To me, my majors in Acting and Psychology are both necessary pieces of the puzzle that is my future career. I am choosing to pursue both of these fields because I have a strong passion for each of them, but also because of how well they are connected. My hope is that the skills I learn in my education of each of these fields will aid me in a combined purpose as I pursue them professionally.
I see psychology everywhere in Acting. To portray a whole person and their story in a truthful way on stage requires a deep understanding of emotions, human relationships, and the effect our memories have on us. This understanding can be achieved through psychology. When first cast as a character actors have to dive into the characters motives, perspectives, wounds and more to give an authentic performance of who this character is and what their role is within the world of the play. Without any understanding of one's own emotions, motives, relationships, perspectives etc. the expectation of playing a character truthfully is unrealistic.
When I performed in my first college production this past spring, Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, I learned so much about how my two degrees are connected. I was prompted to think about the emotional weight of events happening on stage, even if they weren't directly happening to my character. I was prompted to think about my responses, reactions, and internal emotions that occurred both on and off stage and the way that impacted my performance throughout the story. I was prompted to think about societal norms within the play and what was considered outlandish compared to what was considered acceptable. All of these deep psychological intricacies are a crucial part of a truthful performance. Each individual actor must know their own character's identity and their place in the larger story. The skills to decipher these intricacies come from our ability to understand these concepts within our own lives.
Psychology is a backbone of theatre. Having emotional perceptiveness and critical thinking for these topics is what allows actors to become engrossed with the worlds they must live inside of for the stage. Pursuing both majors simultaneously has helped me succeed in each one at a much higher rate. Psychology teaches me highly necessary and applicable skills for theatre, and theatre allows me to practice these skills and perfect them more effectively.
This concept can be seen across the board with liberal arts fields. Theatre is the closest thing to the real world while still being an artistic escape. Therefore, understanding psychology, sociology, history, English, politics, etc. on a meaningful level means understanding characters and plays more deeply. These liberal arts fields give actors and theatre practitioners the skills and context to create authentic art that is valuable to show audiences. An understanding of liberal arts is the second puzzle piece to a successful theatre career.
I was supposed to be researching how to act like a mean pig. That's what acting is supposed to be, right?
Not this time.
While preparing to play Squealer in Tatty Hennessy’s adaptation of Animal Farm, I got stuck on one question: why does anyone believe him?
Squealer is the pig who explains away every broken promise, unfair decision, and abuse of power. At first, I thought of him as a liar. Easy enough. But the longer I rehearsed, the less interesting that answer became. The real question was not why Squealer lied. It was why the other animals listened.
So I started researching propaganda. I watched old Disney cartoons, educational films, political speeches, and clips of Baghdad Bob insisting everything was fine while chaos unfolded behind him. I learned that propaganda does not always arrive looking scary or serious. Sometimes it is simple. Sometimes it is funny. Sometimes it repeats itself until people are too tired or too afraid to argue.
That changed the way I played Squealer. I stopped treating him like a cartoon villain and started thinking about why a comforting lie can be easier to accept than a frightening truth. I was supposed to be doing character research. Somehow, I ended up studying history, politics, psychology, and media literacy.
That is when theatre started to feel bigger to me. Acting was not just memorizing lines, hitting marks, or making “strong choices.” It was trying to understand people. A liberal arts education gives theatre students more ways to do that before we ever step onstage. History, English, political science, psychology, and philosophy are not outside the rehearsal room. They are already in it.
I felt that again playing Abigail in The Crucible. Abigail is easy to dismiss as cruel, but psychology made me ask a better question: what happens when a terrified young woman discovers that accusation gives her power for the first time? History and political science helped me understand how fear can spread through a community until truth becomes almost impossible to hear.
As Emily in Our Town, I found myself thinking about philosophy without calling it philosophy. The play asks why ordinary moments matter and why we so often fail to notice them until they are gone. English helped me pay attention to the plainness of Thornton Wilder’s language. Emily does not need grand speeches. Her heartbreak is in how ordinary everything is.
The same thing happens when I write. In one play, I wrote about an eleven-year-old girl whose parents are divorcing. Instead of writing a realistic living-room scene, I had five future versions of her come out of a closet to tell her what her life might become. That play grew out of psychology, creative writing, and the question of how people become themselves.
That is what liberal arts study gives a theatre artist: more doors into a story. History gives us the world around a character. English gives us the language. Political science reveals power. Psychology helps explain behavior that may look irrational from the outside but feels necessary from within.
I will be going to Oberlin College, where I will be part of the BA+BFA in Integrated Arts program. After spending weeks studying propaganda to understand a pig, the idea of separating art from history, politics, literature, and psychology no longer makes much sense to me. I wanted an education that would let the thinking show up onstage.
Theatre teaches us how to tell stories. Liberal arts study helps us understand the people inside them. For me, those two pursuits are inseparable.
My love for theatre began in the fiction books I read as a kid. Alongside imagining different worlds and learning about new perspectives, I would spend hours envisioning myself as different characters in the dozens of books I read. I’d often flip from page to page reciting dialogue, switching back and forth between the characters acting out the stories I’d grown so fond of. It was then that I discovered I wanted to spend as much of my life transforming written words to performance and hopefully one day for entire audiences to see. Without first falling in love with English literature I would have never discovered my love for theatre, and after my first year as a full-time acting student the importance of this connection has only grown more apparent.
Before I applied to college for Drama, I knew I’d pursue a second major by my sophomore year. But the choice to double major in English came only after I realized just how necessary my understanding of literature is to my theatre studies. Just like it did as a kid, my understanding of my character begins with understanding what the playwright has written. It begins with asking why the playwright has chosen to write the play and for what audiences? It begins with asking why they included my character and asking why they are vital to this particular story. It begins with asking why the playwright chose to write a specific monologue, or line, or word? These are questions that will become easier to answer as I will be asking them daily in my English courses in the fall. As I study English literature across authors, genres, and generations, I will build necessary analytical skills to excel at finding the roots of any play. And it is these questions that will be vital to my performance as an actor. I can create freely with the knowledge of the playwright’s intentions for my character. There will be no second guessing of the choices I make in the rehearsal process as they will be born out of what I have read. I will be confident as an actor because I can trust my work I’ve done off stage with the skills I’ve gained from an education in English literature.
From the audience’s perspective, theater is all that which takes place on the stage. It is the moments from when the curtain rises to when it falls. From the first lines spoken to the final bows. It is the hour and a half long of live performance combined with the technical glory of lights, costumes, and set design. But to the theatre maker, it encompasses so much more. It is the research and understanding behind a play’s historical setting to craft appropriate costume and set designs. It is the knowledge of the play’s political references to discover how it can connect to contemporary audiences. It is the analysis needed to understand one’s character to begin to attempt to portray them on the stage. It takes weeks worth of interdisciplinary knowledge to take the stage in order to impact those seated in front of it, and a liberal arts major provides the necessary skills to do so.
