For ten years, the theater was my life. Since I first took the stage in the second grade play, I felt right at home. I dedicated all my free time to taking private voice lessons, memorizing lines, rehearsing choreography, and going on auditions. Then, during my senior year of high school, I made the decision to leave the thespian world.
A lot of people asked me why I decided to quit, since acting was such a large part of my life. It's true, I loved the stage. I loved pretending to be someone else. I loved the adoration of the audience and the booming applause at the end of the show.
That's why I acted in fifteen shows and directed two. That's why I did crew for some shows and was involved with the National Forensic League in their competitions in prose, dramatic interpretation, and improvisation.
One day, however, at the end of my second professional play (a children's show), I was utterly exhausted and stressed out. I wondered, "Why do I do this to myself?"
I had realized that I had been doing theater for so long that I didn't really know who I was when I wasn't playing a part. Furthermore, I was beginning to wonder why I was so obsessed with getting the next role, making sure it wouldn't be more than a few weeks until rehearsals for my stage production started.
Maybe I was addicted to the audience's attention or to the escape that becoming a character provided. Perhaps I needed theater because it felt comfortable. I had been doing it for so long that I felt like it was what I was supposed to do.
I knew all the people in my hometown's theatre circuit. I knew how actors behaved. I knew how I was expected to behave and what I was supposed to do. So I was a little scared to try something new.
It took a big rejection for me to fully reevaluate things, though. As any performer will tell you, no matter how many let-downs you experience, they hurt just as badly every time.
After a particularly crushing blow, I decided that I was going to take a break from theater. For a few months, I wasn't going to take any acting classes, go to any auditions, or even volunteer to help build any sets; I was going to quit cold turkey.
At first, it was really hard not to be a part of that world anymore. Every time I went to see my friends in plays, I got cravings to be on stage. I would seethe with jealously during the applause and think, "I could have played that part/sung that solo/directed that scene better."
I felt myself drifting away from my thespian friends rather quickly as well. We realized that we didn't have that much in common, apart from the plays we were in. In fact, aside from acting and other cast members, we had little to talk about. Realizing that a break from theater meant a break from some of my dearest friends was probably the hardest part about giving acting up. With the new-found free time I had, however, I got even closer to my friends outside the theatrical world.
In fact, having all that extra time was incredibly liberating. For a decade, I had slaved away, always rushing around trying to fit what little social life I had into short time slots in between rehearsals and school.
For the first time I could remember, I had time to hang out with my friends, go on dates, go shopping, and just relax after school. My grades improved and I found myself to be a lot happier in general.
I started to get an idea of who I was as a person, apart from the actress, too. Since I wasn't spending all me time trying to get into the head of a fictional part, constantly analyzing what my character would do in certain situations, how she would react, what her childhood was like, etc., I was able to think about how I felt about things, how I was reacting, and what I wanted out of life. For so many years, my goal in life was to be an actress, but once I was out of the loop for a while, I realized that there were other careers that I was much more excited about pursuing, like psychology.
As more and more time elapsed from my last performance, I started to miss theatre less and less, until finally, I had no real desire to go back to it. Maybe it was an addiction that I had overcome, or maybe I had just had too much of a good thing and wanted to do something entirely new.
Now, ironically, I am a theatre critic — a specimen I used to loathe. Journalism, though, is more stimulating to me, and I find that I enjoy watching and analyzing plays more than participating in them. I still get a little nostalgic when the final curtain falls and the audience leaps up to their feet, and I admit that I still think, "I could have done this or that better," but it's my job to criticize the performance now.
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