Post 9: Response to Claire Tablizo’s “Identity in Theater”
In my classmate Claire Tablizo’s post “Identity in Theater,” she explains the valuable traits she’s learned from being involved in theater. This immediately resonated with me because, like Claire, theater is a major part of my identity. I am studying acting at USC right now because I can’t see myself doing anything else with my life. That old cliche of “it’s not what I do, it’s who I am” is super annoying, but it’s also kind of true. I don’t know who I’d be without theater.
Despite being a creative field, theater has actually taught me many practical lessons that have impacted every facet of my life. One lesson in particular that I’ve had to learn is the importance of balance. Claire expressed it perfectly in her post: “In order to perform and do what I love, I must be able to balance it with the other important things in my life.” As I’ve gotten older and started putting more time into performing, I’ve had to figure out how to let it not take over my life. Things like academics, other activities, and relationships need my energy as well, and I’m still learning how to balance my time without burning myself out.
Ever since I was young, I’ve always done a million activities. I was that kid who could never play after school because I had dance or piano or clarinet or softball or soccer or art class or acting or voice lessons. While it was possible to maintain all of that in elementary school when I didn’t have a lot of homework to fit in, it became increasingly difficult as I got older. Instead of lightening my activity load, though, I thought I could just stretch myself enough to do it all and excel in school at the same time. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t work. Yes, I made it to every practice, put full effort into every activity, and still kept my grades up, but I was constantly exhausted and, honestly, miserable. I couldn’t really enjoy any of what I was doing because it was just too much. In trying to do my best at everything, I ended up not being able to do my best at anything.
I kept this up for years — many more than I should have. I liked everything I was doing, but I was far more burnt out than any thirteen year-old should be. It wasn’t until I really got into theater that I started thinking critically about my priorities and how they affected my mental and physical health. Time-management is essential in theater because, as Claire explains, a “lack of preparation could impact not only myself, but affect my fellow cast-mates as well.” The more time I spent in theater, the quicker I realized that I couldn’t expect myself to do all six thousand of my activities to the best of my ability, and that wasn’t fair to myself or the people I was working with. It was slowly taking the life out of me, and that meant I wasn’t satisfied with how I was performing in any of the things that I enjoyed.
I realized fairly quickly that theater made me the happiest out of everything I was putting my time into, but I wasn’t able to focus on it because I was stretched so thin. I had to choose what was most important to me and what was ultimately bringing me down, and I decided that I wanted to use my energy for theater, music, and academics. Narrowing it down like this helped me use my time more economically, and I was finally able to put the kind of effort into each activity that I knew I was capable of. To be fair, I overexerted myself in those three things as well, and I was probably just as burnt out at seventeen as I was four years prior, but at the very least I was happier with my performance in each of them. Ultimately, theater taught me that balance doesn’t always mean giving equal time to everything you do. Sometimes balance is deciding what truly needs your attention and when it might be time to let go.
Original Post: https://tablizo.medium.com/identity-in-theatre-c01f6fd12139
