Never Walked In High Heels

When life gets really tough, I threaten to become a lawyer. As a kid I was groomed for law school and up until about age twenty, it seemed to be the most logical thing in the world for me to do. Being a lawyer was safe. Being a lawyer meant I could turn a profit. Being a lawyer means following a pre paved path. Being an actor equates with none of these.

“What makes you think you could get work in law? You get no guarantees kid,” my friend told me after a failed audition. At this point I had simply declared that I would quit, go home, and head straight for the LSAT exam. Why be an artist when you can be a lawyer?

And in a way, he was right. Who was I to presume that I would have anymore luck getting employed with a JD? But in a way he was equally wrong. There are some things in life which are guarantees. And though they seem pessimistic, knowing that these are truths and binding close to them can provide infinite strength.

If you are being effective, you will be opposed. Humans hate change about as much as we hate being told we’re wrong. If you have a vision for how the world ought to be and you are actively moving towards that goal, expect turbulence. Even if you’re right, people will do everything they can to stop you. They wouldn’t bother if you weren’t a threat.

People at any economic level can prove it be shallow and elitist. There are a good many folks who will claim to be morally superior because they have a humble income or ‘don’t get hung up on material things.’ The fact is they have just as many character flaws as anyone else. One of those flaws may even be pride.

At the point of a gun, everything changes. The second someone uses force on you, to jeopardize your rights, that same person has broken the social contract and therefore has given up his rights. These days it seems counter intuitive, but like physics, in life every action will have an equal and opposite reaction.

Guilt is an insidious tether. The Devil is often called ‘the great accuser.’ Guilt can paralyze us more than any other deficit. People will try everything possible to clamp the lead boot of guilt upon you. Don’t let them.

No matter who you are, your family is weird. Stop trying to have the ideal suburban family. It doesn’t exist. If your family is functional… you are blessed.

There are sheep in wolves clothing. Sometimes the people who are the fiercest bureaucrats only just have the tiniest amount of control. They turn everything into a power struggle and a fight. Don’t waste your energy worrying about them. Know that for people like this, there’s always a way to go over their heads.

You will never find a person out there who can give a good explanation why we need Daylight Savings Time. What?… Just try to find one.

About a week ago, I sat down for what I now call ‘a voluntary guilt fest.’ Fully knowing that I was doing so, I walked into a theatre and sat down to see a production about the environmental crisis.  The only difference between this production about climate change and the other six I’ve seen in the past twelve months (two of which in this exact same theatre) is that this production was without an intermission… an element which was sorely missed.

I’m not interested in debates about the environment right now. Do not for a moment think that  am saying that environmental concerns are not a problem. Improving conditions and reducing all sorts of footprints in this planet are as much of encouraging progress as establishing justice. That’s not the issue here. What’s more consternating is that in the face of a major global concern such as this one, artists and writers are merely rehashing stories from each other rather than coming up with original and particularly poignant ones.

In the 1980’s the adage was “sex sells.” Now sex, perhaps in a twist of victorian moral irony, has been replaced by fear. Fear sells theatre tickets and gets artistic grants.  How many plot lines do I have do sit through about concerned women who don’t want to have babies and raise children because the hole in the ozone is continuing to expand? Should I really find it shocking when la creme de la creme of society meets for a global summit on climate change and, as what is heralded as a ‘breathtaking plot twist’ we see big wigs and cronies in some back room making deals which serve to not to act their own self interest? Am I really supposed to be crestfallen when I see the environmental scientist, who is supposed to be the good guy, retract his scientific study because airline executives have offered him a bribe which can help pay for chemo therapy for his sick wife, who got cancer in the first place from aiding him with his research?

Are these repeated and redundant story lines the best creative artists can give us on an issue which looms above every single person on the planet?

Artists, particularly thespians I am told, are supposed to ‘hold a mirror up to nature.‘ Forgiving the horrible pun on the word ‘nature’, somehow we keep holding a mirror  to the same bits of nature over and over again until redundant stories strike a combination of fear and apathy into our hearts until audience members are paralyzed.  And while terrifying the life out of an audience of 750 people nightly is a feat that most artists would be proud of, a seemingly hopeless situation does little to encourage people to take action. Add to that the fact that plot lines are being repeated over and over and you get a hopeless situation and learned helplessness.

If artists want people to take action over a problem, they cannot rely on stories that have been retold a thousand times before. Playing to the critics by using the same points which were tried and true in the last production about the same topic is not a form of creativity but redundancy. Why not, rather than making the audience feel guilty and fearful, figure out a way to empower them into making a change? There comes a point that all thespians need to accept that folks must leave the theatre and go home. When audience members walk into their kitchen, toss their keys on the table, and take off their jackets, do we want them to then go hide under the bed, or figure out how to make the world a better place as a result of the performance they just saw?

Productions about the environmental crisis, in Britain at least, have turned into sacred tomes which cannot be criticized by anyone who wishes to remain fashionable. But art that cannot spark a debate or move people to action no longer shows us a hope in a world which might be. Thus we get lost in the despair of the world that is.

It’ll be a long while before I go back for a voluntary guilt fest. Unfortunately as long as people and grant committees are interested in giving their attention to shows which are meant to explore the environmental crisis, there will be unoriginal productions on the subject. If the resources are there to support certain productions, those resources will be exploited until a whistle blower says “this isn’t good enough, our standards need to change.”

Funny, isn’t it? Exploitation and status quo continues the same way in every field imaginable.

When our eighth grade teacher assigned us to create a family tree, mine was the size of four large poster boards taped together. We were to find the names, dates of birth and deaths going back three generations before ourselves. Mr. Bowman, our teacher said that if we knew our parents names, birthdays, etc and our grandparents should be able to do the same. The assignment sheet ended with the statement “just go as far back in your family tree as you can.”

Thanks to some very adventurous relatives, my drive to be class valedictorian, and a father who harbors some not so secret passions for family research, my family tree went  back sixteen generations and included soldiers enlisted in every war between the American Revolution and the Second World War. Mine, I have often been told, is a family tree peppered with people who sought out lives full of adventure and opportunities. Over and over these quests led them back to America and back to defend the country that was, for them, the land of opportunity.

Not long ago I was reminded of this as my plans for the future were mentioned, plans that didn’t include going back to the United States any time soon.

“How can you think of doing that? Don’t you realize how much your fore fathers gave up  just so you could have the advantages of being an American,” I often feel as though wanting to live somewhere else puts me on par with Benedict Arnold as people whom I normally consider to be very open minded suddenly start going on about how enlisting in the US army should be required for all citizens and how freedom is never free.

I know freedom isn’t free and opportunity doesn’t come cheaply. I am an actress with a disability and I have chosen to immigrate half way around the planet to have a shot at chasing my dreams.

Within the past year alone, I’ve worked with two different television networks,  contracted my play to premier in central London, and worked with a major casting director. And while all these opportunities are available in the United States, my disability is seen as an even bigger hindrance to my artistic career there than it is here. If I was born to be an artist, the land of opportunity is where I can achieve the dreams and ambitions I have set for myself to achieve.

Because my ancestors crossed the ocean in the 1600′s, one can hardly argue that they “came to America, the land of opportunity.” The country that we now call the United States didn’t exist when they boarded a ship headed for a place which, at that time, only existed in rumors and letters. The act of immigrating to America, rebelling against the king of England, and defending the territory against the red coats, was not so much an act of sacrifice as it was an act of risk. Nobody, even as recently as one hundred years ago, knew what America would become. No one in my family came to America because it had been branded “the land of dreams.” People who came much later, no doubt came as a result of such titles. My ancestors came because risking everything to get to a place which might lead them to a life closer to the one they dreamed of outweighed the risk of not doing so.

Am I rebelling against my forefathers if I decide to pick up and live my life in the land of Mad King George and the rest? Hardly. They picked up their families and moved to follow what their dreams dared them to do. No doubt the family members they left behind mentioned sacrifices their ancestors made in attempts to keep order and stability in the family. But dreams hardly ever take much notice of man made constructs, even ones as seemingly grand as nationalities and traditions.

After all, if my ancestors were willing to pack up and leave everything they knew to even attempt to have a life they dreamed of, am I actually rebelling if I am willing to do likewise?