On Being Different

Lament of a Theatre Kid

If you prefer to listen, enjoy the audio for this post, read by a real human (surprise, it’s me!). Warning: I am sick and you can tell. Please enjoy the sultry tones of sick-Jenny’s voice - a bit of a change from my normal audio - but I kind of dig it.

I’ve been an actor for over 30 years

Theatre people are my people. Talk about the most interesting and vibrant folks you’ve ever met. Gosh, I love them.

I started acting when I was in 5th grade and really haven’t stopped since. I did the school musicals, spent my summers performing in an open-air semi-professional theatre in Upstate NY, studied theatre in college and got my degree, then moved to New York City in the Fall of 2003 when the air was crisp and the leaves were just right.

So to be fair, I never really had a choice but to love theatre people. They were my family, my home away from home, my friends and my companions, and I loved them.

Looking back, I feel blessed that I was able to cultivate a space where I felt I belonged from an early age. It just happened to be a space filled with misfits, creatives, neurodivergents, queer kids, and the people who were searching for something larger to be a part of that would take them away from their ordinary lives.

Dreamers, all of us. We were the kids who just felt different.

The thing about feeling different

The thing about feeling different, is that even if there are people around you who understand, your different is different from their different, so in a way, you all still feel different. It’s the kind of life where you often find yourself standing in a room full of people yet still feel completely alone.

So what’s the big deal? Everyone feels different now and then, right?

Sure, but at the end of the day, do you feel like you will ever be fully and completely understood by another person? Does your family know the real you or just the you that you put on like an oversized sweater when you walk through the door? When you have a deep thought, does it feel worth it to try and share it with anyone else, or have you resigned yourself to just keeping those inside, always? When you look at society, do you feel a part of it or does it feel like they’ve all reached a consensus about the way things should be that you will never understand or want to be a part of?

Have you felt like you were broken throughout your life because the way you think is fundamentally different to most of the people around you?

I could go on, but I think you get it.

I don’t know what it is about me that feels at odds with the general population’s way of living, I just know that if that’s the life I’m supposed to want, something has gone horribly wrong here, because I just don’t.

Perhaps you understand. The model of success that so many people are still pursuing seems to be losing more and more of us as time goes. There is a work revolution happening, a rejection of the 40hr work week, a move to remote and entrepreneurial spaces, and more people leaving the traditional workplace to pursue soul-led callings.

I don’t think this is a coincidence. I think this is the result of living in a society that has been getting better and better at connecting those of us who have always felt a little different and giving us a glimpse of each other’s lives. Allowing us to see that there are other people who are saying no to the mediocrity of unfulfilling careers that force us to conform to a world that wants us normal.

It’s making it easier for us to find our people, but it’s also making it more evident than ever how wide the chasm between certain groups has gotten. So the existential dread of being different from the norm feels heightened in a way it hasn’t before. It makes one wonder where this is going and whether there is a place for them in the new world order that feels on the brink of bursting into reality.

Let your freak flag fly

My son, who is ten and - bless him - getting into theatre (to his mother’s delight), was just in a production of Shrek the Musical (I know, but give it a chance, it’s actually a delightful adaptation). Anyway, there is a song in it called “Freak Flag” that’s sung by the ensemble. It’s message is that sometimes you have to let you freak flag fly and just be the freak, the weirdo, the one who does things differently, and let that be your strength rather than your weakness.

I thought about that a lot over the course of the show. When I was younger, I had a group of friends who I trusted and felt would accept and love me no matter what. Being the weirdos, freaks, and outcasts at our school gave us a certain level of safety in letting our freak flags fly, because we had each other.

Did I once get spit on in 10th grade by a kid who was disgusted to see the gay boy I was walking with have the audacity to exist in the same hallway as him? Yes. But did that incident convince me to stop befriending and defending my queer friends? Absolutely not, it imprinted in me the need to love and accept them even harder.

Being different can cause you to build a wall around yourself (another great song from Shrek the Musical, I’m telling you, they really killed it), but it can also light a fire in you to shine even brighter in your otherness so that the people you encounter have no choice but to see you.

Some of them may see you as just another weirdo, they may look away, they may reject you… but what if they don’t? What if they lean in? What if they see some of the difference in themselves in the difference in you? What then?

This is how we build more connections and bridges between people, rather than isolating ourselves into factions at war with the idea of each other. When things shift in the landscape of society, this is how we walk through it feeling a little less alone as we try to discover where we belong and who we are meant to serve.

Showing people that there is another way to do things is what I think people who have always been different excel at the most. I think we tend to be more visionary, more experimental, more likely to follow our instincts and our passions with a bravery that not everyone possesses. We’re the out of the box thinkers and the folks who just don’t give a fuck if our freedom makes others uncomfortable.

Sound like you? Cool. I know it’s not always easy, especially when people just don’t get it. But there is a community of like-minded folks out there who may understand you better than the ones that happen to be a part of your everyday life right now. And if you don’t see them, then it may be your job in this life to go out and find them so they know they are not alone.

Let your differences be a beacon to others and you too can walk the halls of life together without fear.

So, in essence, go find your theatre people.

God help the outcasts

I was lucky enough to play the role of Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 2018. A truly life-changing experience, on the inside and the outside. I met found-family that I am bonded to for life, and I got to fully embody the message of embracing difference and the beauty of a multi-faceted and welcoming society.

(*Spoilers*) My character dies in the musical version of this story. She is the victim of hatred, ignorance, and the unwillingness of those who preach normality and conformity to embrace the diverse world outside of their doors. Of course, she stood for the opposite of all of those things. Her enduring message was, God Help the Outcasts, after all.

As a group of theatre kids we came together to create this work of art, we bonded, imbibed the message of this show, and then shared it with hundreds of people during our sold out run. The tears we shed during the finale every night were real, because it made us feel so deeply the importance of connection in the face of difference, and that was visceral.

Theatre has allowed me to experience these things, feel their truth in my bones, and use my passion and my bond with my beloved theatre friends to tell these stories to those who join us in the audience. It is always my fervent hope that they walk away with a new understanding, a more open mind, and above all - a feeling of connection that may not have been there before.

I don’t know if I would have ever discovered theatre had I not felt my difference keenly, and decided to look for a way to shine a light on it, rather than build a wall around it.

I don’t shrink from my difference, and I don’t think you should either.

Go find your theatre people, and make something beautiful together.