If you’ve ever had a big show—a school musical, concert, or even a football game—you’ve probably suffered from the devastating phenomenon of post-show depression. As an actor and dancer, I’m particularly familiar with it myself. Many times, I feel the exciting build up to a big performance—the hours and hours of dedicated practice, inside jokes in rehearsals, the first costume try-on, and the amazing feeling of performing on stage—and then it all falls apart. Unfortunately, this letdown is inevitable; you prepare for days, weeks, even months, alway knowing your big event will be over in only a couple of days. The last show, game, race, class, project, laugh —it’s always the most painful. Hopefully, I can provide some helpful tips that I’ve learned from my experience.
Tip one: Reframe your perspective The minute you commit to participating in a big event, you need to also accept the inevitability of it ending one day. While you shouldn’t spend the entire rehearsal process in preemptive post-show sadness, you can prepare by reminding yourself that all good things must come to an end. The twinge of sadness you feel creeping up on you is healthy; grief is a representation of love, and even just a touch of postshow sadness exposes deeply-rooted passion among you and your ensemble. So, as you approach the end of a show, your high school career, or another era in your life, interpret sadness as a testament to how much you enjoyed that moment in time and how worthwhile it was.
Tip two: Take lots of pictures Your early-onset post-show sadness can help you feel the urge to preserve memories in your last shows. The best way to do that is through photos. I, for one, love finding and going through old photographs, creating a nostalgia-triggering sensation of being transported back to a specific time period. While backstage, take photos with everyone and everything. Make sure you get all of the cast, crew, and team photos, and preserve them in an album.
Tip three: The show must go on! While the main event may have come to an end, the friendships you make with your ensemble, teammates, or classmates, will last forever; the connections and memories you made will allow the show to go on. So, keep that team group chat alive. Be a screenager in a good way. Even though an undead group chat from a show that ended months ago can be a little annoying, it preserves relationships and fun.
Make a continual effort to engage with your former castmates, teammates, or classmates. If you’re having trouble letting go, wallow in your sadness with your friends—channel your despair into happiness. Reminisce over your good times together and keep alive the things which brought you the greatest joy during a time in your life. In that way, that show just keeps going on.
You don’t have to be an actor or a performer to experience post “large-and-special communal activity or event” letdown. Theater, sports, a big competition—life is full of post-show sadness! And while like all great things, this column must too come to an end, I hope I have given you some helpful tips to help combat the somber feeling after a show. Above all, don’t worry. You’ll be back on stage, back on the field and back in your next act of life!
