Theatre makes me very happy. I love going to the theater, watching a story unfold, feelings apart of it and most definitely performing. It takes me to another world. Theatre is so important because without theatre we would have no culture. There would be no Shakespeare, no plays, and no musicals all the things that bring life to a society.
In the performance that my classmates and I put on, with the help of Daniel Valdez and Janna, called Origins we told our stories about our families. We created a community out of class that brought us together in a way that will never be broken because our stories will be woven together for all enterinety. This is what theatre does it brings a group of people together that may not have gotten together on its own. It inspires people to sing, to dance, to feel, and to create. Through this project I decided to write my grandmother holocaust story into a book because no one knows of the Japanese concentration camps in Indonesia. Theatre feeds the soul and inspires. It inspired each one of us to reach out to family members, many whom we may not talk to very often, to find about our families. We reached out and opened up our families to find our past, find where our families came from. Not only did we did we create a community with our classmates, we created connects with our families that have become stronger as we found out secrets, heart breaker, lies, and truths. Just like everything in life we are complicated and our families are complicated but also very beautiful, these stories make us who we are. They inspire us to find out more and create more so that our stories, the stories of our families, will not die but continue to be heard. Without theatre, without devised theatre, this never would have happened and we wouldn’t know our family or our past.
Theatre is the life and soul of a society and stories are the life and soul of a family, an individual. We must keep it alive so we can keep growing and keep changing and hopefully it will be for the better.
-Brittany Nicole Maher
Regis Performance Alliance 