Acting is not about self betterment. It is not about standing in a drafty hall in front of your friends and peers making silly jokes. It is not, even, about entertainment. This is what acting is, but what acting is about, truly about, is escape. An actor lives for that one moment, that one special, immaterial second as the spark of nerves, fear and adrenaline feeds to fires of performance. That one special moment where you cease to be Conor Dwyer, useless wandering ex-student and become something more. Something else, and you loose yourself in the sweet oblivion of the stage, that loving vacuum where simple concerns matter no more as you loose yourself in the nowhere of here and now.

And then the curtain falls and it is over and you go back to trodding through your boring, mundane life, drifting idly from day to day, feeling as useless as a discarded hammer, waiting for that joyous moment to come around again when you can throw yourself into the sweet, uncaring embrace of the stage..