I found the Barrow Group in 1999 and started taking class with Seth Barrish and Lee Brock after studying with a Meisner teacher in LA who had a different idea of how to train actors. His method included yelling and belittling. Finding Lee and Seth was like breathing pure oxygen for the first time. Acting could be fun! I could feel good about myself and learn at the same time!
Feeling safe made me take bigger chances and try scenes and roles that were intimidating to me. I started writing my own monologues and performing them in class. Seth directed me in a one-woman show of my monologues and Peter Eldridge’s live music. My confidence soared!
Yet the idea of engaging with “the business,” finding an agent and going out for auditions, terrified me. I got my first agent when an actor I met saw my reel and said, “I’d like to show your stuff to my agent.” I had to be sort of dragged into the business side of acting. The agent wound up signing me, and soon after, I got an audition for Law and Order. My whole body was buzzing with anxiety and excitement.
I went in person to Chelsea Piers to audition, and felt this intense focus once the audition started. I was in a scene where my friend had just died. I was expected to cry. I felt completely present and in the circumstances. I got a callback. There were more people in the room for the callback, including the director and a producer. Again, I felt so present and focused. I loved performing that scene again. I left feeling so proud of myself, like I did the best I could.
I found out I got the role! I was in a play at The Barrow Group at the time and came bursting into rehearsal, “I got the part!” Everyone cheered for me! And gathered around me, high-fiving me. Then a few days later, I was told the producer decided to go with another actor who had more on-camera experience. I went back to rehearsal and said, “I don’t have the part.” Everyone gathered around me and hugged me and expressed rage and sadness on my behalf.
After that experience, I shrunk for a while. I didn’t trust the business. I didn’t trust I could ever be an on-camera actor. Maybe I’m just meant to stay where I am. It took years, (and hiring a life coach,) for me to realize that I was avoiding ever experiencing that pain of rejection again. It had felt like a rejection of me as a person, not just my acting, and it had felt embarrassing to tell others I had the role, then I didn’t. I wanted to avoid ever feeling those feelings again.
But as Anaïs Nin said, “And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud became more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” I could feel that I wanted to see what was possible, to expand and grow and try. It started to feel incredibly painful not to go for my dreams.
So I released my agent and got a new one. I leaned on my coach for accountability when it came to getting new headshots done, updating my materials, and much-needed mindset shifts. Within a few months, I got a Law and Order audition again. This time I booked a guest star role having no other TV credits, (but years of invaluable experience on stage,) and they did not take it back!
I had four days on set, three of which were with the lead, Mariska Hargitay. I felt nervous, but capable. The world of TV was unfamiliar to me, but telling stories was second nature at this point. And my confidence from doing all the work I’d done over the years, taking all the classes, doing all those plays and short films, was ingrained in me, a part of my fiber.
On the last day of shooting, Mariska said to me, “You are money. Do you hear me? I’ve worked with a lot of actors. You are money. I want you to take that in.”
I’ve come to believe that both are necessary if we want a career as an actor – the incubator where we can develop in a safe and nurturing space, build community, and stretch ourselves, and the willingness to go out into the unfamiliar and unstable world of “the business.” Putting ourselves out there continually for things we really want and being told no, or not hearing anything at all, can really take a toll. We’re still human, with all our needs of approval and acceptance.
Rejection still doesn’t feel pleasant or innocuous to me, but the more I build the muscle of going for what I want, the less I shrink or avoid, and the faster I bounce back. I trust my ability to recover. Our worth is unquestionable. It exists outside of any role or any career we have.
We must advance toward the thing that scares us to remember that the prize isn’t the purpose, it’s the process that gives us a rich life. One uncertain step at a time.
We got this! Onward!
– Tricia
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