Student Blog: On Prancer On Dancer On Actor On Singer

“My love for theater really started to blossom in educational environments. After school drama programs in church basements, musicals rehearsed and performed in three weeks at summer camps, that’s where I started developing into an actor, writer and theater maker. In high school I took my first steps as a member of a leadership/Production Team in those environments, with the guidance of faculty members and older students who eagerly took on mentorship roles in a traditional cycle as respected as the Oceanside High School Code of Conduct. International Thespian Troupe #132 showed me how important educational and community theater is in the lives of young children, teenagers and even the adults who facilitate it.”

This is me quoting…me. I wrote this for an interest letter for one of my internships, I was applying to work as an assistant to the head of the educational community theater sector of a theater festival. It aged me almost instantly to think of my own beginnings in summer theater programs just like the one I was now applying to help run, it feels like just yesterday I was playing Peppermint Patty in a one week rehearsed production of You're a Good Man Charlie Browne over the summer, wide eyed and terrified of everyone and everything. The importance of educational and academic theater enviornments is a fact I hone in on for every article, essay, and even every play I write. I looked back on this letter of interest, and just like Carrie Bradshaw, I began to wonder. 

I feel like we are far too harsh on the high school theater kid. We put them in this lab setting where they get to experiment with the intensely hyperbolic and dramatic expression of their emotions, and yet we are somehow surprised when they are, well, dramatic. They become little balls of creative energy and curiosity. They try out a million different theatrical careers, sometimes excelling at all of them, most of the time flailing and calling out for help - which is ‘a okay’! They learn to use their resources, to collaborate and start to realize that leadership is more than telling people your age and older, what to do and how to do it. They make mistakes and sometimes it feels like those mistakes start micro-causal civil wars throughout the theater club but looking back on it from a more developed prefrontal cortex standpoint, yeah it was never that deep. 

But for the people who are living in it, the little energy gizmos who consume more fast food and sugar than ever recommended by the FDA, those mistakes feel like life or death, and often that feeling follows you around for years after high school.

Time moves on kind of like a flat circle, we take on the roles we once looked up to, we watch the kids we mentored turn into young adults, and into adults. I’m currently losing my mind over the class of 2025 at Oceanside High School committing to college and at the sheer amount of prospective BFAs in that class. Don’t even get me started with ‘26 because that means Hannah Weiss is going to be a senior and I remember her at age 8 (she’s been begging for a shoutout for months, this is appeasement). I’ve had the privilege of watching shy little kids turn into confident theatrical leaders of tomorrow, who aren’t scared to speak their mind and assert their voice. It renews my faith in the world to be able to witness that. 

These are the “kids” who taught me to be an adult. The younger generations have just as much of an impact in a mentoring capacity as we do for them. They show us the power we wield, but also constantly remind us to calm down about time and aging, “you’re only two/three years older!” they exclaim. Wait till they are in our shoes and they see how two years feels like three lifetimes and a reincarnation cycle at the same time. 

Peer mentorship is the backbone of all theatrical environments. While I have learned so much from my directors, professors, coaches, and teachers, the things I was handed down from the people I worked directly alongside have stuck with me in a much much different way. I’ve written before about the unique tapestry of interactions, conversations, lessons, and mistakes that we are all made up of. The multitudes we contain within us, the lives and stories we carry around. That unique quality is just so beautiful. It’s tragic in its timelessness because memories last while relationships may not. Dramatic teenagers turn into dramatic adults, and that comes with its own natural complications. 

We view theater as an end all be all in a very narrow sense. On stage, on Broadway is the end goal…NO! It can be if that is what your heart desires, but never underestimate the creative power and prowess that comes with being a theater educator. Some of the best productions of my favorite shows have come out of summer camps, high schools, and community theaters. There’s not even a speck of shame involved with having community and educational theater be the highlight of your theater career. All of the memories, lessons and love involved in those organizations makes it a standout credit, if not for the greater industry at large, then most definitely for you, which in my opinion is infinitely more precious. One of the most talented directors and choreographers I have ever known, creates her best work with the Oceanside High School stage as her canvas, she could probably make it all the way to Broadway (she’s a step away in my humble opinion), but the fact that she chooses to impact educational theater environments is frankly inspiring. It is not the scale of the theater being made but the quality and caliber of its presentation. She could be directing Beetlejuice on Broadway, but her Beetlejuice Jr was Broadway worthy! 

Here’s the advice and words of wisdom I have about all this. Be the change you want to see in the industry. Changing the world can be hard, but we can change one theater community at a time until our industry is unified, healthy and inclusive for all its participants. Make an effort to be present in your creative community, if you’re a college student - check out the arts scene in the college town you live in, odds are the opportunities you’ve been waiting for are hiding in plain sight. Rinse and repeat what high school theater kid you would do, there’s no harm in community, in my experience it makes you into the person you’ve always wanted to be. 

Be the mentor you desperately needed when you were little. Consider Theater Education! I think the idea that Theater Ed is strictly for those who cannot make it in the actual industry is so reductive and mean! Theater educators are creating the theater makers of tomorrow and even more importantly, they're making sure those future theater makers know they are safe and cared about even if no one else in their lives is telling them that. So this summer, be a theater camp counselor, intern at that childrens theater or even audition for childrens theater. Think about the theater industry we're going to leave to the theater kids of the future, and how different we want it to be from the one we were handed. 

To all my theater “children” and all my theater “parents,” past present and future, you’ve made me into a version of myself I am proud to be, whether we still talk to this day or no longer speak,

Thank You.