Ghostlight on a Dark New Stage

In between 8^th and 9^th grade I went through a big change – we moved to State College, Pennsylvania. My grandparents lived in State College, and my parents had grown up here, so State College was a place I knew well. I knew there was more here for me to do, and I knew from my parents that State College Area High School had a good reputation. I also knew before we moved that State College had a number of theatre opportunities available to me, if I chose to pursue them. And that intrigued and excited me the most.

I’d done my first real play in fifth grade. Before that I had clowned around in church skits and sung in youth choirs, but that experience in 5^th grade altered my outlook on that whole scene. I played an old German psychiatrist who was also a bear, Dr. Bearjamin Schlock. Schlock was in one scene, where he convinced forest creature parents that their adolescent forest creature kids threatening to forgo the traditional winter hibernation are just having a phase. “They’re at that contradictory kind of age / Known as the drive your parents crazy stage,” I sang in a German accent to a reggae-tinged beat. Yeah, I am not kidding. That show was pretty weird. And I, to borrow from the comedian’s parlance, killed. I made those 5^th grade parents lose their minds laughing. And it felt really good to be so skillful in such a public forum. I felt like I’d found something I was good at, unlike baseball. On the way home after that play, I asked my parents if anyone made a living doing that kind of thing. They were nervous – who wants their 10-year-old to say, “Hey guys, I want to be an actor,” right? My mom said “Yes… some people do, but it is very hard to make a living doing that.” I smiled. “I think I would like to do that.”

The Back Mountain offered very little in the way of arts and culture. My sister took art lessons from a gifted studio artist, Sue Hand, who made her living painting and teaching while her husband Joe ran a frame shop in their cozy little art studio. She had an outlet. I did one community theatre play my 8^th grade year. I was Wilbur in Charlotte’s Web – pink tights, red shorts, corkscrew tail. It was humiliating and exhilarating at the same time. Some pig.

Leaving the Back Mountain, the only home I’d known, was hard for me. I had to leave Amber, for one thing. We went about three months long distance (pretty good for 8^th graders) before things fizzled out. I also had to leave a group of friends I really cared for very deeply, and had only just begun to feel I knew. I spent a surly summer there before school started. I drew a lot. Drawing was my way to escape. Drawing and music…

I got my own room in State College. I started postering my walls with Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and darker comic book characters like The Crow and Grendel: War Child. I drew for hours every day, and I started to get pretty good at comic book drawing. “Maybe this is what I’ll do with my life,” I thought.

School started awkwardly. I was a new kid in a class of almost 600. I slowly met some kindhearted folks, mostly other new students.

Then Matthew was hit by a car.