Tomorrow I will begin my senior year at the same school that I began my kindergarten year. I have grown up at my school, and it is part of who I am. I have always been comfortable at school and felt like my fellow students and my teachers were family. It was not until high school though, that I really found a home there.
Getting pulled into stagecraft my freshmen year, was the best thing that ever happened to me. The different things I could do backstage fascinated me. I fell in love. But there was something I loved more that all of the different opportunities there were backstage, I loved that I continued to prove myself wrong as the year went on. This is what made me fall in love with theatre.
Being the girly, scared little freshmen I was, the thought of using a screw driver terrified me. The thought of using a saw was unthinkable. Either way, I knew I was going to be having to do both. A week later, the thought of using either of them no longer scared me, but rather excited me. Today, I use both with extreme ease.
Later that year, I found out I was going to have to sew. Sewing a button and fixing a hole in clothing also scared me. What if I messed up the fabric? What if it looks badly and cannot be fixed? Even though I had these fears, I knew I needed to try. Two weeks later, after a bit of practice, I was no longer nervous about sewing. Instead, I was excited and even offering to fix items at home.
My next fear was messing things up in the tech booth. I was terrified of both the light board and the sound board and just decided they were both too much for me to handle. As time went on, I learned how to operate both of them well, and I now feel comfortable teaching others how to work them.
Throughout my first year or two in the theatre and in stagecraft, I continue to prove myself wrong by overcoming my fears and accomplishing things I never thought I could. I love that theatre has given me the desire to push myself to learn and do more each day. I would have never pushed myself in these different ways if it was not for loving environment that there is in the theatre. Even though I was terrified and nervous, in the back of my mind, I knew that if I messed up, there would be people there to help me.
As a senior, I am about to be in my 7th semester of stagecraft. After your first semester or two of stagecraft at my school, we help to teach the younger students how things work. Part of the reason I am so excited tonight, is because I cannot wait to watch the new freshmen push themselves and do things they never thought they could. Last semester, I watched several students catch the “theatre bug,” and for me, it was really exciting. I am very hopeful that we will have a great group of new freshmen that will push themselves despite their fears and accomplish things they never thought they could. I cannot wait to watch them prove themselves wrong.