Finding Your Spotlight at Whitman

When I was in high school, I kept a very busy schedule. With marching band, basketball, lacrosse, and everything else filling my time, I was rarely able to try any new, big activities. When I came to Whitman, I knew I could finally explore anything I was interested in, and I was interested in a lot of things.

Acting was one of my many interests. I’ve been fascinated with the stage for a long time. Several of my friends and family members have been involved in theater at various points in their lives, and I’ve always been a bit of a drama queen. As a result, when I hit a particularly lonely spot at the beginning of this semester and noticed an email about auditions for the One-Act Play Festival, I signed up on a whim. 

A week later, I was anxiously wandering into Harper Joy Theater, having gotten a part in Pippen and Piper and the Case of the Catastrophic Cruise by the wonderful Jaime Fields ‘23—a Japanese and English double major, minoring in Theater. As it turns out, I had no reason to be anxious. Despite my lack of experience or knowledge of where any of the rooms were located, everyone I met was overwhelmingly friendly. As we all practiced our British accents (with varying degrees of success) and honed our lines so they were just the right amount melodramatic, we all became fast friends.

The cast and crew of “Pippen and Piper and the Case of the Catastrophic Cruise” during the 2022 One-Act Play Festival.

The cast was quite the motley crew, with two of us completely new to the stage as well as one acting veteran and Theater major (the lovely Kellen Flynn ‘25). Despite the wide range of experience, there wasn’t any tension between the eight of us. We joked around during rehearsal breaks, chatted when we saw each other around campus and played poker backstage in between the end of our show and bows.

I’m the type of person who gets nervous when I don’t know things, but to my surprise, by the second week of rehearsals I was no longer feeling the usual build up of anticipatory nerves about what was to come. Despite the short time we’d known each other, I trusted the cast and crew to be patient and understanding when I didn’t know something. 

Whitman students are truly special. Trying new things feels natural when you’re here, because there’s no judgement if you mess something up, just the expectation that you’ll keep moving forward. That’s really all we can ask.

The cast of “Pippen and Piper and the Case of the Catastrophic Cruise” play poker in the green room before bows.

Zoe Perkins ‘25 is from Hillsboro, Oregon. She intends on majoring in Rhetoric, Writing and Public Discourse. Zoe is a big fan of local ice cream shop Pine Cone Creamery (as is every Whitman student, if we’re being honest) and would like to recommend it to anyone visiting Walla Walla.