An extract from The Time of My Life
by Patrick Swayze & Lisa Niemi

Original full-length version published by Simon & Schuster Australia, a CBS company
Condensed version © copyright Reader’s Digest (Australia)?Pty Ltd

Lisa Niemi and Patrick Swayze are asked by acting coach Milton Katselas to dance before other actors on the stage of the Beverly Hills Playhouse

Lisa and I prepared a pas de deux. And the feeling I got while being on stage, dancing ballet once again, with the gentle moan of the cello guiding us, was far more intense than I had expected. It had been so long since I had danced in front of others, and so long since I’d felt that amazing soaring in my spirit. It was beautiful, and painful, and in the end, devastating. No matter how much success I had begun to have in the acting world, nothing compared to the sheer exhilaration of dancing.

When the performance ended, Lisa and I went backstage and I just broke down. I was overwhelmed with feelings—all the feelings I’d buried on leaving the ballet. Lisa and Nicholas Gunn, our fellow actor/dancer felt the same way I did, so we resolved to do something about it. It was time to explore all those feelings, to give them an outlet. And Milton Katselas offered a vehicle for us to do it. He had started a program called Camelot Productions, which offered free space for people who wanted to develop new plays. We could write about all these pent-up emotions, create a combination drama and dance work, and produce it at Camelot.

Lisa, Nicholas and I got right to work, coming up with ideas and scenes through improvisations. Lisa would write all our ideas down and shape them, and we worked to make seamless transitions between talking and dancing. We wanted the dancing to say as much as the speech, which eventually led to our title: Without a Word. The centrepiece was three monologues, one each by Lisa, Nicholas and me. We wanted to express our innermost thoughts and feelings about dance, making the work extremely personal. The day we decided to create these monologues, Lisa went straight home and wrote the entire thing in one night. And the next day, when she read it to Nicholas and me, we just looked at each other. Nicholas said, ‘Well, she’s certainly set the bar high.’

Doing Without a Word was both frightening and exhilarating for me. One of the most important themes in my life had been learning how to seek out another dream when one died. Too many people get swallowed by disappointment when their dreams don’t work out. Now I was digging back into that disappointment—exploring it. The result was a tremendous outpouring of emotion. A catharsis.

We put on three preview performances of Without a Word in the summer of 1984, then reworked it for a month-long run at the Beverly Hills Playhouse that fall. Every single show sold out, and audiences left the theatre in tears. A Who’s Who of Hollywood stars came to see it, including Liza Minnelli, Drew Barrymore and Melissa Gilbert. Gene Kelly came to a performance, too, and he particularly loved Lisa.

When all was said and done, we received six LA Drama Critics Awards, including Best Play, Best Direction, Best Actress for Lisa, and Best Actor for me. As an artistic endeavour, it was an amazingly satisfying experience. But that wasn’t the best thing about it.

The best thing about the play was the response we got, and continued to get even years later. People would come up to Lisa or me and tell us about the dreams they’d had, and how they’d fallen by the wayside—until seeing our play. People were actually finding the courage to go back and follow their bliss, encouraged by what they’d seen on stage.