The Year of the "Theatre Kid"
Not to be dramatic, but we really did that.
This week, The New York Times ran a piece about the rise of “theatre kid” as a political insult.
To be fair, we’ve never exactly been confused about our reputation. “Theatre kid” has always carried a little baggage. Loud. Earnest. Cringe. A bit much.
But the timing of all this feels…interesting.
In a lot of ways, this year has been powered by theatre kid energy. And I don’t just mean Jonathan Bailey being named People’s Sexiest Man Alive or Taylor Swift releasing The Life of a Showgirl. There were deeper currents—carefully curated public performances like Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show. Camp crossing into the mainstream, like Parker Posey’s “Piper noooo.” A culture with a seemingly growing hunger for shared moments—for witnessing and feeling something together.
So this week, I want to get clear on what we’re actually talking about when we say “theatre kid.” To separate the stereotype from the skillset. The punchline from the practice.
And to understand what the reflex to label us publicly reveals about how attention, performance, and care are operating in our culture right now.
Let’s get into it.
The Misread
When “theatre kid” gets used as an insult, it usually means the same handful of things.
Performative. Fake. Loud. Dramatic. Over-eager. Overzealous. Over-rehearsed. Someone who plays to the room. Someone who needs attention.
It’s an old suspicion—the idea that sincerity and performance can’t coexist. That if something is staged, it must be dishonest. That awareness of the audience somehow cancels truth.
But the truth is that being seen is inevitable. Rooms have energy whether we acknowledge it or not. Tone, timing, posture, silence—all of it contributes to communication. Performance is happening everywhere, all the time. And it’s something we either fumble or learn to do with care.
That presentation you’re giving at work? That story you’re telling your family at the dinner table? That breakup text you’re drafting and redrafting? That’s performing.
You’re navigating the relationship between what you’re doing and who’s receiving it. You’re channeling your inner theatre kid.
So no—we’re not just Broadway super-fans, or crazy cast parties, or loud for the sake of being loud. I mean…sometimes we are, but not exclusively.
We’re the ones who understand that all the world is a stage.
The Reality
Being a theatre kid, at its heart, is an attunement to attention.
It’s understanding how rooms work. How energy shifts. How timing changes the way something lands. How to listen for what isn’t being said. How to read an audience without pandering to it. How to hold attention without squeezing the life out of it. How to show up prepared, then stay flexible. How to recover when something goes wrong—because something always does.
That fluency is easy to mistake for confidence or charisma. But it’s closer to literacy.
A sensitivity to tone. An understanding of the relationship between intention and impact. A comfort carrying emotion without flattening it. A knack for making something, someone, some part of the human experience legible to others.
Yes, we’re often emotionally available, solid storytellers, and quick to analyze the meaning of any given moment. But all of that is an expression of our innate grasp of attention. Not like hog-the-spotlight attention. Like attention to breath, gaze, and our inner worlds.
The reality is that attention was always baked into reality. We just learned what to do with it.
Which is probably why, this year, it felt like we were everywhere.
The Reveal
Culturally, this year, theatre kids have dominated the headlines: Late Night with Stephen Colbert (theatre kid) getting canceled, David Corenswet (theatre kid) taking flight as Superman, Sabrina Carpenter (theatre kid) selling out stadiums.
Musicals took over screens and feeds: Wicked and its press tour, Evita’s balcony sequence, Death Becomes Her and Hamilton sounds becoming massive TikTok lip-sync trends, K-Pop freakin Demon Hunters.
Theatrical camp perforated the mainstream: “Nothing Beats a JET2 Holiday”, KJ Apa’s Mr. Fantasy alter ego, Katy Perry in space.
One could even argue that the year-end obsession with earnest yearning—from Heated Rivalry to Hamnet—carries unmistakable drama-club undertones.
And yet, all of these feel less like causes than symptoms.
Theatre kids aren’t just shaping culture from the top down—we’ve been building it from the inside out.
Theatre kids are teachers who know when a classroom is slipping, and how to bring it back without humiliation. Doctors who understand that bedside manner matters as much as diagnosis. Waiters and bartenders who can read a table before the first drink order. Managers who sense morale before it shows up in a spreadsheet.
They’re parents who know how to narrate a moment, soften a transition, make space for big feelings without rushing to fix them. Partners who know which sweet treat will turn your day around. Friends who know when to speak, when to listen, and when to let the silence do the work.
When you look at all this from 10,000 feet, this year doesn’t really look like a takeover as much as a reveal.
The instincts we associate with theatre—attention, timing, emotional fluency—didn’t suddenly appear in culture. They’ve been circulating quietly for decades, centuries even, carried by people who learned how rooms work and how moments land.
What’s changed isn’t the presence of theatre kids—it’s the visibility of the skills we’ve always had.
A culture that needs, maybe more than ever, what we know how to do.
The Reclamation
It’s true that the world has always been, and may always be, in some degree of a tailspin. I’m not here to litigate whether or not right now is the worst of times.
What feels present in a different way is the desire—or the clear demand—for what theatre kids have in spades.
A willingness to listen.
A default to empathy.
A focus on process.
An eye on narratives.
The instincts instilled in theatre kids don’t expire. We don’t grow out of them, regardless of whether our life’s path leads us to the stage.
Maybe we deserve a kind of reclamation of that age-old “theatre kid” label.
To let it be a source of warm pride. To trust it as a simple truth. To carry it confidently as we navigate whatever next year has in store for us—as individuals, as a culture, as a species.
So, not to be dramatic, but: long live the theatre kids.
One last thing…
If I’m honest, I’ve had a complicated relationship with my inner “theatre kid.”
For a long time, it felt like something I needed to keep at arm’s length—not because it wasn’t true, but because I worried it made me sound unserious. Like something I was supposed to outgrow.
Writing The Fourth Wall this year helped change that.
Week by week, this became a place where I didn’t have to sand that part of myself down. Where caring about how things land wasn’t a liability. Where attention, timing, and feeling deeply could be the point—not something to apologize for or translate into something cooler.
In the process, I remembered why I loved that part of myself in the first place. Not the volume or the performance of it—but the care. The curiosity. The belief that the meaning of a moment matters.
Reclaiming that has felt grounding. Steadying. Like coming home.
But that shift didn’t happen alone.
Knowing the words had somewhere to land each week—being read, held, carried by people willing to sit with long thoughts in a loud year—made it possible to keep showing up honestly.
So thank you for being here this year. For staying with it. For letting me take my time.
See you next year ♥️
—Matt
P.S. A few people have asked how they can support The Fourth Wall beyond reading and sharing. If it’s been meaningful to you this year, I’ve opened a paid tier that includes one extra monthly letter focused on process, practice, and what I’m working through in real time. Thank you for considering it.