On Giving Up: Go and Come Back

This Conversation #5 in my series of theater talks with people who have stopped doing theater, and a few of these conversations are long.

I mean—really long.

As you can imagine, people feel pretty passionately about the arts and what might make someone walk away from the industry entirely.

So for some of these interviews, I’ve chosen to zero in on a particular issue, and this past week, I got to talk to a friend about something that’s come up pretty frequently—

Why it seems easier to be successful outside of your hometown, especially when that hometown is in Rhode Island.

Here’s the interview:

ME:  So I wanted to talk to you because you’re someone I actually use as an example when I talk about one of my frustrations with Rhode Island.

THEM:  Uh oh.

ME:  (Laughs.)  Well, you know where I’m going with this.  Do you want to just--?

THEM:  Yeah, sure, so I was born in Rhode Island, and I did theater here for awhile, and, uh, that went—okay.  It was all right.  And then I left and I went—somewhere else.

ME:  Yes, please be vague.

THEM:  I’m being very mysterious.

ME:  I love it.  Keep it up.

THEM:  I’m worried I’m going to say it.

ME:  I’ll just [Name of City] if you do.

THEM:  So I went somewhere else, and uh, I should mention that the place where I went is a place that’s very, uh, respected, in terms of the arts—

ME:  Right.

THEM:  --And when I came back, people here, uh, people, uh—

ME:  In power?  Or in positions of artistic power or--?

THEM:  Yeah, yeah, uh, they seemed—to, uh, welcome me back with open arms.  In a way that was, uh—interesting.

ME:  And had you worked in this other place you moved to?

THEM:  No, I had done no work there.  I, uh, had taken some classes.  That was about it.

ME:  So when you came back to Rhode Island, did you feel like you came back this, like, big improved actor?

THEM:  No, if anything, I came back feeling like I was worse, because I had just left this place where nothing had happened for me, and, uh, I really felt like a failure.

ME:  And then talk about that first audition you had when you came back.

THEM:  I came back and I auditioned for this company, in Rhode Island, that I’m sure, uh, everyone knows, and—

ME:  Oh, they definitely know it.

THEM:  Yup, so—(Laughs.)

ME:  I won’t say what it is.

THEM:  I mean, I guess—anyway.  I went and I auditioned for them when I first got back, and—

ME:  --And had you ever been cast there.

THEM:  No.  In fact, I never even got a callback or anything.

ME:  Right.  Just want to make that clear.

THEM:  Yeah, so, I get back, I go to this audition, and I’m really just doing it because—Why not?  What else am I going to do?

ME:  Right.

THEM:  And, uh, the—Artistic Director—asks me what I’ve been up to.  And I had put on my resume that I had taken classes with this teacher in [Name of City], and, uh, I forget how—but it was definitely on my resume that I had been in [Name of City], and I saw him look at my resume, and see that, and then ask ‘So what have you been up to there?’

ME:  Okay.

THEM:  And so I tell him, ‘I’ve been living in [Name of City].’  And I’m thinking, Oh no, he’s going to ask me if I’ve been acting or doing anything there, and I’m going to have to say, No.  Nothing’s going on.  I failed.  It’s embarrassing.  But he didn’t.  He didn’t ask about any of that, but, uh, at the time, I thought maybe it was because there wasn’t anything on my resume aside from that class.  But, uh, he got really excited.  Really excited.  He just kept telling me over and over again how awesome it was that I had…gone to this place.

ME:  So he was just excited that you had physically been in that city?

THEM:  I guess so, and, uh—I got a callback.

ME:  Wow.

THEM:  Yeah.

ME:  And had you done this amazing audition—

THEM:  Oh, it was not a good audition.

ME:  Really?

THEM:  I just—it was a new piece I was working on, and, uh, I’m sure I’ve done better auditions—

ME:  For that company?

THEM:  Yeah, in fact, one of the reasons I moved to the other city was because I had done this incredible audition and there was a role a show they were doing that was perfect for me, and they didn’t even call me back, and that was part of me being like ‘Well, forget it.  I’m out of here.’

ME:  So this time around you didn’t think you did as well?

THEM:  I know I didn’t, and also, um, the role they called me back for was not a good role for me.  I mean, I wasn’t right for it at all, and, uh, it just felt like they were going above and beyond to get me in a show there.

ME:  Did you end up getting the role?

THEM: (Laughs.)  Uh…

ME:  You don’t have to say.

THEM:  Isn’t it funny how nervous people get about stuff like this?

ME:  About pissing off a theater?

THEM:  Yeah.

ME:  Or maybe I’m not scared enough.

THEM:  Yeah.  Yeah.  Uh.  I mean, they’ll know, uh—Okay, so I got the role and I turned it down.

ME:  Why did you do that?

THEM:  Because, uh—I was not in a good, uh, place when I came back, and I really wasn’t expecting to get cast in a show, especially there, and it would have been a lot of work, and I just—I just wasn’t prepared for that.

ME:  And did it hit you right away how weird it was that you had had this drastically different experience than what you had before you left?

THEM:  Kinda, but, you know, you don’t want to believe there are, uh, external factors in you, uh, doing better.  You want to just believe that, uh, your time has come—you know?

ME:  Right.

THEM:  But my friends kind of set me straight on that.

ME:  Me being one of them.

THEM:  You being one of them, yeah.

ME:  I just find that whole story so—ridiculous.

THEM:  It is really ridiculous, and, uh, you know, you just can’t attribute it to anything else, right?  People in Rhode Island—and, uh, I’m sure in other places too—but here, uh, they see that you left and all of a sudden they have this huge respect for you.  You left and came back.  It’s like you’re playing hard to get with them—

ME:  With the people in power.

THEM:  Yeah.  It’s like if you stay your whole life then they just have no respect for you at all.  You have to leave and come back to get the respect.

ME:  It’s very Russian village.

THEM:  Yeah, it’s so that.  Trying to keep people down while they’re—and this is just my take on it, but—how I felt before I left was that there was a concerted effort to prevent me from doing well to a certain degree and then when I left, that was enough for people to say—Okay, well, that didn’t work, so if you can’t beat them, join them, put them in a play.  It was very strange.

ME:  You really felt like people were consciously trying to stop you—

THEM:  Not stop me, but, uh, okay so you know how everybody loves to go all crazy over, uh, Viola Davis and some other people who are from here and do well?

ME:  Yeah.

THEM:  Which is great, but, uh, what are we doing to create the next Viola Davis?  Do you know what I mean?

ME:  Say it again.

THEM: (Laughs.)  There is—I mean, you talk all the time about local talent.

ME:  Until I’m blue in the face.

THEM:  What is with this obsession with—really, it’s self-hatred.

ME:  It’s a big problem.

THEM:  People going out of their way not to use local actors, not to produce work by local playwrights—

ME:  My favorite—Okay, so, this guy moved here from—In this case, I’ll just say it—Los Angeles.  He moved here from Los Angeles.  This was when I was in, right out of college maybe, and this local group produced his work and kept calling him a local playwright, and I was like—

THEM:  He’s been local for five minutes.

ME:  Exactly.

THEM:  It is—It’ll drive you crazy.

ME:  I think it has.

THEM:  I bet.

ME:  And it’s really weird when you’re a writer, because, I feel like, at this point, I’ve had a lot of cool stuff happen to me outside of Rhode Island—

THEM:  Yeah.

ME:  And I still feel kind of stuck here, like, people aren’t, uh, like what you were talking about—

THEM:  They’re keeping you down.

ME:  That sounds really dramatic.

THEM:  But is that how you feel?

ME:  Okay, so, the best way to get my point across is—When the Franco thing went down, like, I didn’t get anybody reaching out from any—and I talked about this in regards to being an actor when I did Buyer & Cellar—

THEM:  I read that, yeah.

ME:  But this was just me as a—an entity—a writer, all that stuff.  And I have this show making all these waves, but, like, good waves—

THEM:  A lawsuit—

ME:  But let’s not act like theaters care about good publicity versus bad publicity.

THEM:  Yeah, and you were on the right side of it.  Like you could have been a cause célèbre or something.

ME:  And the New York Times is calling and Buzzfeed is calling and Rolling Stone.  And do I get a #$%-ing phone call from any of the theaters in my home state being like ‘Wow, this is wild.  Let us know if you need anything.’

THEM:  Nope.

ME:  Nope.

THEM:  But theaters outside of—

ME:  Oh yeah.  The phone never stopped.

THEM:  That’s crazy.

ME:  And I knew, in my heart of hearts, that if I was—someone else—that would have been different.

THEM:  Like if you were a different person within the Rhode Island community?

ME:  Yes.

THEM:  They would have tripped all over you to get involved with that?

ME:  Oh god, yes.

THEM:  So what do you think they have against you?

ME:  I am…I am someone who has made it a point to have the success I want to have where I was born and grew up and not make it about—Oh, I’m going to, you know—

THEM:  Do what I did.

ME:  (Laughs.)  Yeah, like, move and come back.  Or go get a grad degree.  Or all these things that are, sort of, accepted forms of getting to success.  I’m doing it the way I want to, and uh, I think people don’t necessarily want to encourage that.

THEM:  Are you going to do an interview on grad degrees in theater?

ME:  Oh, that would be a barnstormer.

THEM:  Wouldn’t it though?

ME:  Should I?

THEM:  To be continued.

ME:  Well, not with you, but somebody else—

THEM:  Ouch.

ME:  Gotta keep ‘em moving.

THEM:  (Laughs.)  Okay.

ME:  So very quickly—why did you walk away and do you miss it?

THEM:  I—Well, we talked a little—all this stuff, that factored into it.

ME:  Right.

THEM:  I, uh, felt like it was not about doing good work anymore.  It was about—the competition part of it.  Getting roles and bragging about roles and, uh, booking gigs and all that.  I just wasn’t interested in that.  Never was.

ME:  Do you miss the work part of it?

THEM:  Yes.

ME:  Do you ever consider coming back to it?

THEM:  Well if I did I’d probably get all the roles.

ME:  Because you left.

THEM:  Because I left, yeah.

ME:  You’d be the hottest thing in town.

THEM:  Is that why you want to leave?

ME:  Yeah, I figure if I leave and stay gone for awhile when I come back they’ll give me whatever I want.

THEM:  It’s not a bad plan.

ME:  I wonder how long I’d have to stay away.

THEM:  The question is—Once you’re away, would you want to come back?

ME:  That’s a really good question.

Them was acting in Rhode Island, then left, didn’t do anything, came back, and was showered with opportunity.  They miss the work.