I am Ian Puckett, I am a senior at Graves County High School, and I am in the Drama club. It is not one of the more popular clubs, being overshadowed by the towering presence of FBLA, DECA, BETA, and the various other “cool cat” clubs. However, I want to make the case for why Drama should be one of the clubs that every kid wants to join. Drama club brings you out of your social shell, it teaches you about teamwork, and it shows you humility, three things that many adults in the land of the free and the home of the brave desperately need.

Firstly, Drama club brings you out of your social shell. In Drama, many kinds of people join. Some loud, some quiet, some tall, some short, some thin, some no-so-thin, some outgoing, some no-so-outgoing, some liberal, some conservative, some American, some not American, but there is one similarity in Drama that brings all of these people together: the act. I have found that when the passionate actors begin to focus on that; the act, and not on the other small, insignificant differences that divide us, then we find ourselves closer together, a tight knit unit that is driven forward by the love of acting and the desire to better ourselves. Then, when the lights go out and the curtains come down, we are suddenly taking to each other as friends. We joke, we laugh, we cry, we talk about the weather, and at times, we talk about the deeper subjects of life. When you are in Drama club, you suddenly lose sight of everything else but the act, and it is the act that brings the actors closer together, not in an act that has bled over into real life, but as a reality, as real friends, out of their comfortable social shells into a lives filled with great friends that happen to be diffferent.

Secondly, Drama club teaches you about teamwork. When a play is written, it invoves multiple parts. In a musical, some sing high, some sing low, and some don’t sing at all! Every single actor has a specific talent that will be used or a specific purpose in their specific part, and when that happens, magic happens. All the gears in the clock begin to turn, creating a perfect harmony that shows the audience in front of them that these people love each other and they love the act. This magic happens only when everyone embraces the act as a team and when they begin to play their part on the team, otherwise they entire play, musical, or whatever act is taking place, falls apart. Just like in life, when someone stops working, then everything stops working, and the team is strained. Drama teaches you how not to strain the team: learn your lines, be yourself, play your part to the best of your ability, etc. Drama makes you a better team player, and that is a quality worht acquiring and putting into practice.

Lastly, Drama teaches you humility. C.S. Lewis once said, “True humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.” The fact is this: there will always be someone better than you. The one thing actors Drama club cannot stand is a narcassistic actor. A person who arrogantly demands the stage, steals every line, every idea, and tries to rise above the pack and run the show. If that person gets the lead role, then the show will either crash and burn or it will run successfully at the cost of the supporting cast’s resentment. Drama teaches every actor the important lesson that not everything is about you, and that there are some things that are bigger than you are. The entire show is bigger than one actor. Every actor must humble themselves and play their part, and then and only then will the show become “magic.”

Drama is such an important club, and it is wildly under-appreciated. I earnestly hope that you will consider how valuable Drama is, and I hope that you will consider joining! You won’t regret it!