Student Blogger: Leah Fridman

I have done (almost) every job in theater you could think of…. I’ve helped produce, done PR, play selection committees. I’ve written works, edited works, worked on staged readings, dramaturged…jack of all trades, master of some!

To all my theater “children” and all my theater “parents,” past present and future, you’ve made me into a version of myself I am proud to be, whether we still talk to this day or no longer speak, Thank You.

You got back up again. You had to….Or you’d still be there. But evidently you aren’t because you’re sitting here reading this article. Congratulations my friend. You survived the Great Unknown and turned it into a Simple Known.

I can’t control my employers, honestly can I even control myself at this point?..... All jokes aside, as long as this summer I have my health, and my friends, I think I’ll be okay.

You can be a million things at once and still be a singular unique unit of a human on this planet. You are not Actor. Dancer. Theater Kid. You are you who contains all those things alongside an epic myriad of others unlike any other person on this earth.

You are the only person on this planet who has come up with the set of ideas, concepts, and goals that you currently have rolling around within your brain and there is something definitively miraculous in that.

At the end of the day actors, professional or not, are all those same kids who would make up plays to perform at family gatherings, would break into song whenever so moved during recess, and dance like no one is watching even if everyone is. Letting that inner child run free onstage is a gift and it makes your performance that much better.

In my experience, crying over Shakespeare does not yield a better understanding of the work itself, but I’m only 19, what do I know…I’ve tried blaming the Shakespeare, I’ve tried blaming myself. Neither option worked! So instead I acknowledged every feeling in my body, validated how it sat it my conscious, and moved towards doing the work.

It’s when you hit that point that things like theater start becoming a chore, as opposed to an active passionate full hearted choice that you make everyday. You’ll start losing your love for the simpler beautiful things in life because either you don’t have time for them anymore, or you’re too burnt out to see the magic of the world right in front of you. 

Somewhere along the way I realized that learning is so uncomfortable because it means getting really up close and personal with the idea that we don’t know everything…..Make your dent in the universe and put your brain in its place because you deserve to do what makes your soul sing and what makes your world feel whole.

I will not limit my own understanding of the world around me by putting myself in a box that determines what knowledge I can, and cannot obtain. I will strive to learn all that I can so that I can create the meaningful types of theater that I want to create.