Micah Stock on Riding the ‘Demon See-Saw’ That Is an Acting Career

The following Career Dispatch essay was written by Micah Stock, a Tony nominee who has series regular roles on Netflix’s “Bonding” and Disney+’s “The Right Stuff.”

You’re lying if you haven’t at least once looked yourself up on a Broadway message board. I know Buddhists who’ve done it!  At this very moment, I’m resisting the urge to check in after a few years of not being onstage. Am I still a “poor man’s Jim Parsons,” a title bestowed upon me by someone with a username like BitchyBwayBaby99? Moreover, has the title bestowed upon me by me of “Mark Duplass with strep throat” managed to eke its way into the collective conscious yet?

I share this ego-compromising information because it reminds me of this: An actor once wrote a think piece in the Times about the “demon see-saw” that is the career of an actor—a dangerous, addictive pendulum of regret, excitement, ups, downs, tests, and quests, and about the ongoing sense of crisis it rains down upon all those who choose the path.

So I’ll be the first to say it: This past year SUCKED ASS for a lot of reasons. That see-saw fucking BROKE. (Not to mention the world, but I’ll let someone else write about that in the pages of a different publication.)

I know I’m not the only one who sometimes feels like they fell asleep on the couch last March and woke up 12 months later surrounded by abandoned sourdough starters and multiple tabs open on their computer about homesteading; but somewhere during that waking year-long nap, I know I marched for Black, Trans, and Asian lives; and in the case of the demon see-saw, livelihoods.

I was supposed to write about how I stayed creative this year. I didn’t. The see-saw was molotov-cocktailed. But in that long waking nap, a lot shifted. Because we couldn’t scream about injustices in a theater, we screamed about them on the streets.

If we’re gonna rebuild the see-saw, let’s make a new one, a better one. A more equitable see-saw. If we can’t have full-on Democratic Socialism (and make no mistake, that’s what “Mark Duplass with strep throat” wants—and I’d be willing to bet Mark Duplass wants that, too) at least make the pendulum accessible. When large groups of people make demands, it is because they must, because they are suffering. So when We See You White American Theater wrote their list of demands and the Broadway League did and continues to flat out ignore them, it is an oppressive act unto itself.

The see-saw’s coming back, but some people weren’t even allowed on the playground. I didn’t do anything creative this year, because I haven’t see-sawed in a really long time, but when I do, I’m gonna scream really loud until all the kids in the neighborhood can pile on and it’s not a see-saw anymore; it’s a fucking beautiful bench we all sit on and tell stories together.

I’m now self-conscious about the extended see-saw metaphor, but it’s the most creative I’ve been in a year.