REAL TALK WITH DANIELLE - On Arts School

I have always loved the arts. It started with my dad who used to take me to musicals all the time as a kid. I loved the songs and the stories, and the way that these shows could get me super hyped or completely broken down in tears. I liked the opening it gave me to feel my emotions. I started singing, dancing, and acting in middle school, and it became competitive very quickly. For those of you not familiar, the musical theatre world is extremely demanding. When auditioning for colleges, you are expected to be a “triple threat” - proficient in singing, dancing, and acting.

I truly value having gone to school for the arts, and I understand I’m extremely privileged to have had the opportunity. But... I have some real beef with both the environment that is promoted by art schools, as well as the personalities that art school fosters. I went to NYU Tisch. I don’t say that a lot, and it’s actually uncomfortable just writing it down because I still hold onto shame about the ways in which I am not what people expect me to be when I say that I went there. Tisch is often regarded as a prestigious school that churns out talent in the performing arts. Similar to Berklee School of Music for musicians. I want to deconstruct some common beliefs about these types of schools, because I think it’s really important that people are aware of the flaws in the way that these schools approach teaching the arts. This is my experience of having attended one of these schools, warts and all.

Auditioning for NYU was where I got an early taste of how competitive the other students were. During the winter of my senior year, I attended a conference in Chicago where various schools come together to hold auditions. I could feel the tension and stress hit like a cloudburst as soon as I entered the hotel where the conference was held. It was palpable. The dancers all have perfect ballet buns, the singers can all belt like Idina Menzel, and the actors have all been performing since they were 3. Many of us already knew faculty members from the different colleges because we already went to those colleges for pre-college summer programs. We were assessing each other and competing like this was our last chance at glory - and the parents were encouraging it. Before we even got to college, our sense of self-worth was based almost entirely on the judgment of adults who would come to strip away our individuality.

At Tisch, the students are split into different acting studios. During my time in the studio, there were a lot of moments that made me self-reflect and developed my sense of awareness. I spent hours lying on my back on the floor with my classmates simply breathing in and out. That type of meditative shit gets you present like nobody’s business. These are the types of moments that I’m really grateful for because it helped me tune into what I’m feeling at any moment. It also helped that during scenes, I could tune into where my acting partner was at emotionally. In our modern world where technology abounds, it’s really nice to have a skillset that allows you to just sit with yourself or talk to other people on a meaningful level without feeling the urge to grab your phone. (Side note: this is also a super helpful skillset to have as a therapist.)

However... there were moments in the studio that were not so great. The standout moment was being told “You are going to succeed in this business only because you’re so damn likeable.” Not because I had any skill as an actress, was his point. If my voice wouldn’t get lower, my endearing personality was my best bet. I was also told to imagine I was looking at a beautiful dog and to have a “real” impulse to say “Wow, that dog is beautiful.” I worked for hours to set up an environment in my head to respond to. It’s years later, but that motherfucking dog was a Bernese Mountain dog and it was walking past me on the streets of New York and it’s owner was a woman with a high ponytail, shades, and Lululemon running clothes. In class, I said that phrase with all the warmth and compassion I feel for real dogs when it was my turn. (And I LOVE dogs!) Do you know what my feedback was? “Nope.” That was it.

In my opinion, this lack of meaningful feedback created animosity among my cohort. It was evident that most of the teachers had normalized this kind of competitive atmosphere in their minds, and they were passing down what they have known to be true - certain students have it, and certain students don’t. Even if this wasn’t meant to be the message, it was the message I was getting, and I believe a lot of my peers at NYU received it as well. Even worse, it was the message that we started sending to each other. Groups formed and gossip was constant. I think this type of competition is absolute bullshit in any art form, but even more intolerable at $60,000 per year.

It took me a while to get my head straight after I stopped acting. I got very lucky. I had a teacher later on who noticed my songwriting. He encouraged me to write an EP, and with the help of some really great friends, that EP became my first published work in 2014. I did this separately from Tisch, and it was totally inspiring to be around people who just loved making art and wanted to support each other as humans trying to work through this process. This was the kind of collaborative project I wanted to be apart of and I realized something very important: You can’t grade art. I think it’s important for artists to be informed of the history of their crafts and be aware of the techniques that are used. But at the end of the day, I’ve never taken a creative writing class, and here I am writing musicals, blogs, and books, and I doubt Shakespeare is rolling over in his grave because of it. (Fight me.) I know that it doesn’t matter if my natural speaking voice is “higher” than normal because no speaking voice is good or bad. I also know that I’m skilled in a variety of art forms and I don’t need an elderly white male to give me feedback on my personality.

Don’t get me wrong. I am absolutely grateful for my time at NYU. If it wasn’t for my experiences there, I may not have: married a guy who treats me like a human being who deserves love, chosen a career path that allows time for creativity, or developed friendships with some of the most real, kind people on this planet... just to name a few. But the other very real fact about NYU is that it is a real estate company before it is an institution. NYU charges extremely high tuition to sustain this real estate, and, ultimately, the students suffer the consequences because academia is secondary to money. The combination of NYU’s expensive tuition and prestigious reputation trickles down to create a competitive environment that fosters crippling insecurity in its students by repeating the message: You don’t matter. Paradoxically, NYU buildings have depleted The Village of all of the artists who historically brought richness and creativity to the area, and replaced them with the NYU-branded artists studying at Tisch.

I guess my point is that the theatre schools around the country are usually pretty great at teaching theories and techniques. There’s a reason that some of the most skilled artists of our time have graduated from these universities. And in the case of NYU, I had a lot of opportunities to learn important life lessons outside of the studio. But my issue is with what happens backstage at those schools. Students who work their asses off are constantly told that they are not good enough, not just as performers, but as people. I just think that we need to be more mindful of what we are saying to the young adults in these programs. Many of them are taking huge risks to show up to these places every day, and I think the least we could offer them is a safe space for their sense of self-worth. Not every young female actress needs to be Meryl Streep, and frankly, the arts would be boring if that were the case. What makes art interesting is the unique worldview that each artist brings to the table when telling a story. We need to stop stripping down young artists of their perspective for the sake of comparison or competition, and start empowering them to own their individuality. The people who instilled this belief in me are the reason that I was able to stay in the arts and I am so grateful to them. Because I see the adult artists who still think it’s a competition and whose art still sounds like it came off the conveyor belt of whatever school they graduated from. I hope for those artists that they get off the conveyor belt and they can make art that is true to themselves. I hope that they can identify that sense of comparison and competition inside their heads, and fire the performing arts faculty that still criticizes them there. I hope it happens quickly. But even moreso, I hope that we can prevent young artists from growing into adults who are constantly comparing themselves and others, and we can encourage them early on to have a sense of belonging in their art form and in the real world.

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