The Black and White

By: Bridget Pouliot

Gerhard Richter once said, “Art is the highest form of hope.” As an artist and lover of the arts, I hear people talk about the power it holds in our lives if we let it, how it can help us express ourselves, and how it can be healing to create. Most of all, different forms of art help us depict and make sense of the beauty, the horror, and the value of living on this earth we’ve been given, and look at it from a different lens. 

For me, Richter’s quote holds a special place in my heart. I live my life bouncing around with a grin. Constantly, I beam about drama, chorale, and my writing, for they are my lifesource. There is no doubt in my mind, or anyone who knows me, that art has made me who I am. I am not sure I would’ve made it through this year without the gift of hope artistry bestowed upon me and the power of healing it holds.

My year started off with a trip to New York City, the city that never sleeps. How could they sleep with the stunning chaos of colorful lights, murals, and, my favorite part, Broadway theaters that define the city? I was given the gift to see & Juliet (for the second year in a row – which I highly recommend to any Shakespeare lovers) and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. There’s something magical about sitting in a theater and feeling the energy, the music, and the passion; it reinforced my desire to perform after a rough show that left me questioning my love for musical theatre.

After I got back from NYC, I slid right into Choral Festival and All-State Chorus preparations. These performances have coincided the past few years, with Choral Festival the Thursday after All-State weekend. The friendships created and strengthened through the shared love of music, and the opportunity to work with the incredible Rollo Dilworth, are something I will never forget. Despite the busy schedule, this is my favorite part of every year. There’s nothing more addictive than the adrenaline rush I get when Chorale finishes our performance at Choral Festival and we walk off to thunderous applause (especially from our biggest cheerleaders, the Pilgrim Chorus), knowing we did it. This was the moment I felt like I belonged and was wanted in chorale.

Simultaneously, I was also in rehearsals for Pilgrim Drama’s straight play, Teach Me How to Cry. This show was my first show I performed at Pilgrim without my assistive listening technology (my FM System), and it was my first ever drama. A show full of accomplishments and new experiences for me, I found that dramatic acting is definitely my forte. (Yes, Madre, you were correct in calling me dramatic. Alas, I cannot help it.) This show will forever hold a special place in my heart, and my healing process regarding an absent father. Oddly enough, if you can let yourself go, there is something therapeutic about crying on stage.

Immediately following the conclusion of Teach Me How to Cry, I was thrown into another tech week. For those unfamiliar with theater lingo, “tech week” is defined as “the week leading up to opening night, when all of the technical elements (costumes, lights, moving sets, etc.) are added”. This is known to be an exhausting time; a time theatre kids dread. However, I’ve always looked forward to tech week. There’s something so magical about it. For this tech week, I was a student intern at the Arts Alive theatre program, which was putting on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at Cedar Hill Elementary School. My initial job was to teach the kids their songs and polish them once they were learned. When it hit tech week, my job changed to being one of the lead stage hands. I will always love the rush of being onstage, but there was something amazing about being backstage and moving sets. It was a different experience I didn’t imagine I would love as much as I did, especially while doing it with three of my closest friends, including my little brother. This show taught me not to limit myself to just what I knew I could do well, because you truly never know what you’ll find joy in.

May flowers blew into my life, and brought the annual Spring Pilgrim Chorus and Chorale Concert with them. Unfortunately, they brought illness into my life as well. This was par for my life’s course, sure, but it did not make it any more fun. Me getting sick meant that I was battling more issues than usual with my ears, which have a long history of hearing loss and other problems. I remember breaking down in tears in the middle of a song while chorale was practicing on the Tuesday of concert week because I was in so much pain and couldn’t hear a thing. But if being who I am and living with these problems has taught me anything, it’s how to persevere, and I have the most amazing support behind me between my family in chorale, my mother, and Mrs. Soares. Despite the rocky road to the day, the concert went off without a hitch, and that feeling of accomplishment and knowing I did a great job despite the ear issues is something I will forever hold onto. That was the day I started believing I could push through it, and music really helped me be able to have that lightbulb moment and build trust in myself.

Summer came into my life as a wave upon a shore, bringing with one of the experiences I look forward to each year; the Providence Performing Arts Center’s Next Stop Broadway summer intensive. A five day camp, from 8:40am to 5:00pm everyday, Next Stop is for those who live and breathe musical theatre. This was my fifth year fulfilling the dream of performing on PPAC’s stage, and let me tell you, Next Stop Broadway has helped me through many things in the past. They’ve supported my healing process after losing a family member, cutting off my father, and even accommodated me four days after an intense ear surgery when I could barely dance and hear. This year was no different. They helped me put an end to limitations set by my lack of balance (another thing I can thank my ears for), and I was even able to perform a solo for the first time ever on stage because of them problem-solving with me to ensure I could hear. I just know little me would be so proud.

The other significant moment July brought with it was the first time I was able to put a paintbrush to a paper and just paint in years. Painting was my escape for years until I got stuck. I was frozen in this fear that I would mess up and that my painting would look awful, until one day. It took everything in me to try painting again, but what is life without mistakes? That’s the beauty of the world. Chocolate chip cookies, a treasure to many people, were created by mistake. Even in culinary arts mistakes lead to “incredible discoveries”, as said by Ruth Cardello. So, I let go and just painted. There was something so healing about just going for it, and I was very proud of my piece of artwork. 

In November, I performed as Beth March in Pilgrim’s production of Little Women. The show was a dream come true, and one I will never forget. However, the rehearsal process was a bit more of a nightmare than a dream. Between having a family member in the hospital, my eardrum rupturing again, and going to the hospital (two weeks before the show) myself due to an injury that resulted in me having bruised ribs, I’m not sure I would opt to relive those eight weeks of my life given the option. Nevertheless, as I laid in the ER at 1:00 am, music from the show kept me calm and hopeful. I don’t think I would have made it through anything that transpired in those two months without the show and the community the Pilgrim Players Drama Club has given me. Music is what holds my world together. Even while a mess of tears, when darkness and despair makes it so easy to just give up, the hope and music from the show gave me the strength I needed to continue. That hope held me through to the moment I was onstage on closing night.

The falling of the leaves also brought the return of chorale to my life. Despite us having multiple notable performances, such as Patriots Honoring Patriots and our Winter Concert, the one I believe pushed me the most was my All-State audition. After a tough audition last year with an adjudicator who thought my hearing device was an advantage and the audition going heartbreakingly downhill when I didn’t hear the starting pitch and she refused to play it again, I didn’t know what to expect. To make this worse, auditions are very early on the morning of the second show, so I had gotten home late the night before, and I woke up with a sore throat. Despite all of this, I put my heart into my audition, and I placed sixth out of all of the sopranos who auditioned. To say I was shocked was an understatement, but it was so freeing to know I wasn’t defined by my ears and that I could succeed despite them.

My year of art and performances ended with me entering Scholastic Arts and Writing, as I now have for five years. I found out in March that my 2023 entries had placed; Monsters, a story based on a metaphor about mental monsters, received a silver key, and Fraction of a Father – which, I believe, is self-explanatory – received an honorable mention. I had been stuck for weeks, unable to put my pen to my paper and create anything I felt I could be proud of. Despite my writing for the newspaper, which was so freeing to be able to do again, my urge to write creatively was consuming me, and yet, I was unable to… until early December. 

Two days prior to the deadline for Scholastic, I sat down and just wrote. I spilled my heart, passion, and my tears (literally) onto the page. I wrote about my sister moving away, and me having to leave her, one of my closest friends. This was my breakthrough, and I was able to write another piece after. In the end, I wrote two pieces, and healed a small part of my soul that missed my sister desperately. My writing has always given me a place to let myself go and heal whatever stings.

To me, letting hope thrive is one of the hardest things humans can do. Not everyone loves being vulnerable, and sometimes, it’s easier to just expect the worst and not be let down, or even give up in times of darkness and sorrow. However, I love living in this world of color and art, even though sometimes the art that makes up my life is very abstract and I don’t always get it. Art (whether it’s performing, writing, photography/filming, etc.) has helped me become the person I am today, and I believe it will always give me the hope I need to exist happily throughout all that goes on. Even in the darkest of times, there is a light that shines in the theater. Whether it is a single light upon the stage during a global pandemic or stage lights on show night, that light shines on just as my joy will.