Why Acting?
After completing a fifteen-week training course with the American Conservatory Theater, I realized that I desired to continue my training as an actor in an academic setting, and have now begun prepping for drama school auditions that will be happening this spring.
This is not the first time I have auditioned for a BFA program, and in fact, I attended a BFA program for one whole semester at the age of 18, in the awkward mid-pandemic sprawl to continue to create while the world was burning around us. The program and I were not a good fit, so I left.
I auditioned for another program that very spring, and after a few rounds of auditions, was not offered a spot.
The audition was so-so, and I am sure if I watched it back now, I would cringe, which I see as a positive sign of my growth. What stuck with me most, however, was not the audition itself, but what they asked me to write about in the written portion of my application.
They asked me to tell them my “why”.
Why acting?
Why this craft, and why this profession?
I am sure I could dig up the essay I wrote then, but I would like to take this space to write about my “why” now, several years down the line, not just as an actor, but as a writer, and creative as well.
My internal life has always felt labyrinth-esque. It doesn’t take much for me to begin weaving an ever-changing web of ideas, mental images, emotions and energies together that recently has felt more like a knot than some sort of well-designed knit-wear. At my best, this noise can be channeled and fine-tuned into something inspiring, or at least interesting to myself or others. At my best, I am at a sense of play, with this noise, and it seems to hum and bounce off the walls around me. At my worst it is strangling me, I find myself looping, and looping, and looping back, stuck on one track that keeps running its course and I wonder why I end up in the same place I was before.
The only way for me to pull myself out of this internal messy happening is through channeling that into the physical. Let the tap run until the water clears. Through movement, and the spoken word, I believe we can alchemize these inner happenings into something useful, something that can stir up change, or understanding within others, or simply give us a point of understanding of what these subconscious expressions might be trying to tell us, about ourselves, our point of view, what we might be missing.
Through the act of performance-making, I have deepened the relationship between my internal and external self, whereas without, they are often at odds, manifesting in quite self-destructive behaviours.
Along with this, understanding myself enough, my isms, my assumptions, and predispositions of thought and behaviour helps me reach a state of neutrality, which is the first step in creating a character, and in telling a narrative. This act of self-understanding has been the foundation of all personal self-growth and development. Growing up in a rather extreme environment of little to no order, this self-examination process began as a form of self-preservation. My reactions, my words, and my thoughts even required a level of hypervigilance and examination in order to remain safe. Although this part of myself was important and necessary for my survival at the time, this level of self-censorship has become quite harmful to me as an adult who is just trying to answer work emails without the feeling of one thousand eyes on me judging my every breath. Through my journey as a creative, I have been able to make friends with this part of myself and recognize that there is a bridge between integral self-expression and virtuosity.
I also believe that in the age of short-form and digital entertainment, the theatre has become an even more necessary space for people to gather. We need rooms with bodies and breath, for community to form, and stories to be shared. We need nervous systems to bounce off each other and share ancient truths that words can only come so close to describing. We need “we”. And I want more than anything to be a part of that exchange, to lend my body, voice, vulnerability and point of view to the narrative, to the verse. I want to lend myself to the work, to the play, to create a space where vulnerability is embraced, where people can sit in dimly lit spaces, and pause and reflect. It is church for me, without patriarchal values or a privatized pulpit. As new stories and experiences arise in the modern landscape, theatre makers get to be at the forefront of social change and also hold space for the timeless truths found in classical works.
I want to create performances because I know I have a unique expression, a unique mosaic of thoughts and impressions, of feelings and internal experiences, that when brought to light, can rescue and reflect to others that they are not alone in their humanness, that hopefully, someone will see my work, and it will bring about comfort, or rattle them to change or reflect back to them a point of view they may not have considered before. I act to incite change within community, within myself, to hold up a mirror to others, to place their stories in front of them and say, here is life, now what are you going to do about it?
I also want to create performances because I know, that at our best, actors are nothing more than vessels, I know that at my best, I can take the “I” out of the work, that the character, verse and plot are complete, are ready, are in a space of truth, before they are ever touched. I know the honor and privilege it is to be given a chance to embody someone else, to be witnessed being, as a chance to teach, and a chance to learn.
The engagement with the active practice of faith is another reason why I have chosen acting as a profession. Faith in my scene partners, ensemble, the given world around me, makes me a better person. When I think of my “why” what comes to mind is the quote from George Bernard Shaw, “You see things and say why, but I dream things and say why not?”
The active engagement with our own ability to create new worlds, to ask “Why not?” is my “Why?”.
