My Growing Up In Theatre

College Essay Growing up in Arizona, far away from The Great White Way, my theatre-going experience had been limited to the occasional trip to a regional children’s theatre or whatever movie musical adaptation was playing in theaters. Moving to New Jersey at the start of my freshman year provided me access not only to Broadway itself, but to a completely different societal attitude regarding theatre. Neither my elementary school or middle school had a school play and trips to New York City were considered a privilege for only the wealthy. My entrance into the world of theatre appreciation also marked the entrance into the world of school pride and music appreciation/performance when I saw Motown: The Musical sophomore year with the marching …show more content…
It focused on three mid-teenagers who break out of the path that is expected from them by society for better or for worse. Despite being able to acknowledge flaws with both the musical and original play, it had become my top favorite musical. Although names and settings have changed, the ideas and conflicts within remain relevant even today. Ideas such as being able to critically analyze your own ideas while still remain true to yourself and the importance of an empathetic society that educates its children are ones that I find to be of great value. However, my passions didn’t lie solely within the mildly political aspects of the show, but the aesthetic ones as well. With the preconceived idea of musical theatre being entirely of grand sets, grand ensemble numbers, and family-friendly plotlines, Spring Awakening stuck out as quite atypical with it’s minimalist design and small cast. While I still maintained other interests, or almost three years I became fully immersed in this singular work and all that surrounded it, ranging from trading tapes of various foreign and regional adaptations to composing short written pieces on characters through psychological and historical lenses and debating those stances on open forums. I became a dramaturg for a hypothetical production that would not exist outside of my own …show more content…
My former disappointment in the fact that I was unable to see the original Broadway production being that I was well across the country and seven years old quickly transformed into a dedicated following of the new one. Sitting in a shoebox currently in my closet, lies dozens of newspaper clippings of ads and reviews of the show all carefully folded and tucked away for safekeeping and in it also is all the knowledge I have picked up during research and analyzing of it. While my interest in that particular musical (and play) has slowed down, my interest in musical theatre has not. My interest stems not from a performing perspective, but from a researcher’s. For me, musical theatre is the ultimate intermixture of nearly every other interest of mine: music, psychology, past history, and the potential future history that musicals are able to influence and