• My best memory of High school was my freshman year when I first got introduced to acting. I was a troubled child heading no where really in life and I had little to no friends. My family was going through really tough times we had just been evicted again because my step dad couldn't pay rent. I was moved to a school called Cajon High school. It was a decent school the people there all had there own cliques even the non socials had a place there.

    I knew no one and I was the odd man out for a while. I was placed into theater arts by force of my councilor who thought i needed to be more out spoken. The class was pretty easy and I got along with the teacher very well. The spring musical was coming up and everyone in my class was excited for auditions. Even in the halls you could hear people discussing auditions it was the biggest thing on campus. our schools plays were the most best events our school had to offer. More people came to our plays then to our football games and every one knew the kids in the plays they were the most popular in the school.

    I met a kid named Ryan Tiption and he loved to build the set for our plays. He convinced me to help our stage craft team by telling me I get 5 extra credits for it and it will look good on collage applications. We went to the audition room and there were actors all sitting down some nervous as heck and some as calm as can be. There were two sign up sheets one for auditions and one for stage craft. Ryan told me to sign a paper and really didn't give me time to read it but he said it wasn't important so it didn't matter.

    Little did I know that Ryan's intentions were to get me to audition for the musical. I ended up signing the wrong paper and i was called up to audition. My heart felt like it was going to explode out of my chest and my body shook so violently it looked as if I was going through convulsions. I went to glare at Ryan but he had left the building before i had a chance. Then I was there alone and having not the slightest notion of what to do.

    I couldn't leave because my teacher had just gave me props for auditioning and was ecstatic that a beginner would audition. So i grabbed a book in her class got a scene from Romeo and Juliet and memorized it as my monologue. They called about fifty people before they called me. It was a good thing to because I needed all that time to memorize. My hands were sweaty, my head hurt and I never felt that nervious in my life.

    I finally arrived to the theatre and a row of five people just stared silently and attentively at me. They looked as if they were judges on a show like American Idol. My theatre teacher was the Simon and she was ready to shoot people down. I got the courage to read my monologue, I was Romeo during the scene when he talked to his friend about his love for Juliet. I read it loud and I gave the most emotion I could seeing as it was put together in such a short amount of time.

    After the monologue it was silent in the room which made me even more nervous. Then the "judges" wrote down there score and right as I was making my exit my theater teacher stopped me. She told me I also needed a song for my audition, it was a musical after all. I had no clue what to sing, I didn't even knew if i could sing! So I thought up the last song I sang in the shower which was Everybody's Fool by Evanescence and I sang it as best as I could. After she said, " That was all" I ran for that door like my life depended on it.

    I didn't want to keep auditioning, I was convinced that I was just going to get cut so why bother and besides plays weren't for me. My teacher came back out and explained what the musical was about. It was called Fuselage and it was about this girl named Nikki and her father just died and she was left to be raised by her aunt and uncle by marriage. She ends up going out and drinking and when she arrives back home the uncle takes advantage of her. She ends up running away and living with homeless people who all had their story's and sorrow. They lived together as a family and they took care of each other as a family.

    The more My teacher got into detail the more i wanted to be apart of the original production her husband wrote. Call backs were the following day and there was going to be a cut from roughly 100 people to about 40 people. I spent the following day nervous and excited to see call backs at lunch. I had nothing else going for me and I had no idea what to do with my life so I needed this break. It came to me that i really wanted to be apart of this play and maybe I wanted to be apart of more.

    Callbacks were finally up and everybody rushed to that list like bats out of hell. Some people jumped from joy and others cried as if they lost a family member. I decided to wait for everyone to see if they were on the list because I hated crowds. I finally arrive to that list and i scan it slowly and diligently to make sure i didn't skip my name. At first I thought i didn't make it but sure enough my name was there! I made ensemble which I was just a singing homeless person but it was a part none the less. My heart was over come by this mixed emotion of excitement and pride.

    That production went extremely well I met a lot of great people, every body knew who I was, and I overcame my shyness. I became an entirely different person, i was doing well at school and I wasn't as negative as my life has led me to be. We were so much more then just a cast to a production no one has heard of, everyone in that theater were family we all shared our backgrounds, our sorrow, and our joy with each other. My theater teacher and her husband were like my mother and father they looked out for me and gave me a ride home everyday even though I lived one street away from the school. During the closing night as I laid there in the fuselage we created I realized this was my calling and I wanted to do this for the rest of my life. Thanks to that theater and those people my life was changed and now I am a better person because of it.