At the age of fifteen I was stuck between wanting profound individuality and longing for a community to be involved in. The friends that I did have were not at all close to me and I would never hang out with them outside of school. It was as if we were with each other just to make the unsettling loneliness we all felt a bit more bearable. I had signed up for a drama class that year and was looking forward to being able to give directing a try, it hadn’t occurred to me before I registered for the class that I would be acting, not directing. Directing had interested me at that time due to my obsession with Tarentino films, and watching the Independent Film Channel. The Independent Film Channel had movies and shows that acted outside of conventionality, either in the way it was written, shot or the fact that these movies were made on such a low budget. This channel offered something that made me feel different, unique, distinct and intellectual, it was something that no one else could grasp and something that only I could understand. That fascination for film wouldn’t translate into the stage that, would soon, envelope my whole teenage existence.
The first day of drama class there was a woman who dramatically entered from stage left, she was small and pretty, thin and sassy. She began with a brief acting exercise that required us to walk across the stage. In retrospect it sounds simple, but at the time that was beyond my capabilities, the whole class was whispering wildly behind the curtain fighting over whom would go first. There was this general fear to walk across the stage and be evaluated by an audience of one, that intimidating drama teacher. After some heated whispers and laughable name calling I emerged victorious and was the last person to run across the stage. That was the beginning, the first time I had ever stepped foot on the stage that would become my place of refuge for the next three years of my life. I had no interest in acting before I arrived in the first day of class, yet it was in that class that acting gave me recognition, where my emotions were validated and respected. I believed that I had found the place where I was allowed to belong. As the months progressed I began to shed the shy skin that had been suffocating me and was born anew.
The thin and sassy drama teacher had in many ways over the course of that class become a maternal mentor and confidante. It was in her that I placed all trust, and her opinion which I held the highest. I registered for the musical theater class that she would be directing and teaching. This class was what the sole purpose of my existence became; I was obsessed with musicals even though I found the material in most of them to be of very little interest to me. My friends at the time were all very interested in the musicals whose music seemed to haunt my thoughts and whose themes seemed trite. Identifying with the musical we were performing wasn’t the point of the class though; I had joined to further create myself, to allow my identity to evolve.
The theater became a symbol, it was my mother and I was its child. We were close friends yet distant enemies; the stage had this allure and mystique. It had this strange power over me and threw me into a wild addiction. There was a strong craving for applause, for seeing the teary faces of my parents and to be loved by everyone in the room for a complete moment. I was created on that stage; the old person that used to inhabit my body was gone. I feared what the future would hold when I would have to leave the stage. The community that I had longed to find supported my individuality and fostered self-growth. Most of all I emerged believing in myself and my ability to understand the world as a human being; I overcame the struggles of shyness and had a genuine excitement to meet new people and understand them. As I’ve grown older many of these personality traits have changed and I’ve most certainly become more reserved, there is no way that I could ever forget what that drama class had done for me though. That first walk across the stage was the experience I had been longing for. It’s exactly like jumping into water, at first it’s cold, but after a while you adjust.