“…And hug five people!” At the words we scramble, grab at the people around us regardless of whether they’re friend or foe, and knot ourselves into a tight group of five. We’re positively draped about one another, heads touching, breath mingling in the center of our congregation. Cheeks are pressed into shoulders, feet are being stood upon. We do not move away out of physical discomfort, though, nor do we shrug out of the space-invading embrace. We’re comfortable.
This is Theatre III. This is where we get out of our heads and break loose from self-consciousness. We check our skin at the door and are allowed to just be for a class period.
This game is called the Hug Game. It forces us to make physical contact with everyone, breaks down our social restraints, and most importantly gets us out of our heads. By committing social “mini-taboos” we break out of the safety of our comfort zones. “Safe subjects are boring,” is the opinion of the Yorktown Theatre Department, “get out of your head.” Carol Cadby, teacher to the Theatre Arts classes II-IV, calls the head a bad place to go — it hinders the living experience, and in Theatre we do not act — we live the circumstances heart and soul.
“And walk!” At her command we break away and move about the space, each walk unique; each walk a reflection of our personalities. It’s hard for us not to analyze and appreciate peoples’ quirks now, ever since last year’s character analysis unit. We observed children and then became children, (who could forget us walking around the school, crayons or teddy bears in hand, with our pigtails and overalls, babbling away like preschoolers?). We observed and transformed ourselves into adults, the elderly, and our teenage "polar opposites" only to understand the similarities between all of them and all of us. We learned to appreciate all. The world is seen very uniquely through the eyes of a Yorktown Theatre III student. We’ve all had our everyday lives touched by what we’ve learned over the years here.
“You’re not special!”
We are not special in that we all are so wildly different.
“You’re not special” is one of the Theatre slogans that has been thrown at us by Carol Cadby since we were in Theatre I. The other would be our personal favorite, “It’s not about you!” which graces the front of our Theatre shirts and sweatshirts from 2003. A puffed-up ego and Theatre do not bode well. Theatre is about the ensemble, and the beauty it creates. Scoring the lead role does not equate your value as an actor.
We learned much last year. It was a year of branching out and exploration. This year is about, finally, application. And oh, were we made to apply what we’d learned last year in the audition for our Theatre III show.
Imagine if you will a stage full of sobbing teenagers: genuine tears, little weepy hiccups erupting from everyone’s throats, moans of, “Oh, God!” thrown intermittently into in the air by one particularly distraught student, Khadija Hafiz. We were the picture of human misery. What on earth had sparked this? Our willingness to live a situation given to us: our immediate family has gotten into a car accident. It’s bad. They’re bruised and bloated from the impact with the airbags. They’re going into surgery…and they might not come out alive. We have to go in there and say what might be our last words to them.
We didn’t calm down for ages. In our minds eye we truly saw our families there. We were emotionally swept away. This breakthrough would not have happened last year, nor the year before. This was the year of everything finally coming together.
This is only the beginning of what will be an amazing year. There’s so much to come, so much that will break us ever further out of our shells and out of our heads. We look forward to it.