Senior Leadership Scholarship Essay 26

I patiently waited for Mr. Dishman to announce that I was going to be cast as the leading player in Pippin. I wasn’t worried at all because for the past four years of high-school, I’ve been cast as either a lead or supporting role. Little did I know, my world was about to be turned upside down.

This year’s fall musical production, Pippin, excited me because I loved the soundtrack and the excitement that I felt when dancing the style of Fosse choreography that is involved with Pippin. Additionally, my director created a new concept for Pippin that resonated with the students in our community. The play consists of a New Orleans Mardi Gras theme instead of your typical circus fun. Since my high school is predominantly Black, switching the style to include a jazz party, with a little voodoo and soul mixed in, had really gotten our students excited about the show.

As we began to discuss more of the content for Pippin, my director made it very clear that he’d already had someone in mind to play the leading player. It in fact was not me. I was infuriated because I felt the person who should play the role was someone with more dancing and singing experience. I was angry for a while, but I decided that I wasn’t going to let that stop me from auditioning. I still auditioned for the show and knocked it out of the park! But he was so set on her being the Leading Player that he took out dance auditions for that Character as a whole.

I felt so many emotions at once. It’s my senior year, and. I wanted to go out with a dream role.. Instead I got the character who’s song I absolutely HATED, Fastrada. Yes Fastrada is still a dancey character and blah blah blah but that didn’t change the way that I felt. It also didn’t help that Fastrada only has like 20 lines and one song. She’s just not who I imagined my senior role to be.

It crossed my mind a few times to just give up, be angry, and quit; however, even through all of those emotions, I knew that was wrong. I had worked so hard these past four years, and made it so far, how could I let one role stop me? I took some time to process everything and decided what I was going to do- I chose to see the light in this situation because there’s light in every situation, we just have to be able to see it.

I have decided to really play around with Fastrada’s song. I mean I am doing it differently than it’s ever been done before (but still following the guidelines). Giving it a more jazz queen feel. I’m also the hair and makeup designer for this show and one of my good friends is the costume designer. Together we are working to make me feel comfortable and confident as Fastrada and I hope to touch many hearts with this role.

I have also discovered my love for mentorship while in this role. It’s allowing me to work with the underclassmen and show them what theatre is really like, getting them excited about it, and sparking some future careers in this industry.