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After all, Barack Obama had just been elected president and, while I didn’t know a lot about politics yet, I knew that was good. I was raised in my liberal bubble to believe every decade brought progress. It was the kind of heartbreak that can occur in ninth grade Earth Science - I learned that people knew about climate change in the 1970s. I wanted us to act together.Īs I played dead, I realized this was the first time in months I felt alive.Īround the time I was falling in love with theatre, I experienced my first heartbreak. When the characters referenced my death, I wanted them to see my empty stare and work off that emotion. With the same dedication that caused my legs to crumble, I sat there on stage not blinking. Wally Webb is dead through the last act and sits in a makeshift graveyard. They became my friends, and I felt anointed by celebrities. I watched them in rehearsal while other kids socialized, during the performances I stayed in the wings just to see them work. Instead, I was enraptured with their teenage talent, their adolescent bravado. I was cast as Wally Webb, and I had a crush I acknowledged on the actress who played my sister and crushes I didn’t acknowledge on the two male leads. It’s one of those classics that’s easy to dismiss and easier to adore.
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Thornton Wilder’s Our Town is a classic of both American theatre and high school theatre.
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But it was the next show, the last show of the year, that changed everything. The first show I did was the big spring musical - The Wizard of Oz - and it was a nice enough time at a time in my life where nothing was nice. With my running career permanently on hold, my friendships lacking, and my suicidal ideation increasing, I decided to join theatre. It was a production of Much Ado About Nothing, and the students delivered Shakespeare’s words like dogs eating peanut butter. The first six months of high school, I used a wheelchair, and my nerd jock friends - not to be confused with the less obnoxious jock jock clique - bullied me incessantly in a painful expression of ableism, homophobia, and their own insecurities.ĭuring this fraught period of time, I attended one of my high school plays for English class extra credit. I listened to my coach instead of the body I barely thought of as my own. It’s funny to think that prepubescent twink thought she was convincing anyone, but I played by my own misguided rules as I attempted male normativity.
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I wasn’t shy about my desire to someday make movies, but the arts were not something I saw as a viable extracurricular. Entering high school, my plan was to spend the next four years running cross country and track - the two sports with co-ed teams. I’d done ten years of soccer, eight years of baseball, six years of martial arts, climbed Mount Whitney, and run three half marathons. I was an artist trapped in a jock’s story, a closeted trans girl who watched art films on weeknights and played organized sports on weekends. The story of how I joined theatre is like if the Disney Channel was dark and gay.