Prologue – Spring/Summer of 2020

I spent March 2020-August 2020 fighting for my education. It was announced that my final year would be done 100% online, but the other years in the BFA were able to remain in person. 

When I asked “why, “

the answer I was received was, “there was no space.”

So, I spent months looking for a space, contacting other departments, sitting in zoom meetings, and finding a way to continue my education. 

When I completed that task and said, “done.”

 I was told, “the professors were uncomfortable using space that wasn’t associated with the department.”

When I completed contacting all of my professors, and said, “done.”

I was told there was “no money for cleaning supplies to support my year.”

 For six months, I jumped through hoops to save my degree, and the final response I received was that I wasn’t going to be given anything due to a lack of funds for cleaning supplies? That didn’t make sense. 

I asked, “what if I bought the cleaning supplies?“

The response I got was, “that wouldn’t change anything.“

August 2020, I came to terms with the fact I did all I possibly could, and now everything is out of my hands. A week later, it was announced we got a two-week Shakespeare intensive, and we ended up with half a semester of in-person classes.

What questions and comments I got used to expecting while doing a performance degree during a pandemic:

-I’m so sorry
-That sucks, 
-I hate that for you 
-What a waste of an education 
-Damn 

-How was graduating during Covid? 
Difficult – But boy, did they try to make me feel better by constantly praising my resilience. 

I’m not a negative person. Spreading negativity is something I don’t believe in. It’s unnecessary. But I am a truthful person, and sometimes the truth is negative and just downright damn depressing. I acknowledge that. But I also acknowledge that even the most broken and decrepit stone can have some beauty in it. You just have to look. Like really LOOK. And if you can’t find anything, ask for help. If there’s not a bright side to shit, then what’s the point? Why are we living through it? Therefore in my mind, every bad experience has a lesson in it. If not, then life’s just a cruel joke –if it is just a big joke, at least you can have a dark and twisty laugh about it. So see, there are positives everywhere! 

A handful of people out there already know that I’ve lived through hell. My life has been filled with fear, loss, and a tremendous amount of pain. I’m not sharing this with you to get the “artist trauma badge of honour”; it gives you context. And the context is I have a high tolerance for shock and mistreatment – case closed. So doing a BFA during a pandemic was far from the worst thing to ever happen to me. Unfortunately, I was blinded to how I was being mistreated because of my experience with trauma. 

So during COVID, I tried to treat each day as I usually would. I still showed up early, present, and ready to learn every day, so it became very frustrating when most people stopped. People saw my constant state of work and praised me for my resilience.

Remember that word. It’s a theme.

The constant recognition caused a significant problem in my development as an artist. People praised me for overworking myself, which created a toxic precedent for my work and a high expectation of my peers around me. I had many fears and ambitions joining the BFA Acting program, one of them being that I had to learn all I needed to be successful, and the other making sure I see every moment as a gift. So that’s the mentality, the mantra I gave myself – Every moment is a gift, live it to the fullest and be thankful for what you have.

So when people asked what I got out of my last year, I could tell everyone I got the most out of it that I could. 

Training during Covid

Given circumstances 

• Stay 6 feet apart at all time 
• No touching 
• Must wear masks 
• Clean every surface before and after use
• Don’t socialize outside of class
• Be grateful 

Let’s start with the easy stuff – the six feet apart and all that jazz doesn’t seem like a lot, but it becomes quickly suffocating when it’s tied to a performing arts degree. So the choice was to be suffocated or find creative ways to breathe and survive in an environment designed to kill your spirit. And BOY, did I ever find creative ways to avoid strangulation, and it was actually fun at times. It became a creative score you had to follow, and sure it wasn’t ideal, but I could play with it and still have some agency with the art I was making. 

So usually, In your final year of the BFA, you act in Studio productions. Studio productions are the chance to work in a professional theatre atmosphere, and most students reason for joining the program. They usually have a large budget, exciting directors, a two-week run, and a large audience filled with family, friends, and artistic directors across the community. 

My final year started with online learning, the first half of my semester. Then, in January, we began in-person classes, which consisted of a scene study with outside directors and three studio performances. My studio show experience consisted of a 6 show run consisting of 4 days. All of the performers/students were masked in the shows, and each show had a ten-person audience of ONLY university staff and BFA acting students. My first two shows were not open to the public or even all university members. 

The circumstances of my education were hard not to find upsetting. But the message being shared by the university was to “be grateful” for all that we had. Of course, not everyone agreed with this message, but I tried to entertain it. 

When you are told to be grateful, and in reality, you feel cheated, the constant reminder to show gratitude can eat you alive. It made the feelings of suffering feel unjust and wrong to have because they were met with contempt whenever you share them. Emotions felt unseen and uncared about because they were rarely entertained. So I stopped sharing them and continued my practice of convincing myself that everything is a gift, resulting in people constantly praising me for my positivity, joy, dedication, and light. My attitude became a standard and something expected of me. It was often mentioned because it was a rare trait under the circumstances. 

But optimism isn’t free. It takes energy. It takes a lot of work. 

I chose to be optimistic because I endured too much pain in my life. So, when I had the choice to be optimistic, I tried my very best to follow that path. So when space, shows, and live education was taken away from me (which was often), I wouldn’t acknowledge it. I knew that it sucked, I knew that I wasn’t getting the education I wanted, and I knew finding work after would be incredibly difficult because artistic directors didn’t want to watch our work because we were masked. So I knew all of the awful things that happened to me, but I also knew that if I put energy into all of the shit, it would only dig me a hole. So I didn’t acknowledge it, not because I didn’t care, but because that’s the only way I knew I could survive. Or so I thought.

What did I learn?

That I am a positive high functioning individual. What does that mean? Simply it means I can overwork myself and do not notice it until it’s too late. Because of this, my mental health goes unnoticed by others and even myself sometimes. People will only know how I am doing if I inform them. I will not show signs of depression because I am too busy with other thoughts and other projects that keep my mind occupied and distracted. So I could be depressed and show no visible signs to my peers. Unfortunately, this happened multiple times throughout my journey at the BFA and went unnoticed for the most part. Most dangerously during covid.

2021, the first week of June, I finished my second studio show and was given a day to rest, turn over and begin a new studio show the following day. So, in June, I worked on a studio show, graduated, took a clown workshop, created a film for Nextfest, took a film workshop, did a dance show, and received two weeks’ notice from Stratford to prepare an audition.

I broke. 

I wasn’t eating, or sleeping and no one noticed. I didn’t notice.

By chance, I attended a mental health workshop for artists put on by Nextfest, and by the end of the event, everyone logged off, but I just sat there with the woman who ran the workshop and began to cry. I didn’t know how to move or talk; I just wept. Then, after a couple of moments, she asked me the last time I ate something, and at that moment, I realized it had been over two weeks since I had a meal.

Because everyone constantly told me that I was alright, that I was strong and resilient, I struggled to come to terms with the fact I wasn’t. I had pushed all of the awful things so far down that I even forgot they existed. I didn’t believe all of my pain was real because I didn’t want to acknowledge it and it was so easily disregarded, so I disregarded it too.

What else can I say?

It’s said that people often cope with severe trauma by dissociating or detaching from what’s happening. Our brain blocks out trauma to save us. To allow us to move forward with our lives. So when people ask about my last year of theatre school, and I have nothing to say, it’s not because I don’t want to talk about it. It’s because most of it is gone. It’s been locked away. 

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not hateful or resentful of all my final time at the university. I’ve learnt many lessons I will carry with me throughout my life. But I believe lessons caused by trauma are unnecessary, and I hope no one has to go through what I have encountered just to become resilient. The fact I don’t remember much of my final year of theatre school probably isn’t the best sign.

If you are still in school, the biggest lessons I can share with you are:

Acknowledge when things suck

-I’m not saying let them consume you, but be aware that not everything is as it should be. You can write it down, talk to a friend, just know you don’t have to deal with it all yourself.

You are only human

-Overworking yourself is very glamorized in the arts industry, and it sets a toxic president. Work at your pace, don’t take on too much and be kind to yourself. There is life and so much more art to make after school.

Everyone is Human

-Everyone has their own journey, and you have to respect that. Life is extremely stressful right now, and will continue to be for a while. Just because you don’t understand how someone is coping right now, doesn’t mean that their experience isn’t justified and necessary for them. Don’t compare yourself to someone else. There is no point. You are you and can only handle as much as you can.

Be Kind

Lastly

Was I fully educated in theatre? I can’t really say. Maybe education is relative to the growth you achieved throughout your study? So from that point of view let’s see what I’ve got:

• Did I grow as an artist? Yes incredibly 
• Did I grow as a person? Most definitely  
• Did I grow safely? I don’t know. 

I’ve tried to write this blog too many times now, and what always stops me is the realization that yes, I grew monumentally as an artist, and I am incredibly grateful to every mentor and person who helped me along my journey. I grew in a covid safe atmosphere my final year; yes, this is true. But did I grow in a mentally safe atmosphere my last year? No, and I’m still healing every day. 

But boy, did they try to make me feel better by constantly praising my resilience. 

Lauren Brady