How I have agency as an artist – Lauren Brady

People always ask me,
“how do you do so much?”

The past three years I never worked on just one project, I love collaborating with people. Or when I do work on one project I make sure I have a project to work on right after.  Whether it be acting, dance, devised, film, writing, modelling, or clown work – I’m always working on something. The reality of the situation is that I always feel I’m not doing enough. There are still things I could be doing, learning or creating. The concept of “free time” doesn’t translate to an unproductive nature to me. Not saying that people who take time out of there day to relax and watch Netflix is terrible anyway. That trait is hard for me to accomplish in my life; I would probably be a lot healthier of an individual if I could do that from time to time.

I’m not a content individual. As soon as a project is finished, I get overwhelmed by future possibilities and what to work on next. The other day I got so frustrated by my lack of art creation that I spent the whole day reaching out to people for collaborative projects – Now I’m booked till the end of July.

There’s a spot in my brain that questions all my choices – asking myself if I work too much. But my gut always convinces me that I could be doing more. My gut always wins. I’ve been examining this quality of myself a lot, the “constantly creating” desire I have for art.

Growing up.

Ever since I was little, I wanted to be famous, I wanted to be on Tv and billboards, and honestly, I never knew why I think it was because I enjoyed entertaining people. But who knows, really?

I always had a great love for the arts of every kind. Whenever I tried to pursue this as a child, it was constantly met with resistance. Whether from teachers, other kids in my class, or even kids, I surrounded myself with who I considered at the time as my friends. It saddens me because whenever I look back on my educational experience, it ultimately rejected who I wanted to be and moulded me into a very shy, quiet individual.

I was so severely bullied through elementary, but no one knew because I wouldn’t talk about it. And when one of my teachers found out in grade 4, they tried to fix it, but in the end, another year went by, and at the end of grade 5, the teacher told my parents to remove me from the school because they couldn’t stop the kids from mistreating me. Ever since that point growing up, I refused to acknowledge how much I loved the arts and wanted to pursue it. Because I was trained and conditioned, and I knew the consequences – when, in reality, growing up, I was surrounded by kids who picked on me because I was different. Teachers who would not stand up for me, they would just ship me off to another classroom as soon as they would discover the problem and hope that someone else to fix.

I concluded that there was something wrong with me because that was the feedback I received. So, I stopped acting until junior high. When I started pursuing the arts again, I was so scared and never found joy in it until grade 11.  At the end of grade 11, I promised myself I would pursue acting no matter the resistance I found, because I loved it.

I am sad to say that when I did pursue it again,I didn’t have one, but two teachers tell me “you don’t have what it takes – you can’t act.”

I remember these events so vividly because they happened in the same week, right before graduation – they set a fire. I got so incredibly angry because I knew they were wrong, and I didn’t understand why they would tell an emerging artist this. Who does that? That night I registered for BFA in drama at the U of C, got in, and was in 8 productions that year – 12 productions if you count the ones I did outside of the university. That same year I auditioned for the BFA Acting program at the University of Alberta – was put on a waiting list, and was later called, and accepted on April 24th at 9:00 pm.

The girl who grew up being told they “could never act” – by peers, teachers, friends, just got into the best acting university in the country. I’ll never forget that night. I burst into tears, fell on the ground and cried for 10 minutes straight – i couldn’t breathe. My mom thought someone died.

So to answer the original question.

“How do I do/create so much?”

The majority of my life I lived in fear,

now, I’m finally standing up for that little girl who always dreamed of being more.

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