Vanessa Claire Stewart Discusses Acting and Writing

When I got tired of waiting around for someone to give me permission to be an actor, I started writing my own projects. To me, there's not a whole lot of difference between acting and writing. Both media are about creating and believing in worlds that are not our own. Both require imagination, empathy, and a knack for storytelling. Once I gave myself permission to call myself a writer, I vented my creative frustration with script after script until finally I had something that was producible. I would have a chance to portray a character onstage that would scare and challenge me. My favorite teacher once told me, "If you're not scaring yourself, you're not doing art." So off I went and created a show called "Louis and Keely: Live at the Sahara" that ran at the Geffen for eight months and began my career. How do I follow that up?

Fast-forward roughly two years, and I'm finding myself in the same position: Staring at my script on my lit computer screen hoping that people will love this "Playby" just as much as I do. Only this time I've decided to sit back and let other people take the reins of the acting end of things. When I met my husband-who I feel is an underappreciated actor-I wanted to write something great for him. When I found out that his life's dream was to portray Buster Keaton, I got to work researching the hell out of the silent-film star and his time period until I came up with "Stoneface," set to premiere in May at the Sacred Fools Theater in Los Angeles.

It was lovely to sit on the other side of the casting table, watching amazing actors have a try at my words, and seeing some of them scare themselves in a good way. It was a very difficult show to cast, given the high level of talent that came out for the auditions. I was reminded that it can be such a crapshoot to get cast in anything, no matter how beautiful or talented you are. After all of it, though, we have a brilliant cast and a very intimidated group of creative personnel, who have about two months to bring this story to life. We're all terrified but in a good way. I guess that means we're doing something right.