Raised in a Christian home, Smith says he got into theater partly because it brought him social attention in high school—a tale many actors tell. But when he reconnected years later with the church, it didn’t feel like a major change, he says. “It wasn’t that dramatic in terms of my world view and Biblical view.” He says the two pursuits share a common theme of “conveying truth in a transparent manner,” which he calls “really the essence of acting.”
Smith, who calls upon skills from both the theater and the church to write occasional pieces for Drama Ministry Magazine, says that “the problem sometimes with the church is that we have decided that a lot of art with a capital A is somehow not about God.” He adds, “Anything that is truly art, from my viewpoint, is about God. True art is about God.”
If author Kallos’ exploration of fictional characters might run more deeply due to her PATP training, so too does Smith’s feel for people’s motivations in pastoral counseling. It might sound like actor-talk for Smith to say “You can’t activate a negative intention and make it believable,” but it’s a helpful way to understand human behavior. In Smith’s view, an angry, potentially abusive husband rarely intends to be so. “He’s making a choice based on some form of internal motivation,” Smith says, “and it’s the only tool he has in his box.” As a counselor, Smith says, he might ask, “What is that choice really getting you? What’s the ‘win’ in that for you?” It’s what actors and directors do when they probe a character in a play.
Smith says his church colleagues tend to admire the interpersonal communication skills that came with his acting training. “The tools you learn in a seminary setting help you be a good theologian,” he says, “but don’t necessarily translate into being a good pastor or shepherd.”
Library science called to 1991 PATP graduate Joel Summerlin after he spent several years in the Seattle theater scene. Ultimately, he says, the negative aspects outweighed the positive in his stage life. “For any art you go through a lot of dreck to get to the good stuff. I was finding the ratio of things worthwhile to things that weren’t worthwhile wasn’t high enough.” He returned to the UW in 1998, earned a degree from the Information School and is now a taxonomist, cataloging photographic images for the Seattle-based Corbis Corporation.
“I’ll always feel glad I was an actor for a while,” Summerlin says. “It’s hard to draw lines between the things I learned in the PATP and the skills I now use in my current career, but at the same time I don’t think anything anyone learns is useless. I’m a firm believer in a liberal arts education. It’s not about using things on the job, it’s about being a well-rounded person.”
Inevitably, of course, the PATP’s range of training helps some more than others in the world beyond acting. Andrew Boyer, a 1995 graduate of the program, performed in the 1990s in New York, but was ultimately worn down by the hand-to-mouth actor’s life. Working with fellow actors in their 50s brought that into focus, Boyer says in an e-mail from London, where he now works as a securities lawyer. “I realized that it was a very real possibility that in 15 more years, when I would be 50, I could still be working hard for no pay and hoping to get noticed too. That was an unacceptable future for me.”
So he went back to school, faced down the bar exam and began his new career. The switch wasn’t easy, he says, “It’s a long path and I don’t recommend it.” And though Boyer says his script analysis skills may help him unravel the thick language of statutory law, the connection pretty much stops there. Of the many things he studied in the PATP—“the yoga, the Suzuki training, the jazz dance and stage combat, the singing and voice work, the tightrope and trapeze classes, the philosophy of connecting mind and body”—few pertain to his current work. Boyer wrote with some finality, “The PATP trains actors, and being a transactional lawyer is simply not anything like being an actor.”
If there is a hint of sadness in Boyer’s story, it should come as no surprise. Nearly any former actor will tell you, leaving the theater—packing away the well-worn makeup kit, headshot and résumé, hanging up the tap shoes—can be a heartbreaking decision. Summerlin says it well: “It was a tough time, having that realization. There was a lot tied up in that—a feeling of failure, that I made the wrong decision, what have I done?” It took some time, he says, but “Ultimately, I did make the right decision.” Still, there always remains the question: Would these former actors return to acting, given the right circumstances? Answers were mostly variations on the theme of a door that is closed just now, but perhaps not locked for good.
Pastor Smith says, “I’m doing exactly what I want to do.”
Boyer, the London-based lawyer, is still working through the emotions of his life change. “I still believe that entertaining people and lifting them temporarily out of this difficult world is a noble calling. … It breaks my heart a little if I think about my former love of theater. Maybe someday I’ll direct something,” he says.
Kallos quit acting about nine years ago. “I don’t miss it very much. The only time is with Shakespeare—that’s the only thing I ever really miss. I’m so lucky I got to play the roles I was right for.”
“When we started in the PATP,” Summerlin says, “(then-program director) Jack Clay, early on, said, ‘If there’s anything else in the world you can do, go do it.’ I think it’s pretty good advice in a lot of ways.”
He didn’t take that advice, of course. He stayed, graduated and enjoyed acting for several years, as did many others. And though it didn’t last forever, they wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
-Peter Kelley is assistant editor of University Week, the UW’s faculty/staff newspaper, and a 1990 graduate of the UW.
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On the Scene: 10 Famous PATP Graduates