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Confessions of a Theatre Kid: How Performance has Shaped Who I Am Kit talks about a childhood led by theatre and how it has helped her overcome challenges and discover who she is.
There’s often one theme that ties together those fuzzy recollections from early childhood. For me, it was theatre; whether I was performing in a primary school play as a particularly animated squirrel, being taken to see my favourite contestant from Any Dream Will Do, or spending countless Sunday afternoons watching West Side Story (my mum’s favourite) on television. So, I suppose it’s unsurprising that I grew up into that distinct variety of teenager known as a ‘theatre kid’ (defined by Urban Dictionary as someone who does “weird things with weird people usually involving song”). Often people envision a ‘theatre kid’ as someone who just cannot get off the stage, and though I’ve had my share of turns in the spotlight, my love of theatre transcended performing—it formed part of who I was. I’m lucky that my family had both the means and inclination to visit the theatre, and those brief moments spent in an auditorium are some of my most cherished. There’s a particular feeling that accompanies live theatre, an ephemeral, irreplicable experience shared with a room full of complete strangers. Once the curtain fell though, theatre formed the backdrop to my everyday life. It was the soundtrack to my revision, the subject of my excited rants to my long-suffering friends, the cause of my sleepless nights staying up to watch the Tonys. There was a cast recording for every occasion, and I heard myself in the characters, listening to how they dealt with their problems so I could work out how to deal with my own. Being a ‘theatre kid’ did tangibly improve my life; having suffered for many years from a debilitating shyness, I eventually forced myself to join a local theatre production and felt the first spark of a confidence I had been sorely missing. But, clichéd as it sounds, theatre was mainly something internal that allowed me to work out who I was, and who I was becoming. Nowadays, I no longer need to rely on theatre as a crutch for describing my personality—it’s an aspect of myself, rather than my defining characteristic. But even now, it’s hard to shake years of full-blown theatrical obsession. It’s 1am, my housemates and I are shouting along exuberantly to the Hamilton soundtrack, and I feel my 14 year-old self light up with excitement.
By Kit Sinclair Page Design by Chiara Crompton
