UC San Diego

I subscribe to the belief that we actors are craftsmen, and the usual analogy I make, for no particular reason, is to a cabinetmaker. A good cabinetmaker presumably needs to have a set of tools - hammer, level, saw, measuring tape, drill, sander, etc. For an actor, this is technique, the tool belt we carry with us through our lives from which we can pull. It may be a pitch build, or a resonator, or a dialect, or a change of gait, or a set of questions, or even just a good piece of critical thinking. We use these to shape the raw materials we are given - usually a piece of text. Our tools are intangible, but no less necessary.

Some see being a craftsperson and an artist as mutually exclusive, but I disagree. I find the framework of craft to be the place where I can shine as an artist - I'm given a set of ground rules, and fellow collaborators with whom I must work, and within those circumstances, I create my art. After all, masons and sculptors, housepainters and impressionists, copywriters and Shakespeare, they all use the same raw materials and tools to create. It is my belief that we actors, as craftspeople, have to determine the artistic value of our work for ourselves. There is artistic possibility in all things, from Hamlet to the latest Chevy Silverado commercial, and the onus is upon me, as a new-minted Master of Fine Arts, to bring that spark to the forefront.