Letters to the Editor
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One more....
There are, indeed, many of us out here. I was a Fine Arts major (painting) and one of the championed in my BFA program. I ran the MFA race and was accepted to quite a prestigous school. At that moment, I decided not to go. I was tired of the struggle, tired of being poor in southern California with no medical insurance, food stamps supplementing my small income, a broken tooth that I could not afford to have taken care of. I was also tired of the myth of the starving artist and figured there had to be something more. Most importantly, I could not justify another $50k in debt to repeat the lifestyle indefinately. Finally, I could never justify the commerce of the Fine Art world, I was not a scene player and always felt the work should be pure and speak more than the image of the artist that created it. So, I panicked and, ironically, got a job in corporate technology sales, after all, years of critique classes had taught me the fine art of bull shit, of listening and then softly confronting. I struggled with the edge of sanity for a year and then got another position at another company with a much more "free" work environment.
6 years later, I am now 31, I live in an early 1900s farm house 30 miles north of Austin and have a studio in a small barn in back. I am still in the corporate job, not rich, but on my way to upper middle class. I don't paint every day, but I do paint on my own terms. I don't care about being famous and I never thought I would make a living from painting. The work is pure and the best that I can do and I have no market dictating my palette, subject matter, medium, or size. I have found a small level of freedom, oh and I have medical benefits.
When some people heard about my quick turn away from academia and into the world of corporate america, I was called a sell out and much worse. I struggled with how to define myself--am I an srtist or not. The irony is that I create on my terms, I am my own benefactor, and if I am willing to give up sleep, I have more than enough time to persure my art.
I guess my point is that we all have to find our own path. The path of an artist is life long and if we are willing to look past the stereotypes of what an artistic life should be, we might just be the better for it.
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Life is not always about the big decisions.
I can really sympathize with this writer. I was a child actor who went on to graduate in theatre from an arts high school and then went into a professional training program at NYU. Sadly, I became ill two years into the program and had to drop my studies.
For a long time, I couldn't bring myself to attend the theater or to even read the arts and leisure section of the NY Times, because it was too painful of a loss. Just becoming well enough to get a B.A. in Liberal Arts was a triumph for me, just being able to work a dumb retail job was a victory over my illness. When I looked back on my dreams and expectations for a career as a performer, I couldn't believe how far I'd fallen. My husband and I had a baby, and I experienced true happiness for the first time since I became sick.
Then an amazing thing happened. My little boy told me that he wanted to get up on stage. I found a kid's theater program for him to join and volunteered to be a stage manager in exchange for his tuition in the program. Two years later, I have become the artistic director of the program, and I am paid a modest part-time salary to teach acting to the kids and direct the productions. That job led to a part-time teaching position at a preschool which also helps support my theater work. I have also started performing with my local community theater. Where I live, amateur productions are even reviewed by local theater critics.
In short I now have a life directing and performing in theater. I'm not a pro like I thought I would be, but I'm just as happy as I imagined I would be. Everything that I've always loved about the theater is there, even at the amateur level.
The point is that I didn't change everything in my life to get to this goal. I just took baby steps toward it from my suburban Mommy lifestyle.
I didn't have to move or leave my husband or anything drastic. I just had to see the door and walk through it.
Cary's advice was right on. Start doing theater where you are now, in Boston, and see what develops. You might move eventually to improve your career, but sometimes it's easier to get started in a smaller pond anyway.
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Like Nike...
As long as it's not the Equity card that makes you an actor, and as long as it's not the public accolades that you crave, just do it. You may never get the acclaim you deserve, but doing it for your own satisfaction - local playhouse, children's theater, whatever - may turn out to be more than you ever dreamed. It may give you a kind of satisfaction that burnishes the rest of your life, and open doors that you've had shut tight for a long time.
I've written all my life, and I have two novels - damn good, I might add - that will probably never be published. What they've given me is not easily measured, but the certainty that I am a writer has carried me into a lot of senendipities.
Don't give up. Just do it.
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So many of us...
I'm a poet two years out of undergrad trying to decide whether or not to pursue my MFA...there truly are a lot of us out there. The thing is, as they say, it will out. You can't stop it.
MUSHROOMS
Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly
Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.
Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.
Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,
Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,
Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We
Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking
Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!
We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,
Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:
We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.
-Sylvia Plath