Because It's Not Easy

Saying what you mean and meaning what you say all the time. I worked on this for long hours that turned into days that turned into weeks that turned into, "have I spent so long on it now that it's disingenuous?" But it's not.

I shared some scraps of it with you guys, but here's the final incarnation. Well- one of the final incarnations. It was tweaked quite a bit for each individual school, and I'm willing to bet not a single program actually read it. Not even especially not the program I was accepted into, but I did enjoy writing it. And I think it's just a good exercise for artists to do. "Statement of Purpose" is probably the most intimidating name for it, but having to justify why you're doing what you're doing is hard. And like most hard things good for you (insert penis joke here. And another one for the word "insert". Why are prestigious programs not calling me back again?)

Please kindly respect that this is not an invitation for your editorial, or an exclamation of how pretentious or not pretentious enough I am. It's just me sharing some work.

Read at your own risk.

            I am an asset-filled, resourceful harbinger of my generational and personal heritage and history. I am the proud owner of a beautiful collection of many mistakes. Today I am a knitting teacher, performing, table-waiting, dishwashing, directing, paper pushing, traveling theater artist. I explore funny walks, interesting sounds, stitch patterns, puppetry, meal serving, Mexico and play constructing. I’ve made sweaters, pigtails, mittens and skins from yarn. I tinker with other devisors in an attempt to find universal truths, turning to classic texts for examples. My diverse background in making provides me with a rich tool set for theatrical creating.
            I strive to be equal parts detective and explorer. I am well versed in how to speak clearly onstage and how to love deeply, quickly and easily in life. I utilize a lexicon as effectively as I do my empathy. I have an equally deep desire to research and analyze as I do to be guided by immediate kinesthetic response. My work ethic is paralleled only by my demand for adventure and play. I continually mine and forage my fields for a perfect blend of unusual and classic, something as guttural as it is soothing. I think of a theater as a laboratory, my brain as a mad scientist and my body as a Bunsen burner. I have a voice that is strong, full and hungry for a venue, feedback and hoards of co-conspirators.
            I have torrid love affairs with stories. In listening to, learning from, telling and re-telling I attempt to consume stories while sharing them, to make them a part of me and my soon-to-be history. When telling stories, I indulge in collaboration with fellow artists, finding new meanings in old stereotypes and iconography, and blending the necessary technical with the unexpected and honest instinctual.  I explore cultural and personal heritage through story telling, recalling symbolic imagery and morphing it to serve specificity in story.
            I crave more tools as an artist. More modes and methods of communication with an audience and my co-creators, more instruments with which to devise and play. My current theatrical vocabulary allows me to tell interesting stories and is wrought with potential. I am a rule-following, limit-questioning wise-cracker who longs to break off chunks of the technical rules and gnaw at them until they’re mine again. I look forward to picking apart each rule, each “should” and “shouldn’t” to discover why it has earned its respect in the theatrical hierarchy and how they can best serve story, questioning each one as I follow it.

            I look forward to a future of meeting new artists, co-creators and audience members with contrasting and diverse backgrounds, to a future of learning new rules that are ripe for following, bending and breaking. I’m looking to a future of collaborating with like and different-minded people who are up to the task of planning the world take-over of story.

Free To A Good Home

Is the sign I'll be wearing around my neck at graduate school auditions next year. Don't get me wrong, I know I aimed high in my grad school application process. I know I was shooting for Ivy league and private schools with nary a legacy nor an interesting ethnicity to my name. Never mind that no one says, "Second time's the charm!"

At the end of the Pier during my visit auditioning in Chicago. It snowed 19 inches my first 12 hours there. It was wonderful.

So next year I'll attend the mass "college fair" style graduate school auditions, white flag in tow, CV thicker than a New York Times Bestseller, experience far beyond any recent undergrad, little investment in any of the programs there and some damn fine, well-polished monologues. Not to mention my charming personality (and hopefully by then I'll figure out a way to check my cynicism at the door).

In the mean time I'll continue to pick up 15 hours in an office, 35 in a restaurant, 25 in retail, rehearse 4 hours a night for a show, direct some amazingly talented and beautiful performers each weekend of the month and catch up with the contemporary play reading series for children. I'm fairly certain I've been talked into teaching this summer again too. I have a feeling all of that will keep my mind off how much more disappointed my mother is than I am that I didn't get into grad school AGAIN.

Do you guys remember 1982? When my mom and dad get approached by graduate programs before they even finished undergrad and offered a bunch of money to pursue their education instead of jumping straight into one of the very plentiful and very profitable professional sectors of their field? Remember that? An remember how right now, in 2015 is exactly like how it was then, with all sorts of well paying jobs and tons of educational opportunities? Remember how all that's totally true?

Yeah. Me either.

So tell your friends in academia. I'm sick of being overlooked. Imma 'bout to blow some minds next year. With my killer grammar skillz and spelling and connection to youth culture. All the programs be like, "Damn gurl, where you been all our two years with your broad spectrum of professional and educational experience and clear communication skillz?" An' I be like, "Ask Yale." Because as I was told while visiting to audition for them (not BY them, to be clear), "White girls don't get into Yale."

As promised: Me eating my most recent rejection letter. Sweet, sweet, delicious rejection. I just can't get enough of you.

Now. To be fair. If you look closely at that letter (I have blurred out the name of the school because I have a lot of respect for the program and don't want anyone to get the wrong idea that I'm bad-mouthing them or "mad" at them some how...) you'll not that I was a finalist for their program, which accepts 7 students out of the roughly 800 that audition. They were very kind. One of only two schools that I really still wanted to go to after I auditioned with them.

Also to be fair: I did get accepted into a program. Initially I was called back and had such a weird, backwards, uncomfortable experience sitting in on classes and talking with faculty and staff and while the performances I saw were lovely- I've been doing that level of performance, even producing that level since I graduated from my undergrad program. They were very kind to offer me a spot in their MFA program. They have no opportunity for financial aid. I wasn't into it. Thank goodness I know myself at least that well.

Snapped this while I was chillin' with the Ewoks on my visit to a school that actually liked me.

I love my life. I love the work that I get to do. The stuff that's directly connected to theater and the stuff that's not and the stuff that falls somewhere in between. I work in a restaurant with people I would never meet otherwise. I work at a yarn shop with people I would never get to meet otherwise AND I get to teach people a skill, or save the day on their project or help them welcome their first or seventh great-grandchild with cozy goodness. I get to direct a variety show that I'm fairly certain saves my life every time I see them. And every time I elbow my way into a circumstance, somehow, someway, people ask me to stay.

So watch out graduate programs. The elbows are out next time.