Life In Costume

Bright lights swim across the stage as I wait for the curtain to rise. The curtain that separates me from my greatest fear. As it rises, I gulp in all the air my costume allows me to take. Only able to see the knees of my fellow actors, I scramble around the floor of the stage with a child on my back. I feel pieces of the shy and timid girl I was crumble away as my character comes out to transform me into something else. Someone else. Afterward, as people were exiting the theatre with their programs of the show they had just seen, Peter Pan, a little girl approaches me and says “You were great as the dog.”

Being involved in theatre has instilled in me a confidence and sense of humility I have never before possessed. Before high school the only performing I had done was singing in church. Even then, I let my nerves get the best of me and my short performances would, more often than not, result in tears as soon as I returned to my seat, sure I had made a fool of mself. After my first day in my drama class as a freshman in high school, I was determined to break out of my comfort zone and take the stage.

On the stage, in front of a mixed audience of strangers and familiar, supporting faces, you become something else. Someone else. There is no reason to be nervous as you let your personality and personal characteristics strip away and result in a new character, although unfamiliar, exhilirating in its own right. Taking on this new role forces you to forget how nervous and sick you felt before stepping out onto the stage under the aura of swimming lights. This new person you have become doesn’t have time to buckle under the pressure as they live the time they are allotted through the costumes, sets and props given.

Through my acting career in high school, I was priveledged enough to play eight different characters from freshman year to the end of my senior experience. The shows I was involved in ranged from Peter Pan to Music Man, Willy Wonka to Grease. The diversity in the characters I played developed in me a new found confidence and assurance that allowed me to fulfill my desire to perform and entertain. In Peter Pan, as Nana the children's beloved dog who believes she is their nurse, I crawled across that stage on all fours, bleeding knees and aching back, with a sense of purpose and pride.

The world of theatre has changed my life. I have walked away from the stage with a new confidence, more humility, and a better bark.