4.3: Case Study- Alys Dickerson Prepares Ophelia

Classical Texts and Contemporary Embodiment at American Players Theatre

Alys Dickerson’s journey to becoming an Artistic Associate at the renowned classical repertory company American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wisconsin, began long before she stepped into a rehearsal room. In this conversation, Dickerson reflects on the early sparks that drew her to the stage, her rigorous Meisner-based training at Northern Illinois University, and the discoveries that shaped her acclaimed performance as Ophelia. Speaking with candor and generosity, she traces the evolution of her craft—from high school auditions to professional Shakespeare, from ensemble work to casting and artistic leadership. As with the other artists featured in this book, Dickerson brings her personal history and context to bear on her work. In preparing to play Ophelia as a woman of color, she contended with and eventually rejected her own preconceived notions of the character as a shy, retiring, and explicitly white blond-haired blue-eyed waif. What emerges is a portrait of an artist’s process where discipline, curiosity, and sense of purpose illuminate not only how actors train, prepare, and perform, but how they build a life in the theatre.

“Everything the Role Needs is Already in You”

A conversation with Alys Dickerson

Alys Dickerson: Hi, my name is Alys Dickerson. I am an Artistic Associate at American Players Theatre and a graduate of Northern Illinois University’s 2016 MFA Acting class.

 

Gibson Alessandro Cima: Can you tell me how you got interested in acting? What were those early formative experiences in the theatre?

 

Dickerson: I was fifteen when I saw my first professional play. My father is a performer. He was a standup comedian and actor. It wasn’t unfamiliar to me, but I was a freshman in high school and I went to see Death of a Salesman at Indianapolis Repertory Theatre. The rest of my class was falling asleep, and I was leaned in. I thought, “I want to do that.” I auditioned for my first Shakespeare play in high school. I memorized a monologue from a movie, and I thought I did terribly. The next day some of my friends asked me, “Where were you? You were on the, you were on the callback sheet.” So, I went to the first day of rehearsal and said, “Hey, I was called back. But I didn’t go.” They said, “That’s not how this works.” That was my first start into theatre.

I went to the University of Kentucky and got a BA in theatre. We were doing Romeo and Juliet. I remember listening to what the other teachers thought about Juliet, and I thought, “Oh, that must be what she is like.” I heard a teacher say, “Yeah, she’s just a ninny.” I said that to my acting teacher and he was said, “Where did you get that from?” I responded, “Oh, I heard people talking about it.” He said, “Have you read the play?” I said, “No, I haven’t read the play.” That happened. I started to fall in love with Shakespeare.

I came to NIU in 2013. I took a year off out of undergrad and thought hard about what I wanted to do. I knew I loved theatre. But I didn’t yet know that I wanted to do it as a profession. I auditioned for a play called The History of Cardenio, one of Shakespeare’s unfinished plays. Scholars from several universities had gotten together and finished the play and were producing it at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). I auditioned and I got in, and I thought, “I want to get better at this.” Then it went from, “I want to get better at this” to, “I want to be the best at this.” The same teacher who asked me, “What are you doing?” when it came to Juliet, was the teacher I went to, and I said, “I want to audition for grad school.” So we started preparing audition pieces and I was going to do URTA (University Resident Theatre Association), which is a huge call where a lot of different actors show up to audition for grad schools. I did my audition, and I didn’t get chosen. There is a final open call, and if schools have stayed that next day, they can come and watch. I did my audition and then saw my name on the callback list for Northern Illinois University.

Then I came to NIU and I toured the school and I was still hesitant. I remember not really feeling it until I saw a grad student sitting in the hallway. I stepped out of my audition, and I was just breathing. He said, “Are you okay?” I said, “I think I’m okay. I don’t know what I’m doing here, but I feel like I’m supposed to act and I hope this is the right program.” He said, “Do you want me to just talk to you a hundred percent?” I said, “Yes.” He kicked the realest stuff to me and said, “This is a program that uses Meisner. You’ll learn about Stanislavski. You will have technique by the time you leave here.” I felt this splash of cold water on my face.

 

Cima: For those who don’t know who Meisner is or Stanislavski, can you explain a little bit about what the training is?

 

Dickerson: Stanislavski and Meisner are, it might be a stereotype, I don’t know, the godfathers of theatre and what American theatre learned to become was based on the principles of these two men. There’s more than just those two. But NIU is a Meisner-based program and what that means is you do a lot of repetition. You do a lot of moment-to-moment work. A lot of the work is training you to receive something in the moment and then respond authentically in the moment, while both you and your scene partner and your cast and ensemble know the given circumstances. Repetition work could look like the two of us sitting across from each other, and I would say, “You have brown suspenders on.” I would notice that you have brown suspenders, and you would repeat that. I have brown suspenders.

 

Cima: I have brown suspenders.

 

Dickerson: Exactly. You would repeat that until something else started to happen. Whether you start to check out or whether you think, “I might be feeling a point of view about these suspenders.” We had a wonderful teacher, Patricia Skarbinski, who is the reason to this day that I think I know what I’m doing on stage. Technique really came from her. She was one of Meisner’s students’ students. So, she was in the third tier. When we got here, we were told, “You’ll be a part of this lineage because she is a student of Meisner himself.” That was exciting to me. She made it healthy to approach the work with what you have today. We started with activity work. The goal was do an activity, any activity, something that you needed to get done. I think one of the first ones I did was try to string a guitar. There was another where I had to braid my sister’s hair. I brought in a wig setup, and I had to braid it because she was getting ready for prom. Then the next segment was adding urgency, "Why does it need to be done now?" Then we would add repetition. We would say, “I’m feeling frustrated. I’m getting this done.” You would perform the action with yourself, and then partner work was the next phase. One of the things she said that stuck with me most was, “Only say what you have to. Don’t say the thing that you think you need to say. Say what you have to say.” Some of us went on stage and had no lines and just let whatever was happening in the moment come through. To finish that process, we added a door, which was my favorite. You are in a scene with two people and now there’s a door involved and the one inside the door has an activity they have to get done, and the one outside the door needs something from this person. They come in and you may or may not know they’re coming. You may be expecting them, you might not. It broke down how a scene is supposed to work. Then you go out into professional theatre and think, “Oh, we are inside. Someone comes through the door and then something happens.”

 

Cima: The grammar of the scene.

 

Dickerson: Yes, exactly. So, there were a lot of equations, different equations, but it felt as if, “There’s still the same problem. What does this person coming in the door need?” Some of the best theatre I have seen in my life to date was in my grad class. Knowing what my classmates were going through, knowing what they were trying to work on, and then watching it happen in class, I would think, “Ah! This is the magic of theatre.” You hear that phrase “The magic of theatre” and it’s kind of corny, but also when you see it, you know what it is.

 

Cima: I’ve had that experience too, of being riveted by my students’ work. Not where I think, “Oh, congratulations to me,” but where I understand what it took them to get to that successful moment.

 

Dickerson: It brought us closer as a cohort. When you join a cohort, it’s a group of people that you go through your grad program life with. We spent three years seeing each other’s work and learning things about each other.

 

Cima: Plenty of people don’t get MFAs before they become professional actors. Why was it important to you to get an MFA?

 

Dickerson: I needed to learn how to do this. I think I had great instincts, and I think I liked being in front of people. I liked making people feel some type of way. I loved all those things. But I didn’t want to go through the world on a wing and a prayer and hope for the best. I wanted to learn. How does this industry work? How do I brand myself and what do I do if I am not meshing with a director? How do I translate a note? How do I work and collaborate as a team and an ensemble? Those are things I didn’t know I desired but benefited from. You’re learning from your educators, but you’re also learning from the people in your cohort.

Grad school one hundred percent prepared me for professional theatre. There were some aspects of the profession where I thought, “Oh, I’ve never experienced this.” But in the Business of Theatre class with Dr. Kay Martinovich, we did so many mock auditions I was ready to tear my hair out. Then when I graduated, I thought, "Oh no, this is the flow.” In the profession you get told “no” a lot. You get rejected a lot. And you have to audition a lot. If you book it or get the callback, you have to remember, “Oh, I’m no longer auditioning, I’m showing them the thing I can do.” Those are two different mentalities. That is something I think grad school sharpened me for. What happens once you get in the door and no one’s testing you anymore? You are the only one who is responsible for your work at that point. With an MFA, a terminal degree, you can teach. You can “go more places.” I’m heavily quotation-ing that because no one knows what your journey’s going to be as an actor. If I wanted to teach, if I wanted to run a theatre program, if I wanted to build a school, those are things that I would need a degree for.

 

Cima: Can you tell me how you landed the role of Ophelia at APT (American Players Theatre)? What was your process in building the role?

 

Dickerson: I auditioned for APT three times. It was 2019. I was working at Remy Bumpo as well as Organic Theatre (both Chicago-based theatre companies). I was performing two roles at the time. I was working my butt off in a day job. I still felt broke and I was depressed. I was in The Father at Remy Bumpo. It’s a beautiful play about Alzheimer’s. My friend in the play told me, “APT is doing generals [open call auditions]. We should go.” I thought, “I have no gas. No gas, metaphorically and no gas literally.” I remember being so exhausted. That’s such a part of the lifestyle. Really wanting to act and going for it means sacrificing some things. Anything you want, you have to sacrifice things. But I remember being super broke and super hungry and working all the time. I was driving us both up there [to APT]. I had one headshot left. I had given them all away. I spilled coffee on my headshot on the way up there. I am so tired. It’s winter. It’s cold. I get in there. I show them my stuff. I did a Portia monologue (from Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare) and then I think I did a monologue from King Headley II by August Wilson. Then I think I showed them a Joan of Arc monologue (from Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw). I said, “I don’t have my headshot. I’m so sorry, I can email it to you.” The casting director, Carey Cannon said, “No, we’ll take it.” They take the coffee-stained headshot—my resume’s falling apart on the back of it.

I do my audition piece and I was ready to walk out. She says, “Okay, so what’s next for you?” I said, “I’m going to play Jo in Little Women (by Louisa May Alcott) at First Folio (a Chicago-based theatre company).” “What do you like to do?” I answered, “I’m a painter. I really love family. I really love faith. I go to church a lot. I love the beach.” If you’re lucky enough, they’ll ask you about yourself. She gives me a note and says, “Can we see them again?” I did my pieces again, and I remember the second time I did my piece—this is an NIU thing—I remember sometimes I would have to prepare and shake off the last performance and begin another one. I remember running towards the back of the wall and pushing myself off the wall and then starting my piece because I needed something to help. She must have loved it because she said, “Okay, stay here. I want to introduce you to somebody.” Carey Cannon brings in the artistic director Brenda Devita and they see my pieces again. She says, “Okay, we may have a role for you, we don’t know yet, but we’ll let you know.” I said, “Great. I’ve got to get back for this matinee.” We had a matinee that day and it is a two-hour drive. I was so tired. I remember learning how exhaustion helps me. It’s part of my process now. When I am too tired to fake it, when I’m too tired to—I don’t know, have any mask on, my work is amazing. I think. It feels free. It feels alive.

Then I booked the Scottish play (Macbeth by William Shakespeare) that first year. I was Lady McDuff. She has three or four pages, maybe. I remember feeling like I made an impression because my track was very small, but I took it very seriously. Advice I give to early career actors when they’re working at giant theatres: you might have to play the attendant and hold grapes or a fan or an umbrella. The third spear holder from the left trope is real. I tell my students, be the best spear holder from the left. Be the best nurse. Be the best maid. Be the best attendant. Make it your life’s work up there. Someone will notice. And they did.

The next year, the same director who directed Mackers (Macbeth by William Shakespeare) said he wanted me to play Ophelia, which I thought was wild when I first heard it, to be honest. I had never thought about playing that role. I had seen her in my head so many ways that I just didn’t think I fit that mold. That was a learning moment. It’s a big part. It’s an important piece of that play. I didn’t want to mess up. She has a scene we called the music scene. It is more commonly known as the mad scene. But the director said, “Let’s start calling it the music scene. I don’t want to call it the mad scene.” I’m a musician as well. I was a singer, well before I was an actress, and I got to compose my own music for Ophelia. I got to arrange it. Then the sound technician used it for the rest of the play. It was incredible. I remember Patricia Skarbinski told me in my third year of graduate school, “I think you are going to be someone who challenges folks. You’ll challenge the perception of a leading lady.” I appreciated hearing that because sometimes you’ll leave a training program and say to yourself, “I am going to be the funny friend, and I am going to be the dad. I’m going to be the ‘insert stereotype here.’” I remember challenging my own perception of what I thought Ophelia was supposed to be. I thought she was a skinny, like four-foot white, blonde woman, to be perfectly frank, and I am not that.

 

Cima: We forget that Ophelia was originally played by a 13-year-old boy.

 

Dickerson: Exactly. All these, Juliets, all these princesses, there were young men playing these roles. Who am I to think that I can’t do it? Unlike other processes since, Ophelia was a process where I had to do some unveiling for myself. I had to say, “Why did you think you couldn’t do this?" In the beginning, I remember making my voice really light and really airy. I did that because of my bias and because of what I thought she was supposed to sound like. There was one rehearsal where I got really frustrated and said the rest of my piece in a lower register. The director said, “That! That! Can that stay, please? You. Can you stay?” I had this lightbulb moment. I thought, "What am I doing?" This is post-MFA, post-BA. I felt as if this was my apprentice year, watching the other actors and learning, “Everything that the role needs is already existing in you.” I remember feeling ease after that.

When we talk about process, I remember booking Ophelia and reckoning with that. Reckoning with booking a lead is part of the process because if you’re holding a plate of fruit, you think, “I know my job, I know everything I need to do.” But if you’re Hamlet, Ophelia, Lysander, Demetrius, the folks who keep the play going, there needs to be generation. There need to be choices. There needs to be leadership. Your prep should be on lock. And when I say prep, I mean everything your actor needs to do to prepare for the first read should be done. That looked like me reading the play over and over and over again. I knew I was playing the role six to eight months before. I had time to meditate on her. I had time to talk with the costume designer. I remember I had just done a big chop. I cut all my hair off. But I remember the quintessential thing of Ophelia’s song scene, mad scene, music scene is she gives flowers out. Rosemary, a daisy.

 

Cima: And each of the flowers have different meanings.

 

Dickerson: Exactly. I didn’t want to hand out flowers. I thought, “I want to hand out bits of my hair.” The director said, “Tell me more about that.” I responded, “I’m thinking about how important my hair journey has been for me.” For a lot of black women—a lot of black people, honestly—hair is a whole other level of your identity, your confidence, your lineage, your family. That’s just scratching the surface. I remember saying, “I want to have a journey with my hair.” It’s her final scene before she drowns herself. I said, “I think I want to pull my hair out.” I don’t know why. I think that image is madness. There’s so much about, “Oh, I was pulling my hair out.” We say that often, but I wanted to go there and do it. He loved that idea. I came to the table with ideas because I had read the play, thought, daydreamed about what the movie in my head would look like, then I brought that to the table on the first day.

 

Cima: You brought the idea of tearing out your hair into the rehearsal room?

 

Dickerson: I think it was before the first day. The director and I had a working relationship because of the Scottish play the year prior. He would call me and ask questions. I would share my Pinterest board. He would share images he’d seen. We agreed on some things before the first read: the music scene, my hair being the little gifts that I give away, and the song. I told him, “I’m going to try to work on how I want this song to sound. He put me in touch with the sound technician. I remember being in the shower, thinking about the lines. They’re nonsensical sometimes. You read Ophelia, you think, “What is she talking about?” I have always been naturally a melody maker. I sang her first line, “How should I, your true love know?” The melody came into my mind in the shower. I thought, “Ooh! Yeah, I like that.” It sounds a little Shakespearean, too. It has a Shakespeare timbre-y sound to it. Then the rest just came. Honestly, it was beautiful. Nothing’s better than when you get to do the thing you know how to do, and you get to do it well and you get to share it with people.

APT taught me that showing up off book (entirely memorized) is great. The first step of my process is knowing the play, knowing the scene that came before and the scene that comes after. What starts the play? What ends the play? By the time we’re all together reading it in a space, you can make some choices. There’s a director friend I have at APT who says, “I like first reads because it means I can show the director how I think the character’s supposed to go.” I get to try something. The first step of my process is truly just reading the play. Then the second is knowing how to memorize. In a lot of talkbacks (post-show discussions) folks ask the actors, “How do you memorize all those lines?” I don’t know why that question irks me beyond. I think, “That’s what you wanna know after all this that we just showed you, you wanna know that?”

 

Cima: But if you take it seriously, there is a real question in that. Because plenty of people don’t go around memorizing all these old stories, these speeches word for word.

 

Dickerson: Right. Punctuation for punctuation.

 

Cima: How do we go about memorizing all those lines? Or why do we do that?

 

Dickerson: Why do we do that? Shakespeare wrote these words. These words mean, “I love you.” These words mean, “Where have you been? I’m your wife.” These words are what the character is thinking. In graduate school, Heather Corwin taught a lab class called Sculpting the Text on how to memorize giant chunks of heightened text. We had a piece of text in front of us. The homework was, you’re not allowed to memorize it. I think I did Portia’s speech (from Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare): “You have ungently, Brutus, stole from my bed,” is the first line. I would have to find gestures with my body for each word. You assign text to your body. It took all day. It does get tedious. But by the end, you’re supposed to take all the movement out and the piece is in your brain because of muscle memory. This is a workshop I teach when I go to universities, because actors have to memorize pages worth of text and if that can be your thing, it’s money in the bank. If you’re the one who says, “I’ll memorize that whole one-man show,” you will get work.

I remember I was at NIU on a teaching residency with APT while I was memorizing Ophelia. I would go back to my hotel room. I would read the text. I would sculpt the text and I would try to associate movements to my body. When I got to the first read, it wasn’t, “Let me remember what I’m saying.” It was, “This is who I’m talking to. This is our relationship to them. My father’s right here when I say this line.” Then it’s time for given circumstances. Once you’ve got the words in your mouth, what’s happening around you? How do you really feel about what’s happening around you? Claudius and Gertrude, what’s my relationship to them? They’re on stage with me the whole time. Laertes, what is my relationship with him? We have a scene together. Hamlet, I only see him twice, but he’s her world. I identify the relationship and then ask questions. A big part of the process is writing down at least fifty questions you have about your character or the world of the play. I write down all my curiosities and look at where I am in the play and who says my name. Who says any commentary about me? What is Ophelia doing in the mouth of Gertrude, in the mouth of Hamlet. What is Ophelia doing in her own world? What is the audience supposed to see from her arc? What do I as the actor want them to track with me? I move between questions and given circumstances.

 

Cima: You seemed to provide a very modern take on Ophelia. You appeared to be portraying the point of view of a contemporary woman in this situation and I wondered where that came from, if that’s Alys there?

 

Dickerson: I am a strong individual, and I endow power to the spaces I go in and I know what my capacity is. The director called me out for trying to shrink it into this image of Ophelia. He said, “No, I wanted you. I meant that I wanted you.” The word was “duty.” This character has a duty to her family, to Hamlet, to the kingdom, to the succession plan. There is a job to be done. I think a big part of what kept me grounded in that contemporary energy was the relationship I had with Chike Johnson who played my father. We talked a lot about the little things we would change. Ophelia says, “While I was sewing in my chamber.” This director asked, “Can we say reading?” Because sewing is a different image in 2022 than it was in 1599. He said, “I don’t know that sewing fits this Ophelia that we’ve built.” I agreed and we changed it to “While I was reading in my chamber.”

We curated a little bit with the text, not too much. It was all the same words. But what if she is grounded and knows who she is? What if she does obey her father but doesn’t want to? Another thing that made me think, “Oh, she’s a victim,” is that she’s a victim in all these scholarly papers and in all these folks’ renditions of her, she is this victim. I wasn’t interested in that. I’d be faking it if I were to play it that way. Jamal James played Laertes (Ophelia’s brother) and he’s one of my best friends in the world. So, during the farewell between Laertes and Ophelia, I thought, “I want to talk to you like you’re my best friend.” Not just little sis having to listen to big brother, which is also there. But what if little sis is saying, “You don’t know what you’re talking about because you’re going to go run your dalliances wherever you want to go and I have to stay here, because I have a duty.” It highlighted how we treat men and women in this Shakespearean world. But also, that doesn’t feel far from what I know. “It’s okay, you men can run off and do whatever they want. I still have a job to do. I still have money to make. I still have this.” I liked that the director let me lean into those moments. I like that, he let her say, “Is it just me? Am I going mad?” That’s what it is. “Yeah. Yeah. You are going mad. You are.”

 

Cima: Can you talk about your current position at APT and what you find yourself doing and how you’ve taken your love of performing and storytelling into a different realm?

 

Dickerson: Thank you for asking. It’s good for me to say it out loud: I’m an Artistic Associate now at American Players Theatre, which is an artistic administrative position. A big part of that position is reading plays and casting bodies. I also run the apprentice program. I choose who gets in the apprentice program and what they get to learn and I am the point person for our understudy system. I get to eat, sleep, breathe, sweat, drink theatre. And it pays the bills. It’s honestly a dream come true. Going from being on stage to working on the production side and helping produce these plays, cast these plays, choose these plays, I did not realize—and still probably don’t, I’ve only been doing it for two years now— but I did not realize how much went into putting up a play from choosing the director, choosing the playwright, looking at the text and making sure that we can tell this story, asking does it play in 2020? Is this a classic? Then deciding the bodies we choose to audition for these characters, watching someone want it so desperately, but not, maybe they’re not quite right, or there’s a different answer that they’re bringing, and then seeing someone come in so confident, they couldn’t care less if they get the role and then you think, “Oh, there it is.” That part.

APT is a classical rotating repertory theatre. What that means is we do classics. We do old plays that are “timeless” and we do them in between each other. There is a set on our stage in the morning that gets torn down and another one gets put up for the afternoon. Then another two plays go up tomorrow. Then another play goes up the next day. The same casts from play A are in play C, and they have to understudy play D. It is so much. There are days where I think, “Wow. Do people know what it takes to put up a play?” I didn’t. I certainly didn’t. I have been doing this most of my life and now I have a different reverence for the production side of things and the patience you need and how to set up a design team. How to listen and collaborate in a real way. Where on stage, it’s the same five-to-twenty-four people. We have our words already, and when rehearsal’s over, I go home. In my new position, we’re auditioning 200 people for one role. We know some of these people. We have conversations with agents. We vet everybody that we hire. What that means is if I see on your resume that you worked for same theatre three times, I’m going to hit that theatre up and say, “Hey, do you know this actor? What do you think about this actor?” A lot of times that seals the deal and sometimes folks warn, “Do not hire this person.”

I do miss acting. I miss acting incredibly, I came to APT to act. But I think I’m growing up and I’m in these rooms for a reason. I get to help folks who are older than me learn what’s happening today. I get to learn from these young, hungry actors what it means to be after a character or a gig now, because that changes. That evolves over time. There are elements that are the same. It’s a lot of learning and a lot of responsibility. The things I love about it are that it is what I said I wanted to do. I said, “If I can make theatre and live off of making theatre, I think I’ll be a happy person.” That’s what’s happening. I get to watch all these Shakespeare plays come to life. I think that by the time I’m back on stage, I’ll have a giant cheat code because I’ve watched all these Shakespeare plays develop and these brilliant actors prep for these roles. I think there will be a day where I think, “Oh yeah, I’ve seen that. I’m ready. I can do it.” It’s like learning another language.

One part of the job that I’m still learning is networking. There are folks who—and I don’t blame them for this—I was not this type of actor, but I know actors that want to network, want to be in your face, and want to say, “I’m doing this and you should come.” Of course, I should come and, of course, I should see your work. But some days I want to go home and watch The Office and turn everything off. There are certain relationships that feel transactional because I am in a position now where I can help folks get jobs. I can make things happen, which I never considered as an actor ever. I didn’t consider that. So that’s a little sticking point. But I think it’s good for me to feel, I think it’s good for me to learn.

 

Cima: Having stepped onto the other side of the casting table, do you have any advice for young actors looking to start out?

 

Dickerson: Whatever you can do to eliminate the false truth that your worth is in how much you book, you will be a happy actor. Truly, you’ll be a happy artist. There are a lot of actors that I see now, and I was one, I think. When I was younger, it was, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t book this. I’m trash, I’m not good enough.” You can take on a failure scarcity mentality doing that. And it’s just not true. It’s just not true. I’ve been in so many rooms now where I’ve seen the actor come in and there it is. There’s the character. That does not mean the actor who comes in after or before them was not excellent. We did auditions for King Lear a couple years ago, and everyone who came in for Edmund was amazing. I thought, “There’s no two alike. How do you do this?” The director had a vision, and the director said, “That’s the one I want.” Everyone else was amazing. Try not to associate your worth with how many yeses you get. It is about longevity, if you want to make this a career. It’s about longevity. How do you see yourself running this marathon and not sprinting to the television screen? It took me fifteen years before I got a national commercial. I worked up to that point. It’s mental health advice, honestly. There are so many other business tips and tricks and whatnot. But to keep yourself on the ground, decide what your worth is in something else, not in how many yeses you get.

And have a life. Have a life. Go and get your life. When I was younger coming up, people said, “I don’t know if you can have a partner or a dog because you’re going to be driving around to all these auditions.” It is not true. Go fall in love. Go spend time with your family. Go learn how to make chocolate. Whatever you want to do with your life, still do it. We live in an age where you can do more than one thing. Everything you do will enrich whatever role comes next. Everything you do.

Discussion Questions \(\PageIndex{1}\)

1. How did Dickerson’s early experiences and initial misconceptions about auditioning shape her growth as a performer?
2. What role did formal training at NIU and the Meisner approach play in her professional development?
3. How did Dickerson navigate challenging a traditional perception of Ophelia, and what impact did that have on her performance?
4. In what ways does her current work in casting and artistic administration inform her acting—and vice versa?
5. How can actors maintain mental health and personal fulfillment while pursuing a long-term theatre career?