Hannah Williams-Inman wrote this glorious blog. I wish I had. It’s that good.
As I sit down to type this – definitely not the day the TEAM blogs are due (OOPS, why am I like this) – we have just wrapped this year’s spring show The Addams Family Musical. It has been busy last few months, and, as any past, present, or future theater kid will understand, the time between tech/polish week and opening night absolutely flew by. Always believe the person who says “yeah, the show opens next week and it miiiight be a disaster.” This is a rite of passage for any show to actually make it to opening night. It is critical for the good of the show, and for the good of theater at large, that the show be a hot mess exactly one (1) week before it opens.
But those days between last week and now weren’t the only ones that flew by – I think the entire team of folks who worked on Addams would agree that it feels like only weeks ago we were workshopping choreography at auditions. I truly hope you had the chance to see the show last weekend, because it was such an example of what can happen when a bunch of people decide to do something good, together.
There’s so much I could say about bravery, or discomfort, or community when it comes to why I believe school theater is so critically important. There are so many ways that being a part of theater during high school changed me – so many things about me that finally make sense when you find out that I used to be one of those kids who donned a wig and LAYERS of makeup, to go do my little song and dance for a few hours, for one weekend, each spring. And honestly, I don’t think being one of “those kids” is something you ever grow out of.
As Neil Patrick Harris sang in his iconic opening number to the 2013 Tony Awards (yeah, I’m that kind of theater kid), “There’s a kid in the middle of nowhere who’s sitting there living for Tony performances… so we might reassure that kid, and do something to spur that kid, because I promise you all of us up here tonight, we were that kid, and now, we’re bigger.” Case in point, I basically begged to be a part of this production. I asked David and Catherine (with Anna, an already-extraordinary directing team as they were) if there was any room for me to help with this show, because I love it that much. She’s a sap, folks!
You don’t know brave until you’ve stood up, on stage, in front of your peers at 14, in character as someone’s mom, belting your heart out. Full stop. You don’t know discomfort until your audience is flat, you dropped an entire monologue, and you think you hear some of your peers giggling at you. You don’t know community until you’ve stayed late at school, singing, dancing, and acting with your friends who have now seen you at your most vulnerable. They’ve seen you say that line wrong, they’ve heard your voice crack on that note at every rehearsal for months, and they’ve watched as the choreography for that dance number disappears from your mind, mid-show. Experiences like these are critical for teens as they grow into adults, and being a part of a show is a unique venue to experience all of them, sometimes all at once.
Having a community in theater in high school does a lot of the same things for students that being on a sports team or other academic team does, only for kids who would rather hit a high note than a baseball (LOL). It creates a space for kids who may be more comfortable doing a jazz square than a football route (I don’t know what I’m talking about). It lets kids be a part of something greater than themselves, to be a part of a whole, where the final product literally could not exist without the contribution of each and every participant.
One thing that separates theater from other sports teams, I think, is this idea of mutual importance. In a production of this size (Addams), with a cast this small, each person plays an integral role, and not just the actors on stage. Crew members are responsible for specific set moves; tech is responsible for every light, sound, and curtain cue; cast members are following their own props and ensuring that things are where they need to be when they need to be there. Actors not only remember their own cues, lines, songs, and choreography, but also the “extra” tasks they’ve been given offstage. They keep track of when they need to move the set for the next scene, when they have a costume change, and whether they enter stage right or left for the next scene. The way the puzzle finally comes together in those final few rehearsals, the way everyone meshes on stage, the way tech and crew nail their cues – it literally cannot work if one person doesn’t, or can’t, play their part. It takes the entire team to achieve the entire goal, and that’s a beautiful experience for our egocentric teens and tweens.
In a time of confusion, growth, and daily discomfort for teenagers, having a place where they can feel “at home” can be so formative. And for some kids, the theater is the place that made it all finally click. It’s a beautiful thing that any teenager would find a community, a group, a team that helps them become who they were meant to be.
There’s one thing that’s special about being a theater kid, though, and it’s this: You won’t always be a high school athlete. You won’t always be captain of your quiz bowl team, or the prom king, or the cheer captain. But the theater kids… we’ll always be theater kids. And theater kids will always find each other, and put on a show, and cry when it ends, because, whether you like it or not, “all the world’s a stage.”