Contemplations of Memories of Musical Theatre College
(In Canada)
those memories i don’t quite carry…
i have the stories
(the ones that i memorized like monologues,
like i do all my important memories,
because i know otherwise
they’ll float away
into the ether
of my mind)
but i don’t have any memories
of egregious things said to me
or a teacher crossing a line in front of me
(though i heard some second hand,
and those do stick in my mind,
as general feelings about particular instructors
moreso than the words/facts themselves)

for someone who rarely understands what their feelings are at any given moment,
i pretty much only remember emotions from any point in my life.
(and unfortunately
the memories that stick out to me
are all pretty much ones that fall under the umbrella of
despair.)

i had fun
at Musical Theatre College
(in Canada)
and yes, there were some crazy things we did
(but i also knew of other colleges that did more [or slightly less] heinous things
said more troublesome things
made more problematic decisions)
but i’d already been in this industry,
and in classes associated with this industry
for over a decade at that point,
so i suppose i had already taken for granted that
this was how we were supposed to find our
‘voices’
as artists.

which is absolutely not to say that what was done is what should be allowed
or is the ‘right way’ to train young, impressionable artists,
i simply stuck my bony chin out
and accepted it as it was(is)
and perhaps that makes me complicit
and perhaps that makes me traumatized
but there HAS to be a better way.

…right?