Chauntee’s Cafe to broadway

Playing was a way of life where I grew up. There were little tv, electronic toys, or video games to distract us from the ever present call (and nagging nudges from mothers) to go outside. Growing up in rural Virginia lent itself to strenuous work and physical play on a daily basis. If I was not working, I was playing.

I was either playing in the dirt with my dogs and two younger brothers or pulling out splinters from my hands from hours of pretending to be Dominique Dawes on old two-by-fours. I would ride bikes for miles upon miles on our dusty dirt roads or be found tirelessly lugging logs around a forest opening to create my very own “Chauntee’s Café.”

Today, I still run miles but more on treadmills than through forests. I do pull out splinters but they are mostly my daughter’s splinters from her climbing into trees, not me. And I do still love cafes decked out with cozy wood although I don’t own them and I drink real coffee now.

Yet, despite my years of physical, emotional, and spiritual growth, creative successes and failures, and the wisdom that life’s ups and downs bring you, I find myself continuously searching for the joy, curiosity, spontaneity, and willingness to fall or fail that encapsulated my youth.

I had no idea that those countless miles, my splintered, ashy hands, and never ending imagination was preparing me for an art form and profession that I would discover many years later. It was these moments in my youth, amongst many others, that solidified the fact that your past cannot be erased from your art.

My creative work is simply an inscription of my life and the stories that come alive through the body in which I have lived. I share my art as an actor, wife, mother, professor, and writer in the same way that I sought out those simple yet mysterious adventures in my backyard as a young girl. And if I do fall or fail, I do so with a willingness to get up, cry a little if I have to, and try again.

I work hard everyday to stress less and play more. Mind you, play does not justify laziness in practice, pedagogy, passion, or purpose. In fact, play works as a more efficient means with which to reach any and all of the above ends. I encourage others to play with the fervor of the young and spirited whether performing on stage, teaching in the classroom, or writing words on a page. As one of my favorite acting teachers, Seth Barrish, often says, “It is called a play after all.”