i also juggle

In my last post I spoke about the value if the artist, so now go and read Mike Daisy and the correlating article.

Is it such a strange thing to believe that artists be paid for their job? It speaks to the entire question of the necessity of art. Try as people might to debate that question, it is fairly irrelevant, being that art does exist and has since the beginning of man, hence confirming that there is some innate need for it. Why we need it, is what makes it so damn interesting.

Conversely, there is also an artist's need to do it. Doing great art is like doing crack. An addictive, supreme high. So you go searching for more.

I remember an audition I had a couple years ago. When I first got back to acting after my hiatus at home with smallers. To get to the audition I had to park on a dimly lit street and walk down a dark alleyway that was littered with trash and debris. When I got to the back door of the audition space there was no light to help me find the steps up to the door. I moved slowly in the dark and carefully felt for each step before committing to moving upward. Once I got to the door and opened it I found a dimly lit warehouse space. Dirty and stuffy. We were supposed to do a lot of movement, and I could actually see the dust in the air. When I looked around the room, I knew many of the actors. We had all made the trek to this place. The play and the company were something we all were interested in. But in that moment all I could think was. 'WHAT THE HELL!". I am better than this. Not more important, not self important. Just important. I have worth. I am worth good working conditions and good health, and safe working environments.

I thought about my smallers at home, and how I could be there with them. I thought of a staged reading I turned down for the night because of this audition -a fun read in a nice theatre space. I thought of my car and the fact that several had been broken into in this area recently. I thought of rehearsing this show in this space in the heat of summer with no air conditioning and what it would do to my lungs to inhale so much of this mottled air. Still I auditioned, because its so hard to turn away from a chance, even one such as that.

What does it say of our value when we do this to ourselves. Yes, I have passion for my art. Why the hell else would I follow that sad bunny trail above. We can talk about the value of paying the artist well, and that does matter. It is huge. But I also think that many artists come from a place of devaluing themselves. It makes sense. We work in a field of constant rejection. For every victory there are ten misses. We are used to not getting what we want. Is that why we accept those conditions? Let me also say that the company that ran that audition are great people. I like them, and I like their work. They are struggling to pay the bills too, and even in the face of that put up lovely productions.

Fast forward.

I was eating dinner with the Assistant Director of my current understudy gig in the midst of those rehearsals, and he complimented me on my work; to which I quickly demurred. I think I may have even rolled my eyes. I started to say 'Its not real acting, I am just a placeholder, etc' (I am not fond of understudying). He stopped me and said '95% of the world cannot do what you do, even less can handle classical text the way you do, don't diminish that'. He was right. It should not be reduced, and I do it all the time.

The last thing Daisy was doing in his article was being reductive. If anything he is fighting against all of us that accept this status quo. We should not be apologizing for our need to do art, we should not mitigate its effect, or its purpose.

I feel like he is asking us to grow a pair.

Well done.