My freshman year, there were two plays to try out for — there was a fall play, and a spring play. If you didn’t get into one, that was that. You worked backstage, or you waited until next year. Things have changed. Last year students took matters into their own hands and a whole slew of student-run productions appeared. Shakesperiments, Effie’s Players and the Broadway Revue all gave lots of students opportunities to get on stage and perform. The Ten Minute Play Festival and 24-hour Play Festival are back, and almost every spring, the campus sees senior theatre majors looking for new talent to appear in their I.S. shows.
The point I’m trying to make here is that if you want to be an actor, now is the time to try it. I know from experience that the theatre department here can seem pretty insular, but this year alone we’ve seen a huge outpouring of talent that I had never encountered before. Almost the entire cast of Effie’s production this year, “The Fantasticks” were students whom I had never seen in a production at Wooster, and it was an excellent.
It’s not just acting, either. Pretty much every area of the arts has groups with varying levels of professionalism and expected commitment. For example, Wooster has five a capella groups—two male, two female, and one co-ed. Do you know how ridiculous that is for a school this size? These groups audition new members every year, and most of the people who sing in them aren’t music majors. Last year, A Round of Monkeys had one music major out of 18 members, and she didn’t even lead rehearsals.
If dance is your thing, there are two official dance concerts produced each year by the Wooster Dance Company (part of the theatre and dance department). Students do most of the choreography, and, believe it or not, most of them aren’t dance majors. Which is just as well because there are only two dance majors at the school right now — they’d have to work pretty hard to put all those pieces together single-handedly. If modern dance isn’t what you’re into, the Let’s Dance Society is always open to people looking to work on their social dance skills — they do swing as well as a variety of ballroom kind of styles.
We also have a student literary magazine, The Goliard, which accepts submissions of art, music, poetry and prose from everyone; not just art majors, music majors and english majors. They also host writing workshops where you can have your work critiqued.
Most of these groups and productions have relatively low time commitments. A capella groups typically rehearse two nights a week for an hour and a half a week. Plays are more intense, but they usually only rehearse for four to six weeks. The student groups are often willing to work around people’s schedules. And if you’re really pressed for time, the 24-hour Play Festival only takes, well, you get the idea.
Despite all these opportunities, plenty of Wooster students still have artistic areas they want to pursue, but they never try. They tell themselves they’re not good enough, and they defeat themselves before they even start. Wooster is the perfect place for exploring these different areas. If there’s something you think you might want to try, get out there and try it. The worst that can happen is you don’t succeed. But the chance to be on stage, or to have your work seen and admired by the campus, is worth the risk. You might discover a side of yourself that you never knew you had.
Nathan Comstock is a Senior Arts Writer for the Voice. He may be reached for further comments and questions at NComstock10@wooster.edu
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