I didn’t audition for two years.
After graduating with my MFA in Acting in 2023, I stepped away from the profession for more than a year. My final year of graduate school had broken something in my relationship to the craft, and a battle with long COVID—which took my voice for nearly eight months—made returning feel even further away.
Eventually, a lighthearted winter play appeared at the first theatre where I had ever performed. It seemed like exactly what I had been waiting for: something familiar, warm, and low-pressure enough to reconnect me with acting. I prepared, auditioned, was cast, and spent the production working with a group of kind and joyful young artists.
But I was miserable.
Returning to the stage had not repaired my relationship to acting. The production ended, and another break began—this time lasting two years from my previous audition.
During that time, I found a wonderful therapist and began working through some of what had happened in graduate school, as well as the larger question of why creating had become so painful. My perspective slowly began to shift. I started attending more theatre, searching for auditions, and wondering whether there might still be a way back to the part of acting I had once loved.
Nothing felt right until I saw that The Modern Rep was producing The Seagull and looking for an actor to play Nina.
Nina struggles to find purpose in both her life and her art. She wants desperately to become an actor, but trauma, disappointment, and time gradually separate her from the certainty she once had about her craft. Near the end of the play, she says, “I don’t know how to stand or use my hands.”
I knew that feeling.
How many times had I forced myself to keep acting in front of classmates, teachers, or an audience while knowing that the work I was producing felt flat, disconnected, and barely human? How often had I become so conscious of how I was standing, speaking, breathing, and being perceived that I could no longer access the life inside the scene?
Too many times.
And here was Nina, feeling just like me… needing someone to tell her story.
I researched plays and characters that might allow me to reveal some of the essentials of Nina and Chekhov in the audition room. The monologues I chose also confronted me with weaknesses in my own acting, forcing me to work through habits and fears rather than hide inside what already felt comfortable.
I worked at it every day with a clear goal in mind: To have a positive audition experience. I wanted to prepare fully, share myself honestly, and leave knowing I had done everything within my control. Whether I was ultimately right for the production would depend on countless factors that had nothing to do with my value as an actor.
For the first time in years, I had fun.
The work was not always easy, but I felt freedom and curiosity returning to the process. Whenever my thoughts shifted towards fear, comparison, or self-judgment, I returned to Nina. I reminded myself that all of the preparation was simply an attempt to earn a few hours in the callback room where I might be allowed to live inside her story.
That is exactly what happened.
At the callback, I explored Nina alongside the director and adaptor, Grant Sorensen, and David Michaeli as Konstantin. For those few hours, acting was not about proving that I belonged in the profession (to myself or anyone else). It was about listening, responding, experimenting, and allowing another person’s life to move through me.
It was the reason why I’ve always loved acting.
And it was fun.
I left the room knowing I had shared something real. Through her, I had allowed myself to be seen as an artist again, not because I had executed everything perfectly, but because I had been present enough to offer something of myself.
Now I will have the chance to continue sharing her story this fall.
I am so excited for so many reasons – the pieces of the adaptation that I’ve read so far, the other actors I get to work with, the director working to build an MFA culture in Minneapolis…
Most of all, I am hopeful that Nina will continue helping me find the innocent love of acting I feared I lost and allowing myself to be seen.