When I was taking my requisite Humanities class in college, we pulled topics out of a hat and had to deliver an impromptu two minute speech to the class. 

I was assigned: “hope.”

I thought I was sooo subversive for my hot take that hope was actually a bad thing. For context, I was in my early twenties with a fresh heartbreak in the rearview mirror. I argued that, as it had been with my failed relationship, hope can keep us shackled to lost causes. 

Fidelity to the doomed dooms us too. 

It’s been a few years since I gave that speech. Has my hope for, and pursuit of, a career in the arts accomplished nothing but render me an ineffectual cautionary tale bound to delusions of grandeur? 

It’s easy, as an actor, to catastrophize. 

We have every reason to. 

Remember during the strike last year when Rolling Stone and SAG-AFTRA chief economist David Viviano spelled it out for us:

“Only 7% of SAG-AFTRA actors and performers earn $80,000 or more a year, and 14% of SAG-AFTRA members make at least $26,470 annually to qualify for SAG-AFTRA health plan coverage…”

The strike was resolved and work resumed in November. Hope.

But showbiz itself seems to be shrinking. In June, the LA Times elucidated the “stark decline in film and TV shoots that has prolonged mass unemployment and mental health crises among entertainment workers.” Some of it was theorized to be about anxiety over a crew strike but those rumblings have been put to rest with a new three year deal. Some of it is tightening belts after the streaming wars. Some part of it is productions continuing to choose to film anywhere where the tax situation is more attractive than LA.

According to The Dailies, things look bleak for “traditional linear TV” as whole, because media preferences for the younger generations are slipping further and further toward “social and user-generated content platforms.” 

[Fun fact: I hid in the laundry room and cried last Christmas when my well-meaning uncle tried to solve my career woes with, “Why aren’t you on YouTube?” In retrospect, it looks like he was right.]

As if to prove this, I’ve been binge-watching Love Island Australia season 5 and at some point one of these beautiful young couples agreed that they didn’t particularly care for movies. Not a particular genre or director- they didn’t like movies. One of these islanders even referred to the notion of watching a movie alone as “psycho.”

This is one of my favorite activities. 

Take me away.

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” 

SAG-AFTRA voted to strike from video game work last week “after talks for a new contract with major game studios broke down over artificial intelligence protections,” reported Sarah Parvini on AP News. 

So there’s fewer opportunities in traditional film and television, tastes are shifting away from those anyway, and AI continues to be a threat in every avenue- though there’s some hope with bipartisan support for the No Fake Act.

No one goes into the arts for job security. Every actor knows it’s a longshot and we make the bet anyway. 

Those gambles were a lot easier to stomach in my twenties and before I compiled all those articles. 

Let’s be clear. I’m not in the union. I’ve self-sabotaged and taken breaks and tried my hand at plenty of other day jobs, careers, and creative pursuits. When I feel discouraged as an actor I think, “that’s okay, in my heart of hearts I’ve always been a writer,” and when I stagnate as a writer I think, “but my real love has always been the stage!” and when I feel exploited I think, “stand-up is so much more honest,” and when I look at my bank account I think, “well, we always apply to law school.” The cost of that is obvious. If you can’t have connections or money or otherworldly beauty, you ought to at least have the grit and consistency of … something super gritty and consistent… granite? sandpaper? Heath Ledger’s unstoppable force in 2008’s The Dark Knight?

It’s possible I may not, on an emotional or psychological level, be fit to compete in what’s left of this industry.

And really how can we in good conscience ask individuals or governing bodies to support the arts when peoples’ basic needs aren’t being met? when we have to crowdfund healthcare? when there are several concurrent genocides happening? when record-breaking summer heat feels like the cold open to the rest of our lives in the climate wars disaster movie?

 Ethically, morally, is there any value to pursuing a life in the arts?

Well, yes. That’s a hill I’ll die on over and over again. That’s a blog I’ll do later with links to studies showing the value of arts in education and whatnot because I know there are tons and I just don’t have them bookmarked yet. Poetry is essential and immortal. Cue our next rewatch of Dead Poets Society. Comedians speak truth to power and give us a fucking laugh. Bo Burnham’s Inside did more for me during the pandemic than any other piece of media. There’s dignity in those arts. Acting though? I don’t always feel so certain. Sometimes it feels cheap in a way that Uta Hagen already refuted in Respect for Acting. Sometimes I catch myself indulging in a false dichotomy between the value of film and tv acting vs. theater acting– and then I have to muse about social media. There’s so much moral panic about the way technology is isolating us. Theater, especially, seems like the perfect antidote to this. Now more than ever, every kid should have to participate in the rigorous, joyful, social pressure cooker that is a local children’s theater production. There is inherent value in theater and acting for our communities and for us as individuals. 

I always felt a deep reverence for acting and especially the theater. 

Discovering Jerzy Grotowski’s work gave me a language for that reverence and also made me completely insufferable. Now, I think of Grotowski as one of my patron saints of acting. Now, when I wonder about the dignity or value of acting, for myself, I know the answer is in pursuing Grotowski’s holy actor, whose performances are less performances and more carnal prayers, human sacrifices. 

I’ll use this blog to dig into these ideas more as I work through my self-assigned reading on the above. We can look forward to discussions of Towards a Poor Theater, Thomas Richards’ At Work with Grotowski on Physical Actions, and Acting after Grotowski by Kris Salata and lots more! 

So, ultimately, it’s not about hope at all.

That same Humanities professor who had to watch my bummer of a “hope” speech is also still one of my favorite acting professors. He said to us: “If you can be happy doing anything else– do that.” 

Maybe I don’t have to judge all my ambition-hopping as a moral failing. Maybe I was just trying to follow good advice. 

Grotowski said ( and I so wish I had the exact citation to quote but I’m traveling and don’t have my copy of the Sourcebook with me) that the only people who should be actors are those who are compelled to do so. 

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that that same professor met and worked with Grotowski during his time at UC Irvine. 

We talk about acting colloquially like an infection. Uh oh she caught the acting bug! For a while I bitterly thought of it as an expensive habit. What do you mean I need new headshots?

[I do actually need new headshots. I used this one for all my grad school auditions last year because it was the closest to my haircut at the time– it was taken in 2014.]

[This is the one I’ve been using lately. It’s here on the About Me page. It’s from 2018.]

[But again, closest to matching my current haircut.]

I don’t want to think of myself as a victim to my passions. I’ll admit I have wasted some precious time feeling sorry for myself. Why couldn’t my calling have been to be a doctor or a lawyer or a business executive? I could still apply to law school. Why can’t it be enough to just find gainful employment (present job market notwithstanding) and take care of me and mine? I could still do that. I saw a rather tempting notice about a job with the sanitation department on my last visit to the local dump.  Wah wah wah. 

I still chose to pursue an MFA in Acting. 

I am in the long, terrifying, middle of one of the biggest gambles of my life. 

Ultimately, my greatest hope is to earn my bread in service of the art form I so revere– however Dionysus sees fit. 

As an academic, as an actor, as a lobbyist for the arts, or as some role for which we don’t have a title yet– wherever I am needed.

Participating in showbiz as much as I have been allowed has given me age dysmorphia but I know I still have so much time. 

It’s never been about hope– whether it leads us down a primrose path or not. It’s about surrender. It’s about another of Grotowski’s ideas: the via negativa. 

Give up not doing it. 

I am giving up resisting what I am compelled to do. 

So, here’s my first actor website in several years after a long break and a lots of little crises. Here’s a blog where I’ll document my progress, talk through my current research, muse about the moral and ethical possibilities of our craft, and share whatever experience or expertise I have–

all in good faith.