Personal Narrative Essay: My Dive Into the Theater World

When I was a child I was a rowdy, rambunctious, little ball of fire. It didn’t matter how young I was, I knew how to command the attention of the room. I was always pretending to be someone else, whether I was pretending to be Ariana Grande or a poor starving child in the Great Depression. Naturally, my mom rushed to put me into theater and dance so she could have a much needed break from my constant energy. Little did she know that that decision would affect the entirety of the person that I am today.

At about 5 years old I started my first acting class. We played games that would boost a child's creativity so that when they become older and have to create their own character, it would come easily and naturally . As soon as I stepped into the class, I knew I had found my people. There were kids doing puzzles, rolling on the floor, and even pretending a laundry basket was a boat. Immediately, I felt comfortable to be completely  myself. Instead of hiding my constant flow of creative energy I now had a place where it was useful to the environment!

When I turned 8, I was finally able to do my first full musical! I auditioned for Annie the Musical and got cast as Molly. Ironically, she is the youngest orphan in the musical and I was the youngest child in the cast. Annie takes place in New York City during the Great Depression so for this role I had to master a New York accent while still maintaining my innocence. It was hard, my mom and I worked for hours and hours trying to memorize blocking and lines.

Finally, It was time for the show, the day I had been waiting for! Right as I was about to go onstage the lady who controls the maintenance of the microphones pulls me aside and explains that my microphone isn’t working and they don’t have a spare to give me, so instead she hands me a hand held microphone and whispers “good luck” and pushes me onstage. I walk onto stage and get into position and the curtain comes up, it was time.  I breathe as I am about to open the show with the first line “Mama, mama, mommy.” My brain began to process what had just happened, my handheld microphone was not the microphone that was projecting my words, It was my lapel microphone! (the microphone on my face that was previously not working) I began to relax as I continued on with the scene. 

After that experience you may think that it would have traumatized me into never doing theater again but I actually learned a valuable lesson: nothing in theater goes the way you plan, things will mess up and people will forget things. Regardless, you have to go with the flow. After Annie the Musical I would continue to audition and perform in over 16 musicals and almost 30 plays. Performing would become my second job (my first being school) and at times everything I did would be a choreographed number. 

This euphoric jubilee would only last for so long, as I started to grow up and school classes got harder and the need for an actual job became more and more of an issue. As of now, I have hung up my acting hat and am now focusing on my love for dance and the expression through that art. While I miss speaking and singing through the lens of another person, I am overly grateful for the lessons learned through my first show and the following shows. Theater has tremendously affected who I am and the decisions that I make and I could not be more privileged to dive into the theater world.