i'm so happy i'm not a 19-year-old actor anymore
or, on acting, exploration, and grief
I’ve been finding myself thinking about how much I miss the kind of acting I was able to do in college. I feel really grateful for having been cast in Yale Undergraduate Theater’s 2020 production of The Wolves, which was the very last thing I acted in before COVID. I am particularly grateful for that production because of the relationships that that production gave me, but in part also because it was a wonderful container for exploring some emotions that I was wrestling with at the time. When I auditioned, I was nineteen and exploring dramatic acting for maybe the first time in my life (aside from being cast as The Voice in an eighth grade production of Get Smart).
I got a call while I was at callbacks with my a cappella group. The director, Gabby, told me that they wanted me for #07 — Striker. Too cool for school. Sarcastic, “fuck”, thick eyeliner. Almost seventeen. Gabby said I could have some time to think about it, and I said “No, I don’t need to think about it, I’m in.”
I remember telling my friend Noah about it and him commenting on how exciting a role it would be. I remember worrying about how I would access the grief of someone who (spoiler alert!) suddenly loses her best friend. At the time, all four of my grandparents were still alive. Loss had touched different communities that I was a part of, but had never struck that close to me. The closest I had come to loss was Nick Booker, a middle school classmate, tragically passing during his first year at college. It was really painful realizing that he wouldn’t continue to grow with me in parallel, even though we weren’t close friends. He’d never get to experience some of the things I would. I watched his mother grieve from afar and found myself at a loss for how to show support. Grief is not something you can fix. It was jarring to have someone my own age die. I felt a lot of grief for him then, and I still think of him every year on his birthday. At the time I couldn’t imagine getting closer to loss than that.
But everyone does. A couple months later, my friend Maya Robinson and her boyfriend Mark Keffer drowned in a flash flood in Puerto Rico while away on vacation.
It leveled me. I don’t know how else to explain it. It knocked me all the way over. It took me down to my foundation. It made me a completely different person. I did a lot of things I wouldn’t otherwise do, I said things I wouldn’t otherwise say, I went places I wouldn’t otherwise go. Loss on that level was such a new experience, and it was painful in a way I couldn’t understand or process effectively. I was so totally devastated by it in a way that I had never before experienced.
I had to remake myself after that loss. It was really ugly and I hated it and I had lots of help and I also felt really alone a lot of the time. I didn’t really go to class or do homework. I think I dropped a class that semester, and the second semester I think I maybe got special permission to take fewer classes than normal, or something. I really don’t remember. I was barely there. I became basically nocturnal, though, which did mean that I usually woke up in time to go to rehearsals.
So in the midst of this remaking, it was actually really cathartic to explore grief and sisterhood and jealousy and girlhood for a couple hours each day, all through the lens of someone else's words. It wasn’t my grief, it was #07’s, and her grief was supposed to be visible, which meant that I could let some of mine out. So I did. I remember during the invited dress, during the last scene, I cried so hard I genuinely thought I might have to stop the show. I was told after by someone who didn’t know me that I “really embodied that character,” which made me laugh — I’d never experienced breaking character in that kind of way (a non-laughing, non-clarifying-stage-directions-or-lines way). It was such a release to be able to feel something so intensely in front of other people. I think it's something that I cringe away from in my everyday life, but I think at my core, I want to be seen. I think we all do.
In i’m so happy for you!!!!!! (did you know I made a web series), my character Cam is a collection of my characteristics assembled in different concentrations, orders, and importances. I built something instead of having a container for what was already there. I gave Cam some of my personal circumstances (OCD and a tendency to try to literally run away when things get really bad), and I initially wrote in the loss of a best friend for Cam as well. When I was editing the episode, though, I cut that line — I didn’t think we needed it. I didn’t think I needed it. I felt like I didn’t need for the character to share all of my circumstances. I didn’t need Cam to explore my difficult feelings, because I can do that on my own now. It feels like such a privilege to make art from this place now — a place where I am making things not because I need them, but because I want them. It’s much easier to build from a place of curiosity and want than from an urgent need or involuntary outpouring of emotion.
I think the Wolves was probably the last time I needed a character that badly. I think a lot about how you’ll never love anyone like you love someone when you’re a teenager, because you’ll never need other people like you do when you’re teenager. I needed #07 in a way that I don’t need Cam. I love Cam, and I respect Cam, and Cam teaches me a lot, and I want Cam, but I don’t need Cam. The Wolves was like a big part of me remaking myself, but the web series is more part of me building myself.
I love acting. I love analyzing the text and translating the character onto myself. I think that it’s useful to have containers to explore your own emotions. It can be daunting to explore them without clearly defined limits, but I think now, I am much better at feeling that fear and doing it anyway. The web series was really useful and vulnerable in a way completely different than The Wolves. I had more of a sense of self going in to the web series — I was and am learning how to listen to myself. There was, in some ways, much less at stake.
The web series has also made me appreciate how much better I am than when I was in college. Even on my worst days, I am head and shoulders above where I was emotionally when I was nineteen. I’m really happy to be exploring more and not having to rely on the work to hold me up in the same way I might have back then. More than anything, I’m super excited to be creating things and approaching from a place of curiosity and want instead of desperation and need.
I love this web series. I love my friends and my collaborators. I’m so grateful to be sharing this work as a completely different person than I was when I was nineteen. I’m really proud of this project — like really, really proud, and I’m excited and hopeful that it will take me places that I couldn’t have dreamed of when I was nineteen. Looking at myself now, I think it kind of already has.
Thank you for reading! Fingers crossed for even more auditions in July. If you haven’t already checked out the web series, you can watch the whole series here. I wrote episodes 2, 7, and 8, but everything in this series has everyone’s fingerprints on it, which is what I love about it. xoxo charlotte
i love you bunches char bar 🫶🏾
I love you so much.