What is it that makes us an adult?
Who or what decides when we hold this label? Is it turning 18, having a job, moving out or is it something you drunkenly realise at four in the morning when you can no longer phone your parents to help you out? Is it a mix of all of these?
Regardless of the reason, growing up and becoming an ‘adult’ is something we all have to do, some of us much sooner than others. This is especially relevant to our theatre company as we are all early 20’s students about to leave University and join the big, wide, scary world. This is not to say that growing up as a university student is what we will focus on; as a company we want to know what everyone thinks constitutes an adult and how you get there, not just students. Do those of us who forgo higher education for work or personal growth consider something different as an adult? These are the sorts of questions we wish to answer in our upcoming piece.
As an impetus for writing ideas, we asked all of the company when they first realised they were an adult (if they even considered themselves to be an adult.) The general consensus in our company was that age never changed their opinion on themselves, it was more added responsibilities and life events that triggered a newer, more mature view of themselves. Personally, I don’t consider myself an adult yet, more a kind of hybrid of child and some adultness. Something like The Missing Link, not old or young, neither here nor there, an undefined transitional period between boy and man. This idea is something I am keen to explore in our writing for Forefront Theatre.
Ollie