Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Allison Shea Reed. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Allison Shea, great to have you with us today and excited to have you share your wisdom with our readers. Over the years, after speaking with countless do-ers, makers, builders, entrepreneurs, artists and more we’ve noticed that the ability to take risks is central to almost all stories of triumph and so we’re really interested in hearing about your journey with risk and how you developed your risk-taking ability.
The first real risk I took as an artist that felt genuinely scary was completely by accident. After a frustrating conversation with a friend, who I realized had no understanding of the mental disorder I faced daily, I rage-wrote a play about my experience with Obsessive-Compulsive disorder. I created a character that was the personalized version of my OCD, to try and help someone who is outside of my head to understand what I experience every single day. I then decided (without really thinking about the implications of it) to submit that play to festivals and when it got into the New York Theatre Festival, suddenly I had to do what I said I would in my submission: put it on stage in front of audiences, with me playing the fictionalized version of myself. It didn’t fully hit me until opening night, when I turned to my co-star and friend, Cam Wenrich, and was like “Oh my god, people are going to see this.” and he, wisely, said: “Well yeah, WHAT DID YOU THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN?” We laughed and then the show began and suddenly every single person I knew in NYC at the time was watching the most vulnerable parts of my experience play out on a stage. From that experience, I learned that I always have to write as though no one is going to see it. It was the best gift I gave myself in that moment and the reaction from the audience (and new understanding from the people I love) gave me a new bravery that has stayed rattling around in my soul since then.
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?
My writing (and performance, honestly) has always come out of my need to process emotions and finding a way to allow audiences to process what is happening inside of someone, with a different experience than their own, on the outside. Although not every piece of writing will reflect my personal battle with my mental disorder, it will always reflect the human instinct and want to be seen and understood. I am most interested in providing platforms for audiences to connect with characters that they never thought they could or had misunderstood up to that point. I’ll never forget the first time I saw the musical “Next to Normal” and how convinced I was that I had been misdiagnosed because I related so strongly to the main character. (I was 12) That is the kind of work I plan to put forward. I believe strongly that everyone has something they struggle with within their own brain and I plan to be one of the voices on the forefront of eliminating the stigma around mental illness and illuminating the way “high functioning” or invisible neurodivergence leads to an unnecessary feeling of separation from society for the sufferer. I also don’t believe in writing that is fully dramatic, to me there is a need for comedy and laughter in the most devastating circumstances and even when I am managing excruciating difficult thematic landscapes, it is crucial that my writing reflect that. The last and, perhaps most crucial, theme in my writing comes through 3 dimensional and flawed female characters. Growing up as an actor, primarily in Musical Theatre, I was extremely frustrated by the lack of strong female characters to play. I was so taken aback by this that instead of learning the female parts, I would learn the male parts as they were far more nuanced or comedic, and their songs were generally the ones I deemed most exciting. Additionally, I find myself drawn to television shows where the lead is exceptionally smart and is able to trick their way into a profession they really have no business being a part of. (Ala Psych or Suits) The problem is, these characters are almost always male and the female characters on the show are almost always underdeveloped or there simply to serve as a love interest. This is something I strive to remedy in my own writing.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Looking back, I think the values I hold dear that have pushed me to where I am now are vulnerability, curiosity, and tenacity. They’re not necessarily traits I love exercising, it’s tough to say how you feel or what you really want, but that’s the only way to truly be seen. I also think my curiosity about storytelling, particularly in the musical theatre realm has changed the make-up of my DNA, I am happiest when I am learning and then figuring out my own way into whatever that new idea is.
The best advice I have for folks who are early on in their journey is to dive in fully by making and trying stuff that does not work, read anything you like that you can get your hands on, and SEE as much as you can. I have always been someone who has to try something to figure it out. Whether it be writing or performing, I have spent hours working on performances no one will ever see, (though my parents and sister definitely heard — I’m only kind-of sorry Mom, Dad, and Josie) writing pieces that are poetic and absolute nonsense, and devising movement that makes sense to me but maybe doesn’t translate. I have been lucky (and intentional) in surrounding myself by artists I really respect that make a point to understand each other’s art (and comedic voices) so we can support and uplift each other, without shapeshifting into one blob of artistry. My hunger to make art comes from wanting to create art I haven’t seen before but would love to watch, shows that I see myself in or can feel a specific piece of my experience through. Not to say they’re all biographical, they’re definitely not, but they do each have something in them that I would have killed to get to see on any sort of stage or screen growing up.
Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
The number one obstacle I am currently facing is finding a way into a room where there could be a team of support around making my art, while navigating having to have a survival job. I’ve been very lucky to have a community that has rallied around me while I have produced my own work, but I definitely feel like I have hit the ceiling of what I am able to do with my current resources. When I am not working, I am creating, writing, performing, and learning as much as humanly possible but what I want more than anything on the planet is to be working as a full time artist and to be able to give that my full focus. Instead of letting the reality of capitalism and the very scary world we’re currently living in win, I am collaborating with artists I love to make work we really care about and I am continuing to put my work out there. The saving grace of this grind is that I know that the day the door opens, I will be ready to make the most of it. This is definitely a moment of transition, where I am watching my peers hit the same ceiling as they out grow the level we’ve all been on and making the most of for a while. There’s no world in which we’re giving up, I’m certainly not, but it is a moment of trying to find a crafty way through so the first one of us up can pull the rest of us through.
In moments like these, I do think community is the place to turn. Finding places where art is bringing you joy, even if it’s through sculpting or linocut carving, (I’ve recently been very into both) and keeping each other motivated by living life so that there are new stories to tell when the ceiling breaks and the next climb begins.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://allisonsheareed.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allisonsheareed/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allison-shea-reed-504ab7115/
Image Credits
Photo Credits: Dani Delia, Denise Grant, Karen Santos, David Noles, Jordan Young
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