Artist Statement
As I am beginning to enter into the industry as a young creative, I have been going through a period of constant change, introspection, flow, and grace. After countless hours of actor training through Emerson College, The Stella Adler School of Acting, and time spent in studios and my bedroom, I feel joyful and excited about the next stage of my career. Actor training has helped me develop not only my technique and ability, but my individuality, compassion and strength within myself. After much work and reflection, I am proud to say that I love myself deeply and empathetically, a feat that wouldn’t be possible without the therapeutic effects of art and music. Through four years of joyfully consuming theatre in all its forms, I’ve been privileged to have read, seen, and performed in so many thrilling plays and musicals, helping me to develop my personal taste of art that I am most drawn to.
As an actor, I love to play with extremes and heightened situations. I am often drawn to characters who live within (or outside of!) these extremes, such as high society individuals, villains, and women on the verge. I adore dark comedies by the likes of Jen Silverman, satirical and self aware pieces by those like Terrance Mcnally, and comedies with a deeper message like Doug Wright. I love queer, female and gender-queer, and/or disabled productions, as I place immense value on the power of letting underrepresented voices be heard. My favorite characters, at their core, are women who speak for themselves, and are written by women or educated men. I love to experiment with highly flawed, and often spoiled characters that lack awareness of their ignorance, providing a beautiful nesting ground for hilarity. I find high status characters delicious, and love to mold my body into someone with power and influence, increasing tension in my jaw, lips, hips, spine, and fingers. I also love to play the quirky, eccentric, and empathetic best friend, as that type is the closest to who I am in life. I am disinterested in hyper-realism; I revel in playing characters that are big, bold, ferocious, and opinionated!
Since I was a child, my favorite thing to do has always been to play around with creating and embodying a character from scratch. There’s nothing I love more than discovering how my character walks, sits, and physicalizes. I love when I’m able to discover characters that have different voices and physical worlds than myself. Like a child playing make believe, I have the most fun when I get to vocalize and move differently than I do in real life. Because of that, I am obsessed with dialects and character voices, and am grateful for any opportunity where I am able to showcase that!
I am fascinated by the psychology of the characters that I play, and explore their brains with curiosity and empathy, through their childhoods, relationships, and self image. The most glorious feeling is diving into the mind of a character, imagining both heightened and mundane scenarios that explain why they are who they are. I believe that at their core, all characters (like all people) are in constant search of love, understanding, and respect, and react in accordance to the lack of such a necessity. I utilize the acting techniques of the great Michael Chekhov and Stella Adler, using my imagination to build worlds and create complex individuals. Like a painter or a sculptor, one of my favorite things to do is to close my eyes and vividly imagine the life and behavior of my characters. Reveling in an imaginary world and life is such a gift, and further demonstrates the nurture, escapism, and joyful play I feel when diving into characters.
Acting, and being able to create and inhabit different characters is the greatest gift. I am so grateful to have found my calling at a young age, and cannot wait to continue to create, collaborate, play, make mistakes, be inspired, and inspire!