Confessions of an Emotional Teen Studying the Arts
From Paranoia to Enlightenment
By Avery Eletto
The title character from a play by Anton Chekhov: A Russian author known to “make actors crazy”
This article is part of the Stage Raw/Unusual Suspects Youth Journalism Fellowhsip
“You artists are so emotional”
I used to fight this snarky comment… Me? Emotional? The girl who tap danced whenever she walked for three years straight, fueled by the passions emblazoned on the EAT. SLEEP. THEATRE. REPEAT. merch I get every Christmas? Never! But now, as an almost-adult with a growing understanding of the profound importance art holds in my life, this statement rings truer than ever.
Art nourishes the soul and cleanses us of life’s toil and trouble. Art for change throws us back into troubled waters, always just above the surface and fighting to do better. Walking this fine line between contradictions leaves me sleepless at night; consumed by life’s worst stresses yet still loving the work enough to roll the boulder up the hill time and time again, no matter its weight. This is an exploration of my journey up the hill… and why I’d choose to climb it again and again.
The pride and joy of my Sophomore year of high school was playing Nina in The Seagull… this was also my first and last flawed try at method acting. Having been cast in no major school plays, I was thrilled to be given this opportunity at my dream role. Thus, I knew I could not disappoint my director. Looking back, the note I should have heeded most carefully was my director’s warning: “Chekhov makes actors crazy”. Pitting my emotions against my sanity to cultivate the best performance my teensy self could, I soon became the perfect example for his case… and my own undoing.
High school drama hit me hard that year: the perfect weapon of mass destruction against my joy. Soon, I would make myself so miserable I wouldn’t even need to act! My pre-show ritual went something like this: dump a half gallon of water on my head (necessary, needed to look like I was in the rain), run around (necessary, needed to be out of breath), and beg my friend to hurl the meanest and most trauma-inducing insults at me as I ran (unnecessary, probably illegal).
If you’re reading this as a veteran actor, you’ll probably notice that this is not exactly acting… or even helpful. If you’re reading this as a newcomer, welcome! Please do not try this at home.
In the end my “acting” was praised by my friends, family and director: I did come across as distraught, on and offstage. As proud as I was of the lengths my ambition would take me to, much like Macbeth before me, I was left to pick up the pieces after my uncontrolled spree of destruction. I learned I could build my mental health up from rock bottom, but now I love myself enough to never let it fall so far again! After this, my art remained a positive force for the good of my mind… at least, until the next school play.
This year’s project is a stage performance of the Netflix show, Adolescence, which I am assistant directing and acting in. Don’t worry, this year’s artsy emotional outburst wasn’t born from the pressure of perfecting a performance. This time, it was an accidental response to the state of the world!
Both Adolescence and the play I was writing and directing, Space Camp!, shared a theme: the impact of society on gender roles… and why it can feel scary to step outside the house as a woman. Adolescence centers around a young boy so brainwashed by the social media toxic manasphere, he kills his female classmate. Space Camp! focuses on a group of young pop stars who are trapped and preyed on by their manager. What possible emotional turmoil could arise from rehearsing both at once?!
The narratives’ storylines — both worst-case-scenarios of modern male oppression — took me from seeing these as cautionary tales to constant realities.
During rehearsal, I was struck by sorrow when an actor compared a scene in the play to a moment every woman knows all too well: seeing a man on the subway stare at you, and the silent, urgent decision to look away… or suffer the consequences. The room fell into murmurs of agreement; we were united by this shared, unspoken hardship. The stories we told were powerful, but it was in the heat of our shared anguish that the line I had kept between fiction and reality began to blur.
Though I am and have always been a firm believer in gender equality, the content I was consuming, bringing to life on stage, along with the connections I had formed around it, pushed me down a rabbit hole of amplified anxiety. I began re-examining my relationships with the men around me and got drawn into the similar mindset often called the femosphere – a space of heightened vigilance and fear among women. I found myself asking: Was I, as a woman, truly safe in a world where so many seem to thrive by causing women, no different from me, harm?
My mind grew jaded. My work felt “flat, stale [and] meaningless” (Chekhov, The Seagull). The very art which once ignited my soul now sucked the life out of me, convincing me I was powerless to change the tides seemingly set against me.
Enter (stage left) the acting class share circle . . .
Upon my classmates’ and my entrance to our classroom, my teacher instructed us to raise our hands and hold up our fingers, corresponding to our anxiety, from one to ten. This is the first time tens across the board were a bad thing! To help us cope, our teacher told us to sit in a circle and share a gift we had given last year and a goal we want to work towards.
The answers that followed gave me a newfound insight into the minds of my classmates; an opportunity students at a non-arts high school are rarely, if ever given. For the first time I saw my peers as they truly were: all carrying different baggage hidden from day to day. Each person spoke of the gift of their art which helped them through the year to understand themselves and now, each other. I cried then, but for the first time, in joy. I looked around the room only to find my classmates crying alongside me. Regardless of competition, talent or anything else that could have kept us apart, we were united, no longer in fear, but in solidarity.
The question still remains: are artists emotional? I sure am! And I now take that title in stride. We are emotional onstage and connected off… although we’re pretty emotional then, too. We are the lucky ones: at the end of the day, we can stop performing.
Artists are emotional… and they’re better for it.
