Meet Rosie Allenson

We were lucky to catch up with Rosie Allenson recently and have shared our conversation below.

Rosie, thank you so much for joining us. You are such a positive person and it’s something we really admire and so we wanted to start by asking you where you think your optimism comes from?

I’ve always been known as “the positive one”. I was overly cheery to the point of being fake, overly enthusiastic to the point of being annoying, and overly optimistic to the point of being unbelievable, according to most of my friends and teachers at school. It was genuine, though! I was always a really happy kid. Every morning on my ride to school, I would tell my mother one thing I was excited for that day, and the thing is, I didn’t even really need to ponder it. I was just sort of in a constant state of excitement. I’ve always really loved my life, and I think that’s because I’ve always had the privilege of doing what I love. I have the best parents ever, and they’ve always supported my theatrical ambition, which many “theatre kids” will tell you is rare. I was in acting class at 6, I started singing lessons at 10, and I’ve been dancing for my whole life. I was so blessed, and because I was always artistically stimulated, I thrived rather than just survived. I had very little to be unhappy about. Then, my freshman year of high school, the rose colored glasses came off very suddenly. It felt more like someone ripped them off my face, stomped them into cement pavement many times and then lit them on fire, actually, but that may be dramatic. On May 25, 2018, my school became another statistic in the long list of school shootings in this country. I have never been more scared, and furthermore, that day made me realize that I actually hadn’t ever really been scared until then, not really anyway. Not in the “oh no, I think I might be about to die” kind of way. I called my mom to say goodbye, I said “I love you” to my boyfriend of ten days because I wanted to tell someone I loved them once before I went, and I sat in my darkened science classroom and did what every student in America had trained to do: barricade the door, sit in the dark, and stay quiet. My anxiety about how I would do on my Biology final quickly turned into something much more real. It all turned out fine, obviously. In fact, we were lucky. The kid was stopped quickly, and while one of my friends was injured badly, no one died. But, I was pretty messed up afterwards, For one, instead of being excited about everything, I was scared of everything, and I mean everything. Stairs? What if someone was lurking at the bottom with a gun? The elevator? It could stop working suddenly and drop down the shaft. Hallways? Someone might be at the end of one waiting to hurt me. The subway? I can’t be trapped in a metal box underground; someone might shoot up my car. School? Forget about it. I totally changed, and I lost a lot of my joy. I remember actually thinking in the following months, while I was studying through a musical theatre intensive that I not only loved, but was literally the highlight of my year, “I will never be happy again. I am going to feel this way for the rest of my life.” It was awful. Now, remember how I said I had the best parents ever? It applies here, too. They really stood by me through this time, and eventually, they helped me get out of it. The shooting, while absolutely something no one, especially a child, should ever have to experience, woke me up to the real world, but it also gave me a newfound perspective. Life can and will be really scary. There are going to be days that are undeniably bad. And then, there are the other days. The mundane days, the stupid days, the boring days, the good days, the great days, and the best days ever. I decided after the shooting that I could go ahead and consider May 25, 2018 a really sucky day, and if the rest of my days don’t reach that level of bad (and a couple of them have, in their own way, but the vast majority haven’t, I’m happy to report), then that must mean there’s got to be some good in there, and life, I’ve decided, is too short to focus on anything other than that. Life can end anytime, anywhere, for any reason. That’s a scary thing to realize at fourteen. Frankly, I’d rather die holding onto the joy than being lugged down by the sorrow. There’s bound to be a healthy mix of both, because that’s just life, but I don’t have to carry it all with me. And it takes fewer muscles to smile than it does to frown. So, it might be annoying or unusual to some, and it’s certainly earned me a reputation and few smug remarks, but that’s why I’m so optimistic. Because truthfully, life is way too short to be anything but.

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’m an actor/singer/dancer based in New York with an intense passion for clown, Shakespeare, theatre history, and writing. I’ve recently graduated from The American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Academy Company and am now living the glamorous life of a working actor/grocery store clerk in Manhattan! I’m loving every minute, of course, and can’t wait to see where this city, this career, and the people I’ve met and worked with along the way take me. The possibilities feel endless right now, and that is both extremely terrifying and deeply, deeply exciting. The goal, naturally, is to be on Broadway, because why not dream big? However, I am also extremely politically motivated and intend to be the type of artist that inspires positive change with their art. Right now, I think I’m going to do this via political plays that I pen myself (a big inspiration for me currently is the new Broadway musical, “Suffs” about the American Suffrage movement), but I’d also like to incorporate clowning in some way (because isn’t politics just a little bit silly sometimes? I mean, come on…) Speaking of, next up for me is a clown show called MAD MAD MAD that I helped to devise during my time as a Company member at The Academy. It’s a really meaningful show that examines the absurdity of Mutually Assured Destruction, which is a cold-war era military theory used to deter superpowers from detonating nuclear weapons by assuring the destruction of both the attacker and the target via a counterstrike. It remains the global nuclear policy, and it’s the reason humanity as we know it isn’t destroyed, which is a little ridiculous, if you ask me. I’m performing in it, as well as producing, and I also wrote several scenes, composed a song, and helped choreograph the dance numbers. It’s tested me in every way, and made me realize how creative I can be. I’m really proud of the show, and I’m excited to perform it at Target Margin in Brooklyn, NY on the first and second weekends in September. Check us out!

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?

1.) Take care of your body. Let me say that again. TAKE CARE OF YOUR BODY. Our bodies need food (eating something defined as “unhealthy” is better than not eating at all- you should read that again), our bodies need healthy movement that feels good, and our bodies need rest. If I had spent half the time I spent worrying about the way my body looked on literally anything else, my time as an Academy Company member would have looked and felt very different. Furthermore, if I had allowed myself one day a week to rest instead of trying to jumble school, work, a social life, and pleasing all the people in my life who never asked to be pleased in a desperate attempt to be liked, I wouldn’t have spent half of my college career in severe burn-out teetering on a full-blown mental health crisis. Try looking in the mirror and saying one kind thing to yourself. Just one to start. You can do it, I promise.
2.) Learn how to say no. It’s okay, you’re allowed. It’s not actually akin to being the sole reason the earth stopped spinning and it’s doesn’t make world hunger get any worse, even if it feels like it will. It’s actually okay to say “no thanks” if you just don’t want to do something. Also, you can say yes, and then change your mind, and if someone doesn’t respect that, that’s on them (and you might want to reevaluate that person’s character).
3.) Don’t lose yourself in an attempt to “find your people.” You actually find your people when you find yourself. I’m still learning this one, if I’m being honest, but I can promise from experience that settling for an inauthentic version of yourself in an effort to be liked by people you think you want to be friends with only works for so long. Eventually, you’re not going to be able to maintain the facade (because it’s impossible), and you’re going to realize that the people you thought were your friends were only friends with that version of you, and it wasn’t even real. But honey, the world deserves the real you (and so do you!!) Your people will find you when you let yourself BE you!

To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?

My parents have never wavered in their support of my ambitions of being an actor. I told my mother when I was three years old that I was going to be on a movie cover one day, and my mind has literally never changed. They’ve never uttered one word about it being an unreliable career choice, they’ve never made me feel stupid or small or silly, and they’ve come to every single show I’ve ever done, whether I was a chorus girl or the leading lady. Furthermore, they let it be mine. My parents were never “backstage parents”. They weren’t overly involved. They supported me, yes, but they didn’t intrude. I did all my own auditions, by myself, and if I got in, they would drive me to rehearsals, or scrimp and save for a year and go with me to New York so that I could study in the city for a summer. They charged me a criminally inexpensive rent while I was in school because they knew I couldn’t work full-time while studying at The Academy, but they still wanted me to learn the importance of financial independence. My parents are the parents that most artists dream about having. Instead of wishing and praying that I had been a lawyer or a doctor, they celebrate the fact that I’m following my dream and doing what makes me happy, and that is the greatest gift I’ve ever received from them. If you’re reading this and are the parent of a kid who has recently told you that they are an artist, please believe them. And please, please celebrate and support them. I promise that the world needs more artists, and the fact that you have a kid with that special spark is pretty cool. I wouldn’t be here without my parents, that I am sure of.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://rosieallenson.wixsite.com/rosie-allenson
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rosie.allenson/
• Other: Actor’s Access: https://resumes.actorsaccess.com/2094800-5852302
  Backstage: https://www.backstage.com/tal/rosie-allenson/?editing=1

Image Credits

Primary Image and images 1, 5, 7, 8: Bianca Victoria Jenkins
Images 2, 3, 4, 6: Bronwen Sharp