“You are not your career. Your value as an artist has nothing to do with your employment or your peers’ vision of success. Stay disciplined and joyful in your art and make every obstacle an opportunity for creativity.”
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“My favorite quotes that have gotten me through a lot are “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity” and “What is meant for you will not pass you by”. Always do the work to be prepped and know if you don’t get that part or callback, you have something even greater coming down the pike.”
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“Theatre is a marginal industry during the best of these situations, and I suspect people will use this as an excuse not to return. We’ll need to be wildly imaginative to lure them back and I think the entire structure as it exists across the country now will be changed.”
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“If the desire to tell a story and have someone else listening in person is truly inside of you, then no matter what you do or where you go, it will always be there, and you should always find a way to make that magic happen.”
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“This is a time to be entrepreneurial. That’s something I discovered in myself six years ago that I had this real entrepreneurial side. I’ve produced two albums, three singles and am really enjoying that side of me. You have to create your own work and find ways of being creative.”
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“Like thousands of other actors who work predominately in the theatre, I have devoted the whole of my professional life to developing competence in a very specialized set of skills. To have the marketability of those skills (and as a result my ability to earn a living) disappear overnight is frightening. But I’m trying to keep my chin up, and mainly succeeding.”
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“I hope with the sort of wake up with the racial inequities of the world, theatre will be more conscious of what it means to be an equitable space for all people. It really goes beyond just saying a bunch of nice things but implementing things in how they run their theatre companies and who makes up theatre companies.”
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“My best advice right now is to be gentle with yourself. Do what you need to do to feel okay. You do not have to be working on your craft every day. It is ok to take a break for however long you need to recharge.”
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“Comparing ourselves to others is generally unhelpful and, I think, particularly unhelpful right now. Let’s all try to focus on being kind to ourselves first and then doing our best to help the world heal.”
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“Take this time to reflect on how we treat each other, and how we’ve been treating each other while we have time…and we have lots of time right now.”
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“For artists of colour:. . .Just because people talk about changes in the industry, you can’t change people’s mindset overnight. Those people aren’t going to vanish from the theatre industry… You need to go out there and be able to show them, “No, no, no. I’m that good. You should take a second look at me.” Use this time to get all that done.”
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“Spring will come again….this pause is an opportunity to really focus on what about this business really fuels you. What can you do to change it and make it a more just and equitable and comfortable space for all performers. Especially your colleagues and friends of colour.”
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“This is temporary. We will be back because the world needs us, and when the arts do come back, I don’t want to be doing anything else.”
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“My advice for recent grads is to recognize that this death has levelled the playing field. None of us know the way forward, and the most senior arts leader doesn’t have any better strategies for the future than a recent theatre grad (who may in fact have more objectivity on what could be possible).”
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“Representation matters, and as an autistic person Joe Wells’ comedy makes me feel seen.”
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“I was a huge watcher of livestreams when the whole thing started. They kept me company in a very lonely time. I’ve kind of started thinking of them as a separate art form, to be honest. They can’t replace live anything, but they are a platform for people to at least make some music! That being said, I do worry about giving it all away for free.”
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“I also think the other challenge that performers, particularly theatre performers and musicians are a little bit better equipped to deal with something like a shutdown because we go through long periods of time of “I don’t have a gig”. There are periods of non creative output in terms of jobs.”
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“We are artists. We are suffering as an industry, but we know what we are worth and what our purpose is in the global community, we’ll get through. Invest in yourself, be kind to yourself and be kind to others.”
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“I love creating new work as that is probably my greatest love. One of the things I have been continuing to work on is a new musical that I’ve written with Eric Holmes who’s one of the writers on ‘The Good Fight’. He was one of the writers on ‘Smash’. He’s a fantastic guy, very talented and he and I have been working on this new musical for a couple of years.”
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To the younger generation [including theatre graduates], don’t let your tools get dull, don’t let your dreams sink into the dust, don’t let the negativity weigh you down. You WILL get a chance. Time is a pendulum. It always swings both way
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