Closing The Curtains pt 1 · 5:42am May 27th
Man uh, this series has been a really, really long time coming. But maybe it will help with closure or whatever.
So you guys know I’m a theatre kid, and you know that there’s been some, interesting events that have occurred over the last 4 years. So let’s finally get into the good, the bad, and the ugly.
I’m skipping the TWs because it really won’t help us here. Do you really need to know the nitty gritty details about everything? I’ll just tell you to be emotionally prepared. I’m perfectly fine with simply leaving you to draw your own conclusions. We’re all adults here, right?
I’ll also say that this isn’t only for my own benefit. Never has been. I try to tell interesting stories more than anything. Which is why I try and leave my personal lamentations until the very end. And that will be the case here as well. You can pretend this is all fiction. God knows I want to.
August 2020
Could you call me an excited freshman? I really wouldn’t. Never cared much for school events. I would consider myself “starry-eyed” more than anything. A starry eyed 13 year old is what I was.
And Ms. B was *captivating*. I was fixated from day one. In a school district that never gave more than half a damn about gifted education, finding someone who would talk to you on your level. It was exhilarating. And she had these big blue eyes that were so expressive even through her masked face.
She was definitely the talk of my lunch table that day.
And day by day I tried figuring her out. I tried to answer her daily ‘reflection sections’ that were so light and impersonal. I learned all the words I needed to know and I performed well on all of her assignments.
I signed up for the fall play.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream. You know, I’ve always thought Shakespeare was overhated. And coming in 2 days every week from 3-5 wasn’t a horrible schedule.
The expectations were made very clear on day one. Tried to leave early and I had the fear of God put into my soul. In front of the whole group, mind you. Quite an interesting day indeed.
All that for a movie I didn’t even want to fucking see. (thanks dad!)
And you saw the date at the top of this section. As you might imagine. Things were about to get a lot more interesting.
February 2020
So there was no fall play. Delays and delays piled on top of each other. I don’t know how she worked that schedule out. But we put on the show. It went quite well, I think. And by that I mean that most people refuse to talk about it.
Anyway so I was low-key sexually harassed while this went on. Yes I’ve talked about this before. My career would have been ruined if I told Ms. B about it. How do I know?
We’ll get to that.
October 2021
Yeah I kinda accidentally planned a protest about SA awareness. Ms. B found out about it because of course she fucking did. And she told me not to let it get out of hand. Once again, fear of God firmly planted in my soul.
And it did get out of hand. Quite badly, actually. What if I told you that listening to people trauma dump all fucking day wasn’t a great way to spend your fall break?
So she messaged us. The account, I mean. She told us to come in and have a friendly chat. In which she said, and I’ll never forget this
“The only reason why you aren’t getting sued right now is because I reasoned with admin.”
Dear readers, allow me to pose a question.
Why, pray tell, would she stick out her neck for two anonymous kids? I know she did not care that much for our cause.
So she looked at us and told us we had to fix this. I stayed up all night watching TED talks and proposed an idea to a room full of adults with my future on the line.
Apparently I was quite successful.
Now. I meant it when I said I was way over my head. I truly believe it would not be my place to be the head of an SA movement when nothing of the sort has ever happened to me. I wanted to help a friend. That is all I ever wanted with this. And then we had a messy falling out over B’s involvement.
…
Contrary to a popular belief held by the freshmen, you don’t actually need to interview to get into Theatre 2, you just have to not suck at Theatre 1. Or Drama 1 as it was once called (sue me I’m old). I’ve always wondered what a Drama 3/4 class would have been like. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Theatre 2 was absolutely the best year of being in a Ms. B class. The classroom environment was so amazing and it might have been the best class I’ve ever taken. We were allowed to work on the sets in class but it wasn’t a requirement (not yet anyway). It was just a nice space to talk about theatre stuff and learn about life,
There really was no way to learn what was coming,
Mar 2022
Ah, the musical! Everyone’s favorite time of year. When theatre kids and non theatre kids alike join forces to produce the biggest show of the season.
I was an ensemble member and I was really butthurt about that at first. I know, I know, no small parts. But literally all of my theatre friends had a lead of some kind. Hell, one of them was playing THE love interest.
So it wasn’t so much jealousy and more so I just didn’t feel included. Looking back, yeah I know exactly why I wasn’t cast. It makes complete sense to me as a 17 year old with 4 years of experience.
But as a 15 year old with 1.5 years of experience? Yeah, I was rather pissed. Wrote a song abt it and everything.
So yeah I was intensely biased against Ms. B from the beginning. But it was for all the wrong reasons. Did I let this get in my way of giving the best performance possible?
Fuck no, I was showing all my friends all my choreography every day.
But it was the start of me feeling isolated within the theatrical department. Ms . B must’ve really loved that because she didn’t even have to do it! I did it to myself. And yeah I do feel rather stupid in hindsight, though I feel this is 100% justified.
This was also the start of me developing all my unhealthy habits. The older kids do it, so it’s probably just a rite of passage of being a theatre kid right?
Yes and no. Sure, we theatre kids aren’t exactly known for our work-life balance. But I’m sure said work life balance would have been better if we weren’t staying at the school until 11 PM.
Once again, I can justify this occurrence. But only this one! We had been asked to stay late to fix an issue with our sound system. And my parents could give a fuck?!
Yeah so after getting yelled at over the phone for *daring* to interrupt my brother’s baseball game over something so trivial. I quickly learned that I was me against my family when it comes to theatre and when it comes to the wants and needs of B.
(Yelled at going to school, yelled at going home, yelled at while at home, breakfast lunch and dinner. Etc)
Now you might be thinking that my parents might have seen the red flags for what they were and tried getting me out of there asap. Maybe later down the line (but their methods were fucking atrocious), but as of right now, there were no red flags. Or at least, none that they could have possibly known about.
No, they were just yelling because they like the sound of their own voice apparently. Which is rich since I’m the singer of the family.
Back on track. We seem to have quite the storm brewing, don’t we? Well, by the end of sophomore year, I had nearly cut all contact with any of my non theatre friends. They were just too much drama (ha!) and it’s safer to keep friendships confined to the program.
Some were amiable ends, some were definitely not. I think they all could have been, but you know, people gotta people I guess.
My best friend stayed in the picture though. I needed an out if I ever wanted to leave. Because, dear reader, if you ever did leave the program. Good fucking luck trying to stay in contact with your old friends. According to many people, you would be absolutely shunned if you tried leaving. I don’t necessarily believe that to be true, but you would be looking at entirely different schedules and you wouldn’t have anything in common anymore.
On top of that, my parents were constantly threatening to take theatre away if my grades weren’t high enough. And I was simply not going to give them what they wanted. That’s ODD for ya.
But things are about to get substantially worse. And we’ll have our whistleblower introduced soon as well. For now, let’s end this here.
I’ll probably post this in three parts and then make a fourth one combining the three, and the fourth one will have all the perfect formatting and maybe an intro note.
I just don’t want to risk losing my progress since I do write directly in my browser. A habit I’ve never been able to break. Losing 4 days of progress is better than losing 2 weeks, you know?
I’ll be back..
I’ll be honest, I was going to put this all in one post, but I decided that probably wasn’t the best idea for various reasons.
Sorry if the formatting is a bit off because of that. And I’m sorry if I seem to be leaving out info. I kinda am, which, yeah, I have every right to do, but I’m not going to say that this is the full truth while still leaving things out. I’m trying, believe me when I say that.
Some things just don’t seem necessary to include (there were multiple instances where things were absolutely fine for a while) and there are some things that I just simply can’t remember. Or if I *can* remember it, then I have to take a break after writing about that particular event.
But we will get through all of it.