Meet Ashley Riccardi

We were lucky to catch up with Ashley Riccardi recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ashley, 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.

After I finished my BFA, I was exhausted. Honestly, I was surprised that I even graduated. My persistent mental health issues, combined with a rigorous course load led to major burnout prior to my senior year. A horrible, horrible burnout. I was a straight A student on academic probation. I was even booted from the Musical Theatre “program”. This isn’t a piece on toxic working environments, so I’ll leave the latter story for another time.

Funny enough though, burning out was probably the best thing that could’ve ever happened to me.
If you couldn’t tell already, I studied theatre in my undergrad, a decision that I will never regret. Late in high school, I realized that no matter what, I just wanted to create art that lives and breathes within space. Something about the art of theatre filled my soul so much. I didn’t yet have the words or education to articulate it that way, but I knew the theatre world was where I belonged.

WAS where I belonged…

My college experience began in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Life was obviously strange for everyone back then. On top of that, I had moved from a city where mostly everyone looked like me to a university where almost no one did. Within my cohort of actors, I was the only black person, a fact which I was constantly reminded of. From the moment I moved into my dorm, I felt out of place. In hindsight, I probably should have held out hope for longer, but I was feeling so discouraged from the start.

Freshman year was incredibly difficult. I cannot stress that enough. In my 23 years of life, I think my freshman year of college was the worst time I’ve ever experienced. It sucked. Let me tell you why:

I was already feeling disconnected, surrounded by a people that I had never really culturally navigated before (by this, I mean white people). I had formed some friendships, but I felt completely out of control. It reminded me of the feeling I had when I moved cities every year as a young child or when my parents divorced and my entire life was uprooted. I was 18, I felt like a freak, my life felt out of control, and I was having a severe mental crisis.

I felt lonely, like an outsider. I skipped classes, slept in until noon nearly every day, and cut corners in my coursework wherever I could. I dropped my minor because I was too depressed to commit to it. I even considered changing my major. I just had no idea why I was so incredibly unhappy. Hoping for any support, I confided in my closest friends at the time, my roommates, about how I was feeling. I felt empowered that I had reached out for help, something I had never really done before.

But it backfired.

They told me, “We don’t want to live with you anymore.”

It was my worst fear come true. It wasn’t the fact that they didn’t want to live with me, I can understand that. It was the fact that I felt like I had finally made some positive progress, only to feel completely abandoned. My autistic self now knows that being caught off guard or feeling like I’ve been duped communicatively is immensely distressing to me. So with that being said, I’ve never felt that distressed in my entire life.

Their words hit me like a thousand knives to the chest. I didn’t understand how someone could do that, especially when I had been so open about my struggles. I wanted to disappear. I had already felt like I didn’t belong, and now the people I trusted had rejected me. I left campus, unsure if I would return ever again. Eventually, I did return at the persuasion of a professor. I might’ve been depressed, but mama didn’t raise no quitter.

Sophomore year happened, and life ended up working out the way it needed to. I was able to reconnect with some of my previous roommates, and two of them are now my closest friends. It’s crazy how life turns out once you develop some emotional intelligence. There isn’t an 18-year-old on the planet with a high emotional IQ. I honestly don’t forgive easily, but I do rebuild trust.

My sophomore and junior years saw the most “success” in my collegiate theatre career. After a year of feeling incredibly inadequate, I was suddenly being cast left and right in mainstage productions. My confidence skyrocketed. Definitely too much. They say that if you do one good deed, it comes back to you tenfold, and those middle two years felt like that tenfold. I genuinely tried to stay humble, but in hindsight, I had a bit of an “I’m hot shit” attitude toward my work. I became more obsessed with my art and, in turn, more narcissistic about it.

In the midst of this, I met someone whose story fascinated me. He went to school to be an actor and realized in his senior year that he hated acting. I never thought I would relate to him. I loved acting. I thought I was good enough at it. I was planning for a bohemian future of eating oxygen for dinner and spending 12 hours a day at open calls. But when I started delving into the professional acting world, I saw its toxic side.

In New York, no one cares how special you think you are. (I’m not even making that up. That is a direct quote. Even writing that stung a bit.) You’re not a person; you’re a category. You’re the blonde mean girl. The nerdy Black girl. The all-American boy-next-door. You are whatever fits into a casting director’s checkbox. To you, it’s the reason you live. To them, it’s a paycheck.

And then, for the second time in my college career, my worst fear came true.

“Maybe I don’t want to be an actor?”

I felt lost. Hopeless. Sooo depressed. I went through the motions of post-grad audition prep, but my heart wasn’t in it. I procrastinated the entire way through because I genuinely could no longer bring myself to care. I’m not sure if anyone else could tell. Perhaps it’s a testament to my acting education if they couldn’t!

I often wonder how different my life would be if I had stayed in that world. But six months removed from undergrad and over 1,200 miles away from my alma mater, I realize that leaving was the best thing I could have done. I needed to create my life on my own terms, not live for what I thought my peers and professors expected of me. I didn’t want to exist solely to read horribly written lines off a page and do little dances for an industry that is far more corporate than artistic. I say all of this in hindsight, of course. I went through the motions of regret, but that’s a part of the journey.

And I want to make it perfectly clear- I would never knock someone who chose that path. Many of my former classmates are pursuing acting, some with great success so far. I applaud their grit, talent, and bravery. My heart just doesn’t lie there anymore.

Thankfully, my hail Mary arrived in senior year. That first semester, I took a short-form playwriting class as a palette cleanser from my other coursework. I had always loved writing, but never considered that it could be a career for me. At that point, writing had held a “hobby” status in my brain. But what started as a casual interest very quickly turned into real passion as the class progressed. Not only was I writing plays that I enjoyed, but other people were enjoying them too. My work resonated. It breathed. It was sooo cool.

How anybody treated me no longer mattered. The feeling that I didn’t belong no longer mattered. What mattered was that I had found within myself this kind of “superpower”. I really love to create theatre, and this medium gave me the ability to feel in-control, creative, and like an artist.I felt like when Spiderman first realized that he could do all of the Spiderman stuff. I felt very “go, web go!” I just wanted to bask in the glory of this new, very cool thing that I found out I can do.

In my final semester, I graduated to long-form playwriting. I used to think that my sophomore/junior year casting streak was my peak, but my final semester of college was truly the crescendo of my undergrad experience. The prospect of writing a full-length play sounded scary, and it was. I honestly got frustrated at times, writing myself into problems that I then had to create solutions to. As frustrating as it was, each revision felt stronger. I was living out some of the hardest moments from the past 3.5 years through these characters. In each version I wrote, my characters started to come to life, abandoning my voice and developing voices of their own. Having conversations with my characters was like my personal therapy.

I really wanted this long-form play to be the thesis statement of my entire undergraduate experience. I wanted to show who I am in one play. The absurdities, the surrealism, and the darker humor that I write stems from the way I genuinely see the world. It’s all weird, and we’re all moving through space trying to make sense of it.

At the end of the semester, my play was performed to the biggest audience I had ever seen at a play reading. (Maybe my ego never truly left). I watched as people laughed, smiled, gasped, lived, and breathed alongside the characters I had created. I listened to their comments about how they felt. How they felt comforted, yet horrified with how much they related to each character. How much they resonated with my work. How seen they felt.

What they didn’t know was how seen I felt by them too.

In that exact moment, I knew with certainty that this is what I would do for the rest of my life.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

Hi there! I’m a playwright, poet, and performer based in Toledo, Ohio.

My work dives into the human condition, exploring the messy, beautiful, and bizarre ways we connect with each other and ourselves. I really don’t take humans (or their antics) too seriously. We’re all trying our best after all. This perspective has led me to blend satire, absurdism, surrealism, and black comedy into a writing style that’s uniquely mine (and a little bit Sam Shepard Inspired.) Theatrically, I’m interested in devised and movement-based theatre, environmental theatre, and incorporating activism into my work.

I’m originally from San Antonio, Texas, and I hold a BFA in Theatre Performance. In my studies, I was most interested in movement, the interplay between body and space, devised work, postmodernism, and, of course, playwriting. My experience and perspective as an actor, however, informs my written work significantly. I vow to only write plays that actors will want to perform. All of this continues to shape my creative practice and approach to storytelling.

You can find my work on New Play Exchange, Substack, or by getting in touch! I’m always happy to connect with other creatives.

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

The three qualities I stand by are passion, perseverance, and patience.

Passion comes naturally to me. It’s what drives me. Perseverance and patience? Those are a work in progress, and that’s okay! My advice is to develop these qualities in succession. If you have passion, perseverance is about keeping that passion alive despite the roadblocks. Patience is the hardest because we’re wired to expect immediate results. But your journey is yours alone, and the way you reach your destination is uniquely your own.

Honestly, I feel a little imposter syndrome giving advice about things I’m still working on. But that’s just it. This is my journey, and I’m learning as I go.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

There is nothing in the world that I love more than collaborating with other creative people! If you read my story and I sound like someone that maybe you relate to a little bit, please reach out! All of my contact information is on my website, ashleyriccardi.com

I have ideas for creating digital and virtual-reality theatrical experiences, devised environmental theatre (for those in the Ohio/Michigan bubble), and am generally interested in starting a virtual writer’s room. If any of those sound hot, hit me up.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ashleyriccardi.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyriccardi/

Image Credits

2nd photo- Elise Fulselier
3rd photo- Joe Koporc