Shredded and Torn Pt. 1

Creating my first feature film and what I have learned along the way

I once heard in a podcast, “Make sure you that what you choose to create as a feature film, you will tolerate and withstand for at least the next five years of your life [producing], because at minimum, that is how long you will be working on it.” After making my first feature film, I think I would like to add to that statement, “make sure you believe so strongly in your feature film and the need for it to be out there, that you cannot give up when things get hard because you so strongly believe that the message is needed.”

In 2017, a devastating accident changed the trajectory of my life and my career when I fell down the Manhattan Bridge on my bicycle, riding home from work in New York City. That week, I had a final callback for the national tour of “Phantom of the Opera” for a dance track that understudied Meg Giry, and I felt on top of the world in my career, closer than ever to booking a Broadway Show. When I woke up in the ambulance and could not move my hands or my legs, my entire world felt crushed and changed. What is so challenging for a dance career (and any athlete) is that healing from an injury is not a normal process, because in order for us to get back to where we must be to compete or perform at a professional level, and for eight shows a week, is an entirely different beast.

During that time, I felt isolated and alone, and much of it is because dancers are shamed from sharing anything on social media or in a way that could come back to potential producers or employers. If someone finds out that we have been injured, we become a “liability” to any show or future show (which I now find insane because almost every dancer has had some surgery or injury in this business). When I finally started to share a little bit online about how I was feeling and what was going on, and how it felt to move back to the Midwest, many people started reaching out to me, thanking me for sharing my journey, because they too were going through it and felt alone and scared to share it.

Multiple surgeries and rounds of physical therapy later, and a battle with an eating disorder, and trying to not fall apart financially, I finally moved back to New York City ready to pursue my dream of dancing again, in January of 2020. As everything began to unfold with covid, and the panic set in, I entered the pandemic with a semblance of peace because I had done a tremendous amount of work through that intense recovery process on finding my identity outside of just being a performer. As I watched many of my performing friends post online how terrified they were, or how they didn’t know what to do with themselves, devastated that shows were closing, I realized that we all face a major identity crisis at some point in our lives, whether it is an injury, rejection, the loss of something or someone, especially when we live in a capitalist society that continually moves the bar of success.

Young people are more depressed than ever, scrolling their lives away on social media, and we have to ask ourselves, why are we feeling this way? Much of my depression, besides not being able to do the things that set my soul on fire, was seeing everyone else doing what I wanted to do on social media, and booking their first Broadway shows. We are one of the few countries, that the next question after, “Hi My name is x and it’s nice to see you”, is, “So what do you do?” What we do, defines much of our identity, how we perceive ourselves, and how others see us.

What happens when a life-changing diagnosis or accident flips your entire world upside down? There is no part of our education that values helping us who we are outside of what we do when we graduate from the four walls. In that moment, bleeding out in an ambulance, frantically trying to make my thumbs work to alert someone in NYC that I was in an emergency room, I screamed out “I need a miracle or I need to understand why this is happening.” And I got both, but not when I thought I would.

Why does the world not care if we are depressed? Why is the U.S. not interested in finding a solution to the problem?

VR.

If we are depressed, we WANT to spend money to escape our reality ie Meta-verse and Apple VR, which means more money for them. They WANT and NEED us to be addicted to continue to make money and churn record profits. Two years ago, I saw the short “Chimera” at the Rockaway Brewery, and it won many well-deserved awards as it paints a haunting picture of what the future looks like if we continue to slide down the rabbit hole of addiction to social media and alternate universes. Social media is just the first step to virtual reality.

Happiness is the ultimate rebellion.

As the pandemic continued, the gift of this experience slowly revealed itself. No longer attaching myself to the outcome of every audition and booking, I finally enjoyed dancing because I LOVED dancing, not just as a means to an end. Not being able to book dance or musical theatre gigs during the pandemic because live performances were pretty much banned, I slowly shifted back to the medium I had always been interested in, but never had much time except a few film classes and student films: film.

In this new pursuit of film, since I was now in Vancouver which is considered Hollywood North, and many shows and movies film here, I started taking more classes again, and realized how much I loved and resonated with creating new characters for new stories. It was liberating to free myself from living up to the expectations of past performances of past shows, and instead venture into something brand new.

Long story short, I ended up back in New York City in 2021/2022, and auditioned for a short film “Theatre 4”. Even though the part was written for a male, I saw it was filming in my hometown near Newton Falls, OH (who films there???) and wrote the director, letting him know that my parents live in the area and would be thrilled to have me home, if there was the possibility of a character in this film or a future one that I might be a fit for. I also threw in a Handle’s ice cream joke, and the director ended up re-writing the part to fit me, and cast me. We spent a night at the Golden Star Cinemas Theatre in Austintown filming Theatre 4, a short film about a girl who gets stuck in a movie theater over night.

The older I get, the more I value working with people I enjoy collaborating and spending time with, rather than taking anything and everything. Adam Michael, the director, was a joy to work with, and we kept in touch past the film shoot. Especially in a moment where we bonded over our shoulder pain. Rubbing his shoulder a few times, I looked at him, and he responded back, “Shoulder surgery.” After a nod, “Join the club”, I said back, which resulted in a confused look on his face. “I had an accident, which is kinda how I got into this film thing in the first place,” I said matter-of-factly. He took a breath and said, “Cancer.” We didn’t say much past that, having an understanding that we had both been through something similar that changed the trajectory of our lives.

Maybe anyone is willing to spill their life story on a night shoot when you reach the 4 AM hour, or maybe we just deeply connected, but I knew I wanted to work with Adam (and Ali) again, because there’s truly nothing more fulfilling than making art and having a positive, fun, uplifting film set, even when the material is deep. At the time, I was in an acting class writing my own scenes as an exercise, reconnecting with the writer in me. When I presented my scene to the class, my acting teacher thought that with a few tweaks, it could make a good short film. I called Adam up, ran the idea by him, and he was in to help.

My two best friends from NYC and I poured into my car to drive to Ohio for a weekend to film the short, and it was the highest “high” I had felt since performing on stage. We learned so much in the process about filmmaking, made a lot of mistakes, but had a tremendous amount of fun in the process. I look back on that weekend with extreme fondness, as I had not felt that level of joy in what I was doing since the last day I was on stage before the pandemic, and I knew I was meant to be in this industry. (Ok, ok also my wedding, but that came two weeks later after the short. Note to everyone, DO NOT MAKE ANYTHING right before your wedding lol)

From that weekend, one of my best friends had recommended me for another project, and I ended up being cast as my first lead in a feature film. A week after the wedding, we filmed in New York City and I shaved my head for the role. The week after we wrapped, I sported my new shaved look at the Women's Surf and Film Festival in Rockaway, and transported with an evening of watching surf films mostly directed, written by, or featuring women with a curated evening of live music, inspiring speeches, and art. Someday, I want to do something with surfing because it helped me through the hardest moments of my life.

In September, I returned back to Canada for a few months, went to the Vancouver International Film Festival. In the director’s panel with Marie Clement’s where she spoke about making “Bones of Crow” and how important it is that we revisit and allow others to go through their journey of trauma, Shredded hit me like cupid striking a lover with an arrow. It wasn’t called Shredded yet (actually first, it was “A Film Shot in Tofino") but the next day I called Adam and told him the idea.

“I’ll think about it,” he nervously said.

Part 2… next week. This will be a fairly long series of the creation, highs and lows, and current journey of making our first feature film, and I hope you learn something along the way!

PS - I will be releasing my novel to paid subscribers (but all free subscribers will receive the prologue and a few chapters for free) towards the end of the summer. If you are willing to share my writing with someone who you think would resonate, that would mean so much to me!