To complete the Certificate requirement of teching a production (and to delve deeper into the mystical and arcane world of theater), I signed up to be on stage crew for this year’s spring musical “Oklahoma!” From April 12th to April 21st, I immersed myself in the elusive thespian milieu that is so often speculated upon.

It’s easier said than done. Although I didn’t try as hard as I could have to integrate with the cast, it was surprisingly simple to assimilate into the social sphere of the crew — if you could even call it that. It was more an eccentric amalgam of completely different people, thrown together with one common goal: making the production aesthetically astounding.

Even through my unfamiliarity with technical theater, crewing was an exhilarating escapade into a formerly unknown realm. I became good friends with some incisive and visionary people I’d never have guessed I’d have things in common with. In these misfits, I stumbled upon the forgotten values of piercing, brutal honesty and refreshingly comforting nihilism.

Within a couple days, we were talking about the universe. Existential crises and the validity of sex changes, high school stereotypes and the barbarity of mass homicide. Add those to a daily pre-summer sunset (with a shred of teenage angst) and you’ve got the definition of an Arcadian adolescent paradise.

We all started off with invisible masks, keeping us hidden, vague, and aloof. It only took a couple bizarre, shared experiences, though, to create a bond — one that shattered the facades we’d worked so hard to construct. And shortening this distance that we put between ourselves and other people created an opportunity for complete and utter solace.

I woke up Sunday afternoon convinced that the entire past week had been a dream. Seeing a text about the cast party the previous night, I came to the startling realization that the two separate realities I’d been in were, in fact, the same. 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. every day fell in different weather, different company, and a different location, but they were always within the same 24 hours.

It’s only been a few days but I still find it hard to connect faces: the people I see in my classes or in the hallways don’t seem like the same people that were part of rice grain sweeping, car climbing, or constant Starbucks drinking. Someone from the show will materialize in front of me and it takes a second to realize that I know their name and that we’re friends now. I’ll hopefully get to a point where both personas will merge, and I’ll end my lengthy foray into the grand scheme of performing arts. Without exaggeration, the discipline is symbolically its own world. I can’t imagine shuffling between these two wildly different planets every day the same way cast and crew do; taking a week-long trip was unsettling enough.

Despite my derealized sense of joy, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a relatively incompetent crew member. It took me about three days before I realized the difference between “striking” and “spiking,” and downstage scene shifts make me so anxious I have to delegate them to freshmen. (Not to mention my outspoken opposition to dressing up in farmhand costumes.)

In the end, though, it didn’t matter that we were lazy and generally inefficient, or that, in the words of our stage manager, it took us “three minutes to do anything that [he] said was urgent.” What was important was jumping headfirst into a new experience, without any qualms about deficiencies or judgment.

At the end of each show, we as the more brazen members of the crew would stand on the wings, singing and dancing (more like screaming and flailing) to the last song: “…and when we sa-a-ay YEOW! Ay-yip-ayo-ee-ay! We’re only sayin’ you’re doin’ fine, Oklahoma: Oklahoma, OK!”