Who is me? What dis is?
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I am an actor, writer, and cultural worker. In an effort to synthesize these multiple roles through writing, I will be pushing myself to publish on Medium. My writing here will be by and primarily for arts workers with the explicit goal of developing class analysis across a range of themes including labor issues, cultural and media criticism, theoretical musings, and political education.
On the one hand, I want to make my own study and curiosity public so that others may either engage directly or benefit in passing. On the other, I think there’s a dearth of accessible contemporary writing that thinks through the arts from a left politics, and I hope my voice can be a meaningful addition to a greater project of arts worker discourse.
While I think I’ve been on a persistent march toward this moment for many years, I wish to introduce myself by context of the past two years in particular, which have galvanized my work in a way that has altered the course of my life.
So, it’s probably useful to know that, during the two first two years of the pandemic I:
- Created a nine-week curriculum teaching class politics to artists, self-promoted it, and did it eventually five times over (and counting)
- Assembled a team to devise a free, three-day online event around the same themes that reached 600+ attendees
- In collaboration with said team, scaled everything up into a permanent organization now totaling 15 volunteers including 6 facilitators and 3 additional curricula offerings
- Spoke on institutional imagining and re-openings at an NYU Skirball Center symposium
- Became a guest teacher/speaker at campuses including NYU, Ithaca College, and American University as well as at various non-profits
- Was paid and published for the first time writing about class politics in HowlRound
- Participated in a think tank responsible for disbursing $125 million of funds for artist recovery
- Volunteered for DSA-endorsed local campaigns in both NYC and LA (both of whom won their seats)
- Started a theater-specific, worker-centered organizing group
- Was awarded for ‘Civic Engagement in the Arts’ by CUNY’s Segal Center
All of this was done while:
- Shooting a national commercial
- Performing in an off-Broadway play during NYC’s theater “reopening”
- Revitalizing my acting coaching practice
- Doing virtual theater readings and workshops (incl. Dutchman and Wine in the Wilderness)
- Recording my first audioplay pilot for Gimlet Media
- Self-taping for theater, TV, and voice over in a corner of my room
- Going back into rehearsal for my pandemic-postponed Broadway debut
Not to mention:
- Breaking up, suddenly and unexpectedly, with my girlfriend of three-years
- Moving cross-country from LA to NYC pre-vax
- Traveling to Europe purely for pleasure for the first time in my life
- Maintaining what remains of sanity…
Before these past two years, I had been putting together a career with a mix of traditional acting employment, self-produced collaborative work, and teaching artistry (which you can learn more about at my website). That project continues while the above lane—the infusion of a political aspect — unfolds in parallel.
But the point is that the pandemic has found me in a position I cannot turn back from, where that more or less traditional, generally self-serving path is no longer palatable. Art is not just a creative act, it is labor, and labor is inseparable from the larger economic forces that govern our lives. In this great totality, artistic and cultural products are often caught in a crossfire between creativity and commerce. From this middle place, arts workers have a great power to influence a better world to come. This is what I wish to do, and encourage others to do as well.
As we arts workers blindly march through a pandemic which is on-going, I am no longer content with being part of a broken industry and simply talking about it its problems, but rather feel called to forming community with others interested in doing the actual work of changing it. The ideas which will be published here will be in service of that goal. So, if that sounds like your thing, follow along, and let’s get to work.
