If you had told me at the beginning of 2020 that at some point in my grad school education, I would be singing onstage for the first time in 6 years, I would probably have called you crazy. There are so many other people who can sing and dance better than me because they’ve been doing this since the womb. This vicious cycle of thinking is actually what caused me to finally go to grad school four years after finishing undergrad. I was starting to feel like I was plateauing, and I felt strongly, perhaps mistakenly, that it was due to the lack of acting specific training I had gotten in undergrad. To be fair, when I arrived, it was clear that I was out of my depth. Being a pre-med student for most of my undergraduate career, I left with rudimentary knowledge of Uta Hagen, and little to no familiarity with Stanislavski or Meisner, and based on the talent I saw in the room with me, that was clearly what made a good actor. I stayed after some of the first classes I had with Richard Robichaux, our acting professor, to talk to him about how lost I felt because I didn’t have the same foundational acting knowledge everyone else had. I once again found myself feeling like I was playing catch up with my artistic peers and was terrified of retreating into myself. He recommended books that I found hard to read and assured me that I needn’t beat myself up because that is precisely why I was here, to learn.After my talk with Richard, I reminded myself that there was time that my biggest desire as a child was to be in the spotlight. I begged for singing, acting, and voice lessons periodically through childhood, but due to our financial struggles as recent U.S. immigrants, I was forced to figure out how get these things on my own without having to pay. In high school, being in the Color Guard in marching band covered dance and performance, advanced drama in high school covered acting, and in undergrad, I participated in plays and musicals across all four years, while also taking classical voice lessons through the College House Music program.
Graduate school was no different. I never stopped dreaming of being in a musical alongside some of my theatre idols, so the obvious step to possibly achieving that dream was to take full advantage of the singing lessons we had with Kyle Blair. However, without the cheerful persistence of Ursula Meyer and Linklater voicework, I certainly wouldn’t have been able to make my triumphant return to musicals in the most unexpected way. But first, Linklater.
When I took voice lessons for a brief time in undergrad, it was classical opera. My teacher was lovely and very skilled, but no matter what I did, I always felt like my full voice was locked away behind a door I did not have the key to. Things that felt like they should be in my range often didn’t sit well in my voice, and in an effort to shun my rich alto tone because I had deemed it too manly, I caused undue strain on my vocal cords. Indeed, when we first started classes with Ursula I found myself getting frustrated. We moved slowly, spending several classes on things that I deemed unimportant, but also getting frustrated when I couldn’t make sense of what we were learning or how it was supposed to help me. I didn’t come to school for this! I came to become a better actor and get more experience working on musicals!
As we got to the different voices and resonators; chest, sinuses, nasal, I felt sections of my voice unlock little by little. It terrified me because I never had access to these different parts of my voice, and it actually hurt at first to use it in such dynamics ways. But without learning how and when to use these different resonators, singing lessons would have taken three times as long to see any results. By the time my third-year residency at the La Jolla Playhouse came around, I felt ready to take on any challenges that came my way, and come they did.
As You Like It, the William Shakespeare comedy, was my residency at the La Jolla Playhouse. I was grateful to be in the actual cast because I was going to get to be onstage every night, but also because it was the biggest theatre I had worked at yet. Slowly but surely I found myself coming out of my shell as an artist and taking on more responsibilities and roles. One of the biggest, and scariest, shifts was being asked to sing a solo every night. Prior to arriving here, that would have been my wildest dream and my worst nightmare, but when asked I felt up to the task. Had I not learned how to access resonators of my voice through my Linklater voice work with Ursula or had weekly singing lesson with Kyle where I worked on range, quality of voice, and reinforced the different resonators I could use, I would not have felt confident enough to answer with a definitive Yes. Nor would I have been able to belt a rendition of Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own” complete with runs I made up on my own. In fact, I would not have been able to step into the many roles I ended playing when unforeseen circumstance after unforeseen circumstance took out many of the actors that I was understudying.
As You Like It helped me realize that the difference between me and the other actors I started with wasn’t lack of knowledge. I needed to come to grad school to gain comfort and confidence in me and my voice in all aspects; the deep richness of its alto tone, the range hidden in locked resonators, and the power in my fully unlocked voice. On the stage of the Potiker Theatre at the La Jolla Playhouse, I finally found the key to me, and I am never letting it out of my sight.