The Theaters Are Closing: An Ode to My First Theater

The theaters are closing. For good. Well some of them. They aren’t all closing. That is a dramatic take on it. But I am going on two decades of being a theater kid, so I can’t help but have a little drama.

I feel sad thinking about all the spaces that may never open again. All the spaces that meant something to someone. And while these places are just places, they aren’t the people, they still hold some significance to people.

All of this makes me miss my first theater. My first space where I could create. I mean really create. The innocence of thinking that I would always just have a space to create in.

It's not a real theater. The black velvet curtains that cover the multi-pane windows always leave a crack of light shining through, just streaks of light shining across the floor and occasionally, if angled just right, the stage. The raised stage has been host to hundreds, thousands maybe, of musicals, dance performances, and utterly disappointing senior awards ceremonies. It's not a real theater. But it was my theater. It was the perfect place for my little misfit heart.

The concrete walls backstage are a memorial to students past: “Sam Douglas. Cliff. Cabaret 2011.”  My own name, scrawled in black sharpie several times over, is scattered around like some sort of parrot squawking a half-baked legacy: “Hannah Baker. Twin #1” “Hannah Baker. Kit Kat Girl #4” “Hannah Baker. Ensemble Member.” (Musicals were never my forte.) But despite my lackluster casting history, the ritual of this whole process is nonetheless of the utmost importance. In an old school building, where most of my memories feel dark and groggy, this glorified auditorium is filled with light. It houses more than just folding chairs and an old baby grand; inside this room is a lifetime of firsts--the floorboards are saturated in my tears, my laughter, little pieces of my heart that I often pretend I didn’t leave behind. 

In my seemingly liberal high school (we laugh now at what we thought liberal meant at 17 or even the use of the word), in the not-so-liberal south, I was always proud that this room was host to more “risque” shows like A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (Twin #1) or Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (Ensemble Member). In the worlds of these shows, we were allowed to be whoever we wanted. It didn’t matter that outside the walls of that pitiful little playing space the conservative milieu of Tennessee did not approve of our behavior. From the ages of 10 to 18, I escaped to that room to become someone else. Nearly a decade’s worth of hiding all packed into 2400 square feet. It was the sort of room where suddenly an overweight, awkward 13 year old girl with bright turquoise rubber bands on her braces was selected to play Michael Darling in Peter Pan. It was the sort of room where people accepted without question that ten seventeen year-olds could pass as 35 year old working adults. It was the sort of room where you got cast opposite the guy you turned down for prom, and suddenly you had to kiss him on stage. It was a room where adolescent drama and theatrical drama collided, conflating reality and pretend. As my best friend’s parents once said after a show, we were “real good at pretending.” Maybe we were just more comfortable pretending. 

Pretending was easier than dealing with the (normal) atrocities of high school. Shy and introverted, I had never been one for socialization. I had my friends, but I spent most of my time feeling misunderstood and wanting to hide and relating to the lyrics of At Seventeen by Janis Ian. (My mother gave me both my taste in music and my anxious neuroses.)

In my prideful and seemingly long-overdue parting from high school, I remember thinking, that I would never come back to this place. Not this place. Not these “hallowed” halls. (I went to a K-12 college preparatory school, and yes it was as pretentious and overbearing as it sounds.) After 13 long years in the same educational institution, I was practically in a common law marriage with an inanimate and unfeeling building. A building that only showed its love for me in one particular spot. That glorified auditorium became a sanctuary of sorts--the saving grace of a failing relationship. I had lived 13 years of my life with only this room as a place to find respite. So, as I stripped off my heinous maroon cap and gown, soaked in sweat from the absurd, southern, early-summer heat, I remember thinking I wouldn’t even give this poor excuse of an institute of educational excellence the time of day. 

That’s what I told myself. 

But often I find my mind wandering, loitering in the musty smells of a half built set and the echoing sound of someone’s off-key belt. I can walk along the perimeter of the room in my memory. Inside this tired space is the only place I feel somewhat immortalized. The only place where I know for a fact I felt. The emptiness that consumes my high school experience is only overshadowed by the blatant contradiction of the near overflowing fullness I feel for that room. I am drowned in warm nostalgia.  And just when I think I have surfaced, and the fullness has washed over me, there is another memory shining like buried treasure on the ocean floor for me to snatch up and admire amongst all of the pale grey rocks and sand. I am swept back under and the rare but specific passion I felt as a teenager rushes through me and for a split second I am invincible--in the all too destructive and delusional way that teenagers believe themselves to be. And the foolish, childish thoughts that once consumed me, consume me again: “Someday when I get out of this static town, I am gonna “be somebody.” And when I am “somebody” I’m gonna donate enough money to build a real theater. That’ll show them. I made the most out that old, glorified auditorium. That’ll show em.”  

(I think I always thought like I was a character on Glee.) 

Life is not an episode of Glee (Thankfully.) And though I, too, was a proud member of our school’s show choir, my life has not played out like the mythic small town girl’s. And all these resentful thoughts show is an intense lack of awareness for my complete and utter commitment to proving myself to the people and place that raised me, and, ultimately, the people and place that I felt had failed me. (I must admit my bitterness has always preceded my wisdom.) I thought I was detached and removed from them. I thought I knew better. In reality, I knew nothing. Too deep in my own bubble, I could not possibly have recognized all of the things that the world had offered to me. 

What “artist” hasn’t suffered a morose and all consuming bout of depressive self-loathing? How can one create if not for some traumatic and impossibly complicated state of being? It is truly impossible to create without it. I AM AN ARTIST BECAUSE ONCE UPON AN ALWAYS I FELT SAD. (I do not mean to downplay the significance and legitimacy of mental illness; my flippancy is drenched in the reality of my own situation.) 

 For me, this depressive state began in this room, was aggravated by this room, but most importantly was alleviated by this room. The self-importance and the selfishness that come along with my own brand of diagnosed mental illness were incubated in the warmth of those four walls. The depression swallowed most of my joy; it stole the little things out from under me. My senior year, and unknowingly many of the years proceeding, were shrouded in a darkness so black that only a few memories remain visible. I know I went to prom, but did I have fun? I know I had some friends but did they care? I think maybe not. To them, I was distancing; I became a “bad” friend. I spent all my free time in that room and, for that reason, I obviously no longer cared about them or their friendship. My friends were like an Escher painting of non-sensical attempts at connection and caring: A seemed to care about B’s relationship problems. B seemed to care about C’s need for constant attention. C seemed to accept D’s depression, but what was made adamantly clear was that mine was unacceptable. It was not legitimate because I still made it to school (most) every day. But I had rehearsal. I had to go to school. I had to go to school so that I could go to rehearsal. That was the rule: No school meant no after school activities. And I had to get back to my little not-theater-auditorium-dancehall-assembly-holding room.

All I had left was the auditorium. The auditorium acted as a barricade. It housed the one activity that depression couldn’t penetrate--so long as I was creating, I existed. That room treated me better than any living being could; it became a lifelong best friend, an estranged lover, a place that exists entirely in memory. 

When I said goodbye to that silly little room, I did not cry. There was no use crying; it would have been superfluous, too indulgent, and altogether too cliché. Plus, I had already cried after all the “lasts.” After each ritual had been done ceremoniously for a final time, I allowed a few tears to fall to the ground, letting them soak into the yellow-brown hardwood floors, in all their dramatic glory. All the seniors hugging and crying and saying that we couldn’t imagine better days than these. (The days since have been exponentially better.) We said goodbye to the room in the same dramatic, ceremonious way we did everything else. 

Truth is: I didn’t really say goodbye. 

I often sift through the memories that fill this room--the first (and last) time I got a lead role, the first time I directed a full length show, the first time a boy ever told me he liked me. The room itself is inconsequential. The light tower and the ugly pale green walls and the creaky backstage doors--all of those are just pieces of each memory. It’s not a real theater. But it is a glorified auditorium where we made theater. And it’s a damn good place to spend a few hours after a long day of failed mathematical equations or fights between a bunch of depressed teenage girls. It’s a great place to spend a few hours when you’re that cliché shy kid with a passion for creating. And while I lived this cliché, this glorified auditorium watched on without judgement because, hey, it was a cliché too.