In the Theater

That's where I am right now. I'm sitting on the carpeted theater steps, my gaze flitting between the computer screen and Romeo and Juliet uttering their obsessive, hormone-filled chants of love on the stage. No, I'm not slacking. There are a handful of us that have some down-time between scenes.

It's actually quite relaxing to just sit in the quiet theater. The whole place looms above you, softly lit. People are sprinkled in different seats across the auditorium, silently working or watching the scenes coming alive on the stage before us. A mixture of cut wood and chair fabric and a distinct theater smell-not an entirely disagreeable scent- wafts through the air. I'm quite at home right now.

It's been a very busy week- not a week to be horsing around, as I predicted in my last post. Lots of homework, lots of commitments, lots of pressure and stress. But it's amazing how relaxed you can feel when you walk into the theater. True, you still have to work, but it's a different type of work. You become someone else, leaving all your worries outside the theater doors. It's like another world- the good kind of other world.

Our theater department says that we don't just put on shows to entertain people. We study theater to study life. That is such a true statement. We've only been working on this play for a few weeks, but already I'm starting to realize what they mean by "understanding life." Through the pages of the play, through your own experience of studying the lines, through getting to know the rest of your company, through even just sitting in a theater seat watching the play come alive before you, you can't help but start to analyze and understand small bits of life.

I can't wait for our play to be shown to the Susquehanna community, and I'll keep you up-to-date on that. But for now, I'll sit in the quiet theater and watch as I and the rest of my company start to understand life a little more. And hopefully when this production finally premieres to SU, the community will also start to understand pieces of life a little more too.