The Weird Little Rituals That Hold My Whole World Together

Here's something nobody tells you about performing for a living: the two hours before a show can feel more intense than the show itself.

Not because of nerves, exactly — though those are always there, doing their thing in the background. It's more like there's this window of time where you have to transition from being a regular human person who is worried about parking and forgot to text someone back, into someone who can walk into a spotlight and make a room feel something.

That transition doesn't happen automatically. At least not for me. It requires rituals. Strange, specific, non-negotiable rituals that I've accumulated over years like a very particular kind of collector.

I'm pulling back the curtain on all of it today, and I'm a little embarrassed about some of it, and I genuinely do not care.

The Morning of a Show Is Sacred (and Boring)

On performance days, I am the least fun person to be around before noon.

I wake up early — earlier than I need to — because I've learned that rushing the morning of a show contaminates the whole day. Something about starting behind schedule puts a kind of low-grade anxiety in my system that I can never fully shake by showtime.

So I wake up slow. I make coffee the exact same way every single time: cold brew concentrate over ice, a splash of oat milk, no sweetener. I've tried varying this. It does not go well, psychologically speaking.

Then I sit. Just sit. No phone, no news, no social media. I give myself about twenty minutes of what I've started calling "empty time" — not meditation exactly, more like letting my brain idle before I ask anything of it. My partner thinks this is strange. I think it's the only reason I'm functional.

After that? A walk. Always a walk. Doesn't matter if it's cold, doesn't matter if I'm in an unfamiliar city. There's something about moving through the world on foot, at a pace that isn't rushed, that connects me back to my body in a way nothing else does. I notice things. A weird storefront. A dog doing something goofy. The specific quality of light at 8am in winter versus summer. These small observations feed something in me that performing requires.

The Playlist That Cannot Be Touched

I have a pre-show playlist. It's 47 minutes long. I have not added or removed a single song in almost three years.

I know how that sounds.

But here's the thing — that playlist isn't just music to me anymore. It's a sequence of emotional states. Each song moves me through something specific: the first few are almost meditative, then it builds energy, then there's this one song in the middle that always makes me tear up a little (I won't tell you which one), and then the last stretch is pure momentum. By the time the final track ends, I'm ready. Something in my nervous system recognizes the whole arc and just... prepares.

I tried skipping around in it once during a particularly chaotic tech week. Rookie mistake. Do not recommend.

The Physical Stuff Nobody Glamorizes

Let's talk about the body, because this part is very unglamorous and also completely essential.

I do a vocal warmup that takes about fifteen minutes and sounds absolutely unhinged. Lip trills, sirens, scales, some tongue twisters that I've been doing since a voice coach gave them to me years ago. I do this in whatever space I can find — a bathroom, a green room, a parking garage once. It does not matter. The warmup happens.

I also do this breathing exercise that I picked up from a yoga instructor I saw exactly two sessions with before she moved away. It's a specific rhythm: four counts in, hold for four, out for eight. I do it for about five minutes and it drops my heart rate in a way that feels almost pharmaceutical. On high-anxiety show days, this single practice is the difference between feeling controlled and feeling like I'm white-knuckling my way through.

And then there's the stretching. Not a full yoga session — just a specific sequence of about eight stretches that I do in the same order every time. Hip flexors, shoulders, neck. My body holds tension in very specific places and I've learned exactly where to find it and what to do about it.

The Superstitions I've Mostly Made Peace With

Okay. Fine. Yes, I have superstitions.

I don't say "good luck" to other performers. Everyone in theater knows this — it's bad luck, hence the whole "break a leg" tradition — but I'm weirdly strict about it. Even outside of traditional theater contexts, I just can't bring myself to say it.

I also have a specific order in which I put on costume or performance pieces. Right side before left, always. I have no rational explanation for this. It started during a run of shows that went particularly well and now it's just part of the architecture of my pre-show routine.

And I always, always do a quiet moment alone right before I go on. Even if it's just thirty seconds in the wings. Just me, breathing, reminding myself why I'm doing this — not what I need to execute, but why. The reason always settles something.

Why Any of This Matters

Here's what I've come to understand about rituals: they're not superstition, not really. They're infrastructure.

Performing asks you to be emotionally available, physically present, and mentally sharp all at the same time, on demand, regardless of what's happening in the rest of your life. That's a tall order. The rituals are how I build the conditions for that to be possible.

They're also mine in a way that almost nothing else in this career is. The audience has opinions. The director has notes. The industry has expectations. But my cold brew and my playlist and my breathing exercise and my thirty seconds in the wings — those belong entirely to me.

And honestly? That sense of ownership over something in a career that constantly asks you to give yourself away? That might be the most important thing the rituals actually provide.