Student Blog: If You're Thinking About 'Leaving' the Theater

I’ve had many theater friends who either confidently hurl themselves into theater or drop it and never think about it again. I think I’m somewhere in between. How could I leave behind this thing that means so much to me?

If you’re like me and you grew up in and around the theater, you naturally form an emotional attachment. For me, it ran really deep. The theater was my safe space, my second home, the most comforting environment, every positive thing in the world. My memories in that blackbox theater are shiny and golden and perfect. As a shy kid, it was the first place I felt free to be myself and actually felt seen. I think when you grow up quiet you need a place like that. I felt like people couldn’t really understand me until they watched me perform. Unless you witnessed my line reading of “I just peed” as the Grandma in “The Addams Family,” we weren’t close.

As I spoke about in my last blog, the decision to switch my major from a theater focus felt huge.

I'm still a theater minor, so I sort of feel like I’m just being dramatic. Obviously theater will stay in my life forever, but seeing theater switch from a major to a minor part of my life feels poetic. 

I was always worried I wasn’t going to have as great of theater experiences as I did in the theater I grew up in. When 2020 halted our performances, I felt so lost. I had to find out who I was without theater. I started to lose myself when I wasn’t performing. I feared theater wouldn’t feel the same as it did when I was younger. I was scared I was chasing a feeling that I couldn’t feel again.

But I have actually had some really awesome theater experiences the past couple years. I worked as a counselor at a kids theater camp and it was way outside my comfort zone, but incredibly fulfilling. I found myself on the other side, watching kids just begin to love theater and feeling a connection with them despite how much I wanted to scream when they would TikTok dance and beg me to open their Gogurts (I served my time as a punching bag for 8-year olds, it was worth it I guess). I did a Shakespeare workshop at my old theater with a different company, it really messed me up. I now saw the place as a building instead of a safe space. But, the people I did the workshop with made it one again, somehow. That whole experience really changed how I saw performing, because suddenly I was an adult performer instead of a kid doing musicals for fun. I worked the hardest I’ve ever worked on scenes and monologues and had to rediscover myself in the place I first discovered myself. It was difficult but I pushed through and I’m so proud of what I did. 

Yet, through all of this, I felt a pull somewhere else. I was really enjoying writing. All I wanted to do in my free time was write whatever essay I was working on for class. I love theater so much, but maybe that love was just as a hobby. Maybe my work could be somewhere else. I couldn’t handle the emotional toll of performing all the time; I didn’t enjoy the technical side. I wanted to find a home for my creativity somewhere else, but I didn’t know where to put my love for theater.

I don’t think I can ever truly leave the theater. I don’t know how anyone can truly leave the theater. Sometimes I am jealous of the people who left without a trace, who maybe think of it as a vague memory from their childhood and occasionally check in with their old theater friends, but feel confident leaving it in the past. I wanted that ease, but this theater thing is part of me forever. The seven shiny years I spent in my theater filled me with a love and support I could never forget.  I’ll always be seeing shows, I’ll eagerly participate in a play when anyone asks me too, I’ll work on myself as an actor, and I’ll keep up with my fellow theater kids. 

Go see a show that changes how you see the world. Go volunteer at a local theater. Participate in a workshop. Make a weird music video with your friend. Go see movies like “Theater Camp” that hilariously and beautifully encapsulate your experiences and end with a song that makes you cry. It's all art, theater is everywhere and fortunately inescapable. 

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