Hey y'all, watch 'is!

I am in the final stretch of my MA.


Classes are done.


The final show is closed.


I've written and done provisional revisions on all three of the essays to hand in for my dissertation.


While pondering out loud to a classmate on how to come up with a title which would encompass all three essays:
(1) Hamlet's Gertrude: A Woman Divided by Point of View
(2) Lady Macbeth and Hedda Gabler: A Study of the Jungian 'Terrible Mother' Archetype
(3) *as yet untitled* Reflective Essay on my experience of the year
he laughingly suggested something along the lines of 'The Fall of the Strong Woman'.


I started laughing.  Then stopped abruptly.  "That's not funny."


I'm thinking more along the lines of Mark Twain's quote: "I never let my schooling get in the way of my education."


When I first auditioned for the school (and into my first couple of crit sessions) I remember hearing how 'risky' it was that I take on training at this point in my career.  I couldn’t understand what my tutors were on about.  Risky?  Training?  Training in anything makes you stronger.  Honing my craft, practicing what I love, strengthening my creative muscles, trying new approaches…how could this be anything but beneficial?  To anyone?  At any point in their career?

I think I am beginning to understand what they meant.

The course was not necessarily designed for where I am in my career and life.  One professor even emailed me, “there is little we can teach you technically or professionally.” 

What I had been searching for was a re-inspiration.  

In my application letter, I wrote:

I am a leading lady in stature, age and voice, and would love to be able to tackle the great female roles with the clarity and strength that they deserve. 

But almost immediately upon arrival, I was encouraged to abandon the leading lady roles.  No Lady Macbeth.  No Titania.  No Lady Anne.  No Cleopatra.  No Katherina.  I was encouraged instead into softer, more fragile, ingénue roles.  This was, I believe, to strengthen me in a direction that I was not apparently suited for.  To help me grow and stretch in a direction that seemed against my ‘type’ or ‘personality’.  I understand this push.  Training is to help root out our weaknesses and to work on them.  But one of the things I addressed in my application was that I wanted to get the training because I wasn’t landing these leading lady roles.  I wanted the opportunity to finally explore the roles I had been waiting all my professional career to tackle, and instead, I was very explicitly pushed away from those types of roles.  Along the way, I expressed my concerns that the ingénue roles are pointless for me professionally, as at 37 years old, I am a highly unlikely candidate for Desdemona or Rosalind.  I suggested that I look at character roles – things I might play further into my 50s and 60s rather than roles that I would be unlikely to ever have the opportunity to play again.  I do think that my exploration and growth into that 'softer' area was beneficial.  But on a whole, it gave me a sense of dissatisfaction both with the roles and my own work.  Spending a year doing difficult work that you never feel successful in becomes tiring.  There were few victories or breakthroughs along the way – so it felt tediously sufficient or at best, serviceable.

I came to school to reignite a passion.  To get the fire going in my performance.  To challenge myself to really create amazing work.  I had instead become convinced that all I am capable of as an actor is mediocre work.  That I could fulfill the basic requirements, serve a story line, not draw too much focus from the leads…but that I did not have enough shine or interest or magic to create something great.  I started to notice a personal disconnection from my work.  A diminished vigour in my investment and approach.  

A part of this was the fact that I had a tutor who had made it clear that he wanted to, as he put it bluntly to my classmates, 'knock her off her center'.  I do believe that in his heart he was attempting to help me, but we have very different ideas of what creates great art.  I have a hard-won balance in my life.  And I believe that my ability to create good art comes from being a whole, balanced, creatively full person rather than an off-kilter, unpredictable, unhappy one.  I have been through years of my life when I was completely unable to create art at all because my heart was so broken I couldn't see straight.  That darkness and unbalanced place shut me down to the creation of work.  My insecurity and ragged edges locked my creative heart down rather than opening it up.  I spent time and energy and years regaining personal balance, and then launched myself into school in the hopes of a springboard from which to swan dive back into a joyful career.  And to be honest, when I was no longer in the dualistic place of trying to juggle the desire to be emotionally available and free under this tutor's guidance with the fierce guarding of my personal stability from which I knew my good work would be able to generate, I felt my shoulders drop and a great sigh of relief.

As I started writing my reflective essay, I began to dig back into what was useful, what helped me grow, what made me feel alive and vital.  I started to refocus on my sense of 'play'.  So much of my confidence in my ability up until this point has based on getting roles and achieving success in my career based on my 'work'.  It is a huge intellectual and emotional leap to disengage from the idea of 'work'.  As I've said before on the blog, it is how I judge if I have earned my place.  Work = earned = valued.  Play is a whole different beast.  I'm hoping that part of my feeling of disconnection is actually part of detaching myself from this value system based on work.  Play is not as important.  It doesn't have the same judgement of right and wrong.  It is more creative and explorative.  And by releasing my strangle hold on the importance of getting it 'right', I've found myself feeling vaguely detached from the passion I so sought to regain.  And maybe that is not such a terrible thing.  Just unfamiliar.

I spoke with my Dad yesterday about the idea of each city having a Word.  One word that defines the city, and if your personal word matches the city word, you fit in.  For me, New York's word is 'Achieve', which is similar, but to me a vastly different word than Los Angeles' word 'Succeed'.  Washington D.C. 'Power'.  Boston 'Learn'.  So, will my internal word match London's word?  What is London's word?  I may have to discover that as I've decided to throw myself into the pool here and see if I can swim. 

Dad said, "I think Easley, South Carolina's word may be: 'Hey y'all...watch 'is!!'"  (Which if you say it with a full Easley drawl, is pretty much one word.)

Maybe I'm still an Easley girl, after all.  Because with no particular reason to think that I might have success, without much in the way of confidence or passion, with a rocky road behind me and complete empty slate ahead...I'm jumping into the deep end with both feet and yelling on the way down: "Hey y'all...watch 'is!!!"