Meet Chris Burgess

We were lucky to catch up with Chris Burgess recently and have shared our conversation below.

Chris, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

There are two stories to how I found my purpose. A long one and a short one. To start with the long one: it took a lot of trial and error.
Finding purpose is a near life-long journey of trying things and seeing what sticks. Since high-school, potentially even before, I was trying different things to see what I found fun/purpose in. There were a few false starts. Soccer referee? Sure why not. Improv comedy? Yeah, I’ll give it a shot. Film production? That’s pretty fun. These were all important. Each one of them (save refereeing) set me down a path of getting to where I am today. The improv club in high school set me down a path of acting. Working on video production helped me develop a creative eye. The acting led me to doing theater in undergrad, which led to me going to grad school for it. Working in production gave me a taste of directing and writing. Both of those synthesized into me becoming a playwright and director. That eventually led to me teaching.
I can’t be sure if teaching and theater are my final purposes. Who cares? Maybe they are what I will end up doing or maybe they’re a stepping stone to something down the line. Either way, everything is worth trying.
Of course, the non-starters helped me find what I wanted to do as well. I briefly made music with a friend of mine. He is a rapper and I made beats for him. We did it for fun, although we both wanted to take it more seriously, I ended up putting that to the side for a while, realizing it wasn’t what I wanted to focus on at the time. (Translation: grad school took up too much time and mental space, shocker). Sure, it’s a minor thing. But, had I not tried it, I wouldn’t have the sense and discipline I have now.
Finding purpose really is a constant game of trying things and seeing how you feel about them. You never know what could be the thing that sticks.

The short version of how I found purpose was reading The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut. “A purpose human of life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved”.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

Currently, my life is revolving around theater. I’m working as the Creative Director of the Ryan Repertory Company in Brooklyn, teaching in a theater department at LIU Brooklyn, and have some tech work for plays lined up for the fall. It’s a lot of work (and a lot of late nights), but it’s rewarding. There’s a sense of immense satisfaction from watching a show you’ve worked on go up opening night. It’s tense and exciting and fun and nerve-wracking. Anything can happen, and that’s the fun part. There’s an ephemerality to theater that you don’t get with most other art forms. It exists in this one state during a short run and will never exist in the exact same form again.

I work with college students a lot. Teaching them about theater and helping them put on their shows. It’s rewarding to help someone realize their own vision for the first time. Sure, making your own artistic vision come to life is great, but it’s also so rewarding (and less stressful) to help someone else accomplish it.

I’ve been writing some plays and have some directing gigs in the work coming up. Keep and eye out for those! Be there or be square.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

The three most important qualities in my journey have been empathy, flexibility (mental, not physical), and curiosity. All of these have allowed me to be open to new experiences, ideas, and possibilities. That’s important for anyone’s development as a person and for staying sane in an increasingly insane world.

The best way to develop these is just to practice them. Be open to things. Don’t let sudden changes in your plan get to you too much. Listen to people’s stories, connect with them. Be interested in learning and experiencing new things. It’s what makes life interesting.

What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?

One of the most impactful things my parents did for both me and my sister was to have faith in us. My dad, especially. He treated us like responsible people from a relatively young age. He supported us in whatever we wanted to do. He trusted us to make responsible decisions, but always reminded us he was there to help out if we didn’t. That trust he had in us emboldened us to make bigger life decisions. I always felt supported by him. It allowed both my sister and I to take big risks that we otherwise might not have.
His pieces of advice like “Variety is the spice of life”, “give things a shot, it’s worth trying”, “don’t dig yourself a hole you can’t get out of” and, my personal favorite, “The Dude abides” have all really influenced my current outlook on life.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @cdotburgess

Image Credits

Randall Bellows III