Adulting

When I first moved to Toronto from the east coast, everything about trying to find work in the entertainment industry seemed impossibly daunting. All I knew at that point was that I liked dancing, acting, and musical theatre and my parents thought I was pretty decent at it. I had a vague idea of what it would feel like to attend a dance call and an old friend from Saint John knew somebody who knew somebody, so I had one lead on an agent. Everything else about the move made me feel like I was at the bottom of Mount Everest with no gear, no water, no map, and wearing flip flops. I could not have felt more ill-equipped. I slowly found my footing, though, and over time, began to get work in musical theatre across Canada. I still and will always love musical theatre, but I quickly learned that this business waits for no one and because of a near-career-ending injury in high school, I knew going into all of this that my body and dance ability have a rapid-approaching expiration date (Hasn’t hit me yet! Ha!). This year, I have tried my hand at assistant direction, choreography, and writing and I have to say— even though I am nowhere near done with performing, these new aspects of the business have made me fall in love with theatre and storytelling in a deeper way. It’s unlocked a whole new level of curiosity in me and has felt unbelievably empowering to take the reins of my own career, rather than waiting for my agent to send me sides or an audition breakdown. When I’m feeling stuck, my #1 way to pull myself out of that funk is to put pen to paper and fingers to keys. 10/10 would recommend. Here is an episode that I co-wrote with Luc Trottier from a new-ish web series that came out earlier this year called Adulting: Year One. It’s called “Having a Kid” and you can guess what it’s about. If you like what you see, go ahead and binge the whole thing— or better yet, throw some indie filmmaking Canadians a subscribe! If you hate it, hey! Tomato, potato. Not everything is going to speak to everyone. Here’s to trying shit out, moving forward, learning something, and hopefully getting a wee bit better at it.