There are those who wield the term “theatre kid” as a pejorative. It bespeaks a certain teenaged volume of expression, a distinctive depth of passion shared perhaps a bit too wantonly, a tendency to hug and cry at random moments of joy, a habit of breaking into song or monologue at restaurants after rehearsals, a predilection for listening to the showtune de jour on endless repeat, bookshelves filled not with YA novels but scripts of plays as yet unseen to be read aloud without provocation. And so on.
To this I say, decades past my high school years: ich bin ein theatre kid.
I’m not sure the term was in vogue back in my day, or if it was, it was apparently spoken behind my back. I was certainly aware of being part of the drama club-chorus/choir axis, which also included the high school band/orchestra. We knew we weren’t the jocks and did not wish to be. My high school was large enough that we existed within our own not-small niche, and if some of us were bullied or ridiculed, it tended to have more to do with simply being nerds or geeks than any specific disdain for our theatrical pursuits.
The theatre kid term is on my mind these days for various reasons, in part because instead of being problematic, two authors have recently taken it as their own as book titles, for two very different adventures in theatre. John DeVore’s 2024 book Theatre Kids: A True Tale of Off-Off-Broadway is his account of a young man’s adventures in the downtown scene. Jeffrey Seller’s just published Theatre Kid: A Broadway Memoir, is obviously more uptown, coming from the producer of “Rent,” “Avenue Q,” and “Hamilton.” Clearly should I ever write a memoir (unlikely), the most obvious title has been taken, singularly and plurally.
Even more important to my ruminations on the term is the presence of theatre characters on stage in New York right now who are either theatre kids or theatre-kid adjacent. One might assume that this is because the playwrights are themselves theatre kids, but I think there’s something a bit deeper, namely the place that theatre kids occupy both in life and in the imagination, a singular archetype that is representative of many kids who find an affinity for an art, and for others who share their affinity, banding together under the guidance of Thespis and whichever ancient god cared for the stage crew as well.
Hawkins, Indiana, noted for its supernatural ruptures thanks to Stranger Things, finds its resident theatre kid via the character of Joyce Maldonado, embodied on TV screens as an adult in Netflix’s TV series by Winona Ryder. But on Broadway in the show’s stage prequel Stranger Things: The First Shadow, by Kate Trefry, a teenaged Joyce is the manic, shouty director of the Hawkins High drama group. She is no egocentric Rachel Berry clone, since her focus is on producing and directing, not starring; she’s closer to Max Fischer, the ambitious auteur of Rushmore, though even he starred in his copyright-flaunting mini-epics. But one does get the sense that Joyce could grow up – demons and demogorgons notwithstanding – to join New York’s experimental scene, because she eschews Oklahoma! in favor of a surreptitiously staged production of Dark of the Moon, designed to shock the Hawkinsians expecting a bright golden haze on the meadow.
A more complex theatre kid portrayal appears in Adam Gwon’s new musical All The World’s a Stage at Keen Company. At the center of the show stands Ricky Alleman, a new teacher in a semi-rural Pennsylvania town, closeted when it comes to his workplace in the play’s mid-90s chronology. While we quickly learn that he frequents local theatres and is an acolyte of the ascendant Tony Kushner, Ricky is a once and always theatre kid, but the archetype of the show is Sam Buckman, described in the cast of characters as a “tomboy with theater kid energy. Wry, impulsive, figuring herself out.”
Sam is determined to get out of her small town by winning a college scholarship at the regional Thespian Society monologue competition and, upon discovering Ricky’s affinity for the stage, she dragoons him into being her coach, all the while scheming – like Joyce – to pull a bait and switch. She won’t perform the anticipated Shakespeare, but rather a selection from Kushner’s then still-new, still-startling Angels in America. It seems that among their other traits, theatre kids, at least when dramatically portrayed, are sneaky little devils, challenging authority in pursuit of artistic dreams.
The third character in the current triumvirate is only studying a work of theatre, not preparing to perform in it, though, like a pro she nails a cold read of scenes from The Crucible. Shelby Holcomb is, ultimately, the central character upon whom the plot turns in Kimberly Bellflower’s John Proctor is the Villain, the whiz at textual analysis, the dramaturg-in-the-making who upends classroom discussion of Arthur Miller’s work by looking at it from the perspective of a modern woman, not a 1960s pedagogue or drama critic, informed by her personal experience. Make no mistake: Shelby has drama kid energy, causing one of her contemporaries, after Shelby’s bombshell return to classes after a mysterious “sabbatical” out of town, to exclaim, “She’s a lot,” eliciting the reply, “She kind of always has been.” One senses that if Shelby has it in her power to substitute another text into the curriculum, she would be astute enough to realize that her English class, as constituted on Broadway, might be better served by studying Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves or, if things were to get truly metatheatrical, Kimberley Bellflower’s John Proctor is the Villain.
If Joyce takes a backseat to the supernatural shenanigans of Henry Creel and the Upside Down, if Sam’s story is still perhaps secondary to that of Ricky, if Shelby’s audience is limited to that of her classmates and not an audience of parents and students in the auditorium, there is no doubting that theatre kid energy is a driving force within these shows. That these three instances are all female characters should not be construed to suggest that only young women are theatre kids; the same energy can be found in young men of the same age (or in my case, any age), because theatre kids can come in any gender, any setting, any sexuality, any physicality, or any era.
What binds them is their too muchness to some, their boundless enthusiasm for drama and the dramatic that some of us recognize like a secret handshake when we spy it on stage or in a classroom or making too much noise at the next table in a restaurant. At this season of theatrical awards-giving, we may be focused on the theatre kids who professionalized their affinity, but what we should always celebrate are the countless theatre kids who make theatre as well as those who attend it, because without them, there would be no theatre.
[Photos, from left to right: Eliza Pagelle as Sam in “All The World’s a Stage” at Keen Company, photo by Richard Termine; Sadie Sink as Shelby in “John Proctor is the Villain” on Broadway, photo by Julieta Cervantes; and Alison Jaye as Joyce in “Stranger Things: The First Shadow” on Broadway, photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman.]
