May 23, 2023
Echoes of “My So-Called Life”
I just finished rewatching My So-Called Life, which is currently available on Hulu, and also because I read this article recently even though it came out several years ago. And I don’t remember being anywhere near as big a fan of My So-Called life as I was of the X-Files, and yet I had apparently seen every single episode, and without consciously remembering a word of it, it turns out that I remembered almost every single word of it.
One of the fascinating parts of that experience has been realizing just how influential and pervasive the language of that show became in Millennial American culture as a whole. In some ways stylistically, but in others… I have heard almost word-for-word lines of dialogue from it in other shows, in the X-Files, in a play I worked on literally just last year…
I have a way, for instance, of adding “…or whatever” dismissively into sentences when I intend to be dismissive, and I don’t remember this being where I picked that up, but I think it has to be.
If my X-Files obsession has ruled a stunning proportion of my waking mental time for the past 30 years, it turns out that My So-Called Life was sleeping in my bones in a way I did not even realize.
Anyway. Here’s one of my favorite little echoes, from a line that Jordan Catalano speaks in the final episode in 1995:
“I have all of these dreams, where I know exactly what to say. And you tell me, you know, that you forgive me.”
And from the Counting Crows song “I Wish I Was A Girl,” off the album This Desert Life, released in 1999:
“In one of these dreams, you forgive me.”
May 20, 2023
North Meadow
May 16, 2023
Financial privilege and the pursuit of theater
I’ve been thinking a lot about this article about the current state of Williamstown Theatre Festival’s attempts to reform its model of production into something more sustainable and economically equitable for the young artists whose free labor used to make possible its lavish summertime productions, and in particular this comment from interim artistic director Jenny Gersten about the way things used to be:
“On one hand, I’m deeply nostalgic for the Williamstown Theatre Festival of yore. I think back on those sumptuous, large-scale productions and all the people who had meaningful first experiences and how that shaped them moving forward in their artistic and professional lives.”
Because I’m also left wondering how many young artists’ careers WTF ended before they really began. Either due to burnout and mistreatment and the implicit message that that’s just how things work and if you can’t deal with it, you won’t make it in this industry, or with the impression that acceptance to one of its prestigious but unpaid (or worse) apprenticeships was one of the only real ways to get a foothold in the industry as a young actor or artist.
There’s a narrative that’s arisen that says you only ever get to pursue a career in theater or the arts if you have a certain level of privilege in the first place.
And setting aside for a moment that this could be said, to some degree, of virtually any profession or career field and that the arts aren’t remotely unique in this respect: in trying to correctly acknowledge the impacts of privilege, I believe it risks inadvertently sending the message to aspiring young artists from less advantaged backgrounds that they’ll never succeed so don’t bother trying, and reinforcing already-prevalent beliefs that the performing arts are a frivolous pursuit and playground for the rich and spoiled, not a serious way to earn a living.
And particularly as we continue to advocate for living wages and labor rights of performing arts workers, I think that’s a viewpoint we should be extremely wary of inadvertently contributing to.
There are a lot of entryways to a career in the performing arts, and not all of them involve getting an MFA or an apprenticeship at Juilliard or the Public, or even necessarily going to college.
It reminds me in some ways of the way people say, dismissively, “It’s all about who you know,” about who gets to work in theater in NYC. It’s true in certain ways. It’s also often not true in the ways people think.
I came here knowing six people I went to college with in Georgia. But you start working and then you know people. You do a Showcase Code and then you know about twelve people. Do another one and you know twelve more. All of those people also know people. There, you know people. Is it easier if you graduate from a well-connected MFA program and come here already knowing agents, casting directors, or commercial producers? Probably! Is that actually the only way anyone ever makes it in theater here?
I promise you, it is not.
What’s true is that many of us find more work by word of mouth than by answering job listings, and this gets truer the longer our careers endure. We continue working by building connections and relationships over time and being recommended by people already familiar with us.
What’s not true is that the only real way to break into theater is to enter the field knowing a bunch of already-rich and famous people to give you jobs.
Some young professionals land prominent gigs early in their careers by already knowing someone established or influential or famous. It’s true. It happens. It feels frustrating and unfair to watch happen. It’s also not how most of us actually establish or maintain careers in the long term.
Likewise, does it help a lot if you had acting classes as a kid, or if your high school had a well-resourced theater program, or if you were able to go to college without debt?
Absolutely.
And is it almost certainly easier to devote yourself to making art if your parents are giving you $24,000 a year tax free? Or if you have a partner with a more stable and lucrative job? Sure, but it’s also wildly misleading to assert that having this kind of support is the only way anyone ever succeeds in this field.
The way some people talk about this you’d think that no one working in theater actually has to be concerned with earning a living, that anyone succeeding right now has had their way paved for them financially, and not only can I tell you that’s just absolutely untrue, I think it’s erasing and dismissive of people who are absolutely in this to be earning a living. It’s erasing of people from working class backgrounds who are in the arts (whose under-representation is a problem and has gotten worse), and of the seriousness and worthiness of their art and theater, even if it’s not as highly visible or commercially successful. It’s erasing of the work of people who indeed haven’t been able to afford to take unpaid internships, who have often been working multiple jobs while getting theater careers off the ground, and who have to be here to earn a living because our parents are not paying our rent.
And I say this as someone with a substantial degree of privilege. I was born to a family with enough money to live in a good school district, where we had acting classes and a Thespian troupe and exposure to music and theater outside of school. I went to college at very little cost to myself, in a town with a wonderful community theater where I could gain experience and confidence before I was trying to do it at the professional level, and graduated without student debt. It helped, a lot. I would not have been able to pursue many of the early career opportunities I did if I’d been trying to enter this industry saddled with debt.
But my path to a career in the arts isn’t the only possible one, either. And I think we can look financial privilege and its impact full in the face…I think we can address ways that entry to the performing arts as a career can and should be made more accessible to people without immense financial privilege…without perhaps inadvertently sending the message to young artists whose parents can’t give them $24,000 a year, who can’t take a “job” that will charge them for housing, who don’t have an MFA or a spouse with a white-collar job or a family that already has prominent industry contacts, that they might as well not bother. That success in the performing arts isn’t for them.
Chavisory's Notebook 