After I finished my last midterm exam, I was definitely ready to be done with the books for a while, and on the first evening of break, my friend Poupée and I went to see The Mousetrap, a play at Princeton's award-winning McCarter Theater. It was amazing. I thought that it would be a great chance to talk about the benefit of being able to see incredible shows and plays completely free as a Princeton student.
I'll first start by saying that The Mousetrap was a murder mystery based on an Agatha Christie novel. I loved it! The play was very suspenseful and funny, and it was about a young couple who open a new guesthouse near London and need to figure out which of their eccentric guests is, in fact, a murderer! I thought that the play was brilliant, as all plays at McCarter are. In years past, I have seen a modern and clever rendition of The Hound of the Baskervilles (based on the Sherlock Holmes story), a play about the Chinese fable of the White Snake, and the classic story of A Christmas Carol. I simply can't pick a favorite since they have all been amazing!
And one of the best things about the plays are that they are free for us Princeton students! Yes, completely free. All of us students have something called the Passport to the Performing Arts. It's a fancy name to essentially say that we are able to attend world-class performances each year without any charge to us. Every school year, we get eight tickets loaded for free on our students cards. One option is that we can use these tickets to watch and support our friends in student dance groups or music performances; in the past, for example, I have used mine to see my friend tap dance in the annual Tap Cats show. Or the passes can also be used for other theater and music shows on campus, like at McCarter Theater.
It's a huge perk that you should definitely benefit from if you find yourself at Princeton! The McCarter Theater play tickets generally range from a $70-$100 value per show, and we get to attend these amazing shows for free. Seeing these plays is always a highlight for me, and it was a great way to start this spring break!