The Return, On Our Terms

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about pandemonium - but not only in the obvious ways you'd imagine. This ordeal has brought to light several ugly truths surrounding our world; for this post, I'll focus on the ugly truths within theatre.

We all know the buzz phrases: gender-bending, type-casting, color blindness, and so on. We were taught that this is the way it works. This is the industry. These are the standards. We must fit into the boxes they give us and not step outside the lines.

There are a million stories we've all heard before. This one is mine. Let me back up.

A naive Midwestern girl attended a conservatory college in New York City back in 2013. She showed up around 250 pounds, mousy blonde hair past her shoulders, and totally freaked out by the Big Apple. This... was not where she imagined she belonged. Shortly after arriving, school began. While being openly mocked and laughed at by the professor and students in her very first musical theatre workshop (for not knowing what tactics were), she began to wonder - like everyone else - "What the hell am I doing here?" High school didn't teach much about these tactics, and if they did ever touch on it, she wasn't listening... because - actions, objectives? None of this made sense, talking so obscurely about acting. She thought acting was just bringing to life all of the text she learned, and becoming the character - she didn't know there were technical terms, here. And it seemed nobody wanted to teach her about them this late in the game... how embarassing.

Retreating back to her dorm room, she utilized every resource she could think of over the next 24 hours to start studying tactics. It was either A) flop on my face, again, and retain a humiliated reputation for the rest of my time at my dream school... or B) try to survive and act my ass off. I chose to attempt the latter, and it went well.

However, the issue then became that my voice did not match my type.

"You have an ingenue voice, which is great for young leading ladies, or even older leading ladies, and a lot of the classical works and traditional musical theatre... but your body type is more suitable for the comedic relief, the aunt or the mother, or maybe the best friend. Do you know how to belt?" (Spoiler: I did not.)

I recall my first semester check-in. We were asked to write down five dream roles, and then called into the hallway to be subsequently judged and guided into the right kind of roles that we were more castable as.

"'Roxie Hart', 'Elle Woods', hmm. What's the smallest size you've ever been? An 8? Okay. Well, these characters are most likely to get cast with someone who is a size 0. Maybe a 2, at the most, a 4. Do you think you could ever get to that size?"

"She sounds great on this song, but she'll never get cast as this role."

"You know, diets primarily in vegetables and whole foods are naturally slimming, and... oh - you're already vegan? Oh, oh. Well, let's try to think of some more realistic roles, in the mean time."

"If all that's between you and the role you want is the number on a scale, then... you know what you have to do. It's easy."

So, I learned how to belt - arguably, I may have moreso learned how to shout-sing up to a B in my chest voice - and attempted to match the character types I would be best suited for.

Naturally, after some time running to class through the streets of New York and dancing for six hours a day, the weight began to fall off of my full-figured body, slimming me down into a curvy straight-size. (Straight-size meaning you can find your clothing size in most stores without having to deliberately search for stores with larger sizes.)

What was really happening was I was changing types before my professor's eyes. "You can play either type, now, if you want. The leading lady, or the belter comic. You just have to decide." Unfortunately for my career, this body type was unsustainable for me once I left the hustle of NYC, and I gained the weight back.

Because of my learned insecurity surrounding my body (not matching my natural voice type as a youthful-sounding soprano who would, of course, be slimmer than what I am)... I turned to backstage work, and shut the door on my acting auditions. That off-stage resume you see on my resume page? Yeah, that stemmed from hella insecurity and fear that I wasn't good enough for the stage... even with a conservatory training under my belt from a school shouldering Broadway theatres.

And my little story is mild, compared to many others. I'm able to understand the privilege I have being a white blonde woman in theatre (even if I'm a mousy blonde, and even if I'm fat). There will always be roles for me, even if they're not the roles my voice was designed for. But it's still problematic. And if a white woman in theatre is finding the struggle, imagine how the POC actors are doing with these impossible colonized-as-hell standards. Imagine how differently-abled actors are handling pursuing their dreams in a field that's completely prejudiced. Some theatres barely have handicap-accessible entrances, let alone handicap-accessible stage entrances.

Yes, the system is B R O K E N. We've known it forever, and we've complained about it for years.

And now, with the pandemic closing down the industry and leaving us with our mixed feelings on the Stockholm syndrome it's left us with: how are we feeling?

Are we eager and ready to bounce back into the broken system of casting calls?

It's time we renegotiate more than just expired contracts.

In a time when America has been exposed as racist, bigoted, fatphobic, culturally insensitive, and overall offensive... what can we do? It's trickled down from general colonization to interactions in every single workplace, including theatres. We're going to have to pick up all of the pieces we've suddenly noticed all over the floor.

We've been walking on broken glass for too long. We've accepted it as normal, and we've actualized our self-worth as what others define it - or don't define it. And we can't keep cranking the wheel that's been broken this whole time... it's too heavy, my friends, and it's not getting us anywhere.

Let's show audiences that real humans walk this earth as well as the stage. I'm ready to demand for better, for myself and my colleagues of every race, gender, size, and ability. Are you?