Student Blog: Finding a New Comfort Zone

Change has always been both my biggest fear and my greatest motivator. I have always been innately nostalgic, and throughout my life, I have both dreaded and thrived on change. Since I was very young, I have always had an inherent desire to treasure each moment but also keep moving forward, whilst keeping where I came from in the background of every decision I make. When the change is entirely in my control, as difficult as it is, I take it as an opportunity to grow, and sometimes change is necessary to avoid getting stuck in a mundane cycle. 

To grow and change, some risk is required, and as I’ve grown up and developed my creative skills, I have realized that sometimes the greatest risks yield the greatest rewards. The scariest creative and personal risk that I’ve ever taken was the jump that I took from performance to production in terms of my aspirations, and as much as it unsettled me at the time, it is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. 

My entire life, theatre has been my everything. From the music I listened to on the bus to my middle school, to my extracurricular activities, to the movies I watched, since I was very young, I have loved the idea that people can step on stage and become someone else. Theatre has always resonated with me in a way that nothing else has, and I’ve always wanted to keep it in my life in some form as I grow and change. 

For years and years, I thought that I wanted to perform. Audition after audition, callback after callback, and all I wanted to do was be on stage. It was my life goal, my ultimate dream. However, dreams change. After enough failed auditions and upsetting cast lists, I began to realize that I didn’t love performance the way many of my peers did. While my friends found joy in simply being on a stage, I had begun to find it stressful. What if I don’t pick up the dance as quickly as my peers? I wondered, and over time I began to wonder: Is my passion not enough?  At seventeen, all I knew was that I wanted to be part of something theatrical and create this art. A few months into my senior year, I decided to take a risk and try something new, starting to assist with the small production elements of a show that my theatre company was performing. While my friends were on stage, I would observe the crew and assist with stage management. It felt wrong and daunting at first to be taking on this task that I knew very little about, but by the end of the production, something clicked. I realized that maybe I belonged backstage rather than on stage. 

Although that was a terrifying realization, as someone who had dedicated years and years to performing, I found more joy in being behind the scenes, cheering people on, than I ever did on stage, and I felt more myself than I ever had on stage. The next production that I stepped on stage, everything felt different and wrong somehow. It is sometimes unexplainable how fast things can change, but that small risk that I took to begin helping in other areas and take that small volunteer stage management position transformed my perspective on theatre. 

Theatre is not just performance; it is everything that goes into it, and I now know that sometimes passions may lie in the places you least expect them to. It’s funny how one small decision can change everything. As I sit in my New York City dorm room, I sometimes wonder what would’ve happened if I had tried to pursue performance. I definitely wouldn’t have been where I am today. Would I even still be in the arts? Would auditions have killed my passion, as I have seen happen so many times before? As much as I may wonder, I am okay with never knowing because I feel that I am in the right place for me, with goals that make me shine, not fade into the background. 

Despite the fact that since then my dreams have shifted further, I always tell people that the small risk of trying to assist backstage rather than on stage, something I had never pictured myself doing, changed the scope of my career aspirations. As sentimental as it may sound, I will always be grateful that I took a risk to try something new, as production has become my passion, and is such a huge part of who I am today. I will always love the stage, but risk has shown me that I would rather be the one to ensure performers have a show and a stage to bring art to the masses.