We recently connected with Alana Johnson and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Alana, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

As a straight-A student growing up, the importance of education was instilled in me from a young age. In hindsight, being obsessed with the outcome of my studies as opposed to the process of learning definitely came back to haunt me later on. Making the results the most important variable in school set me up for a lot of frustration later on in life. There are no grades in real life. There’s just getting it done or not getting it done. Caring so much about being validated for my efforts made it very difficult to give myself permission to be a beginner, in other words, to NOT be good.

Acting was the first discipline in a very long time in which I understood, this is going to take some time to become great at. I’m going to need to put in a lot of work if I want to make a life of this. At first, I was showing up to auditions that I kind of didn’t have any business being at. When it came to acting, I jumped out of the airplane and began to build my parachute on the way down. I’m still building if you ask me!

Nonetheless, it’s been ten years and I have been committed to studying consistently throughout my entire journey. Acting classes, improv classes, stand-up classes, workshops with Casting Directors, and most recently my Master’s. Above all else, the best teacher I have had to date is the stage. My advice if you want to be a performer is to never stop learning and to never get off stage.

Alana, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’ve been a performer all my life. As a child, I dabbled in ballet and gymnastics, but my first big commitment to performance was when I was a competitive figure skater. In school, I also loved to sing and choreograph dances with my friends. In fact, the first money I ever made was for performing in my 5th-grade Spice Girls cover band for a school event. I was on my high school and sorority Step Teams, and also while in college, I fell in love with being on the radio.

Creative expression was always something that I had an affinity for, but it wasn’t always something I believed could be a professional career. Perhaps that belief is exactly why it didn’t work out at the time.

While working a job in sales, I realized I was miserable. I wasn’t feeling fulfilled, or even happy to wake up in the morning. Performance needed to be a bigger part of my life.

Before my last semester of college, my father passed away. I’d been heavily influenced by him when it came to making major life decisions, and when I had to enter adulthood without him, it felt like my entire world crumbled.

My job in sales was similar to what both my father and brother did for a living. Their approval was something I’d regularly sought. I was on the sales side of a technical staffing company and quickly learned that it wasn’t something I was really interested in doing. Though I did win an office “pitch off” performance, which in hindsight was really just a sales monologue. Little did I know how thoroughly I’d be studying the art of monologues a few years later.

I left that job in sales and went back to waiting tables, which was something I knew I was great at and could also be lucrative while I figured out what was next. I landed a sweet gig in SoHo, NYC that subsidized so much of my acting education. I’m forever grateful for that job.

Sidenote: To all my creatives hustling in the service industry, you got this, and you’re doing a great job!
Aside from showing up for work, I made fitness a top priority, as I figured it would help clear my mind and get me on a path to happiness. After all, exercise was something that had always made me happy ever since my ice skating days.

At that time, I entertained either taking acting classes or becoming a personal trainer. I told myself not to try to do both at once so I wouldn’t set myself up for failure. I knew if I was going to seriously get into acting, I had to do it now. Right now. I couldn’t wait a second longer. At least that’s how I felt.

A few months later, I signed up for a class at Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York City. While researching the school, I stumbled upon this quote by Stella Adler: “Growth as an actor and growth as a human being are synonymous.”

I saw that quote and deeply understood that that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to grow. I wanted to become the greatest version of myself, and if acting could help me get there, then I was willing to take a chance.

Fast forward to now and since that class, I’ve done things I couldn’t have possibly imagined. I’ve been on television multiple times, in commercials in the back of NYC Taxi cabs, in an ad for SONY, I’ve created my own series, became a stand-up comic, got my MFA in Acting, taught undergraduate Acting, performed as an actor and comic in the UK – which was massive for me considering I was raised by the Spice Girls. I want to believe that’s why I’ve had some of the best shows I’ve ever had in London. I also did eventually get that Personal Trainer certification and training later on replaced my server income. That was honestly a dream come true in and of itself.

Today, I’m recently out of grad school and excited to be performing again both on stage and screen. Producing live shows is another area of expertise and another passion that goes hand in hand with comedy. I’m also leveraging my Acting education now to coach acting as well as public speaking and communication, as I do believe that improving our communication leads to better relationships which ultimately leads to a better life. I’m all about that personal growth. You can visit my website alanaj.tv to get in touch!

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I think that a lot of non-creatives don’t understand what acting is. I feel like unless you’re famous, the average person thinks you’re a joke, to be candid. People think you’re wasting your time and you can never “make it” as an actor in this world. First of all, success looks different for different people. Actors who are in the business to be famous I imagine are the first to quit. There are plenty of actors making a living off of their art who you and I have never even heard of. For me, that is success. To be able to live completely off of my artistic skills and expertise. They say it takes ten years to make an overnight success, and for some, it can be 20, for others it could be five. The way I see it, the only way an actor doesn’t “make it” is if they quit. It is not an easy life to lead as an artist. There is no one specific trajectory to any one specific destination. Mostly, because there generally is no one specific destination, and that uncertainty is part of both the thrill and misery of the job.

I also feel like the general population doesn’t understand what acting is. It’s not just reciting lines or crying on cue.
It is learning how to empathize with human beings who are nothing like you, who have had experiences beyond your own, and stepping into their shoes. It is honoring the life of another human being without judgment. It is about having the utmost respect for the human experience and having a spiritual connection to a character you have the honor of crafting as your own. For me, acting and performance in general give me the ability to connect with something bigger than myself.
That is pretty magical.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I was completely unaware that you could earn a Master of Fine Arts, MFA, for free with a Graduate Assistantship. I had no idea this was an option for pursuing any kind of higher education at all. I just graduated with my MFA from Louisiana State University in Acting in Summer 2023, and this was a program that offered a free tuition waiver along with a stipend for your Graduate Assistantship. This was life-changing for me. I had always wanted to go back to school after I graduated with my Bachelor’s from Rutgers. I simply wanted to be certain I knew what I wanted to study before I made that commitment. I discovered LSU’s program through the URTAs, the University Residence Theatre Association. This is an organization that provides an annual recruiting event that connects prospective MFA candidates with admissions faculty from dozens of programs. If you have any interest in pursuing an MFA in Acting, I highly recommend you check them out.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://alanaj.tv
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alanaj.tv/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OfficialAlanaJ/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanaj/
• IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7464335/

Image Credits
William McDowell, Brian Johnson, Dana Kinlaw, Matt Hayek, Tiffany Nguyen