I came to the US to learn theater with full heart of excitement. As a person who loves musical, I had been looking forward to the theater industry for a long time. Theater is a safe place for me, where I can see all sorts of life and how imagination magically came true from everyone’s hand.
Though it is my freshman year at Lafayette College, I have made a lot of friends here. What is interesting is that there are even more domestic friends around me than my Chinese friends. I did not receive racism as I had been worrying about, my friends are helping me integrate into the community here. However, even with their help, I still got some pressures sometimes and would be through magnificent cultural shocks. Thus, what I plan to write about is some of the feelings of international students that might be easily ignored. My “Asian face” was destined to be a different presence in the crew. Lafayette College is a really small and elaborate community, and there are even fewer people who learn Theater. Thus, when I chose Theater as my major, I became the one and only Chinese international student without a doubt. Although there are some domestic American-Chinese students, they are no different than other domestic students because they also grew up in the US. Most of the conflicts and differences are from cultural background, but not skin color or race.
Starting from acting, one thing that I must been through is to conquer my dialect problem. It is one of the hardest things I’m facing right now. I don’t feel ashamed of my pronunciation. In fact, dialect could be one of my unique features when auditioning, but at the same time, it also limited my chances to get other fantastic characters that I wanted to try.
American theater kids received longer and better education in Theater than Chinese students. Theater education in the US is much more structured and mature. Theater requires a lot of expressions. It is a subject about putting your inner world out. This not only refers to the ability to burn my energy during acting but also means communication and cooperation between different crews that make up the theater. In the classroom, I may be able to eliminate language barriers through pre-study and review, and I don’t have any problems communicating in general. Nevertheless, in the cast or crew, real-time communication is very important. Not to mention the fact that there is a lot of specialized vocabulary and “Theater Lingo” involved. In order to accomplish my part efficiently, I have to be very focused. Even then, I sometimes have to ask my partner to repeat his or her expressions or ask the professor what he or she means.
Due to educational background and cultural differences, I was not able to understand their jokes and expressions at first sight in any situation. One thing that impressed me a lot was that during this semester we rehearsed Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, but the theme was Queer, which is a part of culture that does not exist in my educational background as a Chinese. On the one hand, it was a great opportunity for me to learn something completely new about American culture, but at the same time, in order to accurately express the theme of the play, I had to learn more, and in the process of learning I could not help but make mistakes because the knowledge was fragmented and there were a lot of details that I could not understand directly. I may know that the rainbow stands for the LGBTQ+ community, but I don’t know the branches underneath that, and I don’t really understand that there are specific things and words that have special meanings. I was worried about offending my friends and the actors in the group with my expression and ignorance, which inadvertently gave me a lot of pressure.
Besides these problems, as an international student, what I worried about most was that I could not fit in. Unfortunately, I truly felt this kind of barrier at first. People prefer to stay along with the group that “looks” like them most, which is a normal and understandable phenomenon. Nonetheless, when I was the only “outlier” in the group, things became a bit strange. My American classmates did not subjectively reject me. On the contrary, in most cases, I felt a lot of kindness and understanding. But it cannot be ignored that in some situations, I would feel like I am out of the group. Sometimes I can just shut my mouth and talk less. Whenever I try to speak I find I cannot express the meaning precisely. Therefore, some people just consider I do not like to talk or am not willing to communicate with them. There is one sentence that always comes to my mind, “You will never know how clever and interesting I am in Chinese.”
The trails and tribulations I faced are much more than these. They are usually tiny problems that are easily ignored by others. Domestic students do not realize that and international students do not think they are necessary to speak out. That is why I want to emphasize these are not the problems only faced by me and my experiences told me there are people who is willing to help you and wants to know you. I have a lot of friends that are really friendly to me. Some of them are Americans or American-Chinese, others could be international faculties and people from international departments. People around me are trying to understand my difficulties and willing to help me been through every dark night that I feel lonely. Their existence gave me more expectations of future. What I am trying to express is that if I can meet these people, then it means that this society has its hope and beauty. Also, I am willing to believe and I am willing to hope that more people understand the situation of intentional students. Sometimes what needed most could not only be physical help, but also understanding and company.
[Chinese]
那些被忽视的问题：国际戏剧生的心路历程
我是抱着一颗满怀期待的心来到美国学习戏剧的。从小喜欢音乐剧的我早就对于美国的戏剧产业充满了向往。剧院对于我而言是一个非常有安全感的地方，在这里能看到人生百态，能看到一个个故事如同魔法一般从大家手中被创造出来。我在 Lafayette 交到了很多朋友，有趣的是，我身边基本上都是本土学生朋友。我觉得我很幸运，能遇到这么多愿意了解我与我成为伙伴，并且志同道合的人。我并没有受到想象中可能有的时候歧视，我的朋友们都在很努力的帮助我融入这边的环境和社会。然而，即使有他们的帮助，有时候我也有着很大的压力，并且会受到强烈的文化冲击。我想要探讨的就是这一部分常被大家忽略的，作为国际生的感受。这并不代表我收到了不友善，而是有一些客观的隐藏的问题。
我的亚洲面孔注定在剧组里是一个不一样的存在。Lafayette College 本来就是一个很小的学校，而学习戏剧的人就更少。所以当我开始接触戏剧专业的时候，我理所当然 的 成 为 了 唯 一 一 个 来 自 中 国 的 国 际 学 生 。 即 使 我 们 也 有 一 些 本 地 的American-Chinese 学生，但是根本上由于他们也生长在美国，他们和其他学生并没有任何的区别。这些问题大多数来源于文化差异，而不是皮肤的颜色或是种族。
从表演说起，我最大的困难就是要克服口音，我并不为我中国的口音感到羞耻。在面试的时候，这个点是我最大的特点，但同时也限制了我很多的角色。美国的学生从小接受的戏剧教育远超中国，戏剧专业是要求很多向外的表达的，这不仅仅是指在表演的时候释放自己的能量，同时，也是指在剧场组成的各个部分之中通力合作。在课堂课业上或许我还可以通过预习，复习等方法消除语言方面的障碍，而平常的交流也不存在什么问题。然而在剧组里，实时的交流很重要，更不用提剧组中涉及的专业词汇和“行业黑话”很多。为了高效的完成工作，我必须精神高度集中，即使是这样，有时候我也不得不要求我的伙伴们重复他们的表达或者询问教授他或她究竟是什么意思。
由于教育背景和文化差异。我没有办法在任何情况下在第一时间听懂了解他们的玩笑和他们的表达。令我印象很深刻的一个事情是，在这个学期我们排演莎士比亚的《无事生非》，然而主题是 Queer。对于我这个中国人，这一部分文化是完全不存在我的教
育背景内的。在一方面，这个对于我来说是一个了解全新知识和美国文化背景的好机会，但同时，为了准确表达剧的主题，我必须去学习更多，而在学习的过程中就免不了犯错，因为这些知识是细碎的，有很多细节无法直接了解的。我可能知道彩虹是代表着LGBTQ+群体，但是我并不了解这下面的分支，我也并不了解一些特定的事物和词语是有特殊含义的。我很担心因为我的表达和无知冒犯到我的朋友们和组内的演员们，这在无形中给予了我很大的压力。
除了这些问题，作为国际生，我最担心的是我没有办法融入。而不幸的是，在开始，我真的感受到了这种隔阂。人们会倾向与与自己“相似”的群体相处，这是正常的。然而如果当这个群体中只有我这一个“异类”，那事情就变得有点奇怪起来了。美国同学们并没有主观上的排斥我。相反，在大部分情况下，我感受到了很多的友善和理解。然而确实有些情况下，我会感受到自己被排除在外，有时候我只能闭上嘴少说话，一张口表达却不能精确的表达出我想要表达的内容。所以导致有些人会认为我本来就不爱说话或者不愿意与他们交流。有时候我真的会想，你永远不知道我用中文说话有多有意思。
我遇到的困难远远不止这些，它们通常都是一些细小的问题，常被人忽视。本土的学生意识不到，而国际学生认为没有必要说。然而我仍然想要强调，这些肯定不是我一个人所遇到的问题，而我的经历告诉我，是会有人来帮助你和愿意了解你的。我身边有很多很多很友善的朋友，有美国人，有 American-Chinese，有国际老师，也有来自国际部门帮助我们的老师，我身边的人都能够理解我的困难并愿意尽全力帮助我度过每一个黑暗的夜晚。他们的存在让我对于未来有了更多的期待。我想表达的是，既然我能够遇到这些人，那么说明这个社会是有它美好的部分存在的。而我也相信，也希望，能有更多的人愿意了解国际学生的处境。有时候被需要的并不一定是帮助，而是理解与陪伴。