Theatre Changes Everything

Graduate school auditions are just around the corner, and I'm terrified. (The picture you see is the headshot I'll be bringing to them.)

I'm attempting to get accepted into a MFA program in acting. I'd be especially excited to get into a program that had a strong focus in Shakespearean work, but I'll take what I can get (after all, the odds of me getting in anywhere aren't great).

I'm worried that I'll do horribly.
That I'll embarrass myself.
That I won't be as successful as I was the last time, when I was "this close" to getting into two really great schools.

Can you even call that success?

You can in theatre. And I'm about to explain why.

I'm going to a sort of cattle-call audition for graduate school. The first step is a screening audition, where they try to weed out the mediocre people. Only a fraction of the people make it to the next round, which is actually performing your two contrasting monologues in front of representatives from whichever graduate programs are accepting students that year (unlike most fields of study, theatre grad schools don't all accept students every year). You have three minutes (including your introduction) to show them something that will make them want you (and they WILL cut you off if you exceed that time limit, which serves as a signal to the grad school reps that you weren't prepared well enough).

If you don't pass the screening auditions, there's an optional round that you can go to if you like. In it, you get ONE minute to show ONE monologue to SOME of the grad schools (whichever ones feel like sticking around for that round), as opposed to THREE minutes to show TWO monologues to ALL of the grad schools. Obviously, this is not a desired option.

Last time I went, I made it on to the next round. I was the first actor in the recent memory (or, perhaps, history) of my college to do so. Just lucky, I guess.

After everyone has shown their stuff to the grad schools, they gather you all in a room and call out names one at a time, handing each of the hopeful performers a folded piece of paper. The paper tells you if any schools want to see you again (and, if so, which ones, which hotel room they will be waiting in, and what time slot you have).

I was shaking last time as I unfolded my piece of paper. I had a healthy crop of call-backs. I hadn't anticipated any (as no other actor I knew had ever acquired any, and I had been told so many times not to expect any). I almost cried with joy.

The call-backs are all different. One of them was sort of an interview ("Who IS Angela?" "Why do you want to go to graduate school?" "What do you do that ISN'T theatre?"). One was a continuation of the audition (she wanted to see two additional monologues, and wanted me to re-perform one of the original ones, giving me direction as I went). And the others were more sorts of informational sessions, telling me about the programs and asking if I had questions. In one, I was alone. In the rest, I was with other people. I didn't know what to expect from one hotel room to the next.

But that's not even what I'm scared about the most. I'm not worried about the call-backs, but rather that I won't get any. I'm worried that I might not get beyond the screening round. That the last time I went was a fluke. My one, lucky shot. And that I'll never be tempted by opportunity again.

(Playing one of the stepsisters in Cinderella. April 2005.)

I did a little research on the grad schools last weekend, but I kept feeling as though I was counting chickens that would probably never hatch. I timed my monologues (and cut them when I realized they were too long), and criticized myself openly. They're going to take one look at me and know that I'm not good enough. I'm not what they want. I'm just another 20-something white girl, and that's not rare in the world of theatre.

Last time I went, I was a senior in college. My advisor told me that I really shouldn't bother going, as I was too young. Every graduate program is looking for students to round out their programs. People that will expand the potential of their casting pools. They already have undergraduate programs packed with 21-year-old white girls; they didn't need another one. She said I should wait until I was older. That I could become a sort of self-made minority by waiting.

Besides, going straight from undergrad to grad school, they'd probably just think that I was attempting to hide in academia.

Perhaps I was.

Last time, I had a bunch of callbacks. Enough, in fact, that I discounted some of them. I really fell in love with two schools, and I didn't want to settle for anything less. They had little in common with each other, aside from the fact that they were both small programs (most theatre programs are, because they have to be small if they're going to be good).

The first was a school that took 2-4 students every year. And they liked to keep their program male-heavy (which makes sense, as theatre itself is male heavy... they don't want the males to be inundated with roles as the females all fight over the part of the chambermaid). The year I auditioned, they informed me that they would be accepting 2 males and 2 females, which were the best odds I was ever going to get. I drove out to the school for a follow-up audition in front of all the faculty. They had current students call me to encourage me to go there (with one of them even offering to help me look for an apartment). And then they told me that I had made the waiting list. I was girl #3, for 2 spots. And then girls #1 and #2 accepted.

The second school only accepted students every 3 years. They take 5 males and 5 females, and then keep them for 3 years, and then get a brand new class. I travelled out to that one. I observed a class. I ate lunch with the 10 students. The college gave me tickets to a performance that night. I fell in love with the school. And then they told me that I was on the waiting list. I was girl #6 or so. And, as you may have guessed, girls #1-#5 accepted.

(Side note: I have a lot of friends who wanted to go to law school or medical school and always complained about how difficult it was to get in. And yes, I know that it is. But I felt like they were discounting the difficulty of me getting into an MFA program -- which, by the way is a terminal degree; there is no PhD in Acting -- and thinking that they had it harder. But you know what? There are far more medical schools and law schools than there are MFA programs. And they take more than 2-10 students at a time. And they take students every year. And they pay attention to objective things like past academic performance and test scores, instead of a subjective 3-minute audition. And they won't overlook you simply for being female... Please don't get mad at me for saying this. I'm not trying to knock other fields of graduate study; I'm just trying to get my own field the respect it deserves.)

So there you have it. My failure. I was so sure that I was going to get into one of those schools. It really felt as though I were being courted. But no. I was left with no where to go. Nothing to do. And not long after, I began my "adult" life in Chicago.

One might argue that I did well, seeing as how those schools auditioned hundreds of students, and I came so close. So yes, in many ways, my particular brand of failure was a form of success.

Grad school felt as though it were easily in reach. But I suppose it was just a mirage.

(I played Lady Macbeth in an all-female production of The Tragedy of Macbeth. November 2006.)

I have a very unfortunate (mostly subconscious) tendency that I don't often discuss, but I think it's probably a good idea to admit it right now. Maybe that way I won't be able to hide behind it anymore...

When I think I'm going to do worse at something than I'd like, I stop trying. I pull back. That way, if i fail, I can blame it on a lack of effort instead of a lack of ability. I can make claims like, "I could be an A-student, if I tried." It's less painful to think "I wasn't prepared enough" or "I didn't try hard enough" than it would be to think "I wasn't good enough." I don't think I'm the only one that does this sort of thing, but I've never heard anyone else admit it before. Maybe we're not supposed to... Oh well.

I'm worried that I'm going to do that with grad school auditions. I'm not going to prepare enough, I'm going to do terribly, and then I'm going to say, "well, I could've gotten in to grad school if I'd been on my game." And I'll forever wonder if that statement is true.

I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to resign myself to that. I hope not, anyway. I'm going to work. And I may very well fail anyway, but I won't let it be for lack of trying

I don't even know that this is what I want. I sensationalize the concept of graduate school. As though it's going to solve my problems. In some ways, I think I just long to be told what to do again. After spending so many years in school, it's weird to not have that steady schedule of events. I'd like to regain that.

When people asked me what it was like adjusting to the real world after college, I told them that John Mayer was right: "there's no such thing as the real world." But that I didn't miss homework.

I don't know if that's true anymore. I've really just been assigning myself homework instead of having it assigned to me, in order to make up for this mysterious presence that I've lost. Regulated activity, or something like that. Along with a list of completed tasks comes a sense of accomplishment. Maybe that's what I've been missing. So I scheduled writing into my life (in the form of three blogs and a novel). I scheduled reading in (I read on the "L". I just started The Lovely Bones at the recommendation of a dotcomrade). I started taking acting classes. In some ways, I've created my own makeshift substitution for school.

Maybe that's the problem with education in this country. It doesn't teach you how to be a functional person as much as it teaches you to be a student. And as soon as you figure out all the keys to being a decent student, you're done. And by that point you've amassed an assortment of skills that you will never again be able to put to good use. And if, like me, you're a life-long learner (a "student of existence", perhaps), you can never be satisfied without new knowledge being pumped into you on a regular basis.

I don't think that's the real reason I'm longing for graduate school, but it's part of it.

Really, I just want to be a good actor. Actually, I think I'm a pretty good actor already. But I want to be better. I want to be the kind of actor that makes the audience feel the story instead of just understand it. I want people to leave the theatre and feel that they've been changed in some way because of what they've just witnessed. I want to be astonishing.


(Me -- as a blonde -- with my buddy Kevin in The Comedy of Errors. August 2006.)

Maybe now is a good time to relate my theory to you:
Theatre can change the world.

I think that live theatre is a more powerful medium than television or film (I heard a saying once... "Theatre is life. Film is art. Television is furniture"). You can't change the channel. You can't fast forward. You can't throw popcorn at the screen. It's there. It's real. It's in front of you. In some ways, the audience is as much a part of it as the actors are. There's a connection there that's unlike anything else. The audience suspends their collective disbelief, and they witness the performed events firsthand. It's really an incredible sort of phenomenon when you think about it, that people are willing to accept theatre in the first place. But because it's not as easy to tune it out or escape from it, it can have a greater effect, I think.

I was once in a production of a stage version of Anne of Green Gables (which, for the record, wasn't particularly well-written). It was a community theatre production with a limited budget and a cast of enthusiastic local actors.

The story, if you're unfamiliar with the books, is about a precocious, redhead orphan girl named Anne, who is taken in by an elderly brother and sister after a misunderstanding. She's perhaps the brightest girl in school, in constant competition with a boy who teases her for her freckles and red braids. She experiences the world as a more romantic and enchanting place than other people, and her dramatics often get her into trouble. It's not political. It's not avant-garde. It's not meant to be a powerhouse of a play. The novels are heart-warming, and someone decided to create the play more for nostalgia and entertainment value than anything else. And that's fine by me.

While I was working on that production, a couple of troops of girl scouts came backstage before attending the performances. They could earn some sort of theatre badge for it, I guess. And I was asked to tell them all about acting, costumes, make-up, rehearsals, and everything else that might enrich the theatre-going experience. The girls were full of questions and seemed fascinated by everything I said.

And I realized... It didn't matter that this show wasn't written to as some sort of worldly commentary. If one of those little girls watched the play and felt a little more okay with her freckles, then that was more than enough of a reason to keep doing it. If one girl came to the show and felt a little braver about raising her hand in class... If she realized that it was okay for girls to be smart... Or if a child knew it was okay to be an orphan... Or okay to look a little different from everyone else... Or to think of the world as a beautiful place filled with poetry... This show (this poorly-written, unprofessional, tiny little show) could change that child's life.

That makes all the effort worthwhile.

And you know what? It's like that with every play. If one person who feels really lousy can go to a farce and forget their problems for a little while... If a family that rarely gives each other the time of day can see a play and have something to discuss as a family at dinner the next night... If one ladder-climbing professional can see Macbeth and realize that power isn't everything... Theatre can definitely change lives. Who's to say that it can't change the world?

So everything that I learn that I can use to make a show better, I'll learn. Because if the show is a little bit better, then maybe it can touch someone a little bit more.

I've given variations on this speech more times than I can remember. And during every incarnation, I remind myself of why it is that I love theatre so much. I remember why I do what I do.

While I was in college, I ran into a guy whom I'd done theatre with in high school. I told him that I'd recently become a theatre major, and I felt a little guilty about it. I was worried that it was selfish, and I didn't think it was important enough. He looked me square in the eyes, more earnest than I had ever seen him before, and said, "It IS important." I wondered aloud if I should be doing something more altruistic, like becoming a doctor and trying to heal people's bodies. He responded with, "Angela, you're going to heal their souls."

True Story:
Several years ago, a woman went up to Mother Theresa. Mother Theresa looked at her and asked, "what's wrong?" The woman broke down, saying that she worked in theatre in New York, and that she felt like she wasn't doing enough with her life. She said that she wanted to go to Calcutta and help the poor. Mother Theresa looked at her and said, "In my country, there is a famine of the body. In your country, there is a famine of the spirit. You must remain."

So that's why I'm an actor.
I do theatre because I love it more than I can say.
I do theatre because I don't know if I could ever be truly happy doing anything else.
I do theatre to heal people's souls.
I do theatre because there is a famine of the spirit.
I do theatre because it's my way of changing the world.

I really hope I get some interviews at these grad school auditions. If they ask me why I want to go to graduate school, I think I finally have some answers that I'm proud of.

May you find your own little way to change the world.

~A~

(Me and my buddy Simon in Picasso at the Lapin Agile. June 2007)