I took my first acting class when I was 13 years old. We put on a spoof of "Cinderella," and I was the wicked step-mother even though I thought I would have been an amazing Cinderella. From there, I went on to try out for plays in middle school as well as an outside theater production.
In my years of theater, I learned to sing and dance, figured out terminology, memorized lines and learned the art of timing and the importance of dress rehearsals. It was an opportunity for me to take on another personality, portray a different kind of person for a little bit before returning back to reality—it was real, intense, seemingly unrewarding until the end, and fun. Perhaps theater, or the idea of theater, isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I find it fascinating in a different way that seems almost unexplainable. Almost.
It's crazy to think that theater has been with us since the Romans first introduced the world to it. And then how different it has become since Shakespeare's time. And that it has managed to last this long in the face of technology—especially where television and movies are involved.
I saw my first professional theatrical performance when I was eleven. It was the play "Wicked," and it left a lasting impression on me that I still haven't been able to shake. I think that it's part of the reason why theater hasn't died over the last hundreds of years.
There is a kind of magic that comes into existence when music, costumes, wooden sets, props, a plot, actors, and an audience come together that can only be found in this singular form of entertainment. Nowhere else in our world do things like this come together to produce a singular item that moves and impresses upon an individual. Television is nothing but a colored screen showing pictures to us behind a thick lens of glass and computers are nothing more than pixels, but a live performance is real. You can see the actors and actresses straining to get out that last note, you can watch them as they make mistakes and carry on through them.
In theater, there is no editing, no retakes, and no screen separating reality from the story. It invites the audience into a suspended world as nothing else can. When theater is performed at its best, that is what happens. Or at least that's what happens for me —I accept that play as real in that moment and because I do that, I get to feel what that character is feeling and live what they are living.
But apparently there is something about theater that has kept it alive and as popular as it is in our day and in our current culture. Just recently, "Wicked" came back to D.C. for a second time after ten years. All the shows were sold out and they performed nearly twenty in the month that the company was at the Kennedy Center. Tickets weren't cheap either. So what does that tell us? People travel to New York City to see plays being performed on Broadway. In fact, many might argue that this is something that has to be done when one travels there.
I am so surprised that theater is still as popular as it is today; in a good way, of course. I look around and see how books are disappearing behind electronics and how no one buys CDs anymore, and I worry that this too will go away in light of newer and better technology. Will people still want to spend $100 on a ticket to see a three hour performance when they can watch it on a flat screen television? Right now, yes, they would. I can't say if this will still be true in thirty or fifty years, but right now people are still drawn to that kind of magic. The suspension of reality where no filters exist, the ability to turn a wooden box into a wicked witch's tower, or the opportunity to see the suspension chords of flying monkeys and not mind so much because at least they aren't computerized. In a world where electronics have become the inner workings of almost everything else, it's refreshing to spend a couple hundred bucks on something that's been around for centuries.
