Personal Narrative: There Are Worse Things I Could Do

"There Are Worse Things I Could Do"

My experiences performing at Nipmuc Regional High School challenged me as a performer and as a student. I sang solos and lead the Alto section in my A Cappella and Jazz Choir groups; I sang in Canada with my choral groups for a nationwide competition and performed for and with senior citizens in a nursing home during the holiday season. I played the Baroness in my first musical in The Sound of Music and the fickle daughter Lydia in my first play Pride and Prejudice. Betty Rizzo, the memorable tough girl character from the musical Grease, was just one of the characters that I played in a Nipmuc Regional High School drama production. Rizzo wasn’t a character I could initially relate to; she is a cool, confident and witty young woman with an insatiable hunger for power and popularity. Playing her character required my walk to be strong, my shoulders to be straight, and my voice to be unwavering. At Rizzo’s lowest point, pregnant and scorned, she performs the song “There Are Worse Things I Could Do”. Her singing is supposed to pluck at the audience’s

I gained priceless skills as a performer; I learned how to convey emotion with expression of the voice, how to dance with my entire body, how to throw a realistic fake punch and pull some hair. In addition to what I gained on stage I also learned countless lessons off the stage such as time management during Tech Week, backstage etiquette, how to develop a character by reading between the lines and how to take context clues from the text to better understand the general themes and lessons of an old, outdated musical. I made memories that would last me a lifetime, I made friends that would stick with me for years to come, and I discovered something I am truly passionate about. The months I spent working with Nipmuc Regional High School’s drama guild putting together Grease were the best spent winter months of my