“In a very real way, all of us are actors. Every one of you is playing the leading role in the story of your own life. It’s a heroic narrative and you’re the protagonist. All of us, even in our quietest shapes, are living heroically - or trying to.”
What’s my motivation? It’s a phrase we’ve heard actors ask countless times. However the answer to that might be much deeper than we think.
In this second to last episode of our Artists on the Cape Series, Susan talks with actor, director, and author Jeff Zinn about his book The Existential Actor and how its themes extend beyond the theatre, making it a study of humanity and what motivates us all.
Together Susan and Jeff discuss universal truths such as awareness of our own mortality, the armor we wear to protect ourselves, how culture affects how we see the world, and the losses that we choose.
“I need to fight for who I am, and I need to do it now.”
In the fifth episode of our Artists on the Cape Series, we are joined by the wildly talented singer and songwriter Tianna Esperanza, who discusses her debut album Gypsy Afro, her experiences of growing up on Cape Cod and her search for community, how loss and grief have shaped her art and her life, and what all of these things have taught her about moving forward, who she is, and how she wants to be seen.
“I was putting too much emphasis on my music making me successful…so I put it away.”
In the fourth episode of our Artists on the Cape Series, singer/songwriter Sarah Burrill takes us through various journeys through life. She talks about how she began her journey as a singer/songwriter at the age of three when she saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, the challenges of the entertainment industry, her difficulties and struggles with addiction and how that affected her music, and her battle with a rare form of invasive breast cancer.
She shares what she has learned from each of these phases of her life, about not tying our talent to our success, about expectations and resentment, and about the power of love from your entire community to help heal both the body and the spirit.
“Make your own change. It’s all out there and once you start putting the pieces together, you can create the future.”
In the third episode of our Artists on the Cape Series, Susan talks with actor, director, and playwright David Drake about his trajectory as an artist and activist, how he came to understand his part in the larger picture by witnessing the events unfolding around him during the AIDS crisis, how that inspired him to write his acclaimed play The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, and how he uses his art and the theatre to hold up a mirror to the audience with the deep intention to teach us and bring us together.
He also talks about his vision for a better world and the work that needs to happen now as we continue to move forward and create the future we want to see.