i am not an artist by emily hoffert
“You are not an artist,” he says to me, extending his arm out directly in front of him, envelope in hand. “Our program only accepts real artists,” he goes on, “and you are simply not one.” I stand in a school hallway—any school hallway—blank-faced, fingertips tingling, legs becoming jello beneath me.
“I don’t understand,” my voice rings out weakly. “I worked on this audition every day for six months. I love theatre more than anything else in my life. I care. Why wouldn’t you want to teach me more about it?”
A smile creeps its way across his face. He rolls his head back in contorted maniacal laughter. The laughter pours out of his mouth and weaves its way around my ankles, and all of a sudden I can’t move—I’m shackled—as the laughter grows louder and louder and reaches its way up my legs, up my hips, up my waist, up my shoulders and arms and neck and fills my nose and blocks my ears and covers my eyes and I can’t breathe
——and then it stops. I’m on the floor. He leans over me; he has grown ten feet tall. His lips gently part. He tilts his head down at me. His black eyes narrow as they roll across my body.
“Sweetie,” he whispers, “I don’t give a shit.”
Had I received my rejection letter in person, that is how I imagine it would have gone. But I didn’t. I didn’t even receive a physical letter—rather, I was sent an email, with a link to a website.
I sit on the edge of my bed, alone.
You’ve got mail.
My fingers shake as they fumble with my laptop keyboard. I open the email. I click the link. Electronic confetti falls from the top of my computer screen. My heart shoots forward and pulls my body off of the bed.
“MOM! DAD! I GOT INTO FORDHAM! I GOT IN! I GOT IN! I GOT IN I GOT IN I GOT IN I GOT—”
My screaming catches in my throat as I read the fine print on the website page.
Congratulations on your acceptance to Fordham! This is a testament to your academic achievement and strength as a student. But you are not an artist.
I blink twice. I read it again.
Congratulations on your acceptance to Fordham! But you are not an artist.
I rub my eyes. I read it again.
You are not an artist.
Again.
You are not an artist.
Again.
You are not an artist.
Again.
Fuck yourself.
When my parents arrive in my room, I am kneeling on my floor, my nose an inch from my laptop screen. I tell them I don’t understand what’s happening on the website page. I tell them I’ve been reading it over and over again and I don’t understand what it’s saying. The words keep changing and I don’t understand. My mother sits down next to me, gently grabs my shoulders, and pulls me away from the computer screen. My father sits on the floor across from us and sets my laptop in his lap. He stares at the screen for a long time, his face unmoving.
Finally, he takes a breath and looks up at us.
“So, you were accepted,” my father beams. “With a huge scholarship!”
My mother yelps and wraps me in a suffocating hug.
“But,” his voice wavers, “but not as a theatre major.”
“What?” My mother’s grip on my shoulders tightens. “How could she be accepted and denied at the same ti—”
“Yeah, I know, but Lana, look—here it says—”
“Let me see tha—”
“She could attend as a philo—”
“—osophy major, yes, okay, um, I th—”
“So she’s accepted, but just no—”
“Not to the theatre progr—”
“Not to the theatre program, no, but—”
“She’s still accepted, and—”
“It was just the audition that didn’t go too well so—”
“But the rest of her application was gorgeous, she just—”
“Just didn’t pass the audition, no—”
“Oh, sweetie…”
“Lana, wow, look at this financial aid packag—”
“Holy cow, Ken, this is fantast—”
“I know.”
“This is perfect.”
“I know.”
“She has to take it.”
“I know.”
They both stare at me, their teary smiles full of pride and heartbreak. But I could barely see them. All I could see was the image in my mind:
You are not an artist.
Six months later, my parents and I are dragging my luggage across floor twenty two of McKeon hall, to my dorm room. I’m not hot, but gallons of sweat roll down the back of my neck. During the ten minute elevator ride up to my floor, I must have introduced myself to thirty new people.
Hi I’m Natalie! I’m an english major! Hi I’m Mark! I’m an environmental science major! Hi I’m James! I’m an english major, too! Hi I’m Julia! I’m a communications major!
Hi. I’m Emily. I’m a theatr—philosophy major. Sorry, no, I—yeah, philosophy. Philosophy major.
The words feel foreign in my mouth, even after speaking them three hundred times throughout the three days of orientation. The declaration of my philosophy major is met with wide eyes, blank stares, and slow head nods. People jokingly ask me what job I plan to pursue with my notoriously useless philosophy BA. I jokingly respond that I have no fucking clue—I don’t even know what philosophy is—my audition wasn’t good enough for the theatre major, so I figured I would pursue the one major less employable. We all laugh, then realize that none of us were actually joking. So we all laugh harder.
By the second week of college, I’d met with the assistant director of the theatre program, multiple theatre professors, and various upperclassmen theatre majors. I asked each of them what I could do to become a part of the program. They each said the same thing:
Work on your internal transfer audition. Make it good.
Make it good. The most vague yet specific, obscure yet concrete advice. Want to study theatre? Be talented—objectively talented, if there’s such a thing. Make it good.
I meet with my advisor, a frizzy-haired philosophy professor, to discuss my concerns. He throws his feet up on his desk and takes a swig of pepto bismol. “You think you’re an artist, huh?” he asks me, “What do you have to show for it?”
I swallow my frustration. For the next two months, I spend hours every night in the brightly-lit, white-walled dining lounge across from my dorm room. After a full day of class, homework, and studying—I run my audition pieces over and over and over and over and over again, until my voice cracks and my mouth runs out of saliva. You are not an artist. Until my eyes won’t stay open. You are not an artist. Until the pain in my thighs and lower back signals that it’s 1:00 am and I need to go to sleep and be done, for tonight. You are not an artist. You are not an artist. You are not an artist.
I enter the audition room. Three white-haired men sit behind a long table strewn with headshots, pens, notes, and empty disposable coffee cups. I look in to their black eyes, feel my heart drop, but smile warmly. I had done this audition before, a year ago. And I had failed. This is my second and final chance. My fingertips tingle, my legs become jello beneath me, but I push myself forward. I collapse into a chair and exhale my monologues; the words roll off my tongue easier than breath. I can barely hear myself speaking over the volume of my own heartbeat, but I squeeze my nails into my palms to remind myself that I have a job to do: I tell them that I love theatre more than anything else in my life. I care. Why wouldn’t they want to teach me more about it? I tell them that I am an artist, and I wonder if they believe me. I wonder if I believe myself.
Three weeks later, I am kneeling on my dorm room floor, my nose an inch from my laptop screen, staring intently at an email containing a link I have not yet opened.
Subject: FORDHAM THEATRE INTERNAL TRANSFER AUDITION RESULTS.
My cursor hovers above the link, but I can’t bring myself to click on it. The room spins, I feel my blood shooting through my veins, and my skull pulsates with anticipation—I realize it’s a familiar feeling—the same feeling I get right before walking onstage. The first time I felt it, I was six years old. I stood frozen in the wings of a tiny community theatre in suburban New Jersey, all three feet of my body shivering beneath my feather-covered costume. I was playing a bird. The curtain opened, the stage lights flickered on, and I was supposed to walk onstage. But I couldn’t. I turned around and looked up at the show’s director, who was standing right behind me. I told him I was going to be sick. I’d never done this before. I couldn’t go, I couldn’t do it.
He kneeled down, took my hands in his, and told me that this is what it is to be alive, and to create theatre. We feel fear, but we don’t run away from it. We run toward it. We run into it, and we are beautiful. “You are talented. You are prepared. You are an artist,” he said to me, “And it’s time for you to trust that.”
I turned back to the stage.
I closed my eyes and took a long breath. I felt my fear and did not run.
I was beautiful.
I still am.
I spread my wings, drag my finger across my mousepad, and into the fear I fly.