By Vanessa Alvarado

I am an actress. Allow me to process that for a moment and build up the courage to say it a bit louder. I am an Actress. Louder. I am an ACTRESS.

A year ago, I ran into a fellow actor who has since moved to Los Angeles. About six months to a year prior to our brief encounter, we had taken acting classes together at a studio in South Lamar in Austin, Texas with Paula Russell. We had also been part of two full five minute episodes of a web series called Katy. I played Rachel, a barista/waitress at a coffee shop whose friends either worked at the coffee shop or played at the coffee shop (as in a two-person band). There was only one friend who liked to come by to drink coffee and study there. He liked the lead character, Katy.

We filmed a couple of weekends, overnight, from about midnight to six in the morning. It was fun. It was fulfilling. It was exhilarating. Driving home at six in the morning, getting into bed as the sun rose, it all made sense and not because I am a night owl. I am not. As David and I briefly chatted over the loud chatter around us on a Wednesday night at Baby Acapulco’s during a Network Austin Mixer for people in the film industry, he told me that he was moving to Los Angeles. “That’s great,” I probably said with a smile as I always do. But it was an empty smile. Not because I was jealous that he could move and I could not. It was because I really did not understand what it meant. You know, to move to L.A. Up until that moment, I had heard so many opinions about whether L.A. was a good idea or not. And then the jokes about every waitress or waiter being an actor and every person at a coffee shop writing a screenplay. Who wants to be made fun of? Oh, and don’t forget the story of the actor, who after twenty years, has not yet “made it.” A coworker at a law firm once shared this story of his best friend. Who wants to be the character of that story?

And then David said something that has stuck with me since then. As he explained why he was moving he said, “This is what I do. I am an actor. I live, breathe and eat acting.” And then as my heart paused for a moment to feel the energy in those words and connect to that sentiment, I followed with, “isn’t that the hardest? to say that you are an actor?” David agreed. He said, and I paraphrase, “I just started to say it out loud.”

Fast forward a year later, I find myself at a networking event in the back patio of the Austin American Statesman following the Hispanic Marketing Symposium put on by the Austin Advertising Federation. Though I am not in advertising, I have made a presence to learn and meet the independent Latino artists who were invited to speak about their businesses. And I network, kind of.

With the best disposition and focused intention to network, I walk onto this patio set up with about ten high rise table tops each with an empty box of Don Julio as its centerpiece. (Don Julio is the sponsor. After all, it is not a Latino party unless there is Tequila). As I enter this networking opportunity, there is a rectangular long table to my left set up with some of the staples of a “Hispanic” themed party in Austin: chips and salsa, guacamole, tamales, flautas. I go to it, of course. If all else fails, at least I am doing something, eating. The iphone was not an option. I was there to meet, listen and be known; except that the people I wanted to meet seemed to have gravitated towards their known circle of people. Their tables had no more room for an unfamiliar face. And as I am still green on my networking skills, I decide to take it slow and find a table with enough room and at least one friendly face.

Over the course of an hour, I meet six people, two of them speakers at the Symposium, two journalists at the Austin American Statesman, and two women from an advertising agency. All who ask me, from the get go, “So, what do you do?” “I am an actor,” I answer.

As I say this out loud, I am freaking out. My brain is reviewing my words as they travel towards these strangers’ ear canals and into their brains. I realize that it is the first time that I ever say that I am an actor to anyone much less to six people outside of of my theatre and film circle. Do I take it back? Do I follow it with the more easily digestible and understood, “I am also a graduate student at St. Edward’s University,” and let that be the last thing they hear?

I do not. And as it sets in with them, it sets in with me. My body is feeling a tingle. But I do not stay for very long. The original plan was to leave at 630 PM. The imagined setting of exchanging my first business cards and a few laughs with the notables I was determined to meet did not come to fruition. Out of the fifty business cards with my headshot, name and profession (Actress) that I had prepared for this event, I only give out one. My first one. It goes to the young journalist who is in charge of a new project. He is new to Austin and found it cool to hear that I was an actress. “Maybe we will need an actress for one of our spots,” he says. “Yeah, great,” I smile.

By 5:45 PM, I am ready to leave. I blame my headache, which has gotten stronger, for my need to leave. But really, I am so ready to get into my car and head over to my improvisation class at the Institution Theatre where what I just said makes perfect sense. Where I do not feel out of place. Where it is safe to be an Actress and to say it out loud.

I have not said “it” since nor have I networked since. But then again, it has only been a week, and I have been busy with school assignments, life details and some travel. But I have thought about it, every day, especially as I stare at my letter from the Screen Actors Guild, which I received that same week.

I am SAG-eligible now. I am SAG-eligible. It means I can join the Screen Actors Guild. It means I can vote if I join. You know that award show where the actors and actresses who win say that they are especially honored because they were voted to win by their peers? That “peer” can be me now.

It means I worked for this. I auditioned and I was cast in professional projects. And I worked those long hours.

It means I am serious about acting. I am committed to it. I am focused. I am a working actor. So maybe I cannot yet pay all my bills with it, but, nevertheless, I work as an actress and I get paid for it. I can move to L.A. now.

There it is. L.A. Now I understand. Yes, there may be too many actors and actresses in L.A. waiting tables and writing screenplays, but it is where the dream and the love for the craft is probably so palpable it makes an actor feel like an athlete training in Colorado where the altitude is so much higher it exponentially improves conditioning and endurance; and where the training is so focused it nurtures the competitive spirit. There is a difference, after all, between “I just want to do my personal best and finish the race,” and “I want to do my personal best and win.”

David wants to win. And now so do I. While I have been acting and performing for twenty eight years, Acting is not my hobby anymore. It is not what I do after work and then have more than a few drinks afterwards. It is at the forefront. It is why I do not stay up too late or have too many drinks. What if I have an audition at 10 AM the next day? It is why over the last year, I quit my full time job and became a graduate student to focus on creative work that both feeds and allows me to create the space for creative development and acting opportunities. It is why I got an agent and I have been auditioning and saying yes to many opportunities that have come my way. Dr.
Maya Angelou once said, “You can only become great at that for which you are willing to sacrifice.” That is acting for me.

So when I say, “I am an Actress,” it is an announcement packed with so much meaning and so much uncertainty, it IS hard to say. It is a slow journey to be savored fully along the way over film shoots from midnight to 6 AM, productive rehearsals and days that so soon end. It is a process packed with doubt that survives on faith because in the end it just all makes sense. (Did I mention I like to rhyme?)

The truth is that that networking opportunity was only the beginning. It is because I love it the way a doctor loves being a doctor that I must proudly say that I act. It doesn’t define me but it is what makes me smile deeply. So, though it is still hard to say it loudly, I must keep on practicing. I AM AN ACTRESS. Whew.

 

Vanessa Alvarado is a professional actress and a graduate student at St. Edward’s University.