Since my freshman year of high school, I have participated in every one of the school’s plays and musicals. Before high school, however, I had never been in any major production. This made my opening night, for Seussical the Musical very exciting and nerve-wracking. Since then, I’ve had six more opening nights and am looking forward to my eighth and final opening night at JHS.
As I reach the end of my acting career at JHS, I find myself looking back at the bitter-sweet moments I’ve had with the theater department and my fellow thespians.
Every play had good and exciting moments. In Seussical the Musical, I made many new friends, and in Rebel without a Cause I watched helplessly as an actor was dropped onstage during a show. During Our Town and Little Women, I enjoyed having a small cast that felt like a family. In High Schooler’s Guide to the Galaxy, I had the opportunity to smack a friend onstage, and in Shout, I sang acapella for the first time and made the front page of the newspaper. This fall in The Actor’s Nightmare I loved my part and sharing advice with my new freshman friends.
Although there are many good and exciting moments, it’s hard to forget the difficult times. With every production, there is a large amount of rehearsal time involved. It was easy for me to get bored and irritated with large amounts of time eaten up at practice. I missed sporting events, TV shows, and time with friends and family for nightly practices. Many people don’t realize the amount of time and effort that goes into a show; we have rehearsals for two or three months, memorize pages and pages of lines outside of practice, learn songs and choreography, plan our movements step by step to correlate with our stage directions, and find props and costumes mostly by ourselves.
Every show also has a large amount of unnecessary drama. Even though it IS the drama department, there is always extra drama and conflict between cast members. One year a “disagreement” between some people got so bad that one cast member quit the show.
Despite all the work and drama, I still love acting and the stage productions I’ve been involved in.
Every show has a bitter-sweet taste to it. I love performing and the good memories I’ve made, but I won’t miss the hours of boring practices and strained emotions that come with them. Just like each show, the end of my JHS acting career has a bitter-sweet taste to it as well. Despite the difficult, I’ll miss the good memories, the great friends I’ve made, and the thrill of performing. However, I know that I’m not done with acting, plays, and performing yet.