What Are We “For” Anymore?

(repost from Substack: originally published June 12, 2025)

I sit in the corner of a dark office (which is not my own) at my soul sucking job. I ask myself: “what am I for?” I do not work at some corrupt law office. I do not help rich people get richer. I work at a Boutique Acting Conservatory in New York City. It’s the sort of job that is not supposed to be “about the money”. It’s supposed to be about the love of the thing. But I have fallen out of love with the thing.

…

When I started working here I worked in an office on the highest floor of the building with the three Heads of Department: Voice & Speech, Movement, and Acting. Their ages at the time were 30, 42, and 70 respectively. Wisdom and innovation abounded. And then there was me. All of 22 years old. The magic of the time spent in that office has sustained me in this place for longer than I am willing to admit. It felt as though we were creating an endurable ethos in that room.

“At this point I really couldn’t care less if they become ‘good actors’. I just hope they leave us as better people.” Janis, the Head of Acting said this to me once with a grin. “I’ll always love good theater, but it’s got to be about something bigger.”

When I was getting to know Thomas, the Voice and Speech Head, he mused on an idea: “We center our lives around the pursuit of a product - when in reality, everything is process. Product is a passing thing, with the illusion of fulfilment. But process - that’s the stuff of living.”

Sheila, the Movement Head, was in the corner: angry and stretching. With her you had to take the double-edged sword by the hilt: wielding the frightening with the fierce. Most who dared wound up wounded. But I still remember that time she cried. It humanized her.

This fortuitous congregation of folk had less to do with the logic of me, an entry level assistant, being there, and more to do with spatial happenstance and restrictions. I thought, “how lucky I am to be placed amongst them.” A sounding board for their ideas and strife. Together they made a trinity which granted meaning to the 6th floor - to the building. Their combined force created a sacred office for discussion and discovery. I learned about art. I learned about life. I got to sit in on their meetings, discussing pedagogy and the philosophy of acting. At the heart of it was deep appreciation for human experience through the embodiment of the physical and the spiritual:

The integration of movement and stillness in the body extends to expression in the voice. Then, what is potential is made kinetic as a force acts upon it: the actor receives a role they were not born into. A role they must inhabit. That generative fluidity between the role, and the self is the craft. The actor lives in both the former and the latter in order to inform and enrich the other. To enrich their partner. To enrich the world of the scene. It’s not so much the glory of the transformation, but rather the conversation between the self and the role which creates the magic seen on stage and screen.

Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances (or so I’m told.) Artificial intelligence (AI) is “technology that enables machines to simulate human learning, decision making, comprehension, creativity and autonomy.” As we feed it imaginary instances, it predicts the next word. and the next. and the next. It knows all its lines. Lines of code. Lines of great art. It eats up all our lines and spits out the bastardized sum total of Humanity for the enrichment of the few.

We don’t talk about AI very much at the Academy. Except in hushed tones of danger. A punchline and a boogeyman we would all rather ignore. It’s not a serious discourse. We need not stand up to it - and we lack the resources to stomach the will.

Janis is a shadow of the presence she once was here. Sheila left a long time ago. They were never replaced. Now it’s Thomas and I. And that sacred space is transformed into an administrative office we are no longer welcome in. Our creative space is the basement of the Bread and Butter an avenue away. It’s as if 120 Madison Avenue hinders creativity rather than abets it. Inspiration is a thing lost in the reorganizing of spaces and priorities.

And now we’re caught up to where I started: what are we here for? What were Janis and Sheila here for? Did we change anything - did our bending and sharing of our minds’ best graces and gumption generate something? I think it did. But now, I avoid my new “office”, a space in a dark corner of the 6th floor which is removed from pleasant society. The plant I brought over goes unwatered and limp. And whatever the four of us made with it. Our ethos is falling out in favor of the bottom line. Product Wins. We need more money and we are not willing to take a risk on a daring position. We’re doing what the big studios do: a reboot of what we think sells for as little money as we can manage. Another cheap machine. The more we render ourselves like a machine, the more irrelevant we will be against the rise of machine learning. The irony of it all is lost in the translation of in person to digital.

I don’t believe we should be “against AI”. What a useless thing to be against something humans made and can decide how to wield. But I’m against its supremacy - like the absurdity of Henry VIII trying to get all the clerics to agree to a new fundamental truth oriented for the enrichment of the king's court. I’ll not bow to nerdy robber barons who want to redefine the value of art. The value of art is the value of the human. The Medicis, flawed as they were, extended their riches to patronize great art which would stand tall against the tests of time. They abetted Humanism. Holiness in right action - dignity innate. Now we're all just a means to an end on the way to Mars. We gobble up their product afraid of the process of our own minds without distraction. As people and institutions, we trade our humanity for the drug of diversion.

I believe this Acting Conservatory should be for the sacrality of human expression. I believe we should be “for” the process of self-actualization found through the body. I believe we should be “for” being better people. There is something beautiful about the American Academy of Dramatic Arts - in its history and its humans. That could be our pitch. Our aim. We stand aloft in a grandiose century old building, with secret passageways to ½ floors, and a glorious proscenium adorning our regal theater. Yet, we spend most minutes of the day trying to figure out how we can catch up with the future.

Maybe we shouldn’t attempt to. Or maybe we’re losing the plot for the page. We uplift an ancient art form that aspires to essential verisimilitude. Maybe we shouldn’t glorify celebrity and try to fit in in the attention deficit digital order. Because up against other institutions, we’ll lose. We don’t carry the brand recognition capable of playing the same game. It is our singularity that stands as our virtue. Our process, not our product.

Or do we stand at all? For there is no proclamation we’ve issued stating:

We stand for what it means to be human. We stand for acting’s extension of humanity. We stand for the value of human contribution. We stand for arts’ endurable endeavor in times of calamity or congeniality. We stand up for the poorer amongst us. We stand for stories that connect us to the ancient and drive us toward the future. We stand for finding the extension of truthful behavior in a digital world. We stand for - no matter the medium, remembering the magic. The transportive magic of seeing the human condition played out and making its mark on the world. Above all: We stand for our Dignity.

A nice idea. But we stand for nothing. We have no leader. We have no love. We have survival. How can we inspire troops to march on in the dead of a soulless winter when we are not preaching and pursuing a glorious promise? A promise which wills forward Process. How can we claim our great value when we cannot even attest to what humans are for? What acting is for? Are we for discipline or a constantly shifting target? Are we for inclusion or a poorly acted performance of it?

Maybe I should recognize my own part in this falling out of love. It’s not just that they’ve changed, but I’ve grown bitter and less patient. I’ve romanticized the past and I feel stuck; I shouldn’t, but I blame it on this place. Because it’s given up on nurturing its soul. And I connected too much of my soul towards our mission. Perhaps we can fall in love again. Or perhaps I’m desperately clinging to the idea of first being in that room with three apostles of Acting - writing the gospel. Believing it mattered.

I think (once) it did.