The views and opinions expressed in this podcast by the hosts and guests may or may not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Miami University.

Speaker 1:

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast by the hosts and guests may or may not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Miami University.

Speaker 2:

Freshman year, I came in undecided.

Speaker 3:

I am finance, entrepreneurship, and anthropology.

Meredith Aliff:

I'm a senior architecture student.

Speaker 5:

I'm involved in the Blockchain Club here.

Speaker 6:

I'm very passionate about studying abroad.

Speaker 7:

Classes are going great.

Charlotte Perez:

And then obviously very involved with my sorority.

Speaker 7:

I'm thriving.

Meredith Aliff:

Hi. I'm Meredith Aliff, and this is Major Insight. This is the podcast where we talk college life with amazing students about how to find your place and purpose on campus. Theater has the power to inspire, educate, and to even change the world. And for Charlotte Perez, it's the perfect way to address many important social issues through the power of art and performance. As a theater major studying social justice and inequalities, she's been a playwright, a performer, a sound tech, and a stage manager. And she recently directed the university's main stage production of the Angel's Trumpet about the personal lives of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. We'll also talk about how Charlotte approached and navigated college as a first-gen student and about the importance of following your own intuition as a way to find out who you really are and who you may wish to become.

And today, the first thing that I'm going to ask you is super general question, who are you?

Charlotte Perez:

So my name is Charlotte Perez. I am a current senior here at Miami University. I'm a theater major. I have a minor in social justice. I'm getting a certificate in fostering just communities. I'm originally from Bowling Green, Ohio, which is up near Toledo. So I do a lot of theater stuff, a lot of social activism. That's pretty much it.

Meredith Aliff:

That's amazing. Well, let's talk about your majors for a second. So theater, what kind of led to that decision?

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah. So I've been doing theater since middle school, and I had a lot of people tell me what I should do with my life as normal.

Meredith Aliff:

Right.

Charlotte Perez:

I was told I should be a lawyer, a teacher. I was told I should go into business, yada, yada. And so neither of my parents have gone to college. I'm a first-generation student, so this was a very stressful process to go through and kind of go through loan. And I was talking to my mom one day, and she was like, if you're going to go to college, you're going to spend all this money to go get a degree and pursue whatever you want to pursue, do something that you know you're going to love. Which is so important because I was worried I was going to pick something and then I was going to like 10 years down the line hate it.

And when I really sat down and thought about what would be important to me, theater had been such an important part of my life and a part of my happiness and my creative expression, let's say. And I just really realized that if I want to be happy and fulfilled for the rest of my life with what I do as a job, theater is going to have to be the way I go. So I took the risk. I know a lot of people judge me for it, which is fine. Arts can be considered risky, which I don't think they are. And I have been so happy ever since. I really feel like I'm going into a field I know I'm going to thrive in and grow in, and I'm very excited for that journey post-college.

Meredith Aliff:

Yay. Absolutely. I love that answer, because I think, we were talking a little bit before we started the podcast, but just there's a lot of pressure when you're making the decision to be an arts major.

Charlotte Perez:

Mm-hmm.

Meredith Aliff:

I was talking about how I've had a little bit of experience with that. But then you decided to add on another major.

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah.

Meredith Aliff:

So tell me a little bit about what led to that decision.

Charlotte Perez:

So the Social Justice FJC certificate. My junior and senior year of high school, started getting into kind of social activism theater. Which I didn't have the best upbringing or more affluent upbringing, let's say. And my junior year, my theater director wanted to write this play. So Toledo, Ohio is number four in the nation for adolescent human sex trafficking. It's a really big issue. Almost all the time I would see in news like girls going missing when I was a kid. And it mostly affects ages 11 to 13. And by that time, a lot of parents haven't had proper talks with their children. Most children don't know about the dangers and also the dangers that can exist via social media now that we're expanding the realm of possibilities. So we made a play that kind of exemplified what human sex trafficking looks like, because it's not always just, this is kind of stereotypical, but a van coming up and snatching girls.

Sometimes it's grooming. Sometimes it's men or women sliding up on posts on Instagram. It can be a lot of things. And that really empowered me to think about how I can use theater to influence people. That year, I also wrote a play about children of divorce, I'm a child of divorce, and kind of what we go through in life and how we experience life and love and emotions as a child going through that. And I've kind of just gone on from there. The year after, I did a play on attention disorders. At my time here at Miami, I did a whole research project on discrimination in healthcare settings, especially in regards to gender. And there is so much in this world that we do not know about, and theater is a great way to bring those topics to light.

Meredith Aliff:

Absolutely.

Charlotte Perez:

So there's just so much that people don't know, and producing these really important plays can educate people so much.

Meredith Aliff:

Yeah.

Charlotte Perez:

And it can be controversial. I mean, some of these shows, they're hard topics. A lot of people don't want to address them, but theater's a great way to do it.

Meredith Aliff:

Absolutely. So stepping away from the theater aspect that you've added onto this, what do classes for that look like?

Charlotte Perez:

The theater or social justice?

Meredith Aliff:

The social justice. What kind of classes are you taking?

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah. The minor here usually focuses on social justice theory, sociology theory. So personally, I've taken a lot in racial studies, gender studies, and disability studies. The sociology and social justice minor is really tailorable to what you want to do. Personally, I've studied race and gender relations for a while. So disability studies was something new to me, so I took a lot of classes with that. So it's a lot of theory, a lot of different concepts about how we can fix the world. Why is the world why it is right now? How did this happen in the history of our being as human beings?

Meredith Aliff:

Right.

Charlotte Perez:

And then on the other side of it, I also have the FJC certificate. That's through a program here called the Urban Cohort. It's through EHS, Education, Health, and Society. So it's typically for education majors, but I'm the fun little theater major who joined in. They focus on... A lot of people go into urban areas like Cincinnati, like major cities, that they come in with this kind of savior complex. And that ends up hurting these communities a lot more because you're doing things what you think are good, but you're not conferring with the community, asking them what they need. And this is just kind of helping us learn how to be active people in these communities, especially when we're all going to be moving there. I mean, theater happens in major cities, so how can I go into a major city and not absolutely tear down these communities and help and support them to grow? And in turn, learning as well, how to be good community members and how to work against systems of injustice. So.

Meredith Aliff:

Absolutely.

Charlotte Perez:

The in-person experience has been great teaching me how to be a better human just in general, but also how to integrate some of these ideas into theater and teaching people. So.

Meredith Aliff:

Yeah. I mean, it just sounds like you've found this perfect mesh of things that you're passionate about.

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah.

Meredith Aliff:

Are there any specific classes or teachers that have really stuck out to you during your time here that you would maybe want to give a little shout-out to?

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah. I have to give a shout out to my advisor. She's advising the directing project that I'm doing right now. Her name's Dr. Ann Elizabeth Armstrong. Her main areas are in directing dramaturgy, but she's cross-listed with a lot of women gender studies class. So she actually teaches Theater of the Oppressed and Theater for Social Change, which I didn't even know... I mean, coming in, I knew I would be doing theater, I would be doing social justice. I didn't know there was a person in the theater department who taught that.

Meredith Aliff:

Right.

Charlotte Perez:

She has always been excited about what I want to do. So she advises the organization I'm the president of, which is The Walking Theater Project. We do social issues theater. She advised my research project for gender inequality in healthcare and creating a play for that. She's done advising for the show I'm directing right now. She has always been passionate about what I'm passionate about, which has always been so helpful that I have someone on my side and who's willing to take on these projects with me.

Meredith Aliff:

Right.

Charlotte Perez:

I've been doing independent studies with her since my freshman year, which has been great. Research opportunities your first and second year at other colleges are sometimes unheard of.

Meredith Aliff:

Oh, absolutely.

Charlotte Perez:

So the fact that I'm here and she was willing to do that with me at such a young time in my career really changed the trajectory of what I thought I could do and helped me understand what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it.

Meredith Aliff:

Definitely. And then let's talk a little bit about that show that you're directing right now.

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah.

Meredith Aliff:

So as of the time that the podcast is out, it will have already happened-

Charlotte Perez:

Yes.

Meredith Aliff:

... but tonight is opening night, correct?

Charlotte Perez:

It is.

Meredith Aliff:

So how are you feeling? This is a huge thing.

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah. I'm so incredibly excited for people to see the show. I've been working on the show for over a year. So this show technically is on the main stage season for the theater department, and the fact that they let an undergrad direct on it, wow. So I had to go through a very lengthy interview process last fall semester to be able to do this. I did research, submitted shows I wanted to do. They came in and saw my directing scene in our directing class. And then last semester, spring of 2022, I spent the entire semester just researching, reading the play, breaking it down, breaking characters down. And then now at the beginning of this semester, I got to cast my show, I got to work with these actors who... Also, I have a very young cast. I have two freshmen and two sophomores.

Meredith Aliff:

Oh wow.

Charlotte Perez:

And they took this challenge so greatly. I mean, it is a very weird show. We're dealing with historical figures, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda Fitzgerald. There's a certain nuance of we have to represent history in a certain way. But there's also some speculation in the show, like not all of this is truth. This play is just a speculation on what happened.

Meredith Aliff:

Right.

Charlotte Perez:

So I'm very excited with all that we have done. We only had four weeks of rehearsal, and my actors have absolutely killed it.

Meredith Aliff:

Wow.

Charlotte Perez:

We have some beautiful tech and design elements. We actually... My scenic designer designed the show from Luxembourg.

Meredith Aliff:

Wow.

Charlotte Perez:

He's studying abroad in Luxembourg and wanted to design the show. My roommate's a costume designer. We have someone making their choreography debut. It's such a great time because we have a lot of students showing their talents. And it's an important story. I mean, Zelda Fitzgerald is kind of unknown to a lot of people, despite her husband being of such literary merit.

Meredith Aliff:

Mm-hmm.

Charlotte Perez:

And I hope that people walk away from the story knowing a little more or are a little more curious and thinking about their own creative liberty a little bit more. And also, we get respondents. Like someone from Cincinnati's going to come and review the show. That's big for me.

Meredith Aliff:

Mm-hmm.

Charlotte Perez:

That's big for my career. So having these opportunities are huge for me, and I am so excited that I'm just a senior undergrad but I get to direct a huge show-

Meredith Aliff:

Absolutely.

Charlotte Perez:

... like this and show it to the public.

Meredith Aliff:

Yeah. And you said it was sold out tonight, right?

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah. I believe it's almost sold out. There's like four tickets left.

Meredith Aliff:

Wow.

Charlotte Perez:

Because we just opened four more tickets. So it was sold out. We opened four more today. So the lucky four can squeeze in tonight.

Meredith Aliff:

That is so amazing. I'm so excited to hear all about it. Hopefully I'll be able to grab a ticket and go see it myself.

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah.

Meredith Aliff:

So outside of class, outside of this show, you are a tour guide.

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah.

Meredith Aliff:

So do you want to talk a little bit about your tour guiding experience?

Charlotte Perez:

Yes. It's been such a wild and fun ride. Working in admissions is so fun, because you really get to have these one-on-one conversations with students, hear their fears, hear what they're passionate about, tell them about your specific college or just college in general. I did not think about the impact this job would have on my life when interviewing for this job. But I've been able to influence and help a lot of prospective students, and now I have students coming up to me and saying, you were my tour guide. You're the reason I'm here.

Meredith Aliff:

Aww. That must feel so amazing.

Charlotte Perez:

I know. And I often don't know what to do with it. I'm like, thank you. It's so rewarding to know that you had such a positive influence on someone else's life and helped them make that right decision for them.

Meredith Aliff:

Mm-hmm.

Charlotte Perez:

A lot of my ending spiel was like this isn't about this college or any other college. This is about you and what you want to do with your life. So finding your perfect fit, wherever that may be, is of the utmost importance. And trying to leave people with that impression, like you do what you want to do for the rest of your life and do what makes you happy and what you're passionate about, because passion is what drives you throughout your entire life and through your work. And I love inspiring kids who come here and do that, because a lot of them aren't thinking for themselves.

Meredith Aliff:

Right.

Charlotte Perez:

They're so stressed about college and finding their fit that they don't think about what do I just want to do for me?

Meredith Aliff:

Mm-hmm. I feel like college is such an intuition based thing.

Charlotte Perez:

Yes.

Meredith Aliff:

You kind of have to go and actually talk to people on campus and make connections and go on tours. And it's really important to have tour guides, no matter what school you're going to, but always go and hear from students that are already here, because it really is intuition.

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah.

Meredith Aliff:

That's at least what I thought. I mean, I would step on a campus and be like, oh, I don't even want to...

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah.

Meredith Aliff:

I think we're good here.

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah. Like general campus, most of the times when I went to campuses I could get a feel for whether I liked it or not the minute I stepped on campus.

Meredith Aliff:

Oh, absolutely.

Charlotte Perez:

Or just visiting departments, if you knew what you wanted to go into, you could get a feel for if you liked it there when you met with the head of that department.

Meredith Aliff:

Mm-hmm.

Charlotte Perez:

So having these... talking to students in tours, going on department visits are so important. And I don't think a lot of people really... They're looking at so much, they're so stressed about college and admissions that they don't take the time to really make that decision and weigh out their options. I was a spreadsheet person. I had a color coded spreadsheet for college, which is the nerdiest thing about me. But I was really trying to find a place that I knew I could thrive in. Because I'm spending four years here and I'm doing a lot here, so I might as well make it good.

Meredith Aliff:

Absolutely.

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah.

Meredith Aliff:

Absolutely. So what are your plans for after this? Are you doing more research? Are you studying abroad? What are you kind of planning to do with the rest of your Miami experience?

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah. Well, since you mentioned study abroad, I am studying abroad in the winter.

Meredith Aliff:

Awesome.

Charlotte Perez:

I am doing the London Theater study abroad. I get to go to London and see a bunch of shows on the West End and off the West End. I get to go to William Shakespeare's original cabin.

Meredith Aliff:

Wow.

Charlotte Perez:

And I'm so excited to be able to go and see some of these original artifacts. Also, it's just London. I'm so excited to go to London. I'm doing that over J-Term, and then next semester, I'm going to be the sound designer for the play that we're doing next semester, which is The Play That Goes Wrong. It's a very high-energy farce.

Meredith Aliff:

Oh, okay.

Charlotte Perez:

So it's going to be very fun. It's a very tricky show, but I'm excited to take that on.

Meredith Aliff:

Definitely.

Charlotte Perez:

So I'm actually going with the interim provost right now.

Meredith Aliff:

Okay.

Charlotte Perez:

She was the dean of the CCA and then got moved to the interim provost position.

Meredith Aliff:

Wow.

Charlotte Perez:

And she is one of the biggest theater historians I've ever met, Liz Mullenix. She's amazing, and she's just radiating energy. She's like, I'm so excited to go to London. We're going to go see everything.

Meredith Aliff:

I love that. Yeah. I mean, London, that's going to be like nothing-

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah.

Meredith Aliff:

... you've ever... I just... Ugh, London. Love it. So that's finishing up senior year. What is going to happen after?

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah. I'm kind of on two ideas right now. One is either I just go straight to a major city, probably either Chicago or Minneapolis. For myself, those are my two cities I would like to move to and start trying to look for theater opportunities, entertainment opportunities while living there. I was also thinking about returning to the company I interned for this past summer, it's a summer-stock company, and working for them until August and then possibly moving to a major city.

Meredith Aliff:

Well, that's so exciting. And then there was something you said much, much earlier that I kind of just want to jump back to for a second.

Charlotte Perez:

Mm-hmm.

Meredith Aliff:

So I'm second-gen. My dad was the first-generation college student.

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah.

Meredith Aliff:

What was your reasoning for saying, yeah, nobody in my family's gone, but I want to go to college.

Charlotte Perez:

I don't know. I guess it's just always been a part of my life plan. I knew I would go to college. I knew I would be the first one in my family, in my immediate family to go to college. And I knew that would be kind of a big deal, just because the generations of my family, we just either couldn't afford it or it just wasn't in the cards for us. So the fact that I now am going to a nice university and doing, I'd say, well, not to-

Meredith Aliff:

Very well.

Charlotte Perez:

... gloat on myself.

Meredith Aliff:

No, absolutely.

Charlotte Perez:

And having that going into the career field and having that degree and experience, I'm really excited for. And I am a very appreciative of my family. They're so very proud of me for getting this far and getting ready to get my degree, because it's like we haven't had that a lot.

Meredith Aliff:

Right.

Charlotte Perez:

This is an exciting thing.

Meredith Aliff:

Absolutely.

Charlotte Perez:

So yeah. I guess I always just kind of knew I would go to college.

Meredith Aliff:

So you're here, coming onto the final semester of college.

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah.

Meredith Aliff:

Let's think about somebody, or yourself, but somebody four years behind you. What would your advice be to them?

Charlotte Perez:

In general, follow your intuition. I know we had a long talk about that, but tour your schools, look at their stats, call the departments you're interested in, and really follow your intuition. If you go to a place that you know you're going to love the teachers, you're going to love the environment that you're going to be in, that's going to help you be who you want to be. And the same goes for your major or whatever you want to study. You want to find something in your life that you know you're going to like and you know you're going to be passionate about. And if you don't know, that's okay. If you come into college you're first year and you're undecided, that's not a problem.

Meredith Aliff:

Mm-hmm.

Charlotte Perez:

You can take a lot of gen ed classes during that time.

Meredith Aliff:

Absolutely.

Charlotte Perez:

Taking the time to figure out who you are, what you want, and what you want to do for the rest of your life is a big decision to make when you are 18, sometimes 17.

Meredith Aliff:

For sure.

Charlotte Perez:

So take the time, do some soul searching, and make that decision for yourself. Not for anyone else but yourself.

Meredith Aliff:

And I think one really cool thing that I've noticed about colleges is I know when I was thinking about, as an adult, what am I going to do, and even as a little kid, you're like, okay, doctor, dentist, lawyer, teacher, and that was it.

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah. A very limited thing on what jobs were.

Meredith Aliff:

Right. But there's so many majors.

Charlotte Perez:

Yes.

Meredith Aliff:

You can find something for anything that you're interested in.

Charlotte Perez:

Definitely.

Meredith Aliff:

I mean, to be a theater major with social justice-

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah.

Meredith Aliff:

... the ability to combine those and actually have classes that combine those is crazy.

Charlotte Perez:

And that's the great thing about this area of Bachelor's of Arts, because... So the theater program here is a BA instead of a BFA, and what that means is I don't have a focus. I mean, I have personal focuses in where I want to go in my life, but I'm not just tied down to only studying directing. I study theater history, I study directing, acting, stage management. I study a lot of things, so I have a whole rounded education. And that's great because a lot of people here double major, triple major, triple minor.

Meredith Aliff:

Oh yeah.

Charlotte Perez:

One of my friends is theater and biomedical engineering, double major.

Meredith Aliff:

Like what?

Charlotte Perez:

Like what? But she loves both of those.

Meredith Aliff:

Right.

Charlotte Perez:

Those are both her passions. So having a school where if you have more than one passion, you can do that. My roommate currently, she's special education and theater, and she's looking for ways to combine those things, which is great.

Meredith Aliff:

So cool.

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah.

Meredith Aliff:

It's all up to you.

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah.

Meredith Aliff:

Well it sounds like you have gotten the college experience that you came here to look for, and I can't wait to hear what you do next.

Charlotte Perez:

Yeah.

Meredith Aliff:

And it was so nice to meet you. Thank you for coming.

Charlotte Perez:

Yes. It was wonderful to meet you as well. Thank you.

Meredith Aliff:

That's a wrap.

Charlotte Perez:

Buh-bing.

Meredith Aliff:

Charlotte Perez is a theater major with social justice and inequalities minor. After graduation, she plans to pursue a career in theater and performance while continuing to advocate for social change. And thank you for listening to Major Insight. If you enjoyed this podcast, share it with your friends or anyone interested in navigating college life. Many more episodes are now available wherever podcasts are found.