Please welcome Backstage’s new Working Actor columnist, Kelli Barrett, who will be starring on Broadway this spring in “Doctor Zhivago.”
My name is Kelli Barrett and I am an actor.
I’d like to welcome you to your next year of AA. That’s “Actors Anonymous” for anyone new to the program. Over the next year, we will be learning the 12 steps for coping with our addiction to acting. We will learn to share, discover, and manage our addiction in a way that allows us to live the most healthy and rewarding lifestyle we can. So let’s dive right in.
Step 1. We must admit that we are powerless over our addiction and our lives have become unmanageable.
If any of you have been through AA in its original form or know someone who has, then this first step may look familiar. There are many of you out there living with your addiction in secret. There are two camps to which I’m speaking specifically. First, there are those of you who moved to New York to pursue your dream, have taken the necessary survival jobs but failed to thrust yourself into the world of auditions and cold calls for fear of failing.
In the other camp we have those of you in steady jobs climbing corporate ladders, living for your next audition or community theater production, and writing your own YouTube videos. Please understand, I don’t recommend one group over the other. I wholeheartedly believe that if you can do anything with your life besides acting, you should. If late-night website prowls and self-produced shorts fulfill you, then by all means continue. If you’re anything like me, however, hopelessly and utterly addicted to the process of self-discovery, stage play, and emotional pants-dropping, then you need to come clean and get serious.
I believe those of us for whom acting could never be a hobby have an addiction to it like any other. Only in confessing can we find a way to manage what is potentially a masochistic and lonely profession. Also, through our admission, we find community. I’m speaking to you true addicts out there. For those of you applause-hungry approval seekers, I hope this article will help you to move on from the idea of a lifestyle that in truth is mostly devoid of the glamour you seek. To the true freaks, the ones motivated by their secrets and getting high off of their confessions, we need one another. In one another we will find a family that understands us and can ultimately help us through this clinically insane lifestyle we’ve chosen. Since the essence of acting is to tell the truth, then let’s begin our journey here. My name is Kelli Barrett and I am an actor.
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