By: Emma Russell (Beta Pi, Washington College)
I have loved The Little Mermaid since I was little. It was my favorite Disney movie, so I was delighted when for my birthday my mom took me to New York City to see my favorite mermaid live on Broadway. I was a little girl sitting in the back of a giant theater seeing Ariel glide on the stage as she sang “Part of Your World,” and I fell in love with theatre right at that very moment.
The thought that I could be Ariel was, and still is, mind-blowing. I wanted to know what it felt like to be another person and to tell people’s favorite stories. Getting the chance to be all kinds of different people living in a variety of different worlds is so exciting; it’s almost like traveling, but it’s your heart and mind that are going on vacation.
I very quickly grew to love being on stage. I started small with cutesy little elementary school productions, and when I was in middle school, I really got the chance to improve my acting abilities when I made it into a special performing program. I experimented with musicals and got the chance to step into the shoes of characters like Éponine from Les Misérables and Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. I even experimented with Shakespeare when I played one of his most famous characters: Juliet Capulet.
If middle school was a time for growth and education, my high school experience was a time for me to have fun in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Beauty and the Beast, Grease and The Wizard of Oz. Theatre was just always something I thought was fun, an extracurricular activity in school I was actually good at and enjoyed. The stage was a safe space to experiment, to figure out who I was and what kind of person I wanted to be.
My freshman year of college I missed the first round of recruitment because of tech week for a production I was in called 8x10. I floated the idea of going out for recruitment but was nervous because I didn’t know anything about any of the sororities on campus.
My first introduction to Alpha Chi Omega actually happened the following semester when I met a sister named Lauryn, who now is one of my closest friends, while we were in Tommy together. I remember her telling me about Alpha Chi, and it sounded like such a great place, but then COVID-19 came in and shut everything down. I didn’t end up going through recruitment until the next year when it was totally virtual.
Even online my sisters cheered me on in all of my virtual performances, and they all totally had my back when I returned to campus and jumped back into in-person performances. I’m glad to have found a home in Alpha Chi Omega, where my sisters support not only the work I do inside the chapter, but everything I do outside of it. I know there will always be people to come see me perform.