Featuring Beverley Rockwell

This week’s featured artists spoke wonderfully about her journey with acting, finding creative agency, and how to develop your own learning process.

Beverley Rockwell, a new graduate of the BFA 2020 Acting class at the University of Alberta, has a fantastic sense of what it means to be understanding of yourself, and patient with your progress. I like to say, we are all drafts of ourselves yesterday, and today will be a new draft. 

We asked Rockwell about her early stages of theatre and why theatre? Rockwell began by explaining that as a kid with a father in the military, she had to travel and live in many different places. From Germany to Nova Scotia, Canada, and then finally settling in Yellowknife and calling that stop “home.” Rockwell went on explaining she spent a lot of her time in high school doing musicals from Little Mermaid to Highschool Musical itself – classic and iconic. In High School Musical Rockwell told us,

“I played both Sharpay and Gabriella big surprise there.”

Being a double for two roles and experiencing typical Drama class drama. After graduating highschool Rockwell was not sure that theatre was for her and considered going into classics, she elaborating by stating;

“I want to go to history, want to go into architecture, and said barely working at math, but I wanted architecture.”

And like most of us who caught the theatre bug, Rockwell could not deny that her passion lay with Drama. The choice of choosing a not very lucrative profession that has more tears than coins is a difficult choice for every artist, but Rockwell knew it would be the path most fulfilling for the rest of her life. 

“Why am I kidding myself and the fact that I don’t want to go to school for architecture.”

The university environment is very different from high school or anything many of us have ever experienced. In University, you experience what it is like to be the small in a big pond with classes of over three hundred people versus a class of twenty in high school. I believe it is a time that you learn how to be responsible for yourself. It is a daunting experience that can leave many feeling isolated and uncertain of their purpose. Most importantly, entering the drama department with other students who consider themselves great performers have been the stars in their high school’s drama program. Rockwell mentions that she felt this way;

“Going into University, I was the big fish in a small pond syndrome.”

Rockwell quickly realized she was surrounded by other theatergoers who had the same drive as her, which was a new and welcomed experience.

Rockwell began speaking about how musical theatre had a significant influence on her life. Which primarily emerged from having a mother/singing teacher, and Rockwell’s love of dance growing up. She concluded that Musicals are made for her. Rockwell understood that she was musically attuned, and that was her strong suit and that acting was not. She decided to audition for the University of Alberta’s conservatory for that specific reason. In our conversation with Rockwell, something came up that I felt was universal for all artists, and it was shaping your narrative and learning to encourage growth. In a conservatory program, she says;

“ It feels like you’re on the rack being stretched a million different directions and how do you keep your personhood while being stretched in a million different directions.”

Rockwell made me realize how important it is to ground yourself in your work and discover your process through each new tool that you are adding to your toolbox. She also helped me understand that it is essential to be honest with yourself and compare your work. Not constantly compare your worth to your peer’s work. Rockwell liked to imagine that instead of comparing yourself with someone else’s niche, instead reflect on how their process helps them, and give it a try for yourself and see if it works for you.

I personally coin this as using the “essence” of another artist, and what I mean by that is observing what they are doing, and trying it in your own body, your way. We all have that someone in our lives who we admire, and we want to emulate them and how they navigate characters,etc.. Rockwell has an excellent point about how to find that agency of having a developed dialogue with yourself and asking yourself, “what is it that I offer?” and “what works well for me?” and “how can I utilize it in my work?”.

As an artist, we can experience fragile egos (I can speak for myself here), and it is essential to notice the type of narrative you feed yourself. Are you constantly self-deprecating your efforts, or telling yourself you will never grasp the technique or screaming in your head this doesn’t work for me? I believe like Rockwell that healthy words of affirmation in your thoughts can lead to better results in your work. That is a type of feeling that can lead you into the rabbit hole of “I’m not good enough” or “I don’t have anything great to offer.” The greatness we all want to achieve takes work, and that only comes from being consistent with what you are learning, not being shy to ask for help, and being forgiving of yourself. As Rockwell said,

“Turn on yourself and then you can put your individuality in every step because if you can bring yourself to everything that you do and everything that you learn then you’re going to get so much more mileage out of your learning”.

My mother would say “there is only one of you in this world, so be yourself” in everything you do. Shine bright!

Thank you for reading this article. We will be uploading an interview article every week featuring a new artist. If you are an emerging artist and would like to share your story feel free to contact us today!