“Theater is work. Some actors say they lose 3 to 5 pounds a performance. But, hey, that’s a great way to get skinny.”,  Jerry Knight- a Texas UIL Legend- jokes with Smithson Valley High School’s 2017 One Act Cast during a clinic at Jefferson High School on Feb. 18, 2017.

There is only one word in the high school theater community that can send a shiver down any drama student’s spine: clinic. A word that means hell on earth for one whole day. Ironically, clinics are also one of the most loved tradition of Texas UIL Theater.

I have never experienced anything more taxing than a clinic day. And while there is a physical component, I won’t stand here and try to sell to you that it is worse than or even equal to football. The real killer in theater is the emotional toll; Have you ever spent hours being yelled at to cry? How about spending what feels like a lifetime repeating the same line over and over because you just can’t seem say it right? Honestly, it borders on insanity, but we call it clinic.

On average, a clinic day consist of the 4 hour morning rehearsal, then the long bus ride to a new school, then the unloading of a ton and a half worth of props on to a foreign stage, then the waiting in a random classroom (which usually entails more rehearsing), then setting up of lights, set, and props in seven minutes on a stage you’ve never seen before, then the actual performance that can not run over 40 minutes, followed by a fast strike, and then the worst part: the process of being utterly teared apart by an older, experienced theater director who was hired to destroy all of your work. But as Mr.O, the dramatic director at SVHS, would say, “the lower you fall the higher you can climb back up…”

And if you’re as unlucky as me, that low is low, and that old, experienced director is Jerry Knight, a theater god and literally the toughest critic to walk this planet. (He also happens to be your director’s former director. Not good.) Needless to say, he demolished us: told us the set was weird, the acting was hard to understand, the sound and lights failed to impact the audience, and our facial expressions were the equivalent of marshmallows. He was brutal, and the bus ride home left a crick in my neck my hanging my head low.

But upon arriving back to SVHS, the cast had regained our pride, and unload like a team. This is what we all loved about theater. “Win or lose, we are a family”, Mr.O’s voice rang in my ears. I imagine it rang in everyone’s. Win or lose we would remember the days like this. The days you hated to love. Clinic Days.