Awakening a Great Artist

As a young theater artist, there is nothing more daunting than taking the giant leap from training to “the real world.” I’ve been in acting school for three years at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati, and have a measly eight months before I make the leap myself. And while I am pulling hair out thinking about it, I feel confident that I will be able to thrive in this business. What’s my secret, you ask? No, it’s not my deodorant, but a wonderful program called the Orchard Project.

This past summer, I was a part of the Orchard Project’s Core Company: a group of young theater artists who, along with a small staff of working professionals, run a five-week artist retreat in the beautiful Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. The retreat invites a number of theater companies and individual artists from across the country to cultivate new works under The Orchard Project’s wing. What you get is a vibrant atmosphere of eclectic theater folk, all generating in the same space and time, completely isolated from the distractions of everyday life.

So, how does this program ease the transition from education to profession? It offers the opportunity to create relationships between working veterans and the upcoming generation. It opens the door for us to begin vital networking. While my conservatory training has molded me into an actor, one who has been taught the tools and techniques to truly craft and shape my work, the Orchard Project has graciously afforded me the contacts that I will need to pursue jobs.

The Orchard Project is still a training program though, which can be seen in the multitude of workshops and open rehearsals that the resident artists and companies are asked to host. I liken the training to a shotgun firing: a workshop with New Paradise Labs, open discussion (what we call a Salon) with Robert Schenkkan, self-portraiture generation class with Suli Holum and Deborah Stein, for example. These workshops create an assortment of snapshots of the work and aesthetics of some visionary American Theater artists. You learn a vocabulary—a way of communicating with professionals. And you gain an understanding of how you and your aesthetic may penetrate the American Theater landscape. You are armed with a host of devising tips and tools to create your own work—something that should be, but sadly is not cultivated in standard university training programs.

And while I am pulling hair out thinking about it, I feel confident that I will be able to thrive in this business. What’s my secret, you ask? No, it’s not my deodorant, but a wonderful program called the Orchard Project.

Since devising is one of the primary focuses of the Orchard Project, I think it should be noted that the Core Company is not, strictly, a group of actors, but rather a group of slash-artists: a few actors here, a playwright and director there, with some dancers, poets, and painters thrown in to the mix. The Orchard Project allows you, as a Core member, to cultivate and intertwine your various abilities into your theater work. It allows you to awaken the greater artist within—not just the actor, or the writer, or the filmmaker.

With Core Company one can truly get a sense of what the next generation of theater folk care about, and with the entirety of the Orchard Project, one receives an even larger sense of what we mean by American Theater. Writer Marion Starkey wrote that “if you really know the few, you are on your way to understanding the millions,” and by spending five weeks at the Orchard Project, one can truly see how the local embodies the universal.

My conservatory training has been essential to the honing and development of my craft, but it has left me without a strong base of knowledge of the greater theater community. Before the Orchard Project, I was plagued with fears such as, “What am I going to do if I don’t land an agent right out of college?” and “Is such-and-such city the right choice for me?” While I still ask myself these questions, the fear has subsided significantly, because my experience this summer has unveiled some tremendous possibilities and truths. I feel confident that regardless of what happens after Senior Showcase, I can always find or make work for myself wherever I end up. Whether it’s calling up a Core Company buddy and proposing that we co-create a piece together, or emailing so-and-so to see if any job opportunities are available. The networking web that the Orchard Project spun for me is an invaluable jumpstart to my future career.

Read Catherine Mueller's companion article "The Chaos and Clarity of the Orchard Project’s Core Company".