The lights dim, and as if on cue, the audience falls into a hush, waiting in the
darkness. It is my favorite moment – the moment that I set aside my own life and
step into another world. As a student majoring in the dry discipline of economics,
I have very few friends who understand why I get so excited about plays and
musicals or shed tears over books. Many believe that I am simply a “cultured”
person. My passion for theater and literature, however, goes far beyond that;
these arts are an integral part of my life.
The easiest explanation for my attraction to these arts would be my love of
language. As a quiet child whose hours were mostly spent reading, I fell in love
with the way words can be put together in beautiful, mysterious ways. Now, years
later, I still keep up my habit of underlining particularly memorable sentences in
novels and “collecting” them in notebooks. In theater, I enjoy not only the lines
and lyrics themselves but also the details added by the actors. Just as a word
written in a certain way can have a different connotation, the actors’ gestures or
facial expressions can add meanings absent in the script. In this sense, I feel that
the details can be likened to language, and I record them along with my collection
of sentences.
Another reason for my passion for theater and literature is that they have
broadened my academic interests. For instance, after seeing the Korean musical
Rimbaud, I borrowed a collection of Rimbaud’s poems from the library. Simply
reading the poems was not enough to really understand them, so I read some
academic journal articles as well. They were quite interesting, and I eventually
developed a general interest in French literature. Like this, a play or musical will
often lead me to related literary works or academic fields. Such experiences
broaden my areas of knowledge and allow me to speak and write about a wider
variety of subjects.
Lastly, on a deeper level, theater and literature are special to me in that they are
a representation of life itself. Books allow me to escape the limits of reality and
live a thousand different lives. Yet each story touches upon a universal feeling or
question not unfamiliar to my own life, and that makes it more meaningful. The
same goes for theater, but it is a more concentrated experience. The songs in
musicals are like a roller coaster of emotions. It is at the peak of the song, the
moment when the actor hits that last high note, that I am sharply reminded of
my human heart. It tells me that there is so much more to life than the daily
struggles of my seemingly monotonous existence. This feeling of being alive is a
large part of what makes me keep saving money for tickets and returning to the
theater.
In conclusion, my passion for theater and literature comes from the technical,
academic, and emotional meanings that they hold for me. They are just as
important as the numbers and graphs that I study, which is why I always try to get
in a few hours of reading or watch a performance when I can. A friend asked me
recently, “What’s the point of it?” I was unable to answer her fully then, but if given
the opportunity, I would have told her that there is a point, in every way, and that
is why it matters so much to me.