525,600 Minutes in Theatre

By Sam Langmead

For the past few months, I have been taking a Journalism class at Emerson College in Boston. The program, called emersonWRITES, gives high school students the opportunity to learn more about writing, in a college environment and taught by Emerson graduate students. As a hopefully future Emerson student (majoring in Journalism and minoring in something theatre related), I learned so much about narrating a story, structure, and setting scenes in literary journalism. At the same time, I learned about my own writing skills, playing off of my strengths and improving my weaknesses. For the final showcase, I wrote 525,600 Minutes in Theatre to explain how my passion for the theatre arts has created the person that I am. Although it was difficult to fit my love of performing into one-thousand words, I believe that I got my message across: that the skills that I developed during my 10+ years of performing have changed me in a way that nothing else can.

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I honestly think that theatre has taught me more than school has, from random life lessons hidden in song lyrics (I would like to hear my math book tell me to “forget regret, or life is [mine] to miss”), or even social things like building positive relationships. In theatre, my ideas are valued. Although I have to listen to the director, I also have the right to say “I don’t think my character would do this” or “I would feel more comfortable performing it this way”. I’m allowed to use more creativity than I could ever use in a “creative assignment” in class. I am taught so much in a way that makes me feel better about myself – messing up a monologue, although not a goal of mine, feels a heck of a lot better than a D on a quiz. I just wish that other people could see it the same way that I do, as more than just a silly little arts program.

At the beginning of my sophomore year, I auditioned for my high school’s fall play, And A Child Shall Lead. It was like any other high school play – something that no one had ever heard of. But I soon realized that it wasn’t like any other school play.

This play was all about kids in the ghetto of Terezin, a concentration camp, during the Holocaust. Like most stories from that time, this sure wasn’t a happy play. No matter what role I got, my character would be dead or “shipped to another camp” by the end of the show.

This was not something that I was expecting from a department that had just done a comedy about speed dating four months prior.

Despite the downright depressing topic, I auditioned with three of my other friends, and we all got cast. On the first rehearsal, our director had us do an activity where we talked a lot about bullying, and being judged by others, eventually to the point of things that we couldn’t help or change. It gave us a perspective that none of us had ever had before. It ended up with a lot of us in tears, talking about the difficult things that were happening in our lives, and realizing that for every problem that we had, someone else was going through the same thing. I became closer to those twenty kids in two hours than I ever had with kids that I spend nine months in a classroom with. My school’s attempts to create a closer-knit student body could never measure up to this.

Our relationships became even closer over the course of the show. I honestly think that I made more friends – real friends – in those two months than in three years of middle school. Maybe it’s the topic that set the base for a relationship, but I think it is more than that. Even in more upbeat shows, like our musical last year, The Wiz, there’s something about the experience that being in a show that creates a special bond. We compare our school’s drama department to “a family, not a club”. That’s what we are – a family. It may be crazy, argumentative, and drama-filled, but what can you say about a group of theatre fanatics that spend 15+ hours a week together? It would be weird if we came out sane.

Being asked to be stage manager – in charge of making sure everyone is in place and knows where their props are – boosted my confidence more than good grades ever could. I was the girl who was barely at rehearsals the previous year because my other theatre company made me prioritize, so I thought that I would spend my junior year in ensemble because I rarely had time to prove that I had the drive to be in a show. But here I am now, halfway through junior year, having stage managed our fall play, It’s a Wonderful Life, and now our spring musical, Once on This Island. Four months ago, I had convinced myself that my director wouldn’t even want me in the show (yes, I am a prime example of the Actor Confidence Complex: you can go from being a self-centered diva to thinking no one will ever cast you in a matter of seconds). The fact that I was given such a big responsibility seemed unreal to me. That responsibility taught me about leading a group, being organized, taking charge and initiative, but at the same time being a part of something special.

Anyone who has been in a show can tell you how exhilaratingly stressful productions can be, but it takes a while to realize the extent of how it changes you. I wish everyone could have the same experience as me, but it does say something about being a part of something that isn’t the “in” thing. It’s as if we are all part of a secret club, and we are surprised, but mostly excited, when we meet someone else who is interested in the same thing. No matter if we had performed together, just being a part of any theatre production is a connection enough to spark a friendship.

Sadly, many people do not believe in the power that arts can have on a person. But until other people realize that theatre can help them the way it helped me, I will continue to measure my life in love. I’ll let the sunshine in. I’ll find my Wonderland. I’ll remember what I do for the things I love, the things that change me for good. Who am I? I am what I am, and I won’t change my passion to be “Popular”. When I grow up, I can change the world, because I am my own creation.

And I’ll continue to put musical quotes into all of my essays and articles, like this one. Because whether it is conscious or unconscious, musicals make everything that I do better than they would be otherwise.