Accidental Lessons

When people think of theater, they think of actors, and of sitting in an audience. They never think of the process, or what happens behind the scenes. I learned all about the process, and many life lessons by accident when I got involved in 8th grade.

Accidental lesson #1. Teacher's pet always wins.
I had been going to the school plays forever. I saw some high school plays when i was still in elementary school,middle school plays as well. Always the lead parts had been given to upper classmen, usually very talented ones. In the middle school, it was the 9th graders, high school it was the seniors. But when i got to 9th grade, most of my fellow classmates were given unimportant chorus roles with the 6th graders, while the 8th graders got the lead roles in the spring musical of The Wizard of Oz. The girl we thought would be Dorothy, whom we all loved and thought was very talented, was given a chorus role. The role was instead given to an 8th grader not as talented. She was given the role because 1. she was the director/teacher's pet 2. Her grandfather was a former governor, and therefore she was very rich. This angered many people enough to make the quit the show. I learned that talent and age sometimes don't matter as long as one is rich and the teacher's pet.

Accidental lesson #2: Being in the spotlight can change people's popularity.
Before joining theater, i didn't know many people in it besides a couple of my classmates. After I joined though, I got to know alot of them, even developed a few crushes. Then I started to notice that almost every girl in school developed crushes on the male leads. In Beauty and the Beast, the higher grades fell in love with the boy who played the beast, and the lower grades fell in love with Lumiere. In high school, every girl in school developed a huge crush on the boy who played Lt. Frank Cioffi (chah-fee)in Curtains. Those boys went from nobodys to local celebraties in the week or two weeks that shows were performed.

Accidental lesson #3: Actors can be very irratating.
When you work on running crew, it means you'll be running around putting set pieces away backstage or in their place on stage, running from side to side, holding curtains back, and more. To do this as fast and as efficiently as possible, you need actors' cooperation. That does not happen all the time. For example during Curtains, things needed to be moved from the shop to the stage, and some things needed to be flown in and out. This means that set pieces that hang are lowered to where they can be seen by the audience, or taken back up to where they can't be seen. When this is happening, everybody needs to be out of the way, for their own safety, so running crew often call out "heads up!" but the people on stage don't look up untill the piece is almost on top of them. Actors!

Accidental lesson #4: Home away from home, family away from family.
Having things in common brings people together. Theater is no exception. Even though one grade is always going, and one always coming, everybody involved becomes a family. The adults become your second set of parents, and the kids become your brothers and sisters. Fights will happen, people will become snappish under pressure, but in the end, everybody loves each other. And when you are forced to be in the theater 5- 6 days a week, it becfomes your home away from home. The theater itself, the hallways, the shop, the costume room, all become filled with memories, and for two months it's where you spend most of your time. It becomes a part of you that's hard to leave behind.

Accidental lesson #5: There's pride in a group effort.
Knowing that you helped to create something great, makes you feel great. You become immensly proud of the product and the people involved. You worked hard, had fun, and helped to make a great product, and it becomes a community feeling. It's like the pride people have in their school's sports teams, only better because you had a hand in making it.

STLF Trip

The week after school ended in June 2010, I went on a trip with an organization called Students Today Leaders Forever. About 30 high school kids from schools all around the twin cities hopped on a big greyhound type bus for one week to travel in Wisconsin and Illinois doing service projects. Our leaders were college students from the U of M and a couple other schools. There were about 40 people in total. We slept in church basements and became a little family. We did service projects in Madison, WI, Lacross WI, Rockford IL, and Chicago IL.
In Lacrosse, we stopped at a nursing home to help out. We were broken up into groups to do different activities with the residents. Some did manicures for the residents, some did bowling, and some took the residents outside for "walks". I took a couple residents out for "walks". The first lady i took out had Alzheimer's to the point where she could no longer walk, and could barely talk. I went out with a couple leaders and another resident who was in the same position. We sang "You Are My Sunshine" and they started to sing along! It was wonderful. Then, one leader, Luke, started talking to the ladies, and asking them things, although he knew they couldn't reply. But amazingly enough, one lady did reply! She said she used to play the violin when she was younger! Later, when we told the director, she exclaimed "You got one of her golden moments!" I'm sure I was practically glowing from the joy of helping.