What My First Role Taught Me and Why I’ll Never Forget It
by Chris Peterson
When I think about my first role, I don’t remember it in broad strokes. I remember it in snapshots. The weird costume. The way the room smelled like construction paper and stage makeup. The sound of kids half-whispering, half-yelling backstage because no one has ever learned to actually whisper in a school production.
My first role was in a play called Wack a Doo Zoo, which already tells you exactly what kind of artistic masterpiece we were dealing with. The plot was chaos in the best way. Farm animals were making all the wrong sounds. Cows were meowing. Pigs were making chicken noises. Nothing made sense, which, honestly, made perfect sense for my first theatre experience.
I played one of the cows, and I also had narrator duties. At that age, that felt like winning a Tony and an Emmy in the same night. I was thrilled. I took it very seriously.
Then came performance day, and everything shifted fast. One of the narrators got sick. Not “maybe can push through” sick. Out. Gone.
Suddenly, we had a problem and about five minutes to solve it. You could feel that backstage panic ripple through everyone.
And somehow, for reasons I still can’t fully explain, I had memorized the other narrator’s parts too.
No one asked me to do that ahead of time. I wasn’t trying to be strategic. I just loved the show and had listened to everything so many times that the lines were in my brain.
So I stepped in and did both narrator tracks while still doing my own role. I went from “cute little cow in a silly show” to an emergency coverage plan in under ten minutes.
I don’t remember feeling scared in the moment. I think I was too locked in. I just remember knowing the words and knowing the show needed someone to say them. So I did.
Looking back, that tiny theatre emergency taught me almost everything I still believe about this work. Preparation matters, even when it’s accidental. Teamwork is real. Your job is never just your job. Small roles aren’t small when people are counting on you. Confidence usually shows up after you leap, not before.
And maybe that’s why this memory has never left me. My first role wasn’t polished. It wasn’t glamorous. But in the middle of all that, I learned what it means to show up.
So I asked readers to share their first roles and what they learned from them, and the responses were exactly what you’d hope for: funny, chaotic, sweet, and unexpectedly profound. Different shows, different ages, different stages, same core truth.
Your first part teaches you way more than blocking and lines. It teaches you how to recover, how to listen, how to be part of a team, and how to keep going when things go sideways.
Here is some of what they said:
“I played a little German Girl and a Chinese dancer in an elementary school play that was a take on the Nutcracker. What I learned was that when you keep whispering to the person next to you while you’re on stage, EVERYONE in the audience sees it! My mom was so furious!!”
“I was in the ensemble in Annie Get Your Gun. I guess I learned that when your boot falls off in the middle of a dance, just keep going.”
“I was a cat in The Diaries of Adam & Eve.
I learned that all characters, even those without lines, must be present and actively listening and engaging with other characters.”
“I played multiple parts in Little Shop of Horrors in high school. I learned a lot from that show, but the most important lesson I learned was: Don’t draw on a mustache unless your director approves it in rehearsal, and wear the costume you’re given in the exact combination it’s given to you.”
“Backstage—set crew.
And I say this as someone who’s well versed in most aspects of theatre, (other than directing, because that’s still scary to me): it is a team sport—no one person is more important than any other.”
“I was the interpreter and one of Simon Legree's dogs in The King and I. This was after graduating from college and starting my career as a pharmacist. I had never performed in school. Changed my life trajectory. Thirty eight years later, I am still performing.”
“Ugly stepsister in Beauty and the Beast in middle school school. I learned that size matters in theater and if I wanted a shot I “had to lose weight.” It’s all any vocal or drama director ever said. Oh and that I’d “never be a dancer”
As a grown up I’ve learned never to speak to a child that way. I probably could have learned to dance if I hadn’t been convinced otherwise.”
“I took advantage of a class in my Jr. High called English-Drama. The deal was if you took a semester of Drama, you got out of one semester of English. I wasn't interested in acting at the time, but, the idea of skipping out on a semester of English was too attractive. So, I signed up. It turned out I had an aptitude for it, and I ended up as the lead in a one act play called "School Bus Romance". What I learned is that if you are too shy to make friends, but, not so shy that you can get up on stage, friends find you. I went from invisible to feeling like everyone knew me, and I was hooked.”
“Chorus of “South Pacific” in high school. Quickly learned that stage life is not for me so now you can hear me in the pit orchestra.”
If there’s a throughline in all of these stories, it’s this: your first role isn’t about being perfect. It’s about being present. It’s where you learn resilience before you know it’s called that. It’s where you learn that preparation matters, people matter, and the story matters most.
Whether you were a lead, a narrator, a dancing corn stalk, or Cow #2 in a mixed-up barnyard, that first part left a mark. And honestly, thank God it did.