“Loud and Proud!” said Kay Cole any time someone didn’t speak loud enough for any of us to hear. Cole was the director of Crescenta Valley High School’s recent acting workshops and the leader of a project that introduced to me to high school drama performances at a large high school.

The first time I heard that phrase, I wanted to laugh, but I knew I couldn’t because I was up on a stage in front of about 30 CV drama students. All of the CV students called the three of us — Alina Sargsian, Haykouhi Kouyumjian and me — “The Clarkies,” and we were proud of our moniker.

This all started because of our mutual, close friend, Anna Karapetian, who goes to CV. She told us over the summer that CV was having a free acting workshop only for one day and that we should go. Not only did we have the wrong day for the workshop, but it turned out to be an audition day for student director scenes — one of about ten drama productions CV is doing this year, including Comedy Sportz and musicals.

The drama department is run by a husband and wife team, Brent Beerman and Kathi Chaplar. They both teach a variety of English and theater classes ranging from beginning to advanced.

Students usually never get to direct individual scenes, so it was most of the student directors’ first time directing; usually if they direct, they have to direct a class or an entire play. They were also able to choose their scenes to direct and their actors.

It was nice to see the students work so hard, especially because so many art programs are getting cut in public schools. Also, according to DoSomething.org, a not-for profit social action organization, students who participate in extracurricular activities having to do with the arts have a lower risk of dropping out.

I, wanting to have nothing to do with acting on a stage in front of people, insisted we leave immediately; however, my friends thought differently. They thought it would be fun to audition, even though none of us had experience. So they all signed up, dragging me along with them.

The student directors gave us a line to say; however, we wanted and only had a few minutes to prepare. A couple days after we auditioned, all three of us received notice that we were selected to play roles for a few director scenes.

We all had different ideas of how CV drama kids would be like, but they all like exceeded our expectation. “I expected them to be judgmental toward us because we weren’t from CV, but they treated us like we were a part of their little world,” Sargsian said.

One of the student directors who worked with Sargsian said that he enjoyed working with us Clarkies. “I didn’t know you guys, so it was refreshing,” Evan Boukidis said. “You were strangers so it felt like working in the real world where you don’t get to be with your actors six hours a day, 310 days a year, for four year.”

We also went to the acting workshops, which we then realized were on Tuesdays, not Mondays, and started enjoying them. We walked from Clark to CV every Tuesday to go to the workshops and scene practices.

(Something peculiar about these walks to CV was that when we’d stop at Vons to eat we’d see the same three older women, about the age of 60, having their lunch and we’d alway say that they were the future us. When we saw them, they always asked us how we were doing, and we asked them the same. But they would always answer with something like, “We’re feeling much better in here; it’s nice and cool.” We didn’t know why we asked because we already knew the answer.)

The acting workshops consisted of all of us working together and closing our eyes to imagine situations that would never happen. For instance, we had to imagine we were speaking to a historical figure — dead or alive — and ask them a couple questions.

We then had to imagine what they would ask us about how life is now, and we had to have an answer for them. We also did an exercise where we would have to stand in two lines facing each other with some space between us. Someone would then have to walk in between the lines and everyone in the lines would have to say one thing that we like about the person.

Since everyone knew each other, they said things like, “I have known you since the second grade and you have changed my life…” while all we “Clarkies” had to say was something like, “You seem nice.” However, we all became closer to these CV kids as we got to spend time with them and heard their stories.

During our first practice, our student directors gave us our scripts and we eagerly shuffled through them. When I found my part in the scene, I almost fell off my seat from laughing. I was playing “The Mexican Woman,” with my one line that I would say five times, “Flores, flores para los muertos?” My character was supposed to break the tension in the crowd with comedy, which was very comforting thing to me. My student director, Justin, kept assuring me that he wasn’t being racist but that he thought I had confidence, which made me laugh even more.

After weeks of practicing, the day came to perform all of our scenes … but not without our exercises first. We all got into a circle and did some breathing exercises, but the one exercise that I will remember forever was the confidence booster. We first started off by saying, “Ooh, I feel so good like, I knew I would. Ooh, I feel so good,” in a normal way. Yes, I said normal; it got crazier.

Immediately after, someone from the group yelled, “Now whisper it to Satan.” We had to kneel on the floor and bang on the ground while whispering the same chant. I thought the craziness would stop there, but after that, the same person yelled, “Now yell it to Jesus.”

We then had to shout to the sky the same chant. Right then, a group of students walked by and gawked at us for a while, but none of us had a care in the world, because we were too busy chanting.

It was finally time for the show and I was extremely nervous when it was my turn to walk out and say my line. When I walked out with a shaky hand that was holding a bag of flowers (which was partly from nervousness and partly on purpose) the audience was already roaring with laughter. This made me less nervous and gave me enough confidence to say my lines and leave the stage, ending my acting career with me yelling lingering “floreses” and the crowd laughing.

After the show, I felt very accomplished because this is something that I thought I would never do in my life. People had suggested it to me before but I never had enough courage to actually do it. When I first walked up to that stage during the first workshop sitting in a circle with the CV students, I felt instantly uncomfortable.

I thought, “Who are these people?” “Why am I sitting around with a bunch of drama kids that are so passionate about acting?” However, with every workshop and every Tuesday that passed by, they all opened up more and more in front of everyone, and I learned to love them and my time with them.