How Theatre Helped Me (and Can Help You Too)

Submitted by Amber Simpkins, ’24 

College extracurriculars are a great way to learn new skills and meet new people. One new thing I tried when I started college is theatre. I added theatre as my minor, but there are many people involved in UC theatre who do not have it as part of their education and are doing it solely as an extracurricular opportunity. I have learned that theatre comes with many benefits that you can apply to your personal life. Basically, all the benefits I’ve gained from theatre fit under two umbrellas: social skills and creativity.

The biggest thing theatre helped me with is my social skills. I knew theatre would force me to come out of my shell and communicate with others. As someone with social anxiety, I was known to me be more on the quiet side, and I really wanted to change that. I started theatre as a college freshman, and it was very intimidating at first to have to get loud and perform with my classmates, let alone in front of an audience. I slowly worked my way into it and got more comfortable with being onstage as time went on. I have allowed myself to apply that experience to my personal life. I tend to talk very quietly because I am naturally soft-spoken, and theatre taught me that I have to talk loudly. It was a struggle at first, but I eventually got comfortable with it. I still sometimes talk quietly in certain situations, but I have grown more comfortable with talking, which has been helpful throughout life. Theatre has also helped me feel more comfortable with just being myself and being a little bit more outgoing. Like I said, theatre gets you out of your comfort zone and requires communicating with others. I didn’t like how reserved I was and wanted to be forced out of the comfort zone I stayed in. Eventually, I learned to show more of myself and be more communicative, and I made some close friends along the way. Theatre helped me be more comfortable with who I am and learn how to just be myself around others. Looking back, I can see how much I have improved socially since before college.

Theatre also helps increase creativity. There are many more creative sides to theatre than just acting; there’s also writing, directing, and lots of design and tech related aspects. It requires some out-of-the-box thinking in multiple areas. I have done acting, improv, directing, and design, and I had to put put lots of creative effort into all of them. The creative skills you learn don’t only help you within a theatre setting, they can also be applied to many other things in your life. Teamwork and working with others are also a big thing you learn in theatre. You learn how to connect with the people you are working with, no matter what theatre-related job you’re doing. How well it goes will probably depend on the group you are working with, but I’ve had a mostly positive experience and have become friends with a good amount of the people I worked with and have been classmates with. 

Overall, theatre provides an opportunity to develop better social skills and get more comfortable with who you are as a person. Doing theatre has allowed me to gain better social skills, develop a better sense of myself, foster more creativity, and meet new people who I have formed friendships with. If you are looking to gain any of those skills, you might want to consider trying theatre. It might be uncomfortable at first, like it was for me, but, if you push through it, you will benefit a lot from the experience.