A few weeks ago, we went to the Maud Whitmore Benefit Concert, a variety show to help select members of the Charlottetown Festival company pay for training that will advance their craft.
That night got me thinking back to my theatre days and realizing how woefully uncurious and ill-informed I was about the people I was auditioning for, and what was happening in the theatre in Canada — or in general.
That Chorus Line/Fame/Reality TV line of thinking (“I’m gonna get what’s mine! I deserve it ‘cuz I’m great!”) was a terrible mind-poison. I applied for the Maud scholarship and wasn’t chosen, and I see now that the panel were absolutely right in that decision: I honestly didn’t know what the hell to do with it, and that must have been plain to see. I was just a selfish kid looking for opportunities; I had no vision for the theatre or for myself as a practitioner in it.
(“Let the ground open and swallow me now” moment: After an audition for the Grand Theatre’s summer season, I wrote a thank-you note to Artistic Director Martha Henry… and addressed her as “Martha Graham”. To my credit, I did have the good humour to follow it up with another note to apologize and say, “I guess I didn’t add enough postage to reach Martha Graham”. I just Googled Ms. Henry and discovered that she’s passed away — which gave me a feeling of sadness but also a sigh of relief that this gaffe would be forgotten.)
Likewise when I was a little kid drawing cartoons: I just drew made-up characters over and over against a blank background, trying to get them “right” and thinking about my future career as a famous cartoonist — yet I never actually put the characters into the settings or stories that would make them worth sharing.
There’s no do-over for that, and I guess that practice did give me a strength in that one particular category — greatly amplified over the past few years since my work asked me to draw a cartoon of every new team member as they pass their probationary period, so I’ve drawn about 230 of them!
But now, as an adult, I have more ideas for comics, zines, and interactive stories than I could possibly act on. Maybe that’s the difference that tells me I’m in the right career, that I deserve the opportunities I have — because I’m curious, hungry to learn, and willing to put in the work.