I did not play sports in high school. I tried. Several times. Each attempt merely revealed my own limitations. Someone once handed me a lacrosse stick, but I lacked the requisite luscious hair flow and meaty calves. I tried basketball, thinking my overly large hands—ridiculous, Shaq-sized hands—would aid me, but it turns out you have to do this thing called “dribbling.” It’s a different language on the court. What in the world is a three-man weave? Given my un-athletic prowess, I stuck to my realm of pleasure and passion: theatre.
Fast forward to the opening days of freshman year. I strutted onto campus, water bottle in hand, honey green tea in pocket, and Stanislavsky books in tow, ready to audition for a production. I went to yaledramacoalition.com to see what the big shows would be. I was not prepared for what I would see.
There were twenty-nine productions that I could audition for. Twenty-nine! Like twenty-nine as in the number between twenty-eight and thirty. Twenty-nine fully funded, completely staffed productions, each with its own theater space. A library of shows were being produced, everything from Spring Awakening to Twelfth Night.
And so audition season began. Everyone from freshmen to seniors began preparing sides and songs, jumping into auditions where we were asked to sing, act, improvise, cry, laugh, seduce, shout, live, die, dance, and everything in between. With such an appetizing buffet of theatre, almost everyone found a place in one production or another, from freshmen nailing lead roles in musicals to others getting their first opportunities onstage.
I found my place in The Seagull, a play by Anton Chekhov, cast as Shamrayev, a retired lieutenant obsessed with stardom and fame. The process was intense, with multiple practices a week culminating in an intense tech period the week of the show, in which rehearsals ran from 6pm to midnight every day.
Since The Seagull, I have been in two other productions. I’ve helped make something truly beautiful in The Laramie Project, and spoken to dead bodies in Middletown. I have been rejected from shows, but persistence is the greatest asset one can bring to theatre. And it pays off.
By closing night of The Seagull, I was exhausted. I stood onstage, simmering in spotlight, holding the hands of all the actors around me—people who had become my closest friends. I looked at each of them, some freshmen, some seniors, and remembered the promise we had all made to each other on opening night, “I will hold you up; I will not let you fall.” We bowed together. I went home and slept until 3 pm the next day and began preparing for the next audition.
