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The wig was enormous. Dark red, slightly ridiculous, and the moment it was placed on my head, something shifted. Up until that point, some part of me had been standing just outside the whole experience, watching it happen to someone else. But in that dressing-room mirror, looking at a version of myself I barely recognized, it suddenly became real: I was Charlotte. And Charlotte, unlike me, had absolutely no interest in playing it safe.

Getting to that dressing room took years longer than I expected.

My first time on a stage was Cinderella Jr. in elementary school, where I was cast as Prince Topher. My 8-year-old self was not exactly thrilled; I had pictured something a little more central to the story, or for a lack of better words, a ‘girl’ part. But then opening night arrived, and I felt my heart hammering in the wings, and I heard the music start, and none of that disappointment mattered anymore. I did Annie after that; Fiddler on the Roof, The Little Mermaid, Shrek, Peter Pan. Show after show, I kept coming back, craving that same feeling.

Then softball pulled me in another direction, and I let it. By the time high school started, the stage felt like somewhere I used to belong. So I found a different seat, the one in the audience, notebook open, pen ready. For three years I reviewed every fall play and every spring musical this school produced. It kept me close to something I loved without asking me to be vulnerable. It was the perfect arrangement, until my best friend Mikaela decided to complicate it.

She asked me to audition senior year. I told her I would, under one condition. If the show was Cinderella or Fiddler on the Roof, my favorite two I had done as a kid, I was in. It seemed like a safe enough promise to make. Then the show was announced.

Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella.

I do not break pinky promises. So I showed up to auditions, got cast as Charlotte, and suddenly found myself in rehearsals for the first time in years, surrounded by people I had spent four years walking past without a word. That changed fast. There is something about stumbling through choreography together, laughing when someone misses a cue, running lines in the hallway before a rehearsal that breaks down whatever distance you have built up between yourself and other people.

Walking into the rehearsal space those first few days, I could feel the rhythm they’d already built together. Inside jokes I didn’t understand yet. (“The window is open!”) Songs they’d hum a hundred times. A shorthand between people who’d spent weeks to years already knowing how this would all fit. I was the new person, the one who didn’t belong in their timeline. But somewhere between the first table read and costume fittings, that shifted. Nobody made me earn my place, they just… made space. When we all stumbled through a scene, someone offered a note without making it sting. When someone missed a cue, they’d laughed together, not at one another. By the time we hit the stage, I wasn’t performing alongside them anymore. I was part of them. That’s what humbled me most, how quickly they let me in, how little I actually had to fight to belong.

But Charlotte on the other hand, definitely did not fit in. She was loud. Dramatic. Deeply committed to being the center of attention at all times. She wore a ball gown and she owned it. Every comedic moment, every ridiculous overreaction, Charlotte leaned into all of it, and so did I. Standing in the wings before my first entrance, I was not thinking about whether I looked foolish or whether I had been away from this too long. I was thinking about my next line. The wig had done its job. Whatever outer layer I had been carrying around — not quite a shell, more like the careful, composed version of yourself you present when you are not sure how you will be received — it was gone. Charlotte had no use for it.

Closing night fell on March 22nd. When I thought about where I had been exactly a year before, I felt something I can only describe as quiet pride. Which brings me to the part of this column that is a little bittersweet to write. After years of reviewing every show this school has produced for the last three years, I am stepping away from this seat. Someone else will be here next fall, notebook open, pen moving, ready to tell you what they think. I hope they love this program the way I do. These shows deserve an audience that pays attention, and they deserve someone willing to put that attention into words.

To the performers, the directors, the crew, and everyone who makes this program what it is — thank you. Watching from the audience was a privilege. Getting to stand on that stage with you, even just this once, was something else entirely.

The spotlight has a way of pulling you back. I am glad I let it.

Charlotte, signing off.