No Drinking After Rehearsals=Everyone is Suspicious - Steve

It is incredibly hard to exist in the Chicago theater world without being able to drink. In 2011 I found myself on nine months probation for an alcohol related charge. As a stipulation of my probation, I could not set foot in an establishment that served alcohol. Not only did this mean no going out after rehearsals, it also meant that I couldn’t go out after opening. No one knew that I was under this restriction and so no one could understand why I was so stand-offish. In hindsight, it probably would have been better if I had explained what was going on, but I didn’t want to have to bear the shame of my mistake.

In the following years, I have remained sober. And while I can go out to the bar to celebrate blow off steam, it always has a feeling of being hampered and people are suspicious of my not drinking. Not even the why of my not drinking, but my friends feeling like they shouldn’t drink because I’m not drinking. Or that I’m judging them for drinking. It was awkward. Once upon a time I was the first person to ask if anyone wanted to go out after rehearsal. Now I just don’t bring it up and often make up an excuse to go home rather than having to put myself through the awkwardness.

It has been a hard transition for me – not because it was a struggle to resist the temptation of drinking, but there is something essential in the social bonding that happens outside rehearsal – it can help build trust, it is an opportunity to reflect on rehearsal and what is going wrong and what could go better, it is the opportunity to bounce ideas off each other in a no-pressure environment. Sometimes you come up with the answer you missed while struggling in the moment. It’s like an added meeting for script and character analysis.

That’s not to say alcohol is necessary in this equation at all. All this could easily be done over cheese fries or an iced tea, but we are all so accustomed to it being done over a beer or scotch that having to develop a new process seems strange – or more work than it’s worth.

If someone can’t understand the change, it was like when the smoking ordinance was passed in 2006. I fondly remember handing out in the green room the theater after rehearsal and (especially) shows and just relaxing and socializing – and I didn’t even smoke. But all of that ended because the smokers couldn’t smoke inside. In fact, the ban led to many of my friends flat out quitting. But it was the not being able to do it together after the show that had the biggest effect.

And all of this isn’t to say that I haven’t had my own personal struggles with not drinking. There are plenty of other social situations where not-drinking is just bizarre (imagine going to a wedding and not drinking). There are also certain restaurants or specific times of the year where not drinking seems to break all traditions that I had used to create myself identity. Quitting drinking really forced me to take a long hard look at who I was as a person and how I wanted to identify myself. And it is a process that never ends. I did six months of intense out-patient substance abuse therapy as well as years of work with my own personal therapist and still – six years from the date of my arrest – it is an ongoing self-evaluation.

- Steve