For the Love of Theater

I'm going to take this post to branch out from my usual commentary on school and teaching and instead write about one of my true loves: theater.

I'm currently playing the character Luisa in a community theater production of The Fantasticks and I must say, I'm having such an incredibly fun time. I absolutely love the music in the show and the rest of the cast is hilarious and a lot of fun to work with. I'm so glad to be involved in theater again!

I've been thinking about why I love acting, singing, and theater in general. The show is, at times, very silly, yet eight full grown adults have no complaints about - in fact, we even enjoy - partaking in the frivolity and ridiculousness that is this show. This includes but is certainly not limited to dancing, climbing out of boxes, dying, fainting, sword fights, kissing, and of course singing, all while pretending to be someone else. Why do we do this? We all have real jobs and real lives, yet we all excitedly come to rehearsals four times a week and gladly get on stage, waiting for our next direction. Well...I have a theory. It might be totally wrong, and maybe not even make sense, but I'll tell you anyway. My theory is that actors are people who never stopped wanting to play pretend. Remember when we were kids, how much fun it was to play house, tea party, cowboys and indians, etc? Essentially, that's what acting is - playing pretend on a grander scale. At some point between childhood and adulthood, we lose that desire to play pretend and move on to grown up things (and often harsh reality). Perhaps actors never lost that love of playing; perhaps our love of theater stems from that part of us that still has a little kids inside wanting to play pretend. Perhaps we are all so good at playing pretend that we want to show everyone just how good we are.

After all, how else could one get eight grown ups to go onstage and perform without pay?