Theater sparked my interest in middle school, and I almost instantly sold my soul to the stage. The five years that I spent surrounded by people who were just like me were some of the best and worst years of my life. They got me through horrible times, opened my eyes to an entirely different world than I was used to, and taught me so many things about who I was. I owe parts of my life to the stage and the people that I shared it with. I learned how to become the person that I am now, the person that I want to be. I have found myself missing my days in the auditorium more and more these days and longing to go back to high school and do it all over again. Even though I can't do that, I can reflect back on how great it was and everything that I learned there. To all of you who are no longer in theater, like me, and even those of you who are still there, this one is for you.
Teamwork
Teamwork is a big life skill that everyone has to learn, and high school is always trying to force students to work together. Well, I can honestly say that I never really learned how to work well with other people until theater came into my life. Spending hours with someone else on a big stage with an entire audience watching your every move...it can be intimidating. The only person that you can really rely on is yourself, but you have to force yourself to trust your fellow classmates and the crew working behind the scenes. Someone has to make sure that your costume is in the right place, someone has to make sure that your microphone gets turned on, that the props are in the right place, and someone has to be there to catch you if something goes wrong in the middle of a scene. You get two months to put a show together, and no one person can do it alone. You have to put faith and trust into everyone else and hope that you can pull it off. Odds are, everything is going to be fine. That is, if everyone can put aside their differences and figure it out together.
Dedication
Not everyone realizes how much dedication it takes to put on a show. The cast battles through horrible anxiety just to audition, and once you're in it only gets worse. From the moment the cast list goes up, you dedicate every single afternoon and evening to the show. Not even weekends are sacred anymore - if you aren't on stage rehearsing your scene, you are sitting somewhere going over your lines. If it's a musical, you never eat or drink dairy and basically infuse vitamin c and water into your system. No one can get sick and no one can get hurt. The closer opening night gets, the longer rehearsals run and the worse the stress gets. You have to eat breathe and sleep the show and you practically say your lines in your sleep. For crew, they might not show up to every practice until the month of the show, but they do twice the work in only half the time. They pull all-nighters to put all of the lights up, spend hours and hours working out the sound system and hemming the costumes. They go crazy just trying to make sure that everything is just right. Needless to say, far too much work goes into the show and hardly anyone takes the time to recognize just how much blood, sweat and tears go into the beautiful masterpiece that is played out in front of the audience.
How to be myself
High school isn't always fun. It isn't necessarily an environment where young people can thrive and grow as a person. No one really feels safe being exactly who they are when they walk the halls of school. That is, until after the bell rings and it's time for rehearsal. The mean kids go away and you are suddenly surrounded by people who are just like you and actually embrace all of your quirks. You are free to laugh and goof off and not care who sees because they're all too busy laughing along with you. Theater isn't one group of people, it's a mashup of a million different kinds of people who are coming together and not caring what anyone else might bring to the table. Instead of being a select group, they take anyone and everyone: we are the island of misfit toys and no one is as broken as they might think.
You can always make things better
Everyone has their own problems, but no one has to work through them alone. With a support group as large as the cast and crew, how can anyone feel down for very long? Whenever something goes wrong, you know that someone else is always going to be there for you. Drama isn't just an after-school activity, it's a family. We always look out for one of our own and care about each other more than anything else. What happens in the auditorium stays in the auditorium, and all that jazz. We always know how to turn a bad situation into something less bad, whether that be with horrible puns or with really loud music. We will always sit by your side, listen to all of your problems, eat gallons of ice cream, and dance it out until our feet are sore.
Some things are forever
Everything must come to an end eventually, high school theater being one of them. It is one of the most bittersweet moments of your life, looking around at the people who stuck by you for five years. To look out at the audience during your final performance on that stage, to know that you can come back but it will never be the same. It will never be you up on that stage again, and it is absolutely heartbreaking. While you leave high school, leave the stage, graduate, some part of you knows that it isn't really over. Sure, your castmates are going off in different directions, but you'll always come back for future shows. You will all make your way back to each other and find yourself laughing at the memories that are engraved in your minds forever. Your performances might be over, but your friendships will stick with you forever. No one will ever forget the moments that you shared, not that they would ever want to. You have always been and always will be a family, and that bond is something that no one could ever break.
The four years I spent in high school were some of the best years I've had so far, and the reason for that is the time I spent in theater. If I hadn't forced myself to go out for that one audition in eighth grade, I might not have ever discovered the magic that took place within the four walls of that auditorium. The stories and memories that we created together on that stage were beautiful and magical and I wouldn't trade them for anything in the entire world. Whether we were laughing about how silly the lines were or how ridiculous we looked in our costumes, whether we were ranting about how so and so did this one thing or crying about how awful life seemed to be...we did everything in that auditorium. It was our home away from home and, more often than not, we would rather be there with each other than at home dealing with whatever problem was happening at the time. I know that my time spent in theater saved me from a lot, and I couldn't be more grateful to the people who joined me on that crazy rollercoaster of a journey.
If you have ever thought about joining theater and haven't yet: do it. You won't regret it, I promise. And to those who are still there, whether you are a senior or a freshman: enjoy it as much as you can. Hold on to the long nights of hell week - er, tech week. Laugh until your cry, eat all of the free food provided by parents and make sure to thank everyone along the way. Cry when it's over, but smile because it happened. Take as many pictures as you can and don't forget to be proud of yourself. None of this has been easy, but it's definitely been worth it. You found where you belong, you found your family and that is going to last forever, I promise.
