Spending almost three months in New York City on my Teaching Magazine internship and drowning myself in Broadway plays, off-Broadway musicals and off-off-Broadway one-woman shows made me really appreciate the theater scene at Northwestern. No joke. You’d think after my two-professional-shows-a-week minimum (oh, and they were all free), I’d come back and whine and complain about having to sit on folding chairs in the Louis Room or waiting outside Shanley Pavilion for tickets, but in all honestly, I’m looking forward to the first production of the spring.

I don’t think most of you realize how good we have it here. There’s a show practically every weekend – make that two shows – and for the most part, they’re pretty darn good. Sure, not all of them are going to move you to tears or make you rethink your life plans, but neither are all of the shows on Broadway.

For some crazy reason, kids here are quick to bash student productions. Even before the second round of teasers for a new play lavishly decorate the sidewalk in front of the arch, people start bad-mouthing: “I heard that show’s gonna suck.” What’s the point of saying something like that? All that anyone really knows thus far is that a group of kids have been working on a production for months – rehearsing, designing the set and the costumes, selling ads for the program, hanging lights and painting the banner. And they’re excited. So why go around and tell everyone that it’s no good? Just let them find out for themselves.

Every year there are shows produced on this campus that amaze me. My freshman year, Vertigo Productions offered us “All the Children Sing,” a musical that a few students happened to write themselves. (I saw it twice and desperately tried to memorize the lyrics to the title song.) Those NU alumni are now trying to mount the show off-Broadway, and after seeing a couple of shockingly horrible off-B’way productions, I think they have more than what it takes to succeed. That same year Wave Production’s “Grapes of Wrath” took the audience on an emotional ride from Oklahoma to California; John Steinbeck would have been proud. The next year we had “Molly Sweeney,” “Pippin” and “New Brain,” and this fall, those crazy theater kids jumped back into gear with “Company,” “Medea” and a half dozen more productions all worthy of a sold-out house.

In New York, you have to shell out a good $40 for an off-Broadway show and up to $90 for a Broadway spectacle, and every time you order tickets you’re taking a risk: Is the show really worth it? No matter how many reviews you read or ads you see in the “Times” boasting about the success of the run, you’ll never really know until you see it. Five bucks is all it takes to catch a show here. If you like the show, cool; if you don’t, whatever- you’re only out $5 and a couple of hours.

Now I don’t want you all to get the wrong idea – I’m not easily pleased. I’m not the audience member who laughs at all the trite jokes and rises for a standing ovation without any hesitation. There have been numerous times when I’ve considered walking out on a production, but I never have. Why not? Don’t we owe it to the actors and the director and the producer and the sound designer and the publicity director to simply sit and watch what they’ve prepared? They’re doing it for us, after all.

That’s what makes the theater so great – everyone is involved in the production’s goal to to entertain the audience.

So this spring, take a campus-sized risk and check out what JTE, Sit-n-Spin and Entity have to offer. Oh, and don’t forget about Arts Alliance, AATE, Vertigo, Wave, Exigent and Lovers and Madmen. With all those choices, you just might see something good. nyou