Nicholas Barnard Conservatory of Theatre Arts and Film Essay SSN: 127-70-6568
The day after the Oscars, Hollywood's premier evening, I find myself consuming my body odor, as a result of the lack of a shower for three days. The intense odor along with the scraggly uncombed hair reminds me of a month long trip, that is still vividly ingrained in my neurons, a year later.
My New England Experience Immersion trip is an experience that I will never forget. It was the pinnacle set of moments in my teenage life. I discovered many things about myself that month.
The first simplistic truth I learned was to be true to myself. I was presented, through a miracle of chemical composition, or divine intervention, or extraterrestrial manipulation, (choose which ever you wish) with a unique set of abilities and characteristics that make me a unique person. I realized, wholly by accident that an average group of my peers could openly accept my as a homosexual male.
I had always envisioned coming out to my peers to be a perplexed carefully controlled activity. Coming out to my fellow questers on this trip was the most unplanned and out of controlled coming out of anyone. It was an average day at our cabin. Everybody was in-between activities and lounging in our room doing some reading, and an older roommate handed me a sheet of paper that said, “Who is the hottest girl at school?” Determined not to lie, I handed the sheet back to him and said, “I'm not sure.”
Handing the sheet back to me he said, “Surely you must have some opinion.”
“I'm really not sure.”
A few tense seconds passed and then point blankly he asked me, “Nick, are you gay?”
I was shocked, what would happen if I told my roommates? Would it be out over the whole school? Would my parents find out? What would happen to my lack of a social life at school, would it turn vengeful? Would this become the discussion point for the rest of the trip? How was this going to change my life? My mind continued raced then I let out a timid, “Yes.”
My roommates' response was anything but what I expected. The first response was expected, but that was the only normal response. My roommates were curious, and a game of 500 questions ensued.
You cannot take a picture of a moment, only of a millisecond. I did not have a snapshot of that event, but I did have a snap shot of every other event on that trip. I was a prolific photographer, taking over 120 photographs in the span of that month long trip. My pile of photographs far outpaced every other participants' conglomeration of images. Everybody seemed to dwell upon my photographic works. This puzzled me. While I had made an effort to attempt to capture a large amount of scenery, my colleagues had done the same. Why should my photographs be placed above that of the group? I asked one of the instructors, who dwelled upon my photographic body of work the end of term comment, why they chose to focus upon, what I thought was an insignificant portion of my contribution to the trip. He told me of the power my photographs had to capture the essence of the people and characters present.
I mulled over this bit of information and realized that I found something that I loved that I had a natural talent for. But, if I was to pursue the art of photography I would be abandoning the process of the stage that I had pursued so passionately. I had learned through several stage shows, that I did not love acting, but I loved the process in which acting took place.
My first experience with the stage not acting on it, was an offer to produce the sound for the high school production of The Diary of Anne Frank. That position was a technically demanding job. While I had several different minor technical problems to overcome I enjoyed the camaraderie that I had developed with the actors on-stage, some of whom I had worked with before, and some whom I would never work with again.
My position as the sound engineer for The Diary of Anne Frank was the beginning of putting many different hats on in stage productions on The Miami Valley School, including writing, directing, handling the monumental position of playing god in a Samuel Becket play, An Act without Words, and acting when needed.
I have fallen in love with the process of taking the talents of several people, and combining them to produce an enjoyable piece of entertainment, and often a thought, or laugh provoking work.