Stepping into the Spotlight

My life changed when I was a tiny twelve year old, sitting in a renovated barn with the paint peeling of the sides, giant windows swinging open to let light filter in, faded paintings of dancers and acrobats stuck to the walls. I sat in a cramped camping chair on a dusty floor, next to my friends from my cabin. I rocked back and forth, my stomach filled with lead-but not solid lead, which would have just sat in my stomach, only being a slight problem. It was liquid lead, churning and throwing itself around my insides, sending my thoughts-and my guts-every which way. Two of my friends stood up, walking outside to go audition. I started drawing spirals and stars with my fingers in the dust on the wooden floor.

I had promised myself I would do it. A year had passed since I saw my best friend Caitlyn in the previous camp play, strutting around stage as the goose in Charlotte’s Web. Eleven months had passed since I saw a sign-up sheet at my new middle school in a crowded hallway, encouraging people to sign up for the school play. Eleven months minus one week had passed since I ignored that poster even when Caitlyn wrote her name down, insisting that I needed “more acting experience,” that I needed to do what Caitlyn did and try the camp play first-because your best friend is always right, right?  Nine months had passed since I saw the school play, saw Caitlyn playing fairytale characters as I sat in a creaky wooden chair in the auditorium. And I couldn’t stand sitting there much longer. I knew I had to fulfill my promise to myself, had to finally get that experience so I could join her up on the big middle school stage.

But now that I was finally at camp, now that I had finally signed up for the play, I was starting to rethink the confidence that I had when I put my name on the audition sheet. Usually the play was less popular than the musical, and therefore everyone got larger parts, but this year was the opposite. About twenty kids had joined the play, making a good part hard to get. And even worse, only one of the leads was a girl. Although the directors promised to have a different actress play the part in each act, that still left three leads over at least fifteen girls, and six leads for the boys with five male actors. My minuscule acting experience left me mostly stressed, a little scared, and fairly nauseous. I stared at the crisscrossed beams of the barn ceiling for eternities before my name was called. I dragged Caitlyn out the door for “moral support,” and as soon as I took my first step out of my seat, my decision was made for me. And so I stepped outside into the clear sky and air filled with the sounds of laughing children, and walked out to the tiny wooden porch. I stood in front of the three directors as Caitlyn watched from the side, took a deep breath, and started to read from my script.

Imagine the acting ability of a child in their second grade play about the planets mixed with Jimmy Fallon’s excitement over celebrity guests, and you have my acting ability at age twelve.

In retrospect, I wasn’t nervous enough at my first audition. Everything I needed to know about acting, I learned from Disney Channel sitcoms-or so I thought. I was stilted, awkward, and absolutely overacting, and I’m sure I threw a Valley Girl accent in there. But I had done it. I walked off the rickety old porch, leaving my words lingering in front of the directors for them to breathe in. I was letting someone judge me for the first time in my life.  But since this was non-competitive liberal inclusive arts camp, everyone gets a part, and although my part was “Office Girl #2,” I still had one. And I made the most of those eight lines, enjoying my time on stage, whether it was playing off of each other or getting my makeup and costume done backstage or sitting in the cramped wings, waiting for my cue. Whatever it was about that produced-in-a-month-by-twenty-year-old-camp-counselors play, it stuck with me. It pushed me into the spotlight and left me there for the next four years.

It was September after camp, and I had made my way onto the middle school stage, my vision going blurry as I paced back and forth while beginning to read. Now it was real to me-I had to audition in front of everyone, I had an actual monologue instead of “read whatever you want out of the script,” and of course, there was the chance I might not make it. But my name ended up on the cast list two nights later, and I was absorbed into the world of middle school theatre. And it was amazing to me, the professionalism of it. There was the real lights we stood under, the posters printed on giant glossy paper that hung around the hallways, the camaraderie between the cast members that can’t be made in only a month. I made new friends, was part of inside jokes, and above all, I finally started to find where I belonged in the acting community.

Then it was a year after that, in eighth grade, and now the director knew me. I had my shining moments in our poetry ensemble piece, acting in roles from a lazy Shel Silverstein character to a dead captain to a lonely teenager. And that spring, the musical audition sheet was posted in that same crowded hallway I used to avoid. I ran right to it, wrote my name on and started learning the music. In sixth grade, I put my name on the audition list before promptly erasing it. In seventh grade, I swore my singing voice was so bad I would never let anyone hear it. And in eighth grade, I stood on my beloved stage in teal skinny jeans in a group of three and belted my heart out. Somehow I made it in.

But I only truly realized how much my first audition had given me when I stepped on stage for the last time in my middle school career-for our eighth grade drama project. The stage that used to terrify me finally excited me, as my original eight lines exploded into multiple characters. I talked fast and loud as a commercial announcer, worked alongside one of the best actors in our grade as two concerned parents, and even got laughs from the audience when I dramatically stared at Caitlyn in our lab rat vs. lab assistant scene. And as I came out of tableau and walked downstage for curtain call, I felt nothing but euphoria for how far I had come. And as I grabbed my props, running backstage where the improv troupe congratulated us, and back into the auditorium, I sat back down into the wooden seats where I had longingly looked up at the actors a mere three years before. But now I was one of them. Now I watched the improv troupe with pride, with satisfaction, with happiness knowing that I had done that too. I went home that night and found my original camp script from 2011, looking back at those eight lines and knowing that if I hadn’t said yes to that urge inside of me to audition, if I hadn’t botched lines on a tiny porch in the middle of Maine, I wouldn’t have had the ride of a lifetime on the roller coaster that is the world of acting.