By Hailey Palmer, Puyallup Tribal News
Puyallup Tribal Member Araquin Boome isn’t shy to say he had trouble making friends in middle school and high school.
He would even go as far to tell you it got to a point that his school began to worry about him.
“The school was concerned about me for the reasons you’d expect,” he said. “I walked around with my hair covering my face, I didn’t talk to anyone, I sat alone during lunch. They called me into the office and essentially just told me to join a club.”
He decided to join the art club, which, at the time, was working on set design for the school’s theater production of “Dorothy in Wonderland.”
It was a snowball effect from there, Boome said, as his first introduction to the world of theater wound up being far from the last.
“Up until that point I never really thought about acting. … It never really crossed my mind,” Boome said. “The next year, my school did “The Little Mermaid,” and, for whatever reason, I just have a soft spot for that movie. I had never sung before, I had never performed in front of anyone, I had never really wanted to. I have no idea what compelled me to audition, but I did.”
At first, though, Boome said he absolutely hated it.
“I just could not get into it,” he said. “I was so overwhelmed with all of these people trying to talk to me. I fully planned on quitting. I didn’t show up to rehearsal for two weeks. Eventually, the director caught me in the hall at some point. … I kind of just got guilt tripped into performing.”
Once he let himself enjoy it, Boome said, he kept performing all throughout high school.
For Boome, he said it’s been the easiest way he’s found to make friends and form relationships with those around him.
“It’s definitely not for everyone, but I have thoroughly enjoyed it,” Boome said. “You build this small family over the course of two or three months, and you see these people every day for that period of time and you’re all just working toward a common goal. … It provides a really nice escape, I have found, and that was something I really needed throughout high school, and especially after the pandemic.”
Since graduating from high school in 2020, and following a pause on all theater production due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Boome has mostly performed in community theater in the area, but was recently in his first professional-level production in July, “Cabaret” by Harlequin Productions.
Today, Boome is on a mini break from theater, but has found a different way to stay on a stage.
“I’ve been doing a bunch of drag performances,” he said. “It’s stupid, it’s fun, it’s not easy, but there’s a lot less pressure to do everything perfect. I don’t have to have everything super rehearsed. … It reminds me why I do what I do. I love performing. I like putting a smile on people’s faces.”
How his performances impact others has been one of Boome’s favorite parts of theater, he said.
“It was brought to my attention a couple Tribal Members saw (“Kinky Boots”) and they saw me on stage in my performance,” he said. “I didn’t do a whole lot in that show. I kind of just put on a bunch of pretty dresses and clacked around in heels four times and that was it, but they said seeing another Tribal Member being their authentic self, they saw themselves in that and it brought them a little hope. It was a really cool thing to hear and I think about it a lot.”
Photos courtesy of Araquin Boome
