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.”

Sheila is a twenty-seven-year-old working actress who has been involved with the theater since she was eight. After she saw a performance of Annie at the Summerstock Starlight Theater near her home in Kansas, she wanted to take voice lessons. Her mother was concerned about her interest in theater, so Sheila received piano lessons instead. She loved everything about theater: the music, the drama, and the storytelling. During adolescence, when she (like so many teenagers) felt awkward, theater provided an element of escape. In the theater, she found a community where she felt she belonged.

Sheila wants to “give something back” to the art form that has given her so much. She hopes to contribute something new and cutting edge, and she is attracted to things that are interdisciplinary or abstract. With training in modern dance and singing, she believes she has something unique to offer. Interested in many different styles of performance, Sheila auditions for whatever comes her way. She tries to choose work that has a good script or good music. She looks for strong female characters who express heroic themes.

Sheila believes in working hard and says she can’t do things “halfway.” She believes firmly in telling the truth. As she was growing up, her parents encouraged her to be truthful and promised that as long as she told the truth, they would try to be understanding. Her acting teachers also emphasized the importance of truthfulness and pushed Sheila and others to discover and get rid of habits that “block flow.” Sheila believes that theater is all about “finding the truth.” If she is doing a scene and feels it lacks truth, she feels physically sick.

Sheila also believes in seeing the best in people. She realizes this may impede her ability to play darker roles, or to understand the less attractive sides of human nature. For example, she finds it difficult to give a good performance when she doesn’t like her character.

Sheila jokes that she will know that she has “made it” when she pays back all of her student loans. On a more serious note, she will be satisfied to become part of a company of actors. She has already received an offer to join a reparatory company, but there are other things that she would like to accomplish before making a full-time commitment. She would like to continue to work on challenging, innovative projects. Broadway plays and television opportunities offer a nice paycheck but they are not always artistically satisfying. For her, “it is all about doing good work.”

Although she talks about raising a family someday, Sheila hopes to achieve a certain level of success first. At the moment she wants to be free to travel. She is very concerned about finances. In order to “chip away” at her student loans, she is considering working in film or on television. She would never consider leaving the profession, and says she would be miserable doing anything else, because “being an actress is who I am.” Acting has helped her work through depression and through some other major challenges. She can imagine that, if she has children, she might take some time off, but this would only be temporary. Because her identity is so intricately connected to acting, Sheila doesn’t believe she could be a good mother if she left acting altogether.

On a whim, Sheila auditioned for the Williamstown Theater Festival. She was accepted into their company for a summer and it proved to be a transformative experience. She describes feeling the pure enjoyment of her work:

“That summer changed my life. It absolutely reinstilled my belief in theater, my belief in a group of young, talented, ambitious, bright artists working together and supporting one another, that that was possible. That ensemble theater was possible at the level we were at, and it was—

I actually had kind of a real spiritual experience while I was there. I had had these recurring dreams my whole life, of these kind of—not like flying dreams… with these very particular sort of mountains in them and colors. And I had never been to the Berkshires in my life, and I hadn’t really known about them, but we were performing a production of Princess Turandot that summer at Williamstown, which I was playing Princess Turandot. I had the lead and it was gorgeous, it was outside, and we were in this field, it’s called Buxton Field, in Williamstown, and it overlooked the Berkshire Mountains.

And I looked out over them and I realized that this was where—this is what I had been seeing in my dreams. And it was very—and I cried—this is literally what happened, and I knew that it was—I was on the path, like I had lost the thread and I found it again, you know?”

This experience helped to solidify Sheila’s commitment to theater. Although she may have many challenges ahead of her—some financial, some personal—she clearly finds meaning in her work.

Sheila describes a lot of financial pressure. Is finding meaning in her work a “luxury” that she might not be able to afford? Why or why not? Is it important to you to find meaning in your work?