Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen­–Except I am Definitely Not Lindsey Lohan

30 seconds.

Five of my castmates are desperately trying to unzip the back of what is starting to feel like a straitjacket as quickly as possible. As we struggle letting out frustrated whisper screams, I hear our voices softly echoing on the stage just 10 feet from us. Your mic is still on you MORON, I say to myself. 

15 seconds.

I pull my shirt over my head and slip on the rest of my costume not even bothering to look down to realize I was still wearing slippers. Why is this a big deal you ask? To set the scene for you, I was playing a high school student on her way to class. In slippers. I’m sure no one in the audience noticed but that didn’t stop the one drop of sweat to fall down my forehead as I tried to hide my feet from the audience members.

It’s unlikely that an anxious person, like myself, gets so much out of chronic angina that fills my chest right before I get on stage. I don’t know whether it’s the fact that my uncle tried convincing me and my little cousins that J-Lo was our “titi” every time she came on the tv or the stories I was told of how my grandmother had the best singing voice in Puerto Rico, that instilled a love for performing in me at a young age. Most 3rdgraders loved reading books like Goosebumps or Horrible Harry, but I spent my time reading monologues and performing them in front of the mirror. At every family function, my cousin and I would come up with an entire one act and give the performance of our lives just 30 minutes later.

I remember each and every audition that I have gone to. Both the bad and the good ones are etched into my mind forever. The posters for the upcoming plays adorned the walls of my middle school. The bright colored paper and bolded fonts, quite literally jumping off the page followed me to every class that day. When I finally got my hands on a script, I would recite my lines so many times you’d think the words were engraved into my mind forever. Yet even though I had all the confidence in the world right before going into an audition, when the time came, as I watched each person onstage, I developed a toxic obsession of comparing myself to others. Nothing I did after that was ever good enough. I found that in a room full of judging eyes, I was my biggest critique and because of that, for the longest time, I avoided auditioning for major roles in any production. Bright colored paper and bolded fonts now swarmed around me like insects, following me to class only to remind me that I was meant to be Girl #2 and nothing more.

Before middle school, my time as a theater kid included being part of the choir or a cast member in a musical (usually Disney). It was in 8thgrade when my theater teacher Ms. Orlando, began to really push me to try new characters and genres that I never thought I could pull off. After being introduced to improv, I grew to love being in an ensemble, and for the first time ever I didn’t feel like I was shadowing someone else. Each and every one of my castmates brought different elements to our scene that made it great. So great that we decided to script our ideas as a class and create a student-written and directed show filled with short one acts. It was then that I had my first leading role in a one act. A sassy old lady (which I nailed by the way, even got voted favorite character by the audience members). After that experience, I decided that I was going to go to competition that year and perform an ensemble with my friends. 

For all my life I had loved memorizing my lines and finding out more about who I was portraying to be able to play that role in the best way that I could (even when I was Girl #2, I was the best darn Girl #2 anyone in The Academy had ever seen). Studying dialogue is a big part of theater, and building a background for your character helps an actor understand where to take the role. When Ms. Orlando suggested we perform an ensemble pantomime I started to sweat nervously. Everything that I knew went out the door and it wasn’t how I delivered my lines that I had to focus on, but how to communicate what I was feeling or saying to the audience without dialogue but just the muscles in my face and body. Day after day we rehearsed, and each time Ms. Orlando cheerfully exclaimed, “Bigger! I want bigger!” I found myself analyzing every movement I made throughout the day, the faces I made when I heard good news, when I was scared or jealous, then I multiplied them by a hundred when I got onstage. It was the first ever role that I felt a part of something bigger than myself. Never had I put so much passion into something that I had worked so hard on and dreamed of doing for so long.

On competition day, as we were about to perform our pantomime in a giant room filled with 4 of the most blank faced judges, I began to feel the adrenaline and nerve coming in full effect. That afternoon we walked out of the competition with “Excellent” gold ribbons in our hands. To this day as I move on to the next chapter of my life away from my hometown, I still proudly pin up my ribbon on my new apartment walls.