Student Blog: Rituals, Rituals, Rituals: Maybe I Am Like My Cat?

If there is one thing I have in common with my cat, it’s that we both love our rituals. That cat knows, to the second, when her food should be in front of her and when we should be heading to bed (by we I mean my dad; she doesn’t really care about anyone else). While I don’t start herding my roommates to their respective beds when the clock hits 10 pm, I have been a lover of rituals and traditions since I was little. My entire pre-college education was spent at the same school with the same people, which meant that my theater experience was largely confined to the same group of people in the same program, performing in the same black box theater.

You can imagine that, with an average of 6+ years members, we had some pretty deep-rooted rituals.  We had the classic cult-like warmups like “To Sit in Solemn Silence…” and “Zip, Zap Zop,” but our cult-like preshow routines didn’t stop there. Our biggest ritual was the “Oh Sh*t”. Now, unfortunately, we have a Fight Club level of secrecy surrounding it (even though it is a very popular ritual in many theaters), so if you don’t know what I’m talking about, just imagine a circle of theater kids standing in silence. Yes, I know, silence and theater kids don’t go together, and here we have the problem. The thing with rituals is that they change as they are passed from generation to generation. My freshman year, our “Oh Sh*t” lasted 15 minutes, and no one made even a peep the entire time. My last ever “Oh Sh*t” in my senior year lasted max 5 minutes, and I kept having to shush the giggles across the circle. In retrospect, I know there was nothing wrong with the change, but I was and continue to be a creature of habit, so my senior year self graduated feeling like I failed my senior friends from my freshman year who loved this ritual so much. 

Now that I’m in college theater, I have learned that if I want consistency, it’s most likely going to be found with me, myself, and I. I don’t say that to dissuade group rituals, trust me, I love them. I am saying that I know that I am someone who loves consistency in pre-show rituals, and when you’re in a program big enough where you’ll have the opportunity to do many different shows with many different people in many different environments, you need to be able to give yourself that consistency and let go of the need for consistent group rituals. My first semester of college was rough with show rituals, but I have learned since then, and now I get to approach each ritual with the excitement of just learning a new possible ritual. 

This past semester, I played Claudio in my school’s Shakespeare Society’s production of Much Ado about Nothing, and if you know the play, you know Claudio has a bit of a whiplash of an emotional journey, and a lot of it happens offstage. This meant that I had to find ways to lock in before each scene and find where he was before entering, which was also somewhere different, so every one of my scenes had a different preparation ritual, some with others, some alone. For example, the party scene needed limited rituals because all I had to do to get in the right mindset was to dance a little with my scene partner backstage, and I was good to go. This was different then my preparation for the first wedding scene because so much happened offstage between my last scene and that scene. This prep was an alone one where I had to take deep breaths by myself and save my voice for the yelling (sorry Hero). This theater company also came with its own traditions, from vocal warm-ups to cast circles, and we added to the traditions with different line dances for a physical hype up (see photo!). 

All the changing rituals and traditions I have encountered in my past three semesters have made me fall in love with theater even more because they are all so unique to the individuals or groups they involve. Acting is a personal and intimate art, and I always love hearing what others do to prepare, as it shows me a little bit about who that person is as an actor and a person. Maybe my cat should take notes. :)

~ Natalie