This week-end my fourteen year old daughter Chloe was in NYC for a teen Broadway Intensive workshop. There were days scheduled with casting directors, acting teachers, vocal coaches, dance instructors and even a Master Class with some of the Broadway cast of "STOMP"She attended with her best friend since kindergarten, who is a singer.
Both girls study at the New Mexico School for the Arts high school. Chloe in acting and Sam in singing. NYC was different. Chloe reported experiences with cutthroat stage mothers, casting directors who were mostly concerned about "type" over originality and that intense vibe that one only gets to experience in NYC studios.
The experience was good for Chloe. She has more information on which to base her choices of what kind of actor she wants to be, what kind of path she wants to forge. And the various costs of various paths...Because we all pay in one way or another for our choices.
Her whole experience made me reflect on my own training, my own dreams of youth and how some of them played and some of them did not. And how some of them changed.
When I saw Meryl Streep in the t.v movie "The Holocaust" when I too was 14, I decided that I wanted to be an actor. Her performance rocked me to the core of my humanity. I asked my mother to sign me up for acting lessons in the DC suburbs which she did.
My first teachers were wonderful. I felt "seen" and "whole" for the first time in my life as I embarked upon the deep emotional journey of an actor. I thrived playing in the deep end of the ocean and my happiest times were spent in rehearsals for shows in a darkened theater. I instantly loved Shakespeare, Albee, Williams, O'Neal..I was cast in show after show and attended a summer camp for the Arts during high school at Goucher Collge where I studied with a truly amazing teacher, Pat Vitalglian.
My experiences in college was mixed in terms of teachers. I had a great one, Matthew Vakey at Carnegie Mellon and another great, Ron Jenkins at Emerson. Both continued to instill my love of the art. Both were deeply supportive in terms of developing my craft.
But the ugly shadow of competitive, one size fits all acting had also begun to creep in. At Carnegie Mellon, I had a female teacher who "went after" all the Freshman and Sophmore girls who were vulnerable in any way. She told one girl, Diana that she couldn't stand the sight of her and to get out of her classroom until she lost some weight. She told another girl that she would never work because of the size of her nose.
And one day, she pulled me aside and said that I was too unattractive to be an ingenue and too pretty to be a character actor. And so that at 18, I might as well give up on a career now. Because there was not a "place" for me. And I did give up for a while. Her words penetrated my deepest fears and deepest wounds. I began to get suicidally depressed. By summer I decided that I wasn't going back to school the next year. I went to NYC for a year and began to study with the late, great Bill Hickey at HB Studios. Bill confided at me that he would never teach at any of "the League' drama schools because they were all this way when I told him the story. I got into an abusive relationship to validate my worth and attractiveness.
I was running my life based on the thought that I was not good enough to have my dream even though I knew that I was talented as an actor. The "business" of acting already felt brutal to me and I had barely begun.
Then I decided to go back to school in Boston.And I met Spalding Gray...a man who was creating his shows and touring with them. A man who had stepped entirely out of the system. From the moment I walked out of the theater after seeing him, I knew what my new dream was. To create and perform solo shows. In time the dream also included helping others create.
Deb Margolin, an early and well known solo performer who also teaches at Yale called solo performance "Outsiders Theater'. I agree with her wholeheartedly. No matter how the culture sees us, those of us who are drawn to solo theater, in some way, identify as outsiders.
I do not know what my daughter's path will be. An insiders path or an outsiders. Or an in-between. As artists, we all find our own way. And pain and failures along the journey can even lead to our deeper calling. That is what happened with me.
I met some amazing people and just kept following an inner voice over an outer voice. Isn't that what outsiders are here to do?
You can have your art. You can have your career. Do it the way you want to.
