WHEN LIFE MEETS ART: NATALIE KERN

I've been acting in plays and working in the world of theatre for as long as I can remember. I actually taught myself to read on my first play script as I was trying to memorize lines. Through all the years of training, and trying to implement that training into actual paying work, I always thought that the rule of thumb was the same basic strategy as the board game of Monopoly, always say yes. If you are lucky enough to land on a property, you snatch it up. If you are lucky enough to be offered an opportunity to act or work in the theatre, you snatch it up and say yes. Opportunity begets opportunity, right? Yes, and it comes with a cost.

Making the decision to move out of Los Angeles with my husband was a difficult one. In some respects it felt like giving up on myself and what I had been working towards. In other respects it also felt like taking on a new opportunity to say yes to a different path and having faith that light would continue to show me the next step to take. I assumed that I would be able to find a new passion, and that when I tried it on it would feel as much like my own skin as it felt when working in the theatre. That isn't quite how it panned out. What I did discover however was powerful and definitely impacted how I've spent the last 15 years deciding what I was going to say "Yes" to.

Becoming a mother three times over, put the toll of what a theatre practitioner sacrifices into sharp perspective. Since many of us have this feeling of needing to say yes to every opportunity (at least I'm fairly certain that I'm not alone here) we are most often willing to work for very little compensation, if any, and are not very discerning about projects. Having three little ones at home gave me an opportunity to reexamine this in my own life. Saying yes to projects would now mean missing out on weeks or months of bedtime stories and goodnight kisses. It would mean missing milestones that happen without warning because you only had 30-60 minutes with them each day. It would mean missing those conversations with my partner and processing how many ways we are screwing up our kids and how they amaze us all at the same time. And while I understood this was the sacrifice, at some point it became important for me to examine the value of what I would be gaining. Would the opportunity I was considering value me as a trained artist and be willing to compensate for my value in some small way? Would the opportunity I was considering provide me with an artistic challenge that could grow me as an artist and a person? Was the opportunity I was considering a story that felt important and valuable to my community at that moment? And maybe most importantly, was the opportunity I was considering going to involve other people who made these same considerations and decided to embark because they felt the same innate need to be a storyteller and bring another human story to life?

It's amazing how three tiny humans (who are not so tiny anymore) put these questions into perspective for me. While this means I don't line up project after project in order to stay current or relevant "in the business", it also means I am discerning about the projects I sign on to when the opportunities present themselves. When the opportunity came to work on Our Country's Good, I asked myself the same questions I usually do. And saying yes was absolutely the right decision. The other artists and theatre makers who are participating in this grand experiment with me are inspiring and challenging. I am learning more about myself as an artist and actor as I push myself to keep up with the amazing work they bring to the table every two weeks. To be able to practice my passion and then go home and have my children ask me how it went is a blessing. And by being passionate about what I'm involved in I hope I will model for them that there are many paths to living out your passion. I'm sure I still have many years of making parenting mistakes but I hope what they remember when they look back is that their mom didn't give up on herself. Instead, she became more herself and a truer version of the artist she always was.