Why bother?

Making art involves time, passion, and vulnerability. When I'm onstage, I commit fully to the role and the production I've created with my director and cast. It's an electric experience doing live theatre. You're out there in front of hundreds of different audience members every performance, and everyone is breathing the same air, communally experiencing every moment together. 

It's also terrifying. 

From role to role, I change and grow. And from role to role, I incite vastly different responses. Just yesterday, one friend commented that she thought my current role was her favorite character I've ever played. She loved my physicality and honesty in the part. Two nights prior, another friend told me he felt lukewarm about my performance. 

Reactions like these become another essential part of the process. Gracefully handling both the positive and the negative reactions is a skill I continue to cultivate, even when I hear the bad stuff.

It's a deeply personal medium. You invest your intellect, your body, and your emotions into the written words of the script in order to breathe real life into each character. On each night, I give all of my energy into my work; and I'd be lying if I said I didn't care what my friends, audiences, and critics think. Of course I care. I care whether or not I've communicated the story. 

But at the end of the day, what I care about most is whether or not doing this work gives my own life more meaning. If the answer is yes, then I'm doing everything right.