“I was quite appropriate as a child. I didn’t let my mother down. I could be very good. But I also wanted to experience things… I can be led astray. I find it tempting, enticing, and I’m pretty much up for anything… [but] the guilt, if I do something, weighs me down… Some people can live the other way. They have some sort of latch that locks the stuff in. I don’t.”
-Nicole Kidman, actor

"I can resist everything except temptation."
-Oscar Wilde, playwright

Let’s pretend that you are an actor and you are auditioning for the role of Juliet in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. (If you are not a woman, you can feel free to switch the pronouns and characters around in your head as you read through this.)

You sit in the audition waiting room with your nerves running high because you really want this part. You are feeling jumpy; you watch the heel of your foot as it taps out a frantic silent rhythm.

Finally, it is your turn. You walk into the room. You introduce yourself by saying—"slating"—your name and introducing the piece you will be performing, which is from your favorite Shakespearean play, Twelfth Night.

You feel like you are walking a tightrope in front of the panel of judges as you bare your soul using Shakespeare’s melodic phrases. You breathe, you focus, and you let yourself really embrace the artistry and emotional courage it takes to perform in front of people who are there to judge your work. You nail the audition and leave on a high. You are filled with well-deserved pride: You just successfully braved the storm of your own nerves and were able to actually show what you can do.

You are burning to know whether or not you got the big part. You wait for days for a response, not sure whether you should remain hopeful or just move on with your life. And then, a week later, when you are just about to give up on your visions of being in this play, you get an email with the sizzling subject line, "Casting: Juliet".

You read the email and discover that the coveted role is yours! The stage manager emails you the rehearsal and performance schedule, and you see that the next 4 weeks of your life will busy, with a total of 80 hours of rehearsal, scheduled from 6-10 pm every weekday evening.

Then, during the 2 weeks after that, you will spend a total of 32 more hours at the theatre for performances, which are scheduled for Friday evening, Saturday afternoon and evening, and Sunday afternoon over the course of 2 weekends. By the way, in this scenario, I am giving you a lighter weight, community-theatre-type schedule. If you were on Broadway, your time spent performing the show could be more like several months to a year, 8 performances a week, 6 days a week.

So, to tally it all up, in this community theatre production of Romeo and Juliet, you will spend 112 hours over the course of 6 weeks pretending to be Juliet falling in love with Romeo.

And that’s not counting all the hours spent on your own, memorizing lines. Let’s say it takes you 20 hours to memorize your lines. That means that at this point in our calculations, your total time spent pretending to be Juliet falling in love with Romeo is now up to 132 hours, or exactly 5 ½ full days’ worth of time.

Let’s not give ourselves a completely safe situation, and let’s say that you happen to be mildly attracted to the guy who has been cast as Romeo, an experienced actor named Peter. You know, you might not have an eye that wanders to him across the room right away, but he seems friendly and sincere and really dedicated to what he is doing. You can see why the director wanted to work with him and decided to hire him. He makes a good leading man, the kind of person that an audience will buy into as the love interest.

Now imagine that you are also a Christian and that God’s love for you prompts you to want to love and honor him with your entire life. Also, imagine that you believe the Bible to be God’s words, and you see in the Bible that to love God is to obey him,[1] that sex is only meant to be between a husband and wife,[2] and that to even look at another person lustfully is to commit adultery with them in your heart.[3]

Also, let’s give you a family at home. Let’s say in this scenario that you are married to a man named Kyle, who works as a lawyer, and that you have two children with your husband, a little girl named Madeline and a little boy named Jeremy. Why am I making up names for your fake family? To highlight the point that the stories our lives are telling affect real people, people who are valuable. In actor terms, the stakes are high.

If you were single, God’s laws about keeping sex within marriage—mentally, emotionally, and physically—would still apply, of course. But for the purposes of this scenario, we are giving you a family, just to drive home the point.

To flesh out the picture, let’s throw in the added element of your "real" husband Kyle’s lack of interest in the theatre. He is a busy and effective lawyer, and he provides the stability that your free-spirited creative personality needs. But it is rare that the two of you really "get" each other when it comes to your deep-seated artistic passions.

Back to Romeo and Juliet: You are a couple of weeks into rehearsal now, and up to this point, you and your fellow leading actor, Peter, have worked well together. You both have experience in, and passion for, the theatre and how it speaks to people. You have developed an unspoken trust in each other as acting partners. You each have no doubt that the other actor will be on stage on time, ready to go, investing 110%, and always focused on getting the job done. In summary, you are both serious, intelligent actors with a shared passion for this art form, and you work well as a team.

What you like best about working with Peter is that you really seem to "get" each other. You have started to think of each other as friends, and you have a mutual respect for each other’s talent. However, as rehearsals have gone on, you have started to become a bit cautious. You notice that the way you and Peter interact with each other, while pretty typical in theatre, could possibly be seen as just a little flirty. You aren’t sure if that’s true, but it could be. You wonder, "If Kyle were here, would I act differently?" As you are mulling these things over, you take a glance at the production schedule and see that this evening’s rehearsal happens to be the first one in which you and Peter will be practicing a stage kiss.

That evening, you head to theatre, your mind starting to buzz. Rehearsal begins, and when you check the schedule again, you see that Act 1, Scene 5, the kissing scene, is scheduled as the last scene to be worked on for the night.

For the first three hours of rehearsal, you find your mind wandering to the end of rehearsal, wondering how this will go. You are kind of looking forward to finding out, but repeatedly jump in on your own thoughts to quote West Side Story and tell yourself to "be cool", "stay loose".[4] You are a professional, and you are determined to act like one. You will remain casual about the requirements of the play.

At around 9 pm, the director gets to Act 1, Scene 5. The other actors are let go, and just you and Peter remain on stage. Your director, Randall, says that, as this is Shakespeare’s finest love story, he wants to convey the passion of these two lovers and he really wants the audience to believe the immediate chemistry between the two of you. Randall is the kind of director who likes to give you his vision, and then step back to let your instincts take over. Instead of micromanaging, he wants the process to happen "organically."

He gives the two of you one final direction before you start the scene: "Just look into each other’s eyes and go with whatever impulse you have. Just make it ’truthful’: I really want this scene to come across as genuine, intimate, and raw. That will get the audience’s buy-in, get them really believing in and rooting for this couple."

You respond with, "Absolutely," wanting to show your director that you are on board and serious about the task ahead. Randall then steps back to give you and Peter room on stage to try out the scene.

You take a moment to focus, remembering all of the things you learned in acting class, making sure to imaginatively place yourself within the environment of the scene. You picture the colorful chaos of the Capulet’s feast. You can smell a hint of wine in the air, and hear the laughter of the party guests. And you allow yourself to feel the rush of new attraction as you see Romeo—whose face happens to look like Peter’s—for the first time.

The words you have been memorizing so diligently are now "trippingly on the tongue", as Shakespeare put it.[5] They no longer sound like lines you are trying to recall; they have become your own words, being said now, as if for the first time. You experience them with all of your senses as you say them. You are on fire and so excited about the part you are playing and the story you are telling. The scene is going well. And then it comes time for the kiss.

You hear Peter saying Romeo’s words, and saying them as if he means them, directly to you, err, to Juliet:

My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.[6]

You remember that the director wanted you to look into each other’s eyes, and so you do. You realize that, to this point, you have never really looked this guy in the face. You also realize that you are now standing so close to Peter that you are picking up the smell of his laundry detergent. And there is something so vulnerable and connective about eye contact. You want to look away because you can feel the crazy eye contact power, but, since you are a serious actor dedicated to this important scene, you instead push yourself even more into the zone and focus intently on being "in character".

As capable actors, you and Peter aren’t just saying the lines to each other; you are reacting off of one another. He says a line tenderly, and you allow yourself—no, Juliet, the character allows herself, or is it you? —to melt a little more. You can’t stop looking into Peter’s—no, Romeo’s—eyes. "This is great!" you think to yourself. "We are really playing this scene! Romeo and Juliet have great chemistry! We are selling it, just like we were asked to. I love working with capable actors like this! It is such a thrill."

You get to the kiss, and you stay in character as you are supposed to, reacting to your scene partner as you were taught in acting class. You let him (Peter? Romeo?) kiss you (Juliet?). The director stops you after the couple’s second kiss. He looks like he is on the verge of tears, remembering why he loves the theatre. "That was exactly what I was looking for," he says quietly and reverently. "I don’t think we need to run it again."

You are bursting with pride at how powerfully you and Peter must have just played this beautiful scene, to have so visibly affected your director. You also feel a flash of disappointment that the moment is over so abruptly, that you will not be running the scene again tonight, but you quickly stifle this reaction. "Control yourself," you tell your inner teenager. "That was just acting. It didn’t mean anything."

You drive home filled with emotions, chief among which are excitement and uneasiness, which seem to be in some sort of argument with each other inside your head. You get home and Kyle, who just put both kids to bed and did the dishes, wearily asks how your day was. Although the two of you are usually living in two different mental spaces, you want to share the excitement of such an emotionally intense rehearsal with your husband, to bond in celebration over the professional-level work you just did.

You tell Kyle about the acting choices you made, and how it is so nice to have someone to play against who is as serious about making the show great as you are. But Kyle’s had a stressful day and while he truly wants to listen to you and share in your joy, he only has the energy to respond with a tired, "I’m glad it went well." He shoots you a weary smile, gives you a quick kiss, and tells you he is heading to bed.

For your part, your mind and heart are so full of new sensations and experiences to process from rehearsal that you aren’t tired at all. You are going to need some time to unwind. Also, you are confused about the excitement you felt tonight at rehearsal around Peter. Were you excited that the scene was successful, or should you be worried that these emotions mean something more? You really aren’t sure.

There is something inexplicable about performing well with another actor, the sparks that ignite when you are working together to create drama, to breathe flesh-and-blood life into a story. And Peter seems so easy to talk to, and to really see the world of theatre the way you do.

You crave clarity, but feel confused.

[1] John 14:15

[2] Heb. 13:4, 1 Cor. 7:1-3

[3] Matt. 5:27-28

[4] Leonard Bernstein, West Side Story, Jim Bryant, recorded 1961, Sony Masterworks, 1992, compact disc.

[5] Hamlet, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), 3.2.2.

[6] Romeo and Juliet, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), 1.5.92-93.