Personal Narrative: How Theatre Changed My Life

At a very young age I learned I was only good at a very select number of things. I failed miserably at soccer, and my experience on the kindergarten basketball team was nothing short of catastrophic. I was far from the avid reader I am today and have needed a tutor in math since I learned how to multiply. It wasn’t that I was particularly bad at all of these things, but I used to be so remarkably unambitious that I couldn’t bring myself to commit to anything long enough to become good at it. That was, until I was first exposed to the stage. Yes, I do realize how cliché this must sound: girl tries theatre, it changes her life, and she wants to pursue it in college, blah blah blah... But when my relationship with the stage began, I was in the third grade, didn’t have any friends, and was so emotionally lost I didn’t even realize I was going in the wrong direction. I’m not going to lie to you and say, “I’ve always known that theatre is my passion,” because that’s just not true. I was only eight; I probably didn’t even know what passion felt like. However, for the first time in my life, I had I finally found something I genuinely enjoyed-- it was a strange new feeling, being included. I’m also not going to pretend I was initially
Actors are opening themselves up to be completely and utterly vulnerable for a crowd of people to watch. They are letting strangers by the hundreds view them at their weakest moments, and then forcing themselves to wipe away the tears and take a bow. They are connecting to a story with emotions that are so overwhelming, they have to sing about it, and when those emotions intensify even further, they have to dance about it, too. Everything about the theatre is just so stunningly relatable for those onstage and off, I have a hard time imagining how different my life would have been if I had never been a part of