By Lisa Frystak, Fine and Performing Arts Faculty

Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and now reimagine yourself not as who you are but as a representation and manifestation of someone else. You are tasked with telling an authentic story about someone or something else by way of using your body, your voice, your gestures, and your lived experiences. That is the job of the actor. Acting is a gift. It is also the product of being able to know one’s own values while simultaneously finding humanity within a character that challenges your personal beliefs. Theatre inherently is told through multiple lenses; its core job is to help us make sense of the world around us. This forces us to stop and ask ourselves, “Why might a character act that way? Why might a human make this choice? Would I, given their circumstances, make the same one?”

This last summer (July 2024), I attended the Broadway Teachers Workshop in New York City, presented by the Broadway Teaching Group in conjunction with MTI (Music Theatre International). Each workshop’s guiding principles include collaboration, creativity, and confidence. Over the span of four days, I participated in eight workshops and attended six shows. These workshops ranged from Broadway History and The American Musical to Intimacy Direction to Stage Management, and even Personal Wellness (Creativity and Managing Anxiety). These experiences, while exhausting, turned into a jam-packed few days that forced me to take inventory of my experiences at Eastside Preparatory School. These workshops encouraged me to leave space and listen to other theatre practitioners from each state, and beyond. At lunch one afternoon I sat with a couple from Australia, and we engaged in a conversation centered around the student experience within a middle school drama classroom (spoiler alert, we weren’t so different with our approaches). Behind us, educators from New Jersey talked with a cohort from Japan. All of us networking, discussing, confiding in, and validating why the arts are important, and often we settled on one driving force: theatre exposes different people and different cultures to different perspectives.

From a more clinical perspective, the University of Toronto’s psychology department recently completed a study that determined, “engaging with fiction, such as theatre, can increase empathy.” Furthermore, the National Endowment for the Arts found that, “Theatre and live performance arts help to promote social engagement and improve people’s understanding of social issues. When audiences see diverse experiences represented on stage, they are more likely to understand and reflect on different viewpoints.” These findings are not at all surprising. By removing the self, the audience gets to be a passive observer who can then reflect upon the stories, culture, and art they see at a level that is appropriate and comfortable for their lived experience.

The first step to understanding what you don’t know is allowing yourself to feel uncomfortable. Will someone like me? Will I make a mistake? What if something goes wrong? But—what if something goes right? We ask our students to take risks daily, inviting them to tell their stories. On a micro level, it’s about connections with a certain friend group. On a macro level, it’s about a feeling of belonging. Each piece of art holds an artist, holds a perspective, holds a story, and a need or want to be heard or understood. We are not alone in this human experience; it is a global and philosophical unknown. Art attempts to educate and entertain.

Through those five days I attended Illinoise, Suffs, Stereophonic, The Outsiders, Oh, Mary, and The Great Gatsby. The sheer range of shows on Broadway this past summer showcased that we are ready to hear stories both reimagined and original. Reading The Great Gatsby then seeing The Great Gatsby gave me a new perspective on what F. Scott Fitzgerald considered his allegory for the American Dream. Kait Kerrigan, the individual who wrote the book for the musical, included her own interpretation centering her viewpoint of wanting the audience to sympathize with Daisy, to create a more ‘feminist’ portrayal of Jordan. Those two different core values of the same art piece changed the subtext, leaving the audience with a new understanding of a beloved piece of contemporary American literature (although I’ve never been much of a Gatsby fan… that’s neither here nor there).

Illinoise showcased the necessity humans have—to tell our own stories, not through words, but through dance. Six individuals come together around a campfire and share personal journalistic moments with the greater group. They leave feeling less alone, more understood, more supported, and more conscious of themselves. You see, in this piece the audience is faced with the fact that our day-to-day lives have become more individualized, more independent, and ultimately even more isolated despite being endlessly connected through the internet.

Suffs is the story of the struggle during the Suffragette movement and included an all-female identifying cast. I believe a PBS taping was recently completed, so hopefully by the time you all read this—you, too, can watch Shaina Taub’s historical creation.

Speaking of history and perspectives, at the center of Broadway’s recent chatter was and is Cole Escola’s outrageous farce, Oh, Mary. If you know, you know. If you don’t—find me and we’ll talk! Think Mary Todd Lincoln performed by a nonbinary playwright and actor—who discovers her true love of being a cabaret singer. This show, while hilarious, is a divisive foray into the imaginative subtext written and unwritten in history books. Once again showcasing the importance of our ability to be creative beings who dream, believe, and manifest.

Here at Eastside Prep, I consider myself an advocate. This fall’s production of Ramona Quimby aided in delivering important material about classism during a Middle School assembly. For January’s Voices in Action Day, students were asked to explore places within the community where they experience oppression through a mini workshop on Forum Theatre and Theatre of the Oppressed, an artform born out of social justice from the mind of Augusto Boal. In the seventh/eighth grade One Acts class, we rewrite fairy tales to include a social justice piece. Once again, we are examining the human condition and engaging in a collective journey of discovery.

So, how do we bridge human perspectives? We create community, we create experiences, we interpret, we educate, and we understand that the more we showcase views outside of our own, the more we can appreciate our differences, and the more we all realize we’re not alone. I urge you to see theatre, I urge you to feel uncomfortable, and I urge you to have tough conversations. Most importantly? I challenge you to simply create.