Localized Collaborative Play

A blizzard forms outside. I can smell it in the air. Comforting, yet uneasy. Uneasy comfort, if there was ever such a thing. They call it a nor'easter over here, but we don't name our storms where I come from. I haven't been in a blizzard since I was seven. I barely remember it, but I do remember how a two week winter break became a month long and that was cool to a seven year old me. But when a month long winter break became a year and a half stay at home order not a decade later... Not so cool anymore to be holed up in one place. A decade and an entire country away from that blizzard, cool breezes transform into flurries and ice and forces of terror as the wind howls, its screams pounding against the three inch glass of my dorm window. Bird poop staining, the grading of it freezes solid. If I ever thought it would be worn away by weather and time, it most definitely isn't going anywhere now. The bird poop is here to stay. Comforting uneasiness.

Whenever I look out my window, thinking the bright whiteness shining outside of it could be the comforting presence of the sun, all I see is a blanket of smoke. Not smoke; smoke is too musky and gray. It's powder. It's the Pillsbury Dough Boy, rolled out with easy, terse strokes to be plastered against my window. My phone camera can see the streets below and the people walking out in the storm. I envy them but I don't. I envy their willingness to look like fools. I wish I could just fail like that sometimes. But only sometimes. I don't envy them because walking in this weather must suck.

This brought me to the conclusion that I fear I have done my first semester of my BFA wrong. Of course, there are no rights or wrongs, especially in our beautiful craft, but if there were, I feel I did "wrong" in the way I approached fall semester. Specifically, with regard to one class: a collaborative supportive room referred to as "Locals". In Boston University's (BU)'s BFA Theatre Performance program, we have two tracks we must choose between in our sophomore year (a decision I do not have to make until the end of this semester, which you'll hear all about then): Acting or Theatre Arts. However, for our freshman year, the entire cohort of 37 students is split into two to three random groups for the year to create the Performance Core. We take our prescribed performance, voice, and movement coursework in our smaller groups but then once a week all 37 of us meet for three hours for our acting lab known as Locals.

In this class, we come together to showcase out-of-practicum pieces of art, stories, feelings, and experiences for each other. We were presented Locals as an opportunity to fail with each other as a safe, collective group. You can bring in completely polished work, first passes, heavily rehearsed pieces, and even new works. We've had people show up to Locals as a fully formed improv troupe (643, as the three 6'4" white guys call themselves), singing "Agony" from Into the Woods as Chads, presenting journal entries as a full performance art piece, bringing in new works, and even presenting pieces for audition preparation.

The whole point of BU BFA program's creative and learning process-as well as the point of this art-form is collaboration and the art of play. This is key in everything we do at BU, especially in Locals. But I strayed away from that collaborative play. In an effort to somehow find myself during my four years of college ahead of me, I focused almost exclusively on just myself last semester. I forgot to take others in. Preoccupied with worries of how I was interacting with my peers, I ended up just not interacting. I frequently used the time to play during Locals but failed to play with others. For example, I decided on a whim every week to do a song that made *me* happy-whether I wrote it or someone else did. Then there was the one week I realized that I'm in acting school and had never acted without song in Locals.

So I performed two of the monologues I was planning on using for auditions outside of BU-again on a whim. Another week, I asked two friends three days before Locals to read a scene from a play I wrote last year. And then finally, just as the semester was coming to an end, I reached out to three others and asked if they would collaborate in a performance of "No One is Alone" from Into the Woods with me in memory of Stephen Sondheim. We rehearsed it between bouts of the flu, finals week, and with COVID cases on the rise within the school. Then came the day of Locals and I bowed out of the performance. In all honesty, I told them it was from COVID nerves and that I wanted to be socially distant and not attend the crowded class of 37 students in one room-which definitely played a part in it-but it definitely wasn't the only reason. I was afraid of presenting something I wasn't exactly proud of. This was no fault of my group mates, of that I want to make completely sure. They are wonderful people and artists. I just didn't feel right in that piece. It was as if I wasn't meant to be performing it with them, despite me being the one to set it up and formulate it..

That was the most collaboration I achieved in that entire semester of Locals. And then, I didn't even perform in either of those two collaboration opportunities. Sure, I am not only a performer; I am also a director and a choreographer and a writer and a music director. Therefore, I did have my collaborative mark on those two pieces. But! I didn't present them. I was afraid of what my face next to the collaboration would reflect in the eyes of my cohort. Which is stupid to think, in retrospect, but we're all a little stupid. These people are so safe and kind and loving and they truly care about each other and the collective art we make. I just sometimes alienate myself from that experience.

Again, there is no way to do college and a semester or even one class "wrong." However, I can say I wish I would have taken better advantage of the wonderful opportunity Locals is in the Freshman Performance Core at Boston University. I'm proud of myself for at least stepping up every week and performing things I wrote and was excited about in that moment. I'm just trying to remember that pride, while also recognizing the things I missed out on and how I might improve upon that this semester.

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