Finding Heart at Academy of Arts

I received an inner calling recently to write about my past experiences being enrolled in an Academy. Two dreams about it materialized for me in the past week, one of them being about me writing this post. I decided to fulfill the prophecy. Since my book trilogy is set at an Academy, it felt only right to dig through the old trenches of memories I would mostly rather forget.

We’re gonna flash back many years ago, to ‘08, high school freshman me. This and my next year were the mousiest years of my life. I didn’t know I was supposed to shape my extremely bushy eyebrows, I cut off too much of my hair and didn’t know how to style it, I was coming off the tail end of my colored braces era, and I wore modest v neck shirts with a tank top underneath. Too many pastel colors were worn to the point where I avoided them for years afterwards, associating them with youthfulness.

These were the years in which I attended the Academy of the Arts in Hartford, Connecticut, in addition to my normal public high school. What this meant was that the end of every school day was just the beginning of a whole additional school day. If “arts” sounds easy to you, I can assure you it is not, especially at a rigorous academy. Back then though, I thought singing and acting was my calling, so when my voice teacher suggested I audition, it felt like the right thing to do.

To even get into the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts is a feat, you have to pass a competitive round of auditioning. Luckily, my voice teacher helped me practice. I performed a solo and a monologue, because I wanted to get into the musical theater department. To my surprise and excitement, I had a very good audition and passed. The bigger hurdle ended up being getting my public high school to allow it. They needed to adjust my schedule slightly and provide a bus to and from. That is where my mom comes in, a tough cookie who advocates for her daughters as fiercely as a lioness protects her cubs.

I don’t exactly know what my mom said, and who she said it to, but as with almost everything she advocated for, she got her way. This meant I was on my way! To becoming a star! Or at least toward the first railroad tracks that would help take me to stardom and validate my budding potential.

As you may be able to predict, that is not what ended up happening. If anything, this experience showed me the door to my dreams of becoming an actress/singer. But, as with all experiences in life, especially during a developmental age, there is good and there is bad.

It became clear early on that I did not fit into the musical theater department. First off, I was a quiet kid. Second, I did not like belting out show tunes at any given moment in public spaces. And third, I didn’t know how to fix my appearance for everyday life, let alone a stage.

I was pretty certain I would not make any friends in my department. And unfortunately, every other department despised the students that took the musical theater track. It was not “cool” like the “acting” track. To be honest, that track hadn’t even crossed my mind because I loved being able to sing as well as act. Landing a solo had been one of my favorite parts of being in a traveling show as a preteen (even though whenever I got nervous my voice got VERY pitchy).

But, at the Academy, people in the musical theater department were viewed as loud, showy and obnoxious. Not to mention cocky, for assuming their singing voice was good enough to invest in. Needless to say, I saw a long friendless road ahead for me. Indeed, my first couple weeks there matched those expectations.

Musical theater kids are not shy about making their feelings known, so it was not hard to decipher that I was considered uncool. Even worse than that though, was that I also appeared untalented. Though my audition had been good enough for me to get in, the actual school itself was extremely competitive. I’d always been told I had a good singing voice, but so had everyone else there. In my voice classes at the Academy, a soprano without much depth is not going to be viewed as anything special. Dancing was my biggest weakness, and not just cause I had to change into a horribly uncomfortable (not to mention unflattering) black leotard and tights. I tried to stand in the back of the line formations so that I could follow the people in front of me and hide my errors, but unfortunately, they still became known. By the end of my first year there, I was held back in dance class! I was scheduled to relearn beginner ballet with the freshmen at the start of my second year while my peers moved on to more advanced dance classes. That left acting, what I had hoped would be my saving grace.

It was not. In my own life, I was a very private person who hid my emotions, so when I acted, I acted like a person who was also bottled their emotions. More than a bit robotic. I hoped the nuances of my expressions and feelings would speak for themselves. They didn’t. I was told I came off flat.

So, untalented in all the categories of my department and friendless? Not the best start. What was I even doing there? I and all my peers surely wondered.

An unexpected occurrence happened a few weeks in, that forever altered at least one of these categories for the better. I attribute my survival at the Academy to it, for making a very difficult experience bearable. To fully do justice to this moment requires a little background info.

One of the few people I quickly admired from afar in my department was Ashley, a fashionable African American girl from West Hartford. She felt like a city girl, whereas I was from a very suburban town. She was effortlessly cool. I say effortless because although she was confident and spoke assuredly, she didn’t flaunt extroversion the way others in the department did. On the bus, she always had headphones on, and rocked her head to beats no one else could hear. She didn’t make small talk. She clearly appreciated her space and was comfortable in her own skin. She was also immensely talented. She could sing a song that would leave goosebumps on everyone’s arms and chills down their spine. Her voice was a rich deep alto, in contrast to my breathy soprano.

One day, waiting outside the door for music class (the class that taught how to read music-another challenging subject for me-), Ashley approached me. I don’t remember if she asked it as a question or said it as a statement, but what I remember clearly is that she wanted to sit next to me during class. I could not have been more shocked. I, of course, immediately assumed she wanted to copy my notes or something. I figured maybe since I was uncool, people assumed I was a nerd that took good notes (I didn’t even have that going for me).

During class, however, I kept trying to angle my binder toward her so she could see what few notes I did take, but she weirdly did not seem interested. Even weirder, she stuck by my side the rest of the day. I went home extremely confused but cautiously excited.

When she saved me a seat in class the next day (the first time someone ever did that to me), it dawned on me that this was starting to feel like the beginning of a friendship. It must have dawned on everyone else too because people shot a lot of weird looks our way, like what is cool Ashley doing associating herself with dorky Melinda?

Ashley eventually revealed to me that she did not like the overdramatic showtune-belting vibe that a lot of the girls in our 20 person class put out. She liked that I was “chill,” and asked if I was planning on staying the whole four years. I said yes, and she decided right then and there that I was her pick for Academy best friend. I knew I was insanely lucky and still did not fully understand why, but I certainly wasn’t going to refuse! Not that I could have even if I had wanted to- Ashley had an inner strength so powerful that no one questioned her choices. At least not out loud. That was my saving grace. No one dared ask her why she chose to be friends with the dorkiest girl in the program.

A few months into the program, one of the girls in my department was having a birthday party that she was very vocal about. She left “invitations” in people’s stuff, a picture of herself with the details of the party on the back. One of the boys in my program, a scrawny one who was maybe just as uncool as I was, asked where his invite was. Very loudly, she told him only the cool people were invited. I was apparently the only other person in the program who had not received an invitation either. Although she was my least favorite person in the program, this still stung. A lot. I was so low on the totem pole that I was one of only two people that did not get invited? It was embarrassing, not to mention hurtful.

But by the time I bussed home that evening, I was miraculously in good spirits. Because of Ashley. She told me the photo on the invitation was a nude photo! The only article of clothing she was wearing was a top hat. Ashley held it with a disgusted look on her face, like she was disposing of a rat. She said the last thing she would ever want to do in her free time was spend more time with this princess. Together, we laughed and laughed about the way she had gone about inviting people. When naked photos surfaced of someone at our public high schools, they were mortified! But she had purposefully planted naked photos of herself in people’s stuff! It was so ridiculous that it made my feelings of ostracism whittle down to nothing. I certainly didn’t want to receive a naked photo of this girl. She did not get to decide my worth, Ashley and I decided.

Though my perceived talent did not improve much in the first year, I had an awesome friend by my side. She shared an ear bud with me so I could listen to the music that grounded her, like Bottom of the Ocean by Miley Cyrus. I even taught her how to speak gibberish so that we could talk on bus trips together in a language no one could understand. She was a quick learner and it became very fun for us, safely gossiping away. We did not find out until the end of the year that our teacher, who usually sat near us, also knew how to speak and understand the strange tongue.

My first year at the Academy of the Arts threw me for a loop. I expected to be a star student and instead was the opposite. My public school academics were easier for me to get good grades in! I had double the homework by attending two schools, and half the time to complete them. I had a full schedule, tests and electives at both schools, in addition to a commute that overlapped with rush hour. It was exhausting. But I survived year one and hoped year two would bring me some vindication, outside of being held back in dance class.

Year two did bring a huge blessing my way. I had a different acting teacher, a woman, who I loved and desperately wanted to impress. She reminded me of my fifth grade teacher whom I also loved, intimidating on the outside, but deeply caring and intelligent on the inside. She did not cut corners or sugarcoat things, but I trusted her opinions and guidance more than that of my first year acting teacher, a man who definitely chalked me up to lacking talent early on. In her acting class, we delved deep into character study, often writing our own historical background for a role we were portraying. Writing and imagination has always been a strength of mine so I cherished this new angle. I improved my “range of emotion” in her class and began to enjoy and sometimes actually look forward to bussing to the Academy, for her class alone.

About halfway through the year, my class was told that we were going to put on a mini show for the public. A famous and very successful retired Broadway performer was going to help train us and watch it! Everyone buzzed with excitement, even after hearing that the show was going to be Urinetown, a musical about a town with a water shortage, where being able to use a bathroom becomes a paid-for privilege. It stars a girl named Hope, who falls in love with a boy who inspires her to take part in a revolution. There were no auditions for the roles (our teachers were picking them and they saw us every day), but one day they posted a list of who was assigned to what role. There have been so many times in high school and middle school where I hopefully looked at a casting list only to embarrassingly not find my name that I didn’t even bother to look at this one. If I couldn’t get roles in public schools, why would I ever get one at an actual performing arts academy?

But it turns out I didn’t need to look. Words traveled quickly in a small school, especially among musical theater people. Even more so when they were angry. I knew, from overhearing gossip, that people were not happy about who was chosen, and were trying to guess why. From there, it didn’t take long to find out that I had received the starring role of Hope, and the boy who had been the other “uncool” kid who didn’t receive a birthday invitation from the year prior, was the co-starring role of Bobby, the guy Hope falls in love with.

This may sound like redemption for the uncool kids, but It’s pretty funny to think back that people were probably jealous of me. Since there were majority girls in my class, no one cared too much about who the role of Bobby went to, but they did care about Hope’s. Even though I should have been honored, I too, figured there must have been a catch as to why I got it. Maybe I just looked the part? I had to be lifted in one of the scenes, so probably being small was a major factor (everyone else assumed it was the only one).. Regardless, I didn’t think being the star of a show about urine was really something to brag about. Or having to act like I was in love with a boy in our class. I still cringe thinking about the time I had to practice running into his arms, and how he had trouble catching me. Everyone looked on laughing their heads off, while I, mortified and red faced, had to keep going. It was like the Dirty Dancing scene had it gone horribly wrong.

But, oddly enough, the role ended up being a defining moment for me at the Academy-one of the highlights of my very limited highlight reel from the school. There was a scene where a lot of commotion was going around me, and I was just in the center of it all, sitting on a chair. I had no lines in that scene, so I decided that I needed to be more expressive visually. I used what I learned from my current acting teacher about really delving into a character’s mind and background. I knew she was deeply scared, and overwhelmed, by her lack of control, and the state in which her hometown had become. I channeled all my teenage angst into my own feelings of desperation and, in our first big rehearsal, I cried.

I didn’t know if people would even notice, or worse, think it was overdramatic. Neither was the case. People were impressed, particularly my first year acting teacher. I was told he made speeches in all his acting classes that day about my performance. He claimed I took the scene and my character to another level. By the end of the week, everyone was going red in the face trying to produce tears in their acting. But, being the first who had done it granted me a platform that no one else could claim.

The Broadway star who was helping us wasn’t there for our rehearsals, but she joined some of our acting classes to give us some tips and share her story about the ups and downs of show fame. I think my acting teacher brought her in to help us understand how brutal it can be in the real world, from the perspective of someone who had made it. She had clearly aged out of doing shows, but her talent was impossible to miss. We were all enamored with her. I had to block out the knowledge that she would be watching me as Hope in our show or I probably would have been too nervous to perform well!

I don’t remember if I fully cried on the day of the actual show or not. My guess is my eyes at least became watery, but maybe without a cascading waterfall of tears. Instead of focusing too much on crying, I simply focused on carrying in my face the weight of emotions I felt through my character. I didn’t want to receive the same critique I had received the prior year from my acting, that I was too deadpan.

Though at the time I had blocked out of my mind that the Broadway star would be watching, she was there in the crowd. She told both me and my acting teacher afterwards that I shined on stage. That I had a brightness that made it impossible to take her eyes away from me. She claimed I had the “it” factor.

As a whole, this show was a big win for me, as you can probably imagine, despite having low expectations at the beginning. The positive feedback I received boosted my confidence immensely. When we had open (and very public) improvisational auditions for another all years department show, Tintypes, later on, I was able to step into them confident enough to have one of the most comedic performances! I don’t remember what I did or said other than that it got the whole room to burst into laughter (in a good way-it was intended to be comedic, as was the show). People complimented me on it all day. I didn’t get a major role in this show (once was enough for one year), but it was very satisfying to hear almost all the teachers claim I gave a fantastic and memorable audition and that comedic improv was clearly one of my strengths.

Even in dance class, I made strides. We had a hip hop style dance performance that was repeated over and over to the point where I knew the moves without having to copy others. Once the moves were ingrained for me, I was able to add my personality to them and liven them up. My dance teacher expressed surprise that I actually looked good (it was one of those classic backwards compliments, but I took it happily). In the ballet class I was held back in, I was able to finally catch up to the others! By others, I mean the freshmen, not my actual sophomore peers. Come on, you’re not expecting a full Cinderella story here right? This is real life, not the movies.

Nevertheless, one of the much more obviously talented girls in my program (great in all three musical theater categories), came up to me towards the end of the year. She said that she had at first wondered why I was in the Academy, let alone the musical theater department, but that from my performances in acting class this past year she witnessed why I did belong there. My acting teacher, too, expressed awe and commendation over my improvements, particularly over one monologue I performed towards the end of the year that resulted in a sitting ovation (the best you can expect from a class where everyone is each other’s competitors).

It may come as ironic that I finally “belonged” the same time I decided to drop out. Although I was happy with the strides I made, musical theater as a whole was clearly not my specialty. My singing voice was better suited for pop songs then big numbers and my dancing skills were clearly mediocre at best. There’s a reason I chose soccer not dance class from a young age! I only like to dance when it’s for fun, not following precise steps in a tight leotard.

Ultimately, the Academy of the Arts added immense stress to my high school self. I found myself dreading going rather than looking forward to it most days. I felt exhausted and mentally drained every time I came home afterwards. I was sick of doing my Academy homework on the bus because I had no other time to do it.

It was the right decision-I felt a huge weight lifted from my shoulders after I left, but I lost a friend because of it. Turns out that promise I made to Ashley early on that I would stay for 4 years was one she didn’t take lightly. Me leaving the school came as a betrayal to her. Once I told her I wasn’t coming back the following years, she began intentionally avoiding me even when I was still attending. By the time I left, we were no longer talking.

I ran into Ashley at the mall years later and found out she had dropped out after the third year. Arts Academies can really run people ragged, even when the talent is there. The environment is like a pressure cooker, so competitive and draining, and what for-fleeting popularity? It wasn’t worth it. A part of me guiltily wondered if Ashley ended up dropping out in part because I already had. Even though I thought her friendship was just a blessing for me, maybe I too had been important to her as well, and critical in surviving the Academy. I’ll never know.

What I do know, embarrassing moments included, is my experience at the Academy of the Arts both humbled and shaped me. I am immensely grateful I had the experience early on, which prevented me from going to college in this field. Dreams and reality don’t always overlap. Instead, I went to school for psychology because I am fascinated by people and how their minds work (as I had been when I was creating stories for the characters I was playing). Now I am in the process of writing a trilogy! We never know where life will take us, but I like to think every experience and every lesson takes us closer to where we are truly meant to go. And if we have a hard time looking back at something, but still feel the need to, that probably means we should.

Me from back then (in my signature pastel colored hand me downs):