hard worker, mediocre actor

photo Edwin Fernando Gonzalez. image description: i stand smoking against a dark background in a film still from Media Res (2017). i have brown skin, black facial hair/eyebrows, and sweat dripping down my chest.

you’re not a particularly talented actor, my stage fighting instructor tells me during our personalized reviews. he does not inflect his words with even a hint of malicious intent. but as an eighteen year old actor-in-training, his words incinerate me without the courtesy of sweeping up my ashes.

the conservatory faculty convene with students at the end of the semester to gift us our feedback. we meet in a room typically used for classes, but these sessions differ. they rely on partial fluorescent lighting and the few slivers of daylight that enter. the unusually dim lighting betray the compliment sandwiches they feed me. you’re energetic but speak too quickly, they summarized. you’re charismatic but do not enunciate enough, they dictated. you’re present in your body but spent too much time in my head, they shared. you’re a hard worker, but not a particularly talented actor, he added.

thank you, i say before walking out of the room. 

i worked to be the best worker/actor/human before that moment, so his comments serve as a sort of unintentionally cruel affirmation. if i could embody a superlative for my approach to my craft, i would be ‘most respectful, dedicated, hard-working’. or, as some of us heard in elementary school, a pleasure to have in class.

thank you, i practice, even when i disagree. i slow down my tongue as i speak, gently releasing my words until i felt slower than a sloth. i purposefully pay attention to how many words i blurt out on only one breath. i repeat words over and over, listening to the way my tongue brushes up against the permanent retainer behind my bottom row of teeth. i try to be in the moment. wait, can i can in the moment if i have to try? i envy actors who emulate the presence of young children and dogs, truly living in the current moment.

my classmates and i sit across from each on blocks under the flourescent lights of our classroom at the instruction of our teacher. we learn how to stare at each other for minutes without laughing. we’re taught to familiarize ourself with the beats in a script, the meter of shakespeare. we move our bodies from our hips, our shoulders, and from a string from an invisible string at the bottom of our being through the top of our heads as we explore laban movement and later moliere. we touch and rub and feel before tidying up for the difficulty of beginning ballet or the anatomy-driven jazz dance classes. we discuss the business of the business, we learn to audition by actually auditioning, we keep a journal of our feelings, we sing alone, we sing together, we create warmups, and we practice our breathing.

i take these classes four days a week, roughly four hours a day; i do backstage tech work three days a week, three to six hours a day; i sell clothes another four hours a day; i throw newspapers from my car, two to three hours a night; i audition for plays and musicals and student films; i read as many plays as i can; i watch as many productions as i can; i barely find time to learn my lines or rehearse with scene partners; i sleep poorly. i worked hard as hell.

working really hard didn’t produce talent though.

photo Ryan Chalk/the reporter. image description: from left to right, titania (a filipina woman), puck (me, a black person), and bottom (a white man) pose for a photo from a 2008 production of a midsummer night’s dream. titania wears a wig and fairy wings, i wear fairy wings, and bottom wears the head of a donkey.

the notion that some people just have ‘it’ is more than just a cliché, it is a container for some truth. some actors have it, most don’t. however, innate talent without practice makes for shitty craft. as kiese laymon writes, we’re not good enough to not practice. as such, we know the names of Lupita Nyong’o, Meryl Streep, and Viola Davis for more than just their talent alone. the capital of the elite white institutions at which they trained—yale/yale/julliard, respectively—provided them access to resources like professional training and powerful social networks. however, that training molded their talent, it did not create it.

my decade in the industry taught me that folk who succeed in television, film, and theatre usually have some talent, but even that is not a given. many of us can think of at least one stage or screen actor who we would say is tragically bad. they make up for it with conventionally attractive looks, nepotism, or both. without stunning good looks, nepotism, or ‘it’, many actors explore other routes to their own version(s) of success. they train for their craft, modify their physical looks, build a solid reputation, and garner social connections that turn into bookings. that was me.

in high school, a year prior to entering my local community college’s intensive two-year actor training program (atp), i had only taken one theatre class and performed for the first time as a small role in our musical. i was not yet good. on a whim, i auditioned for atp after graduating high school with no college money or college plans.

during my audition i stumbled on the lines i recited from a shakespeare play i hadn’t yet read. my mistakes flustered me. i started again as my instructors smiled on at my tenacity. i think i might have even started a third time without completing my monologue. i was shocked when i got in. i think almost anyone could get in, but i was still juiced: i now had a direction for my life. i didn’t have it, i didn’t have any connections, and i didn’t have nepotism. so i got by on my youth, work ethic, reputation, [the appearance of a] dancer’s body, and likeable face until i could actually act a little bit.

being able to act even a little bit takes practice and rejection from auditions hurt, so i got used to it. i couldn’t book anything unless i auditioned a whole helluva lot. as the phrase goes, closed mouth don’t get fed. i auditioned for almost anything i could find to make the whole acting thing—as loved ones called it—work. some of those ‘anythings’ were…bad, but i got more comfortable on-stage and on-camera.

while still in the program i explored my physicality in 2008 through Puck and dancing for the first time. after graduating atp in 2009, i got my first real paid job. i was juiced (again). i toured northern california performing educational theatre for a season while still working my retail job at night. we loaded up our own set every day and performed for sixth to twelfth graders in everywhere from libraries (25 students) to ornate theatres (1200 students). i honed my facilitation skills in question and answer sessions with the kids and put my roasting skills to use when they clowned us for being corny.

i got paid to do what i loved at the time even though the money wasn’t enough to sustain me. i was young and lucky enough for that to sustain me. i still lived at home, so although i paid rent and had bills, i hadn’t yet accumulated grown folks bills. the next year, 2010, i booked two paid recurring roles, one on the tv show component of an educational product and another on a new webseries about anime nerds.

successful felt real in 2011 when i got a full-time acting job that came with benefits, something ever-elusive to many actors. within a few months i moved to oakland, about 45 minutes from where i grew up in vacaville and fairfield, ca. as a performer-educator for the second time, i taught educational messages through live theatre for K-12 (50 to 1500 students) every day, monday through friday, and sometimes two shows a day. and by 2012 i had gotten promoted to the male swing. if any man got sick in any of the eight male roles across our four shows, i swung on into their place, even on an hour’s notice. i had finally become a halfway decent actor and a seasoned performer. then i started attending uc berkeley full time in 2013.

acting, directing, writing, and Black student organizing blurred together over the next three years of my life. i majored in sociology, took a lot of Black studies classes, studied abroad, joined a phd pipeline program, and slowly moved away from my minor in theatre. it was a lot.

while at cal i booked a supporting role in a feature film picked up by sony and subsequently used that film to get signed with a top local agency in early 2014. even though i sought out my agent, social theorists gramsci and fanon began to resonate a lot more than playwrights shakespeare and beckett, especially after ferguson erupted. i spent the next three years writing and learning how to organize for Black and other marginalized people. i still engaged with theatre/acting/directing, but something had to give between full-time student, full-time depressed human, part-time theatre, and part-time organizing.

the painful & personal process of Black consciousness took centerstage. by my graduation in 2016 i had fallen out of love with theatre and redirected that love—in the form of time—to my ideas and actual communities through writing, community organizing, and pursuing a phd.

photo Lucy Gray. image description: four bespoke Black people display a range of emotions under a bright chandelier for “Keep Christmas Well” (2015).

solano community college’s now-defunct atp helped me survive the great recession.

atp wasn’t perfect. atp did, however, lovingly provide a rigorous education in theatre for an 18-year-old pell-grant recipient in need of somewhere to build a professional home—me. theatre unknowingly became the best way i knew how to cope with undiagnosed clinical depression and unhappiness at home that i was not yet ready to face. not coping by yelling at strangers on stage, but instead by keeping almost every hour of my day occupied and giving me a purpose that served me for years. 

i don’t act or direct right now. i didn’t continue the tradition of attending live theatre at least twice a month. i even forgot my stage fighting instructor’s words and how much they affected me until recently. i thought about my career shift and thought yeah, he was right. i’m now in my fourth year as a sociology phd candidate, focusing on race, ethnicity, prisons, and urban spaces (p.s. academia is a mess too, everything is).

you’re not a particularly talented actor occupied space in the attic i call my brain for at least a year, rent-free. but i neither stopped acting nor stayed acting to spite him. i listened, said a sincere thank you i can echo it now: he was honest with me at a time when strangers and loved ones did not want to crush my dreams.

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anthony james williams is a writer and phd candidate in sociology. for more writing, subscribe here on substack. for more information, visit their website at antjwilliams.com.