The Essay.

So today is the day my Scott Alan Master-Class essay is due, and I just sent it in. I am hoping for the best and be chosen to participate in Alan's free master classes over the next year, but I'm sure there are many others that have put their heart and soul into their essay about how they can't live without theatre. If anything comes from this, it will be the experience of writing this essay. It was such a joy to write it and really put out why theatre is so important to me. It brought my understanding of my connection with theatre to a whole new level.

And here it is! I hope you enjoy it.

BLANK

Why I couldn’t live without theatre.

an essay by

Schuyler Beeman

Actor – Singer – Dancer – Choreographer

I love the essence of “blank”.

As an adjective, it can be seen as, “having no mark - not filled in” while as a noun it serves as, “a space to be filled in - the object toward which anything is directed; aim; target.”

Everything connected with theatre starts from this fundamental ideal. Even when a story is already provided, or a concept previously thought, or a feeling felt before, theatre allows a blank space for all ideas and desires to be founded on and seen in a creative way. That blank space allocates endless options and opportunities in which to find a connection with an audience member to that story, concept, feeling… to that idea that is be given on stage. The search for this connecting factor between the stage and audience is why I perform, why I create theatre. It’s how I exchange my deepest desires, my inner thoughts, and my daring dreams. I don’t know how I could speak without it. Theatre has given me the blank space, drive, and correct amount of pressure to see myself in my own true light through another’s story. I am the secure, joyful, harmonious person I am today because of the stage and all that it has given me.

I also really like the idea of “perform”.

It’s active: “to carry into effect – to fulfill – to accomplish – to complete – to execute – to yield a profit.”

All of those definitions truly bring together what I love to do when I perform. Not only do I want to honor the ideas of the piece I’m creating with, I want that fulfillment to naturally bring across a profit for the audience, something they can bring away with them into their own lives, thoughts, and experiences. That connection, the bridge of communication, is what I cherish; it is what I want to give back to the World for all the experiences it has provided for me.

I’ve been performing every since kindergarten. My first time onstage was with the Teddy Bear Rhythms, a children’s art program, where we danced in the elementary school talent show. Every talent show after that, I was there on that stage. Whether I was dancing my mother’s choreography, playing the piano ending with a “cartwheel straight into a full straddle split bow”, sitting on a table draped with my parent’s living room rug singing “A Whole New World” from Disney’s Aladdin (I could go on and on), I lived to perform. This soon morphed into joining as many school choirs as I could.

Coming into middle school I decided that I wanted to begin taking dance lessons after hearing my guy friend Steven recently enrolled. I soon was amidst endless girls with tightly knotted buns, colorful leotards, and my own black tights and fitted white tee. I enjoyed learning my basics and essentials on the ballet barre to then apply them into the more expressive jazz, tap, modern and hip hop classes I continually added to my schedule. Soon, dance recitals joined the endless other concerts I already had from the three choruses I was in. My parents went to everything and couldn’t ever imagine missing one of my performances. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to have had such supportive parents. They saw my passion and dedication and did they all they could to help me continue in my happiness.

The summer before freshman year of high school, my jazz teacher asked me to audition for a community theatre production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s State Fair. I was cast as a dancer/chorus member, and was immediately bitten by the musical theatre bug. Here was where all of my performing loves came together in a wonderfully wound creation. I was in heaven. All of sudden, the next four years were determined by the theatre I was doing; there was the fall drama, the spring musical and summer community theatre.

As I started the college application process, I looked into schools’ biology programs as I wanted to be a zoo habitat designer. I believed theatre to be an impractical choice as a career path; I mean, who actually ever made it? I did however look into schools that had ample opportunities to sing, dance, and act even with a vastly different major. Middlebury College in Vermont was that school, and I got in. Within the first week I was in an a cappella group. A few of the senior members of the group were theatre majors, so I got to hear about their experiences and how much they loved it. It was halfway through my first semester when I saw my first show at Midd and realized my true calling. I thought, “If a student can create that, I want to be doing what they’re doing.” I quickly dropped my biology books and never looked back. Once having left the biology track, I realized how much theatre meant to me and how it was going to be my life’s work to be a part of it. It was my calling and I was terrified and excited beyond belief.  

My college experience was chuck full of a cappella concerts, dance performances, and theatre productions. Once again, my parents never missed one. Even though I was four and a half hours away from home, they still came to support my new-found career path. In turn, my mother became one of the proudest and biggest “stage moms” known to man. She’s no Mama Rose, but Mary Beeman could give her a run for her money, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. She provided the honesty I needed to become that better performer. Along with her, I had the best group of theatre friends who not only encouraged me in my theatrical endeavors, but pushed me, giving me the needed criticism through acknowledging my strongest points of a creation. Up in the hills of Vermont, I experienced all kinds of theatre, which only expanded my depth at which I was able to create a character and story. Physical theatre work informed my body, drama informed my thought, all the while infusing me with the tools to publish more credible people within a musical piece. I was being given foundations I had never felt, which in turn grounded me in more ways than I had ever expected.

Now I’m a graduate, one of thousands making steps to that New York City stage. So what makes me different from everyone else? Why is it that I do theatre? What do I actually love about this kind of creative work? Sure, (like everyone else is probably saying) I love the rush of being on stage in front of a live audience for whom an alive, connecting transfer is built. I love the comradeship of theatre, working together to fulfill that goal of expressing a truth. I love seeing something come from so little and then become so much. I love hearing what people have to say about the piece and in turn learn even more about what I am saying from the people I just said it to.

But what I love the most are the challenges of the process and how they are met and conquered. How these challenges were met with questions, trials, errors, and changes ultimately take the production’s performance to a whole new level. All of the hardships and frustrations of creating a piece that help find the specific message are what give the actual performance the depth that is needed to validly reach audiences’ souls.

This larger point is linked to my own search of how I do and don’t relate to the character I’m living. Through tug and release, I am able to see where I understand the character’s struggles and desires, their secrets and purposes in life, while also seeing what I don’t relate to. This brings up paths to be taken and obstacles to move through, learning more about the character but also about me. In learning about how someone else thinks and is fundamentally, I am given the amazing opportunity to better understand humanity, and find ways to live peacefully, deliberately, and judgment free. In turn, I hope I can shed some of the light of my own discoveries onto the audiences. By being the character, I wish to create opportunities for audience members to also learn a little more about our true reasons for being here together in this lifetime. I hope to best allow my character, through me, to illustrate his good attributes as well as his personal flaws in which audience members can relate to and inadvertently be linked into the story, feeling the message being played.

The best thing about the theatrical process is learning how to not show the beliefs of the character - how not to show his positive and negative qualities, but rather to plainly be them all. It’s when I forget about performing and fall face first into a character, and can just be, that I reach an audience. I lose myself, giving into the values and features of this being. That is the moment I cherish.

I am also a firm believer that theatre should be entertaining. Sondheim’s words ring true for every production I am a part of: “Let me entertain you.” Entertainment isn’t just about being happy; it’s about being moved from your soul. I personally think the circus does this amazingly well. You see an act and you are completely mesmerized, fixated on what is going on around you. A lot of it is fun (cute dogs spinning around doing flips) but it can also be daring (lions and tigers jumping through rings of fire), weird (contortionists), and dazzling (processionals of huge elephants and flashy horses). My goal in creating theatre is making an experience that is truly entertaining, pushing and pulling audiences in all directions, causing them feel everything I can, and having them leave with a sense of “Whoa-”.

As Middlebury exposed me to a variety of types of theatre, it also expanded my interests to different parts of the field other than performing. All of a sudden I was writing for the stage, directing a show, and choreographing a musical, things I have never done before yet somehow threw myself blindly into, willing to learn on the go. I love this dabble effect; it has informed me on where the other creators of theatre are coming from, how they work, and what they need from their actors. Since Middlebury, I have already performed in as well as choreographed two musicals and am hired to choreograph again this upcoming January. I love choreographing and creating these rhythmic illustrations. While performing is still my primary focus, this little choreography bug has definitely bitten me and I’m really interested to see where that could take me.

You have asked, “So why should I pick you?”

Pick me because I know that there are other people out there that love theatre as much as I do, who can’t live without it.

Pick me because I want to meet all of these people and create with them, the artists that take their work as whole-heartedly as I do.

Pick me because I wish to create with others who can’t communicate without theatre, who want to share ideas with audiences from all backgrounds, races, sexualities, genders, and ideals to better humanity.

Pick me so I can take what this blank space has to offer so I may produce theatre that provides some sort of understanding, or at least opportunities for questioning and discussion, to help make the world a more harmonious place.