At the Activities Fair my freshman year, these bizarrely enthusiastic Princetonians tried to hand me fliers to get me interested in their group. I pretty much treated them like those guys who ask for spare change — I avoided eye contact, and hoped they'd leave me alone.
"Not very effective, waving those things in my face," I thought. Plus, the whole "Triangle" thing. It seemed like a stupid name to me, and what was with that inordinately large equilateral, rust-orange object they seemed to worship? Was it some Serra sculpture?
Still, I couldn't ignore the hype about the annual Freshman Week Show, so I tentatively got in line for the 10 p.m. performance.
Entering Richardson Auditorium, a wave of disgust came over me. My fellow classmates launching crumpled paper balls everywhere, making a mess! They were aiming entire rolls of toilet paper at the girl who was starting to sing. And they were those huge dorm-bathroom-sized rolls that never run out, and are very rough around the edges.
Well, as this girl sang, all these people came frolicking onto the stage. After being confused about the opening number — was it supposed to be dorky? — I was blown away. Everyone was laughing and cheering, and even knew some of the lines. And people were drunk in a theater!
"This is great," I thought. I was one of the first people to sign up for auditions for the fall show, even though I was a little concerned about the whole "dressing like a woman" thing . . .
My roommates started suspecting things within a couple of months. Almost every night, I'd leave the room and say I was going to Triangle. I'd get back late, and be a little tired.
One day they said, "Come on, Peter. We know you're not going to Triangle, so stop lying to us." Apparently, they could not believe I would spend so much time doing any one thing, unless it were a "special friend."
When they came to their senses, they were: a) disappointed that there was no scandal going on; and b) horrified that I could do so much "Triangle."
To tell the truth, I'd be horrified to do any one thing so frequently — barring a special friend. "But Triangle is not just one thing," I told my roommates. "It has many sides." One of the roommates, now an architecture major, could not quite grasp how it could have more than three.
But it does — it's writing music and lyrics, acting, singing, "teching," playing in the pit orchestra, building a set and, of course, cross-dressing.
Getting involved in the club has been one of the best decisions I've ever made — I've been trained to write musical numbers and sketches, to act, to dance and to let go on stage, all by New York professionals, and have easily picked up more skills than in all the politics classes I've ever showed up for.
So now I'm a vice president of the club, and am one of those people who force freshmen to take fliers, and stand around the Mother Of All Triangles — the MOAT — and, yes, I occasionally dress like a woman. Albeit an extremely ugly woman.
I have found out that even I can make people laugh, and write music and lyrics, and screw an occasional set piece together and perform in a Tony Award-winning theater. And I got over my high school habit of getting embarrassed easily.
What's more, I've met an incredible group of people I never would have dreamed of meeting — some of whom are even quirkier than I am. Peter Kidd '02 is a politics major from North Plainfield, N.J. He can be reached at pekidd@princeton.edu.
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