Ever since I was a little kid, I was a total drama queen. Just ask anyone I've ever known! I made myself the center of attention by telling some story (made up or true or some combination thereof.) I could be found singing to myself pretty much all the time, usually songs from movies, like Once Upon a December from Anastasia, or the Sky Dancers theme song. Before long, my mother got me involved in after-school creative activities such as honor choir, maybe because she wanted to nurture my burgeoning talent, but probably because she wanted a little gosh-darned peace and quiet.
When I was eight, I auditioned for the musical Good News at our community theater. I was cast, and as I had already taken to memorizing the lines to movies and reciting them around the house, being cast in an honest-to-goodness musical with kids ranging from eight to eighteen was incredibly exciting to me. Not to mention the fact that I got to say two lines.
It was a big deal.
And since that summer in 2003, I haven't stopped. I haven't gone more than a few months without being involved in some theatrical production or another. Any time my hiatus between closing night and auditions approached a full year, I began to get antsy. Even in college, when I have forced myself to take semester-long breaks from auditioning for anything involving a stage, I have maintained a fervent love affair with Dionysus' noble art.
Especially in college, people ask me why I do theater. Aren't there better ways to physically and emotionally exhaust yourself? Better ways to spend your time so that you don't end up sleepless and behind on all your homework? Better skills to improve so you won't be hungry and penniless? Better things to do that people actually care about?
There are many reasons, but I think I can boil it down to two main things:
It's fun. Theater is interesting and exciting and I genuinely enjoy doing it. It is an emotional journey, from preparing your audition until the final curtain call. The sound of an applause after working hard for months with your friends is a beautiful thing. Constructing a set from the ground up that will live for a few weeks before being destroyed, putting on a costume and by virtue a new skin, practicing lines and learning to become other people in a way that is real, these are all reasons I do it. And the people. Theater attracts creative, funny, beautiful human beings. I have made some of my best friends through theater, and I have fallen in love more than one time shrouded in the wings of a stage.
It's everything. Theater has the potential to be a glorious amalgamation of every art form that exists. Poetry, dance, song, performance, directing, sculpture, fashion, carpentry, interior decorating, lighting, sound, even organization becomes an art in the hands of stage managers. A play can be about anything. It is such a malleable form of expression, and it takes a hell of a lot of work and care and love, but it's a high like none other.
Theater has given me my greatest experiences, achievements, and loves. It is a fulfilling and beautiful thing, and that is why I do it.
