I have a BFA in Acting from USC. The theatre department accepted thirty
students a year in a conservatory type program in which we studied the craft of
acting over a four year period. Sadly, I
lost touch with my classmates when I moved from Los Angeles to Seattle in '92. That is, until last month. Via a Google search, my two best friends from
the program found me and sent me emails.
In a strange coincidence, the tragic and untimely death of
one of our teachers was announced in the media the very day after they found
me. I forwarded the article to them,
they forwarded to a few of our other classmates for whom they had addresses and
those did the same, and in two short days almost the entire BFA class of 1991
reconnected in a long email stream. It’s
been a love fest ever since, catching up and reminiscing over email and
Facebook.
It’s a shame I lost touch with these people with whom I
shared a significant part of my youth – if four years of acting, stagecraft,
voice and dance lessons don’t bond you I don’t know what will. But real life happens after theatre school
and we had our ways to find - spouses to meet, children to bear, careers to
launch and re-launch as the case may be.
Some of us have had real crosses to bear over the last seventeen years,
unspeakable family tragedies, profound losses, and almost unbearable
disappointments.
And, now we’re almost forty.
And, everyone’s fine as it turns out. Not just fine actually - thriving. Some of us are working actors, but most of us
had to find another way, because after studying every aspect of the craft in a
protected setting, we realized we had to feed ourselves and be active members
of society and all the rest. I’m not
sure any of us would say our lives are what we imagined they might be during the days we walked the
halls of the DramaCenter. I remember one of our teachers saying, in
attempt to get us to work harder, that 1% of actors work. I suspect it may be less than that.
It’s sad if I think about it too much because in the split
second it takes to close my eyes I can see them as they were twenty years ago,
hanging out at the fountain in front of the Bing theatre - beautiful, passionate,
energetic and talented – young people radiating with dreams – their whole lives
ahead and the reality of the world having not yet squelched their innocence. I see the same in my
kindergartner sometimes when she doesn’t know I’m looking at her, and I say a
silent prayer, please, world, don’t take
it away from her. For my classmates
and me, I wished for our dreams to have come true. I can't speak for them of course, but I know many of mine have not. For moments at a time, I’m haunted with regret.
But, I have another take on it too.
Even when your dreams don’t happen as you imagined when
you’re 19, human beings have an incredible way of bouncing back, forward and
up. We find another way to live, to
be happy, to create, to get up one more day and fight the good fight. That is the true test of who you are. Can you put your foot out of the covers the
morning after the disappointment or tragedy and tweak the dream, imagine anew, survive in the reality? Therein dwells true beauty,
true talent.
That is what my classmates have done and do. That is what I’ve done. And that makes us all heroes. And, you, dear reader. You too.
