Assignment Twenty-one – Jessica Ewing

A personal failure of mine was when I decided to drop out of theater. As a young child (and to an extent, to this day) I required validity as a motivator for me to keep trying in a certain subject area. If I received feedback that I wasn't good at something, I'd keep trying, but if the criticism continued, I'd simply stop.

This happened to me at the beginning of middle school with theater in particular. I had participated in nearly every theater-related thing I could growing up, be it at church or at school. I was Alice in our elementary school's production of Alice in Wonderland my fifth grade year, and our middle school didn't have a proper theater program, so I decided I wanted to branch out into community theater.

I had also grown up attending shows at the Lexington Children's Theater. I had friends involved there and I loved the productions they put on. I auditioned for two of their productions early on in middle school: Charlotte's Web and Madeleine. I never even received callbacks for either one. It was even further disheartening when I discovered that the LCT is incredibly elitist with their casting; if you don't have an in with the director, you'll never get cast in one of their shows.

I was so demotivated by it that I decided to quit theater entirely. It wasn't until spring of my sophomore year, almost 4 years later, that I decided I would try theater again. I'd heard about the amount of fun had by the casts in the previous shows that year and in The Jungle Book my freshman year, so I was willing to try. I was going to experiment, just dip my toe back into the water, and participate in the tech crew for Beauty and the Beast. I saw the production come together so well, I knew I wanted to be involved in theater again.

When I auditioned for Witness for the Prosecution the fall of this year, I wasn't sure what I was going to expect. Part of me was terrified that I was going to be shooed away because I didn't know the theater community well enough. But I ended up getting cast, and as a significant character, no less, Inspector Hearne. That production showed me that the world of theater isn't always a competitive, elitist place. It's a lesson I never would've learned had I not gotten back up onto my feet and motivated myself to try again.