A Night in the Life

On Wednesday evening, I had the pleasure of being able to attend one of the many events provided by Cultural Conversations at Penn State. For those of you who don't know, Cultural Conversations is a works festival here at Penn State that focuses on exploring diversity in our world today. For this past week, CC has been putting on plays and events in the evenings to showcase just how diverse we as a community can be.

Wednesday night's event was called LGBTA: Citizens & Allies Asking & Telling. As a strong advocate for gay rights and equality, I knew I had to go -- but I wasn't quite sure what to expect.

The result blew me away.

http://culturalconversations.psu.edu/

Alongside a mixture of music, dance, and video, the majority of the hour-long show consisted of a group of college and high school students alike reading their own personal writings that focused on subjects like the realization of being gay/bisexual/transgender, coming out to friends and family, the acceptance and/or rejection from friends and family, and their relationships to society now.

Pretty incredible, right?

It takes a strong, brave person to be able to stand in front of a crowd of strangers and spill his or her heart's story out on the floor. I was amazed at this group of people, and I'm not ashamed to admit that there might have been a tear in my eye at certain parts.

While most of my reaction was based specifically on their writings and performances, a little part of me couldn't help but find the rhetoric in it all. Though Cultural Conversations is primarily meant to invoke questioning and conversations post-performance, I think a little part of the agenda must be to inspire and convince through emotion and dialogue.

The ethos of the speakers could not have been surpassed in any other way whatsoever. Hearing a person speak of his or her own difficulties with teenagehood, sexuality, and family is as genuine to character as anything could be, and this ethos plays directly toward the pathos that we as an audience receive. We can all relate -- there have been times where we all feel scared, vulnerable, or uncertain about ourselves. And hearing people our age relate to those fears, vulnerabilities, and uncertainties only furthers the speakers' abilities to more strongly connect with us.

No matter how much or little rhetoric was intentional, the end result is still the same. I laughed, I cried, and I learned a lot more about those people and about myself in the process. The show was awe-inspiring, and something I certainly won't forget for a long time to come.