This is a theatre kid.
Surprise! It’s me!! Now how did I get here? Well let me tell you…
I used to not really know who I was. Younger me was floating, unsure, unanchored, searching for somewhere to belong. I didn’t know it yet, but I was about to find my place. I was about to find the stage.
Being a theatre kid was always meant to be who I am. Theatre didn’t change me overnight. It never does. It’s a slow unfolding, a gradual becoming.
Grade 9
We Will Rock You
Ensemble: My first step onto a high school stage as a high school student. I didn’t have a big role, but I had a feeling. Something clicked. I wasn’t sure what yet, but I knew I wanted more.
Grade 10
The Wizard of Oz
Ensemble: I was considered for Dorothy. I didn’t get it. The bigger roles tend to go to older students. But instead of walking away, I stayed. Something about this world kept pulling me back.
Grade 11
The Spongebob Musical
Pearl Krabs: This was the one. My first real character, my first real moment of thinking: this is who I am. The production even made the local news! A reminder that what we do onstage matters beyond the curtain call (Matte, 2023).
Grade 12
Anything Goes
Hope Harcourt: A lead role. A full circle. The girl who once stood quietly in an ensemble was now carrying a show.
Why Theatre Matters: It’s Not Just Me
My story isn’t unique. Across the world, young people are finding themselves through theatre every single day.
Research shows that theatre-making offers young people a chance to examine who they are in the present, while imagining who they might become in the future (Wong & Bundy, 2020). That push and pull between who you are and who you’re becoming, that’s exactly what four years of productions felt like for me. And it’s not just about the performance itself. It’s about the process, the community, and the space theatre creates for young people to be seen and heard.
As Greene Epstein (2021) puts it, theatre is an essential service. Not because it entertains us, but because it connects us to what is most fundamentally human. Love, joy, belonging, identity. Things every teenager is searching for.
And yet, programs like the one that changed my life are increasingly under threat.
In Greater Victoria, my community, a proposed $250,000 cut to middle school music has advocates sounding the alarm. Paula Marchese of Advocacy for Music in Schools says it best: arts programs are “not just a club out there”. They are curriculum, taught by expert teachers, and they matter deeply to the students in them (as cited in Bell, 2026). Music programs in the district already saw a 20 per cent funding decrease in 2022. The cuts keep coming.
It’s a pattern seen across the country. When budgets get tight, the arts are the first thing on the chopping block, despite being, for so many students, the thing that keeps them going.
I am living proof that a drama program can change a life. So are my castmates, my friends, and every student who has ever stood in the wings waiting for their cue, heart pounding, finally feeling like they are exactly where they belong.
Theatre isn’t just what happens under the lights. It happens in rehearsals, in greenrooms, in the wings. It happens in the hallways of a school that slowly starts to feel like home. Take a look at the space where I found myself.
That space gave me more than performances. It gave me confidence, community, and a version of myself I actually liked. As Greene Epstein (2021) puts it, theatre connects us to what is most essentially human, and when our hearts beat together in that room, we are never alone.
Which is why it matters so deeply that spaces like this one are protected. There are so many examples of a system that continues to treat the arts as optional (Bell, 2026). They are not optional. For many of us, they are everything.
Without theatre, I don’t know who I’d be. I know that sounds dramatic, but then again, I am a theatre kid.
I wouldn’t have the friends I have, the confidence I carry, or the sense of self I spent four years building one production at a time. Theatre didn’t just give me a hobby. It gave me a home.
And as Wong and Bundy (2020) remind us, that is exactly the point. That through the process of performing, young people don’t just play characters. They discover themselves.
The stage was where I became me.
Check out my high school’s theatre page on Instagram!
https://www.instagram.com/claremontmusicaltheatre
Want to help keep programs like this one alive? Consider donating to arts education.
https://artsclub.com/support/ways-to-give
References
Bundy, P., & Wong, J. (2020). Theatre-making and performance: The importance of authenticity in the process of “being” and negotiating the “becoming.” Applied Theatre Research, 8(2), 213–226. https://doi.org/10.1386/atr_00039_1
Matte, E. (2023, May 14). The SpongeBob musical: Addressing climate change at Saanich high school. Saanich News.https://saanichnews.com/2023/05/14/the-spongebob-musical-addressing-climate-change-at-saanich-high-school/
Greene Epstein, C. (2021). Theater is an essential service [Video]. TED Conferences. https://youtu.be/b5Jy8WvQXPA?si=vpipkL0zA68T05qm
Bell, J. (2026, March 18). Middle school music could see cuts in Greater Victoria district. Times Colonist.https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/middle-school-music-could-see-cuts-in-greater-victoria-district-12017889