Theatre Degrees And Menty-B's
The crushing force of a theatre degree you're not using.
[Thank you for reading David’s Folly, a place where I expand my coverage of the art and entertainment industry beyond my regular work in video games into movies, TV, books, theatre, music, and the occasional reflection on creative work and relevant self-reflection. This post is free, so please feel free to share it with a friend, and if you like you can help support my work further by subscribing to my paid tier.]
Full disclosure, this is not what I thought I’d be writing next. I also didn’t plan for my schedule to get so thrown off course, but life happens when you’re busy making other plans.
Which, admittedly is fitting for what this blog is (partially) about. The rest of it is about failure, so your welcome for what is sure to be a very positive read (sarcastic).
Theatre Degrees And Menty-B’s
Theatre Degrees
If you read my “About” page or my “Welcome” blog, then you’ll know I studied theatre when I was in my undergrad at UofT. I graduated with a specialist in theatre & performance and a minor in English. That wasn’t what I thought I’d graduate with when I began my undergraduate career but it’s what happened, and I couldn’t be happier about that outcome.
University was a great time for me. I took the potential of being at a new school for the last time in my life seriously, which meant making new friends and trying to shed my high school awkwardness. Being in musicals and plays in high school helped a lot, and I loved theatre, so I decided I would do more of it, maybe even study it - in fact, in my heart of hearts I’d already decided I wanted to study it. I would however continue to tell myself for most of the Fall semester that I’d do a double-major between history and English.
I would resign my theatrical adventures to what I did for fun, a passion I pursued for my own pleasure, not out of any career desire, even though I desparately wanted to be an actor. I still sort of do, if I’m being honest. Our most passionate desires for how we’d spend our lives don’t ever leave us, I think. That’s why you always have those characters in movies and TV who talk about what they dreamed of doing when they grew up, before having to compromise or forget their dreams because of life’s responsibilities. It’s relatable to hear that character say “Well, the truth is, when I was your age I wanted to be…” because so many of us abandon our dreams, or at least feel like we do. I’d argue the latter is what makes them harder to let go, because if it’s just a feeling then we can create a whole reality around that feeling. If it’s just what is, then life forces us to move on.
That would not be my lot, I decided. What are these years for, if not to do what I want? To find myself before jumping off into the rest of the world? Nothing was stopping me from applying to the drama program, so I did. I got in, and while I could’ve graduated with a drama specialist alone, my Dad made me promise to continue studying English, a more than reasonable request in response to my carpe diem approach to university.
More than “give it a shot,” I’d make it happen. I would perform as much confidence as I could muster through every conversation about what I was studying as a means to steamroll every “Oh do you want to be a teacher?,” “What’ll you do with that once you graduate?,” and “What made you choose that?” retorts. Not to mention the reminders that “It’ll be tough, ya know,” as if I and every other actor out there isn’t aware of the difficulties that come with the industry we’re in.
I knew it wasn’t impossible, and I knew I could do it so long as my heart was in it. I believe I have some kind of talent for it, a mix of a natural disposition towards it and a lot of training and practice. I could keep getting better, and really, really make it work. I never wanted to be famous, I just wanted to be an actor and be able to support my family. Or even then I would say that I’d wanted to “create art and making a living, preferably through acting.”
Surely this is what everyone who tries to make their career their creative passion tells themselves. Acting can also have this extra seductive layer to it, where you’ll rehearse passages of a play, film, or song that is directly tied to making your dreams come true. To embody a character like that, and give a vulnerable performance (the only kind of performance that’s convincing) you need to be able to call on your own experiences. You’re still acting - I’m not suggesting you get all Daniel Day Lewis about it - but if you know the feeling a character is going through, you should show you know it. I think doing that adds extra weight to your dreams. Like you’re already playing the role of dreamer, you just need to keep doing the work. Follow the example of the fictional character who gets their lucky break, because they were in the right place at the right time, and if I can work hard enough maybe I can be in the right place at the right time.
If only you could have a conversation with the writer of your story though, and tell them that you’d like that ‘right place-right time’ moment to happen as soon as possible.
Back to theatre school, I was finally feeling free to enjoy school wholeheartedly. Like I had nothing that I could complain about with what was asked of me, what I was learning about. And I was doing well - thriving, not just surviving - in all parts of my life. Enjoying school, getting good grades (grades that didn’t make me stress out, at least) and finding a core group of friends. Outside of some campus theatre endeavours that probably brought me more headache than help in some ways, I can’t lie that university was a good time.
I met the woman who’d become my wife, and I was starting to come into my own as an actor, and as an artist. I graduated, and while my now-wife-then-girlfriend was finishing her MFA in New York City, and I began working full-time at the shoe store I had previously been part-time at. I needed something to do that brought in money, saving up for a ring and just all-around life things I knew would come with the next few years. I spent the next year trying to figure out the next steps in my acting career, working on various writing projects, and selling a lot of shoes.
What I did most of though was sell shoes, and struggle with the rest. Working at a retail store also wound-up being a bit of a degrading and at times toxic place to work (shocking, I know). I traded selling shoes for selling video games, and worked at an EB Games prior to them all being re-named GameStop for a little more than half a year. And still, I struggled to do a lot of theatre or put anything down on paper. By this point my now-wife-then-girlfriend was also back from her MFA, and even though we weren’t living together we were in the same city, and that was such a joyous thing after being apart for the better part of two years.
Then March 2020 happened, and the world shut down. Now, it would be easy, really easy, to rewrite history here and just say that my theatre career didn’t kick off as planned because of COVID-19. It was unexpected, like a Monty Python sketch, but it cannot take the whole wrap for how my professional artistic career has gone thus-far.
Menty-B’s
I was the reason - I mean, of course I was - but the blame belongs at my own feet.
Every day I went through where I didn’t work on writing a play, or do anything to get myself work as an actor, was a day where I failed. I would justify my failure and reason it to myself saying that “I had time” and that working at my retail job was enough for now, because I at least had some money coming in.
But then I couldn’t work at the shoe store anymore. And then before long I couldn’t work at EB Games anymore. Not because I was fired, but because my soul felt like it was being drained - not just crushed - the longer I stayed. I left EB Games just after 2019’s Black Friday sales, and then proceeded to make almost no money for more than a year.
It’s one thing to feel like you’re failing when you’re at least making money, even if you’re not making it doing what you want to be doing. It was another to be making no money, having all the time to work on your art by literally being locked inside, and feeling incapable of meaningful work. I did have a few small Fringe opportunities lined up ahead of everything shutting down, but that only made things hit harder when it was all gone. I had small, quiet mental breakdowns with myself what felt like every day. The quiet part was I wouldn’t allow myself to cry (if I could help it) but just stoically feel really, really shitty. So quickly I discovered that I actually wasn’t capable of facing constant rejection when it came to my acting. Not because I had a hundred auditions and got none of them, but because I was terrified to even try.
And because I wasn’t trying, I was failing. Worse than a fraud, I was a coward. I had the degree, the connections to do more, the potential to train and get better, and the privilege to have the safety net of parents that weren’t charging me rent to live at home, and I could do nothing with it all.
Your dreams get re-contextualized very quickly when you realize that, even with all the time in the world - like, quite literally a perfect excuse to just do nothing other than work on your dreams - you can’t make them come true. By this point I wasn’t really thinking about acting, because no one knew how long until a production of anything could be put up, but more because I was still scared. Writing was easier for me to do, so that’s what I told myself I was doing. That’s what I told everyone I was doing, and the reality was that I couldn’t. Day in and day out, I couldn’t do it.
Now, you may have guessed that a whole lot of small, constant menty-b’s led up to a big one. I felt the cowardice of my inaction in my core, like I spent each day committing an awful sin. I had also begun to think more seriously about a career in the luxurious world of games journalism, but that felt like I was picking an even worse prospect than acting/writing.
The night it all came to a head, I fell apart more than I ever had before. I faced the music of admitting to my now-wife-then-girlfriend that I didn’t think I could be an actor, or a playwright. That I was stuck, and I was a coward. With grace, she reminded me that I wasn’t dead. My life wasn’t over, and I would need to do something with it. That I would need to try something. I said “games journalist,” and she said “okay, go try it.”
So I did, and things started to get better.
Failure, Success, And More Failure
Things didn’t get better immediately. I mean, I began my games journalism career writing for free. Found some postings for volunteer positions at websites who were also offering some mentorship in lieu of payment for the free labour I and all of the friends I got out of this experience gave.
I started to feel better though. Right away I started to have fun. I was a cliche, to be fair, writing an essay about Spec Ops: The Line as one of the pieces I sent to websites as part of my application. But I was having fun, and even more fun when I did actually get accepted to write at a couple of places, giving me my first bylines. My writing had been published and my name was attached to something beyond my social media accounts.
It was cool - even though I technically just needed to start a blog or even a Substack (ha) to make the same thing be true. But it felt cooler because it wasn’t just my own blog or website. I was a part of something more than my own digital footprint, expanding it in a way that felt natural for the first time. Don’t get me wrong, my relationship with social media isn’t without friction, but that was the first time in a long time that it felt good and fun to post, like I was a part of a digital community.
In fact it was because of that digital community that I feel my career got going at all. The people I met writing for free or in Discord servers meant to be places for entry-level games journalists all with the dream of covering games to grow and find community were the people who helped me get my first paid reviews. My first paid news gigs, my first paid anything.
Was all of this success? It felt like it. Which is a crazy thing to say when the first two reviews I got paid for got me a whopping $10 in my bank account. But I was technically a professional writer, in that I was paid to write. I started to get paid more, with different websites and more consistent contracts. Then the website that gave me my first byline at all, PlayStation Universe, came back to tell me they wanted to hire me, as one of their full-time paid writers had left. It was a full-time job being a games journalist, and I took it to never look back.
I’m still writing for PSU now, and I’m also still not an actor. I’m not a playwright, and I’m not what I thought I would be when I was getting out of school. But that’s not really an awful thing right now.
For so long I felt like I was failing. That I was a failure. I was so hyper-focused on my failure that it stays with me now. I still feel like I’m failing, but for a new host of reasons.
Which comes around to what I’d like you, dear subscriber, to get out of this. As a thank you for reading what I recognize probably feels like something meant for my own journal rather than a blog I’m trying to monetize, here’s the point of all this.
Just because you fail, doesn’t mean you can’t succeed. It can be so easy to feel like a failure in one area of our lives or at one task means we can’t succeed anywhere else. That is simply not true. The good in the world and in life do not lose their value just because bad exists.
I’m married to the love of my life. We live in a wonderful house where we share every day together since we both work from home. We have the best dog who I get to take to the park each morning where she plays with her friends. I’ve even found friends myself in our little dog park community.
I eat good food, drink clean water, and sleep in a comfy bed every day. These are the things that really matter. I’m more than just my career, and so are you. I have dreams that I’m working towards, and even though I won’t get there tomorrow, or the day after that, or the next one - I can keep working to make those dreams happen.
And you can’t control everything. Unexpected things will happen, and you’ve got to deal with them, and the change they bring. After all, who knows what’s down this new path.
[Thank you for reading David’s Folly, a place where I expand my coverage of the art and entertainment industry beyond my regular work in video games into movies, TV, books, theatre, music, and the occasional reflection on creative work and relevant self-reflection. This post is free, so please feel free to share it with a friend, and if you like you can help support my work further by subscribing to my paid tier.]