Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Brandy Hotchner. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Brandy, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
I’m not young. Nor am I very old. I’m 52 and in a unique place to look at my professional life. I can see its trajectory like on a graph next to a brightly colored line that is my personal life. As if these two were distinct from each other. We do that. We silo off the professional from the personal as if we’re two halves and these two parts of us are often in conflict requiring managing, organizing or justifying. It’s foolish. Maybe naive. I’m reliant on my work as an expression of myself, particularly as an artist. I rely on it for basic survival. The income I make has built my home as surely as the contractor who actually built it. I have a partner, he’s the same. We’ve been married 21 years. My purpose at the beginning was ego driven and energized by the need to validate my existence, get recognition for my talents, catapult me toward financial stability if not financial superiority. This is a natural attribute of young artists. It’s necessary. You are called to a profession whose promise is only that there is no ladder to climb, no road map to success to follow. If there’s a system, it’s corrupt and held by gate keepers. If you can’t “not” pursue it because the calling to it too powerful, too sublime, too intertwined with your identity and perspective on life; if you simply can’t see the logic of choosing another more stable profession, that energy is required to stay the course. But the ego is so fragile. It’s the part of ourselves, where our delusions and deepest truths live side by side. My “story” of failure as an actress in New York in the 90s is also the story of my birth as a teacher, leader and small business owner. My purpose arrived along a strenuous path of getting so close but not quite there, too many rejections to count, sexual harassment and discrimination as par for the course and picking myself back up from every bloodying fall. Along that path I had the great gift of colliding with powerful forces that were formative. Teachers who challenged my ego and widened my perspective beyond myself. Events that made choices for me; 9/11 being the most significant, that day altered my trajectory. I arrived at my purpose through pain, disillusionment and disappointment that clarified my deeper love for my artist self and my craft. By my early thirties I was more the actress I’d always wanted to be and no longer under the illusion that was defined by notoriety or fame. It was simply me and wherever I was in life the expression of that would have to be bold, the size of the audience didn’t matter. Chasing recognition only serves our most petty self. Trusting that good work comes with rewards that can’t be manifested, they are realized, discovered, earned. When I met my partner I faced a dilemma that took years to solve. In him I could lay down roots, start a family, live another dream of mine but at the sacrifice it seemed of my life long dream, my “purpose” as I perceived it at the time. I made that sacrifice. It makes me laugh now to think of that narrow vision and I regret the suffering I caused seeing myself so cleaved in two. I chose our family and found myself in a city with no professional theater or film/tv. I couldn’t “not” be me though. My expression of myself as an artist shifted from performer to teacher quite by accident, by necessity. The growth of my small class into the institution it is today was also quite by accident. I rode a wave of momentum that I wasn’t always cognizant of. I was driven by a desire, I didn’t understand and couldn’t have expressed at the time, to create a space where artists could thrive, learn, develop skills, discover their voice and their purpose. This desire was in direct response, I now see, to the gate kept, cruel, greedy and unsafe world I toiled in for 10 years in New York. Arizona Actors Academy would not exist without my wild, tumultuous, thrilling, terrible journey trying to become a famous actor and failing. This school has had its own perilous journey, a long story to tell. It’s filled with as much failure as the journey that brought it to life quite by accident. I’ve been a great leader and a dismal one. I’ve made catastrophic mistakes financially and brilliant ones. I’ve let my personal and professional life war for attention with both paying a price. But both my business and I have endured driven by a purpose much greater than my small petty self. Today, this school does much more than serve as a creative space to learn, it brings people together, removes them from isolation. There are no phones out, voices overlap in enthusiastic communal gathering. It’s brings people out from where they’ve sheltered and into the light of day. I never imagined that purpose. Our “purpose” is a living breathing, forever evolving thing within us. I believe it’s a mistake to see it as something static or a statement on paper. It’s an expression of your principles. It’s driven by your knowledge and the tools you employ. It’s impacted by forces out of your control like the economy, social unrest, technological advancement, supply/demand – you must be flexible, adaptable, willing to let go of what always worked and embrace what’s needed to thrive now. It will evolve with you as you find the resilience to stay bold, risk take and change. Finally, I believe an individual’s purpose doesn’t live alone in you. All human endeavor requires collaboration. Know your weaknesses. Find people who share your passion to fill in those gaps. Trust them. Empower them. Alone you are just ideas, with a team, you are a force that can meet any obstacle.
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?
I founded Arizona Actors Academy to create a unique learning and working space for artistis with an emphasis on the work of Lee Strasberg, Sandy Meisner and Stella Adler in American Method as well as Shakespeare. Cornerstone of its mission is to build a diverse and inclusive community for anyone seeking this specialized study in theater arts. Arizona Actors Academy offers comprehensive acting training for adults that’s accessible and affordable. I am an artist myself, a wife and a mother.
We’ve won a wonderful award. https://www.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
1. Resilience and grit. These qualities are learned only through trial and error, triumph and failure. Life spares no one. You will make cataclysmic mistakes and have to keep going. You will face impossible choices, dilemmas that rip you apart but you have to keep going. You are depended on, relied on, you don’t get to fall apart. Some days your biggest win might be just showing up. Honor those moments of struggle, they are shaping you and your endeavor. You are being remade into someone whose strength you never imagined. Small business owners must have these qualities to thrive in the US.
2. Foster the ability to see objectively verses subjectively.
It’s very easy to shrink the world down to your size. Takes a lot more character to rise to it’s height. If we limit ourselves to our definition of ourselves, events and culture, losing sight of the bigger, more complicated picture that makes up all human experience, we will constrict in the face of struggle rather than expand. Looking at any obstacle you face objectively rather than subjectively is incredibly hard. Our natural responses to critique, failure, obstacles in our way are often defensive, accusatory, deflecting of blame, etc., etc. That’s okay, we all have that in common. I believe we’re also tasked to rise off above that. We need to recognize it as a reflexive response that is self serving, protective, not useful and develop the skills to move beyond it. This quality takes practice and patience but it’s crucial to success. Success without it breeds toxicity, looks like tyranny, crushes potential and only serves you momentarily. Without this skill great powers within you are diminished, those of empathy, courage and generosity.
3. Conviction
Sigh. This is a hard one. Do you believe in your mission? Do you believe in it enough to stick with it through critique, through failure, through ridicule or vitriol, when it costs you money instead of making you money? Can you sit calmly in your own truth while forces work against you and stay the course? That’s conviction.
Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?
I hope everyone reads “Letters to a Young Poet” by Ranier Maria Rilke. It’s a collection of the correspondence between himself and a young poet struggling as a man and artist. I return to it again and again. The wisdom within it rivals great Zen philosophers but it’s also so simply human. I feel in the company of a dear friend when I read it. Here’s one of my favorite quotes from it.
“How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.azactorsacademy.com
Image Credits
Brad Reed Photography DeJean Brown POV
