Confidence and ambition are key in the theatre. And not just when you are on stage. You have to show confidence and ambition in every aspect of theatre, especially in an educational environment where everyone has to pitch in to make the shows happen.

Our theatre department has gotten significantly smaller in the last year. We lost the professor who taught costume design and the one student whose main focus was costume design graduated. At the beginning of the year we didn’t know who would be costuming our musical.

My roommate, Amy and I, had been cast in the show and were doing a ton of research. One night we stumbled upon a 53-page dissertation about the costuming in this particular show. Of course we read the whole thing.

After reading it we realized that our discussion over the course of the night included our own ideas for how the show should be costumed. We decided to send an email to the director asking if we could costume the show. His response was “After thinking about this proposal I think that this could be very interesting, so congratulations you are know the costume designers for the show.”

So my position went from acting in the show to acting and doing dramaturgy to acting in the show, doing dramaturgy, and co-costume designing.

Soon after, I was asked to do some choreography for the show since I have experience in that field. I was now in the show, co-costume designing, doing the dramaturgy and choreographing the show.

Finally, during the second week of rehearsals, I was asked to work on the props design. My final list of duties for the show became playing the lead, co-costume designing, doing the dramaturgy, choreographing, and co-properties designing.

While we have been working on the show I keep throwing out ideas for other aspects of the show as well. My favorite was when I had an idea our director really liked for our pre-show music and he yelled across the room “what are you going to be the sound designer now too?”

Because I want to go in to theatre professionally, the theatre faculty find it important that I am getting this experience in multiple aspects of theatre. They also know that having this many jobs will not detract from any of the other jobs I am doing. They appreciated the confidence I had to take on the jobs and the ambition I have shown in getting them done.