We recently connected with Becca Twiggs and have shared our conversation below.
Becca, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
I think the biggest things to be learned regarding any creative field are teamwork, collaboration, and professionalism. You have to be willing to put in the work not only with your castmates, but your director, your producers, and the design team.
One of the hardest lessons as a creative is realizing that if you show up unprepared and unwilling to collaborate, you will not get far, and you will find out how easily replaceable you are. Thankfully, theatre and arts spaces are, in my experience, welcoming, and many people are willing to help, so if you might be unsure of what you need to do or how you can be best prepared and ready to work, more often than not there will be someone who would love to guide you, but you have to be ready to be vulnerable and ask for it!
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
For me, writing and storytelling came very naturally.
I was a very imaginative kid. I was always making up stories in my head – my toys always had full backgrounds, love triangles, a list of people they hated, you name it. Anytime I played games I would always try to direct my friends and supply them dialogue to make sure the scene I had crafted went the way I planned.
I started acting in middle school, and by the time I was in college, I had worked professionally as a performer for years, mostly doing children’s theatre and improv at places like Stone Mountain Park, The Georgia Renaissance Festival, and Aurora Theatre. I studied writing in college, and in 2020 I graduated from Georgia Gwinnett College with a B.A. in English with a minor in media arts production.
During college, I started and served as a director and producer for an annual short play festival held in the spring. It was then that I really confirmed that what I wanted to do creatively was produce new works and support up-and-coming artists in any way I could.
Now, three years post-grad, I’ve performed standup and storytelling at some fantastic venues around Atlanta, including the Shakespeare Tavern, Heck House, Red Light Cafe, Dynamic Eldorado, Metropolitan Studios, Waller’s, My Sister’s Room, and Dad’s Garage Theatre.
As far as writing goes, my first full-length play, “Hannah and Greta, or The Cost of Livin’ the Dream”, premiered at the 2022 Atlanta Fringe Festival. Most recently, my second play, “The Pros and Cons of Killing Your Cult Leader” ran in July and August at both the Aurora Theatre and The Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse, and received rave reviews from Arts ATL, Atlanta Theatre Buzz, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, and BroadwayWorld. I’m also a regular collaborator with Georgia Gwinnett College’s theatre department, now as professional, having provided classes and the college’s drama club with several scripts in the last year.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
It’s getting to see the impact of your work on other people.
I’ve had two scripts thus far that have been produced here in Atlanta – “Hannah and Greta, or, The Cost of Livin’ the Dream” and “The Pros and Cons of Killing Your Cult Leader”. Both shows dealt with heavy themes in a darkly comedic way.
I am so thrilled that those stories resonated with people; I’ve had so many audience members come up to me after the performance to tell me that they connected with the story, that it made them feel seen and heard. That’s all any artist can ask for.
I remember one particular instance, on the first preview performance of “The Pros and Cons of Killing Your Cult Leader” during it’s first run at Aurora Theatre.
This preview audience was mostly volunteers and donors from the theatre. They enjoyed it, certainly, but their reactions were subdued, and I was so scared that the show wouldn’t reach it’s true audience, that the people who saw it wouldn’t “get it”.
And then I started hearing loud laughter coming from the back, and noticed a young patron. As the show went on, I watched this young patron watch the show. They gasped, laughed, and sat on the edge of their seat. Afterwards, they thanked me and found my Instagram.
If only one person is impacted by my words, then I have done my job, and I will be endlessly grateful.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
In order to make sure you can see great art, you have to invest in and take a chance on new artists. Without new artists around to tell their stories, art will get stale.
Investing in new artists and writers is something I hope more and more theatre companies will do, as the future of this industry depends on investing in up-and-coming artists and allowing them to grow with and make an impact on the arts.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://newplayexchange.org/users/75152/becca-twiggs
- Instagram: @twiggling
- Twitter: @Twiggling