We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Peter Farr. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Peter below.
Peter, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?
If I’m certain of one thing – no artist or creative is able to predict how their path in the arts will play out. This is a tricky challenge to modern eduction in any selected discipline of craft. When we’re pursuing degrees or classes that develop and hone our craft, we’re told by teachers and industry professionals all the “right” things to do to set ourselves up for success and keep getting work. I am not saying that all of those people and words of wisdom are wrong, I moreso think of Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard saying “One can make no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.” Even if you make all the “right” choices in pursuit of your craft, you will still face many rejections, not get the job you really wanted and felt as though you’d be perfect for, be out of work for concerning periods of time, and have to work other jobs to make ends meet in this increasingly disparate world where funding for the arts is constantly at risk. As grim as that sounds, it is still very possible. A mentor of mine would often talk about remaining as intentional as possible in all things – your work, your relationships with others, etc. I share all of this as I could have never predicted, and certainly never intended to have worked full-time for NYC’s longest currently running and most successful magician for nearly three years and almost 500 shows, and yet here I am. I got here because I was intentional and determined to move to NYC and work and perform in immersive and experiential theater. I have yet to accomplish the performance element in NYC, however from that pursuit have met a plethora of incredibly dedicated, clever, compassionate, one of a kind artists and workers who have been intentional with me in turn. Certainly, the COVID-19 pandemic made the ability to work in the arts even more difficult. However after about 2 years of “only” bartending full-time, a production manager I met in the immersive theatre world before the pandemic sent me an email asking “do you want to stage manage for a magician for a month? Maybe two months?” I said why not, and wound up being able to hold that occupation full-time for almost two full years and counting. I am also not here to say that it was “just that easy”. The full-time job is easily the hardest job I’ve ever had. I always wanted to be an impactful artist and storyteller, and never thought of myself as a “manager” or a “boss”. There are a large amount of responsibilities spanning people and timelines I’m beholden to in my work now, and I am grateful for the experience and value that has already instilled in me for future endeavors. I am also reminded of the sentiment that a life and career in the arts is a marathon, not a sprint. If you’re a person who feels that no matter how hard you try, you’re not getting work – you’re hearing from casting directors or agents that you’re too green, young, not enough this, not enough that, please do not let that get in your head. In these chapters of our lives the best thing we can do is just keep working and trying, and allow time to do the rest. If you’re a kind, pleasant, hard working, and consistent individual, work will most certainly come your way. Even if it won’t be the way or exact lane you anticipated. Some major steps and milestones I think I could have taken to speed up or change my path would absolutely been auditioning more frequently and really “grinding” in that sphere. For me, I am a creature of habit and need consistency in my life – something not very conducive to the life of an artist who often jumps from gig to gig and may never know where the next gig will come from. I made the ultimate choices to focus on my personal life and development in my early and mid twenties, and my acting career could have been in a different spot right now if I had prioritized it more.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am a theatre and performance artist passionate about and in constant pursuit of challenging traditional methods of storytelling and entertainment consumption, in a medium now often termed as “the experience economy”. I was in grade school when cellphones and iPods and all of that technology started taking off – these days its undeniable that most all of us have serious addictions to screens in our pockets or in our homes. Through my training and professional experiences, I am unshakably certain that “the experience economy” will only continue to grow. There are so many resources we have today for brand activation, event curation, and performance and entertainment production. Event offerings that bring people together, capture their attention, and deeply engage them with the environment of the event from the moment they first hear about it through the moment they stop thinking about it (not just when butts are in seats) is increasingly necessary and sought after. Additionally, I believe people are increasingly tired of being tied to their screens and the limiting individualism of those experiences, even if AI tools and their productivity is on the rise. Those reflections said, I first fell in love with what I’m talking about when I saw a show called Sleep No More while in high school. I knew I wanted to essentially do things like that for the rest of my life. I gratefully had the opportunity to work at Sleep No More for a period of time before it closed, in addition to an array of experiences working behind the scenes both practically, methodically, and technically seeing how the magic is made. I credit that exposure to my fortune of attending Denver School of the Arts, the primary magnet school in Colorado that prepared grade school students for the best performing arts colleges and careers in the arts. I then honed my acting and performance skills at the Guthrie Theater / University of Minnesota BFA Acting program and minored in creative writing. These days, while my performance career has been on the back burner, I work ceaselessly on weekends to continue the production of The Magician at 281 Park Avenue South, and offer creative and production consultancy to immersive and experiential groups and artists starting out on new productions. Beyond the practical machinations of production, there are an array of considerations for your artists and audiences that must be taken into account both for the production to operate safely and sustainably, as well as leave the highest impact. I am most proud of my determination to work in this field and the opportunities that have found their way to me that I’ve succeeded in, even on days and throughout periods where I was fully out of the performance and entertainment industry making money to survive, as never giving up on yourself and ensuring you’re a kind, honest, hard-working person is most of the battle to ensure you’ll work.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
The entertainment industry has recently undergone and continues to undergo some deep and very necessary challenges and reevaluations of the stories that are being told, and who is telling them. Largely, the most central issues remain of who makes greenlighting and funding decisions – who receives the resources to write, produce, cast, and perform on the biggest stages and screens of the world, and the biases and prejudices of those decision makers. That being the truth (though it crumbles a little more each passing day) – I think the best way we can aid in the fight is supporting small, local, up and coming artists. Go to the staged reading of that college friend you haven’t heard from in years. If you can spare ~$100, drop it in the bucket of the music makers on the NYC subways. Go to your friend’s girlfriend’s stand up comedy show. Download that one friend’s album on SoundCloud or BandCamp or wherever, listen to it fully, and reach out to encourage them and share your thoughts. Anything that seems small, trivial, not really worth it, or silly, may actually be the most impactful change and and shift in this paradigm you can offer.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
As the world rages on, it’s tough to feel a sense of belonging and purpose as a straight white male. There is often and easily unhelpful feelings of guilt and stagnation in knowing exactly what to do or ensure you’re one of the “good” ones. I have had to unlearn patterns of inaction in relation to that. It’s understandable to fear making the wrong decision, saying the wrong thing, or inadvertently perpetuating the harm or inequitable patterns pervasive in our industry. However, we cannot change who we are, and I’ve been working to re-focus much on where and when my voice speaking up is helping a situation or community. We are also all prone to limiting our focus to ourselves, and wanting to ensure that we have “enough”. I’ve had to unlearn the knee-jerk inclination that to uplift or support anyone else, I have to face some sort of “loss” or inability to have my dreams come true as well. Fortunately, it is absolutely possible for everyone to live successfully, happily, and satiated if we’re all in agreement on the safety and basic validity of all people and stories deserving to be highlighted and told.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @peter.i.d.farr
Image Credits
Thomas Brunot. Dan White. Steve Tobar. Denver Center Theater Academy.