Dear Community Theatre,

I really hope you’re doing well. The economy’s rough and the world is hard, and I guess people have forgotten how important you are– but I haven’t. I don’t think I ever can. Community theatre, you’re a punchline in a world of banks and offices and over-dramatic preteens, but you’re also something we can’t do without. Something I never want to even have to try to do without.

I don’t know who I would be without you. You gave me my passion, you gave me the confidence to speak above a whisper, you gave me friends. I can never repay you. And I know I’m not the only one, every “theatre nerd” has their own stories to tell, their own brand of nostalgia for a stage I’ll probably never see. None of us would give those memories up for anything in the world. It’s because, well, without you none of us would know each other, and honestly, none of us would know ourselves. You gave me the chance to be other people, and so the chance to figure out who I really was. You gave us a way to understand the world.

I’m sorry I laugh at you sometimes. I know I contribute to the jokes, and I roll my eyes whenever I talk about my roots– a tiny stage on the second floor of a church– but believe me, I know that tiny stage was important. It was home for a while, and in some ways it still is because whenever I go there I will think of you, and whenever I think of you, all I think of is happiness. I love the quick changes with cheap, crinkly dresses, I love the confusion in the air when new actors come to face to face with stage makeup, I love feeding lines without moving your lips, I love inside jokes from ten rehearsals ago, I love backstage hijinks. There isn’t a single part of theatre I wouldn’t defend to my last breath, and that ferocity, that pride, it all started with you.

I have dreams, big– possibly unattainable goals for my future, and almost all of them include a stage. Before you, I wouldn’t have the confidence to dream this big at all. I don’t want to get all Hallmark on you, but you made me believe in myself. You, with your bold monologues and enthusiastic casts and casual magic supported me through all my struggles.

So thank you for making me who I am today because I am finally happy with the life I’m striving for. Thank you for coming into the lives of my friends and giving them the strength to be as amazing as they are. Thank you for all the things I don’t have the words or time to say. Community theatre, please never forget how awe-inspiringly strong you are, and don’t let anyone else forget either. Even if we pretend we don’t know it, the world really needs you.