Julie is a junior in high school who is very committed to theater. Julie, like many of her friends, is self-conscious about her appearance. She has noticed that one friend in particular is struggling with an eating disorder, which concerns Julie. When Julie served as a counselor at an all-girls summer camp, she was struck by how comfortable all of the campers looked in the photos. It sort of “hit” her that she had not seen pictures of herself or her friends looking un-self-conscious in a long time, and she says she is sick of feeling insecure and watching her friends struggle with the same issues. Her experience at the camp helped her to realize that she wants to use theater to help young women be successful and to feel empowered.
Drama Drama (*Sensitive)
Beth is the director of a repertory theater and teaches at a school of drama. While Beth feels that collaborations in theater are most often wonderfully exciting and generative, she has experienced some that are chronically bad and some that have reached a critical point at which she has asked an actor to leave the play. She remembers casting an actress who turned out to be a non-functioning alcoholic, and she realized soon after rehearsals started that the actress had to be fired. However, she said that she felt “a terrible sense of responsibility to this woman,” and she wondered if she might be precipitating a crisis in the actress’s life by letting her go. Beth nonetheless maintains that there “was no question that this was the right course of action.”
The Right To Say No (*Sensitive)
Sophia is eighteen years old and about to graduate from a high school for the performing arts. Sophia has always loved performing, but theater became a deep passion for her during her high school career. However, a couple years ago, she encountered a difficult situation related to her chosen line of work. Because her parents do not subsidize her acting, Sophia wanted a paying acting job. After mailing out her headshots and resumes, she eventually landed a role in an independent film that she did not know much about. As part of her role in the film, Sophia was asked to do something sexual that made her very uncomfortable, and that she felt was wrong; however, she did not know what the consequences of saying “no” would be. For two years after this experience, Sophia stopped looking for any acting work outside of school.
Typecast?
Chris is a thirty-two-year-old Black actor whose specialty is Shakespeare. Chris attended a conservatory, and during his last year there, he was cast in the role of Dull in a production of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost because, the head of the school told him, “he had no vision of an African American [playing] any role in the play but a character named Dull.” (The character of Dull is a “bumbling police officer,” who, in this particular production, was to be dressed in a fat suit.) Though the head of the school’s behavior was unacceptable, Chris worried about confronting him, not knowing who he could report him to and that doing so would just end up with him blacklisted from future work on the stage. Even though performing the role of “Dull” was an incredibly painful experience for him, Chris stuck with the role, hoping it would be worthwhile for his career. He made a few important connections as a result of the production, which eventually led to his being able to work with a prominent Shakespearean actor at the Globe Theatre in London.
A Stereotypical Problem
Meg is a twenty-five-year-old Asian-American actress, who chose acting in part because she felt that Asian- Americans were underrepresented, and stereotyped, in theater. Several years ago, Meg landed a leading role in a play, and took the role despite the fact that it depended on a superficial stereotype of Asian women. She agreed to do the play in part because she knew that the director was well-known and well-connected in the theater world. She felt that if she gained influence through working with this director, she would then be in a better position to undermine racial stereotypes. Meg felt condemned by the Asian-American community for her decision to take the role, but she viewed it as a compromise that would allow her to take a more principled stand in the future.
Finding the Thread
Sheila is a twenty-seven-year-old working actress. Sheila has been involved with the theater since she was eight, and she says she would never consider leaving the profession. Acting has helped her work through depression and through some other major challenges. She even had what she described as a “spiritual experience” during a summer spent with the Willamstown Theater Festival. Sheila explains that she had had recurring dreams throughout her whole life “with these very particular sort of mountains in them.” As she performed the lead in Princess Turandot that summer in Williamstown, she looked out over the Berkshire Mountains and realized that they were the mountains she had been seeing in her dreams. Sheila explained that it felt like she “had lost the thread and found it again.”