…And became a college theatre dork

How most of us got bit by the acting bug and found ourselves standing in the spotlight was in high school, when we get cast as the lead in the musical or perhaps the time your aunt took you to go see a show and your life was never again the same. You started singing show tunes, tap-dancing in your sneakers on the sidewalk, preferring jazz hands to high fives—then you get to senior year and your last show finishes, you graduate and then what? If you’re anything like me, you do what the (title of show) song says: “So I bailed on my hometown, and became a college theatre dork”. Let me introduce myself, The Green Room Blog’s The College Theatre Dork!

I was fourteen when I realized I could major in theatre. My teacher brought me to a theatre conference at a local college where we were mistaken for a family wanting a tour of the campus, which sparked the initial discussion that people did major in theatre. When I announced my intentions, my parents were surprisingly accepting but in retrospect, my other ambition was to be a writer, so I was still going to be their penniless bum of a daughter, right? But I spent the next three years researching colleges—and wound up on the other side of the state in the best place I could possibly be right now. I’m studying Theatre (and minoring in Creative Writing) and I’ve been blogging as A College Theatre Dork since my first week of college, originally as an assignment for my freshman English class and I just kept going with it there and now here.

So do I sit around doing Shakespeare monologues and musical theatre all day? No. When I was a freshman (a year ago), I took Theatre Major Seminar, which all the freshmen/transfers have to take their first semester. On our last day of class, my professor asked us:

“So, why do you do theatre? This is a career that maybe two of the fifty-two of you here are going to succeed in. It’s what we call in this business a dead kitten; it’s cute, but it doesn’t work! There’s no money, people don’t want to see the shows anymore…we can’t even sell enough tickets for us to do two musicals a year. So why are you here?“

We had a lot of different answers. At the end of our first semester, some people realized this wasn’t the right place for them and were transferring and others decided to change their major to Music and English. I raised my hand to answer: “DEFINE SUCCESS.”  I said more than that, but nothing as important. A year later, halfway through my sophomore year, I think I’m becoming the success freshman me would have wanted to be. In this past year alone, I worked as a street busker performing Commedia d’ell Arte; I wrote my first play for a 24 Hour Show; tried worked behind and in front of the camera; now I am working for the first time as an Assistant Stage Manager in two of my department’s biggest shows; learning tai chi, dance improv, stage makeup; I got a summer internship with a theatre company, an upcoming performance in a movement theatre piece; planning to produce (and possibly direct or act) my first show and now blogging for The Green Room Blog!

So that’s my part in our ensemble, that headstrong youngster who meets their Yoda and starts training to someday be a Jedi. Well, I’m majoring in Theatre and that hope of doing it in the real world someday suddenly has a date on my calendar. Join me in my endeavors of learning how to be professional?