One thing I wish I’d ever learned to do as a young student is to fully appreciate the value of both my strengths and my weaknesses as a performing artist. In fact, it’s quite clear to me now that I gave neither category its proper due. Like a character out of a George R. R. Martin novel, I viewed my greatest strength (singing) as a sort of birthright that required constant defense against interlopers (including my own, well-intentioned mother), and my weaknesses (acting, dance) as sources of deep, deep shame. As a result, I improved at none of them—at least not at any kind of useful pace—and it was only after my first (and only) college audition that I began to admit that perhaps I’d been doing myself a disservice.
While I succeeded in defending my “birthright,” securing me a spot in that university’s music department (not the department I’d gone in to audition for, by the way), my inability to accept and work with my weaknesses led to such embarrassing auditions in the other two categories that the memory haunts me to this day. And though thoughts of the green sweatsuit I wore to my dance audition (to avoid having to display my much-loathed body) are cringe-worthy, to be sure, it’s the memory of my acting audition that truly pains my soul. So unwilling was I to confront my difficulties with acting at the time, that I refused to practice my monologue in front of anyone, including myself. Which is to say, I barely practiced it at all.
“Do you have anything you want to tell me?” asked the kindly adjudicator after I’d stammered out my two-minute travesty in the audition room.
“No,” I answered, faintly, struck dumb by my own failure.
In retrospect, I can take heart in the fact that this painful scenario led me to what was surely the right place for me, after all. I thrived in that music department, and the knowledge and skills I took away with me after graduation served not only as the foundation for an immensely satisfying performance career, but also as the core of everything I teach today. Still, it’s impossible not to reflect on the fact that everything—everything—leading up to and during my career as a performer would have been easier and infinitely more satisfying, had I learned these two lessons before I’d begun:
Nurture your strengths. Your natural strengths are something to recognize and love. They are what makes you special. They are your foot in the door. In the body of your career, you’re the brains, and they’re the muscle. But just like real muscle, your strengths require regular toning and exercise to ensure the best performance. This means, not only should you use them all the time (and I mean all the time), but you should treat them like the muscles of a professional athlete. Find people you trust to train them, and then actually let them do it.
As a young student, I was pretty good at the first part, but awful at the second. I knew who to go to for great training, but I was so afraid of losing or dismantling what I had, that I couldn’t make proper use of what they had to offer. I finally really learned, somewhere in my junior year of college, just how much there was for me to gain from real, constructive criticism and hard training—and I’m so glad that I did. But when I think about how much more quickly I could have gotten there—how much pain I could have saved myself if only I’d been less afraid to relinquish a little control—I can only shake my head.
Own your weaknesses. Everybody’s got ’em. So do you. And despite what my young self might have told you, this is not actually a bad thing. Your weaknesses can be painful at times, and they can present formidable obstacles to be sure. But if you can treat them as tricky problems to be solved rather than embarrassments to hide and fear, they can ultimately provide you with great personal (and professional) satisfaction.
I can honestly say that, as a young person, there was absolutely nothing in the world more terrifying to me than the idea of doing something I was bad at. And, unfortunately, one of these things was acting. I was a smart kid, and naturally good at quite a few things. But of all the things I desperately wanted to be good at, acting was the one of the least promising and the most desperate (and if you knew just how much, as a child, I wanted to be good at ballet—a prospect even less promising for my inflexible, stubby little body—you’d understand just how desperate this was).
I was naturally talented as a singing actress. I could express anything, reveal anything, as long as I was singing. But as soon as the music was taken away, I fell into abject terror. Walls flew up, my creativity went numb, and more than anything I felt ashamed. I felt so ashamed, in fact, that it was only after I got to college that I was able to reach back and make use of the great training my father had provided me with in high school, all of which I’d been too scared and embarrassed to utilize effectively at the time. And it wasn’t until after I left college that I was able to really put it into practice.
My early years as a musical theater professional were dominated by jobs I could get with my singing—that was always my foot in the door. But the jobs I found most satisfying came later on, when I began to really succeed as an actress. And when I was finally cast as a lead in a high-profile production (the first national tour of a Tony Award-winning Broadway play) in which my character barely sang at all? No triumph was ever so sweet.
As a teacher, if there was one gift I could magically bestow upon every student I teach, it would be the ability to truly value both their weaknesses and their strengths. And, as a teacher, there is nothing I can understand and relate to more keenly than the difficulty of doing exactly that. I know so well the obstacles that stand in their way. I know the fear, the embarrassment, and the fervent desire for perfection. I know that this isn’t something I can just gift away. But I also know I’ll continue to try.