About Me, Part 2

After that first show, I was hooked.  I loved the process of rehearsals and the performances.  Loved being around the people, old(er) and young.  After that show ended, another company was doing A Few Good Men.  A friend from the first cast and I decided to audition again since we had no experience and we knew A Few Good Men quite well at that point.  We ended up doing the show for another 3 months, in different roles.  After that, I worked with my first director in a production of To Kill A Mockingbird.

One year after getting started, The Studio Theatre in Washington, DC was having open auditions for A Clockwork Orange.  A Clockwork Orange is my all time favorite book and I love the movie.  I decided that I would go audition even though I had never been to a professional audition.  I figured it would be a good experience to audition just to see what a professional audition would be like.  I was not at all expecting anything other than that.  After auditioning and 3 or 4 callbacks I was cast in a few small roles in the show.  Doing that show changed my life.  Literally.

Clockwork Orange was an amazing experience.  Working with experiences, talented actors made me so much better.  It made me focused and really lit a fire inside me.  There was so much creativity there.  Lots of people coming up with ideas and things on their own.  I wanted to be like those actors.  I wanted to know what I was doing.  They were amazing in including me, a relative beginner, in their group.  Showing me the ropes.  Treating me as an equal.  There was no conceit or rank there.  Just a group of people working hard and enjoying each other's company.  We all went through about a 9 months of withdrawal from each other afterwards and still keep in touch to this day.  Without that experience, I may not have stuck with acting.

After the Clockwork Orange experience I wanted to be the best actor I could be.  I continued to do shows for practical experience, but I wanted to learn the craft.  I enrolled in a Meisner Technique course for about a year.  Afterwards I enrolled in Studio Theatre's Acting Conservatory.  Studio has to be one of DC's most polorizing theaters.  While it is known for sharp, edgy productions, the Acting Conservatory has a distinct Love-it-or-Hate-it vibe.  It's not for everybody.  There is a definite survival of the fittest, weed out the weak approach to the teaching philosophy there.  They won't pass an actor to the next level unless they feel you are ready.  Classes end with a Final Scene night where your 15 weeks of study come down to how you perform in front of an audience.  It is stressful.  Very stressful.  More stressful than any production I've ever been a part of.  I've seen people excel during classes only to falter on FS night and not pass the class and seen people do "okay" in classes and be amazing in FS and move to the next level.  You constantly have to perform.  It's a shame to see people spend $500-600 on a class and get torn to shreds on the last night (after FSs, the faculty retire to another room and talk about each person, then the instructor comes back and the class discusses each person's performance that night.  Then the instructor tells everyone what the faculty thinks of their performance and if you can move on or fail the class.  It's a night of stress, happiness, and tears that ends around 2am.

But you know what?  I loved it all.  My 2 years at Studio were amazing.  The pressure was great.  There was an underlying anxiety every day of the next coming class.  But I met great people, learned from great instructors, and grew as an actor.  I learned a lot about myself especially that I thrive under pressure.  I wouldn't trade my time there for anything.  Being a member of the Studio community opened so many doors for me and really gave me a deeper appreciation for the theater.  I highly recommend it for anyone who has a strong desire to learn and can handle the pressure.

After my time at Studio, I have been doing theater in and around the DC area, as well as appearing in films all over the East Coast.  I feel very lucky in the opportunities I've had.  As the years have gone on, I have wanted to reconnect with learning acting again.  I want to be a complete actor.  I thought about the Theatre Lab again.  The opportunity to work closely with a tight knit group of actors, learning from seasoned instructors, and spend a year concentration on the craft of acting was just something I didn't want to pass up.  So I auditioned for one of the 10 slots in the Theatre Lab Honors Conservatory and was lucky to be accepted in to the program.