I am a massive theater geek.  I am also incredibly proud that I am a massive theater geek.  The theater communities that I have belonged to throughout my life changed me for the better and have strongly influenced my current daily interactions.  I am extremely passionate about performing, but as I've grown older, more devoted to my academics, and thus more distanced from performing, I have grown more passionate about being a patron of the theater.  Simply attending theater events rather than performing them.

At first, this was a difficult transition to make.  For as long as I could remember I had been able to express myself and my feelings through my performances.  However, as a theater patron I have realized that my experiences while sitting in an audience can be as powerful as, if not more powerful than, my experiences performing on stage. Theater provides people with the space and opportunity to think, empathize, understand, appreciate, and most importantly, feel.  A good show can make a person experience a spectrum of emotions in the span of 3 hours that would otherwise would be experienced in the span of a month.  People avoid emotions out of fear or shame, but theater apologetically forces you to confront these emotions head-on.  It's the best kind of therapy.

The most powerful thing about live theater is that not only are you, as an individual audience-member, experiencing a rainbow of emotions in a span of 3 hours, but you are experiencing these emotions in the presence of and consecutively with hundreds of other people.  You see the very same events as these hundreds of other people, played out on stage, you develop an understanding of the characters in the story presented to you based on the same information as all of the other people in the theater, and you cry together, laugh together, smile together, feel fear and hope and love together.  This is beautiful to participate in and witness.

There is a feeling of connectedness to humanity that I feel when leaving a particularly well written and performed show. It is that feeling that keeps me going back to the theater.  The feeling that I have never before, and will never again, feel so at peace with myself, so full of gratitude for my life, and so aware of the lives of others.

These feelings have gone unmatched in all other facets of my life, so I can only conclude that theater is special, and sacred, and to be respected and appreciated.   This is why I wear my theater geek badge with pride.  Because to be a theater geek is to be deeply connected to humanity.  And to be deeply connected to humanity is to be the the best possible version of a human being. Perhaps we need more theater geeks in the world.

Keep on thinking,
Josie