UC San Diego

I viscerally remember while reading The New Yorker article “The Dynamism of Janet McTeer,” as I sat in my cubicle in Chicago at a survival temp job turned actual fake career, sitting slack-jawed, elated, and sucker punched. McTeer talked of acting as jazz where artists re-invent every performance. I finally had words to describe the craving I longed for in my work; something I could point to and say ‘YES! See?? I want to do that!’ But with no idea how to bridge the gap from where I was to where I now dreamed to explore my craft. Admittedly, it is disorienting to look back on a MFA experience that is so vastly different from what I expected and still say… absolutely; I bridged that gap. Perhaps the incubation period is intensified when confined in isolation for most of your grad school career. Where your bed, kitchen, green screen, movement studio, shower, anger, digitalized classmates, heart aches, work, suffering students, tears, panic attacks, pee-inducing laughter, triumphs, failures, and you all manifest together like a hundred piece orchestra playing in a 425sq foot studio apartment. It is deafening. Yet, among all this is where I learned to breathe through my emotions as I speak; sustain in the power of living thought; really do what I’m doing for real, really; and forever challenge myself to embrace the free-fall of a soft belly. Held by my training, I enter back into the professional world saying ‘YES! See?? I now act jazz!”