Costume Superstar | Namrata Vakkalagadda

As a dedicated member of the performing arts community, I never truly realized the meaning of character until my experience in this year’s spring musical, Oklahoma! During our tech week and show week, we make use of the middle school performing arts teachers’ classrooms as our respective male and female dressing rooms as well as our green room. All cast members do their make-up, get dressed, hang-out, do homework, relax, prepare for the show, and of course, eat, in these three rooms (and a little hallway). Naturally, by the end of each night, the rooms are a mess. Most of our cast members simply leave and expect the rooms to be clean and ready for classes and the show the next day. I myself was one of these people in previous shows. Every year, Tina Crnko, graduate of 2012, would win the Costume Superstar Award, presented by our costume designer who would be backstage with us and stay after every night cleaning the rooms along with preparing and repairing our costumes. I never really understood what Tina did until this year, when there was no more Tina. Our first day after using the rooms, I was about to leave when I noticed that in just the girl’s dressing room, chairs were strewn about, mirrors were left to be magically put away, the trash cans were overflowing, and yet, people continued to file out the door without a backwards glance. It was at that moment that I realized how much Tina and everyone else who used to stay behind did to help keep the teachers of the rooms we were using happy and letting us make use of their space. It was at that moment that I realized that I did not want to be the person that walked away, hoping that someone else would clean up for me; I wanted to be the person that people could look up to and strive to be, as Tina was and is to so many of the people who knew her, both as a Costume Superstar and as a person.