Interview with Shenandoah Conservatory Student Actress, Colleen Foster

Colleen Foster and I shared a single Spanish class during my senior year, her junior year, at Yorktown High School in Arlington, VA when she was renowned for her YHS Theatre performances. But our experiences during that class alone informed me of her passion, gusto, and tendency to mull over ideas many people spend a lifetime never considering. I vowed that I would interview her at least once before I died. Now I've finally followed through on that promise. Here is what she has to say about herself as an artist and her experiences with art:

*Tell me a little about yourself, personally and creatively/professionally. What first got you interested in theatre?

As of right here and now, I am finishing up a year of training at Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, VA, working on a BFA in Musical Theater. This means 18.5 credits a semester of all showbiz-related classes, preparing you for a career on Broadway. Just a sampling of schedule components: Basic Acting 1st semester followed by Acting Techniques 2nd semester (the Acting classes have always been my favorite!!), Applied Voice (private singing lessons), Chorus, Intro to Music Theory, Foundations of Ballet, Stagecraft, Stage Makeup, Sightsinging, Lyric Diction, Piano 1 and 2...

*How would you describe your theatre education up until this point?

Up until recently, becoming a triple-threat was very much my focus and my constant drive. It started with a community theater production of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever when I was ten. I got hooked, and went on to do all sorts of community theater in northern Virginia and Maryland. In high school, I completed Theater II, III, and IV with Carol Cadby (who is fantastic, and very much prepared me for acting classes in Shenandoah's pre-professional program), culminating in a one-person show on Vivien Leigh, something I still am very proud of to this day. It was called Vivien Leigh: Inner Chaos Is A Double-Edged Sword, and was very much my baby, something that took months of work and guts to put together (and lots of viewings of Gone With the Wind). I also had two private voice coaches and sang with the Yorktown Madrigals, and took ballet, tap, and jazz dance.

*What experience do you have in other art forms?

I want to always have a foot in showbiz, but not my entire being 100% of the time. Right now, at this part of my journey, I want to dabble. Yes, to act and sing and dance, but what about writing? I love poetry and free verse and spend a lot of time scribbling in notebooks and typing up "splat words" which I share with people (previously on Facebook, that classy literary site, haha, but now typed up and in hard copies that I mail and give out, a sort of self-publishing). And what about painting? That's something I've always wanted to try and am hoping to take classes in at the Arlington Arts Center this summer (a GREAT visual arts establishment; if you live in Arlington and haven't visited yet, you are truly missing out on part of the Arlington cultural experience!!).

*Then what are your post-graduation plans? Where do you hope to see yourself in ten years?

I am a work in progress, so who knows where I'll be a year from now, but as of now I am finishing up this semester at Conservatory (as I answer these questions, I literally JUST got out of my Acting jury, where you do a monologue for a panel and are critiqued), writing lots of splat words under the pen name Zuri Foster ("zuri" is a Swahili word meaning both "beautiful" and "good," which I thought was awesome), and just trying to take every thing a day at a time, to be gentle with myself (something I'm horrible at, being a rampant perfectionist and often over-sensitive). I want to apply to a liberal arts school somewhere in the Commonwealth where I can major in Spanish (which I studied for 6 years in high school), but also take classes in film studies, ballet, piano, and another foreign language, and study abroad. I find getting out of America for spurts of time to be very centering (some of the few moments in my life when the inner frenzy slowed down were in Thailand, riding elephants, and Botswana, on safari).

So I guess at this point, the only way I can "nutshell" myself is... an Artist. In every sense of the word, wanting to explore and just follow my Intuitive Voice, to connect, to center myself. Writing, drawing, acting, dancing, playing piano, singing... honestly, I really do think all the arts overlap on some level. It is us wanting to express our humanity (and how flawed yet sacred we all are), and saying the same things in different languages. I love the term "Interdisciplinary Artist," because I think so many of us are. I think most people are in one way or another, even if they don't realize it. The business major who doodles in the corner of his class notes has an artist side of him, whether he knows it or not.

*What advice do you have for anyone interested in pursuing an acting career?

The world of showbiz is a very complex place, and as you've probably heard, intense and often mean. (I think Donna McKechnie hit the nail on the head when she said that it's "second only to boxing and prostitution.") You get told a lot as an actor that you are a "product" and must market yourself as such, that you must be aware of your "type" (oh what a horrible four-letter word), meaning what character description you fit into (leggy blonde bombshell? sexy Latina dancer? etc.). It can be very hard, because 90% of showbiz is about the biz-- the competition (spoken and unspoken), the insecurities many people bring with them (the stories in A Chorus Line are still relevant today; many people in showbiz are working through so many memories), the sizing-up of others as a defense mechanism. Half the time casting makes no sense, and two different directors/agents will tell you two different things. Sometimes it has nothing to do with your performance... scratch that, OFTEN it has nothing to do with your performance, but is about your height, hair color, vocal pitch, whether or not you "fit" with the rest of the cast, how the casting director woke up feeling that day... It's very surreal, and all highs and lows (very little middle ground). You alternate between being in fantasy and (because it can be so fun and so rewarding), and being leveled (it is painful to have to constantly be up against your friends, comparing yourself to them, etc.). At the right time and place, though, it is exactly the fix you need, and where you would rather be more than anywhere else. It's addictive.

*Any last words?

As an artist, you need to thirst to see and experience everything. You need to both delve into yourself and explore outward, every day. Self-love is very important and enables you to connect with others and communicate with them. You need to know when to fight, to kick and scream, and when to let go and practice patience and acceptance. You need to get out there and make mistakes. So no matter what field you are considering-- acting, writing, dancing, ANY combination of the arts-- you definitely need to try it. You can't just write it off as "not a real job" and spend the rest of your life wondering, "what if, what if." I would never have known that Conservatory is not the right environment for me if I'd turned down my acceptance to a BFA Music Theater program (to which very few people were accepted; I worked hard to get in) at the get-go. Trust in the energy of the Universe (as hippie-esque as that sounds), and go where you are lead. To any aspiring artist of any kind-- GOOD LUCK, trust your gut, and we are all in this craziness called life with you, all flailing around trying to understand it, too... art isn't easy (as Sondheim said in Sunday In the Park With George), but it is sooo worth it. Give yourself permission to grow and change.