James Brown and the sassiness of Little Richard. Alfred was the lead dancer in a musical production I was directing. And he was in a state of sheer panic. Our show was opening the next night, and poor Alfred was having a meltdown of epic proportions. “Let’s be honest here,” he implored, his voice quivering. “We all know I’m really not a dancer. And when I’m out there on that stage tomorrow night, everybody is going to find that out. I’m gonna be exposed as a fraud. An impostor. And in front of the LA Times — The Times!”
Mind you, Alfred possessed all of the attributes of a dancer. He had the body build of a dancer — long, gazelle-like legs and graceful arms. He had the attitude of a dancer — confident and charismatic. He even had the smile of a dancer — brilliant and dazzling, even from thirty rows back.
In fact, there was only thing he didn’t have as a dancer: He couldn’t dance. I’m not saying he was clumsy or awkward; far from it. He could learn basic dance steps, and, to his credit, he looked pretty fabulous doing them. Nevertheless, his confession was accurate — he really was not a dancer. No training. No skill set. Not even much experience.
I tried to calm him down, without betraying my own insecurity. (After all, his performance could reflect poorly on me as well…maybe he wouldn’t be the only one to be exposed as an impostor.) I thought back to his auditions for the show. How could we possibly come to have cast him as a lead dancer? The fact is, he was able to sparkle, shine, and somehow pull the whole thing off. “Alfred,” I began slowly, “I have to confess. You fooled me. And you fooled the choreographer, and the musical director, and the rest of the production team. You fooled all of us. So, you know what? All you have to do now is go out there tomorrow night and fool everyone else.”
Alfred offered a half-hearted thank you, but I could tell I did little to quell his rattled nerves. As I laid in bed that night, tossing and turning, I flashed back to a game of dodge ball when I was five years old. It was the Kindergarteners versus the First Graders…and I was totally out of my league. Every one of my determined throws was successfully — and gleefully — dodged by all of the upper-classmen. They were having a blast; I was absolutely miserable. How could I ever hope to compete with six-year-olds, even in a not-so-friendly game of dodge ball?
My friend, Bernie Nap, who was in the first grade, took me aside. Sensing my discouragement, he put his arm around me and offered some elderly words of solace. “David, it’s okay. Us first graders are good dodgers” — as if to say, “Don’t feel bad about yourself. You’re young. We’re old. You don’t stand a chance in hell.”
Once I reached first grade, of course, it was an entirely different story. I had achieved dodgeball top dog status on the playground. (I even took some pity on the poor kindergarteners, who tried in vain to compete with “us first graders.”) My sense of confidence was short-lived, however, lasting only until I was forced to play against the second graders. Then I reverted back to a state of frustration and futility. And so the cycle continued…
That plague of feeling totally out of my league — and feeling like an impostor — has revisited itself throughout my life, much like a disease that goes into temporary remission and then intermittently crops us, seemingly immune to a permanent cure.
We’ve all experienced similar feelings, whether it’s the first week of classes, starting a new job, dating, parenting, or invariably, the opening night of a show…always living with the gnawing fear that one day, someone will finally spot us for who we really are: “I don’t know how you made it this far. Looks like you were able to fool everybody else. But the jig is up. You don’t fool me!”
I have yet to find a foolproof antidote for this malady. But I did discover that adopting an attitude of “fake it ‘til you make it” was as useful as anything else.
And what happened with Alfred? After our opening night performance, many of us stayed out celebrating all night, awaiting the imminent reviews. I stumbled back to my apartment around six thirty in the morning and spotted a single blinking red light on my primitive telephone answering machine. Who could it be, at this ungodly hour? (Theater people never — and I mean never — wake up at the crack of dawn.) I pressed play, and there was the unmistakable voice: “David? Alfred. I fooled the Times!” (Click.)
And indeed he did. I tore open the morning paper to read a glowing review of our show — and a specific reference to Alfred as an obviously “accomplished dancer.” It spelled triumph and vindication. He faked it, and he made it. Not a bad formula for coping with the impostor syndrome.