We recently connected with Amandalyn McLellan and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Amandalyn thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
Earlier this year, I joined the board of RiffRaff, an incredible new theatre company started by my good friends Joe Staton and Dorthea Gloria. Our mission is to provide acting opportunities to immigrant actors (all our main stage productions and otherwise include at least 50% immigrant artists) and working with RiffRaff has been a meaningful, inspiring, and motivating experience.
Many of my friends in university had shared their experiences with me about studying in the U.S. on a student visa, and the barriers or hurdles that they had to navigate in order to apply for their O-1 visas upon graduating. As with any student there are financial considerations, but oftentimes international students struggle to get work (or aren’t permitted to do so, depending on the type of visa they have.) They are often under a lot of pressure to figure out their next move. Once a student visa has expired, typically one of the only paths forward to continue living and working as an actor in the U.S. is obtaining an O-1 visa, which is an incredibly long and challenging process. The application requires very specific and detailed documentation regarding an actor’s work history. Many theater companies don’t have a great understanding of this process, and may overlook Non-citizens for opportunities as there is a perception that it will be too complicated to work with them. This puts immigrant actors at a great disadvantage when it comes to getting jobs and this lack of opportunity becomes a barrier to obtaining their visas.
Riffraff strives provide equal performance opportunities to immigrants so that they can pursue their passion in the arts, hone their skills, and build their resume to support their O-1 visa application. We pride ourselves on helping to revive the small local theater scene in New York that took such a hit at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While we’ve been focusing on fundraising through variety shows, play festivals, and hosting classes, we are excited for our first, upcoming production of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the upcoming months, we look to produce both new and old works with our own unique twists. We’ll also be hosting an International Film Festival later this year.
If you’re interested in joining us, finding out more about us, or you’d like to donate to support our mission and work, you can visit our website at: www.riffraffnyc.org.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I was raised in a small, beautiful costal town in Massachusetts that I felt I never quite fit into.
I was very much an outcast with my own little band of “lost boys” if you will. Becoming a performer for me never felt like a choice – it always just felt right.
When I was a young child, about five years old, my mother recalls me crying at my first dance lesson not because I was unhappy or wanted to come home – it was because the studio “had no stage.” I have always loved words, I loved music, I loved to dress up, I loved to make believe, most of all, I loved magic. I loved storytelling, which is what most art is at its core. It’s a sharing of our human experience through our shared senses. I realized that through acting, I could do and be things or people that that I couldn’t in real life. I could also make magic real for other people. My mom, noticing my interests, signed me up for a local theater camp. Usually when you start out in theater, you’re playing small background parts, and I was no exception. I would slowly inch my way forward from the chorus, desperately wanting to be in the front where the action was. I watched the lead actors with awe and admiration. I would listen to the directors provide feedback to the actors and share notes on what they liked or didn’t like and why. I would then internalize these notes and apply them to myself, developing my first primitive form of “technique.” This was how I first started learning to act.
When my parents realized I was serious about acting, they began to sign me up for classes and camps and as I got older, they found me different teachers/coaches to work with. I have had many mentors over the years who greatly influenced me and deeply informed my craft. They began teaching me real technique and taking my raw talent and sculpting it into a useable instrument. (I have taken a lesson from every one of them and I am forever grateful.)
Then, I started to audition for bigger roles. I began to digest and incorporate constructive criticism and started applying it to my work. I think this skill is the most important skill to have as an actor. It’s more than parroting a line a different way or “taking direction well,” it’s a form of translation. It’s taking what the director asks for, what the script calls for, and merging that with the character you have created to induce a different experience or response from your audience. That’s where, in my view, the collaborative relationship between actor, writer, and director occurs and where the true artistry lives.
This industry is relentless, which is no surprise to those who are in it. This is why having an unwavering work ethic is a cornerstone of my values. It’s where my love of history, love of words, and interest in what motivates people to do what they do comes in useful. When I am preparing for a role or project, I leave no stone unturned. There is no amount of research I won’t do for a character and it’s rare that you catch me unprepared. I like to be informed in my decision making so that I can understand the writer’s choices and so that I can fully flesh out and understand my character.
The biggest obstacle I’ve faced, is one that I think plagues many young artists, which is the desire to “do it right.” On a basic human level, we all long to be good at things and do things “correctly” or the “best.” At face value, that is a valuable and meaningful motivator, but it can also become relentless and tortuous. Even when you do your due diligence, put your prep in, and work your hardest to hone your craft, there is no such thing as a perfect performance. I realized quickly that I was chasing the wrong goal, and I’ve started to feel more grateful for the journey rather than the result. Sometimes doing things “by the book” can stifle the freedom that’s necessary to create. It creates a kind of forced tunnel vision and cuts off other potential choices you could make. You’re either afraid to make them because they might be wrong, or you don’t even think of them because you’re so focused on doing what you have deemed to be “right.” It also sucks all the fun out of what you’re doing and if you’re not having fun, why put up with all the difficulties that come with a career in the arts? As I’ve moved through my career, on both stage and screen, I’ve begun letting go of that need and it has given me a newfound ease, poise and freedom in my work that is powerful and so fulfilling. It feels like flying.
As far as songwriting, my other favorite mode of storytelling, I’ve had little formal training, though I’ve been lucky to have some really wonderful singing teachers over the years. I took guitar lessons when I was young, but eventually branched off to teach myself. I’ve always had a knack for words. I get that from my dad, and he very much inspired my love of music and was the first person I “wrote” with. He and a good friend of his used to “jam” and I always wanted to be involved. While I’ve ghost written a few songs with others, and written many of my own, I’ve only started performing my own work live fairly recently. I would say I encountered the same obstacle with acting that I did with songwriting – a desire to “do it right.” I eventually realized that with writing, “right” is whatever you deem it to be – especially if you’re the one that wrote the song! When I act, I get to share other people’s stories and when I sing/write I get to share my own. Either way, what bliss! If I’ve moved someone, shared something helpful, or impacted someone in some way, I feel that I’ve done my job.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Resilience has been a theme throughout my life. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard “no”, “not you” “not now” or “not yet”. I have always been a person who has had to make my own luck, which is OK, as being a hard worker has taught me how. One of the hardest moments for me was when I first applied to college. I was a high achieving kid. On one hand, I was a hardworking high honor roll student who was consistently acting and participating in numerous extra curriculars and community service projects. One the other hand, I struggled deeply with anxiety and depression. When I applied to all my schools, I got an acting coach, and I picked my own material (the wrong material – hindsight is 20/20!). I attended Unifies in NYC, and being a nervous wreck, I slipped and fractured my tailbone on the train on the way to the auditions. I had to skip the dance and movement portions of the auditions and I was in full panic mode. I was not feeling my material, I was in pain, and I was seriously questioning my skills. No surprise, I was rejected from every single school that I had applied to. It was a devastating blow. All I knew and ever wanted to do was act. I was already anxious and depressed, exhausted and overbooked, and now I was wondering what I was going to do for the rest of my life. I knew this career was a long shot. Do I abandon the dream? Am I just not good enough? Do I choose another major? Do I have to go through the marathon of college auditions again? Do I take a gap year? After a long and painful ordeal, I decided I was not going to take no for an answer. I knew they didn’t get the best version of me, but I was going to make sure that she showed up the next year. I decided that, for a year, I would attend one of the schools whose theater department had said no, but whose academic program was eager for me to attend. I would get some of my gen-eds out of the way while starting my life in NYC – something I always dreamed of! The school I attended assigned me an advisor who was very unkind and told me that I should probably just stay there and pick a new major because my chances of getting accepted to my dream school were so slim. I’m grateful I listened to my gut and trusted myself and didn’t take her advice or listen to her negativity. In fact, her doubt made me more determined than ever to achieve my goal. I got a new coach, Chelsea, who was wonderful and specialized in college auditions. We picked new materials; we talked about what schools I wanted to go to and why. We talked about social issues and what mattered to me. She got me ready. Most of all she believed in me. The next year I trekked to all the auditions again, many of them on the school’s campuses rather than at Unified’s and I worked those rooms. This was a vastly different experience. I had multiple schools asking me to commit to their program right there at the audition. When all was said and done, I had applied to 10 schools and had gotten a yes from almost all of them. The most important one being my dream school, NYU Tisch, and as a bonus I had been accepted into the studio within Tisch that I had been hoping for. I was thrilled. This to me was a huge lesson in resilience.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is when my work really touches or resonates with someone. When I make magic real for someone, or they hear the lyrics that I’ve written, or the story that I’m telling, and they see themselves in it. When I bring them back to a time in their life or remind them of someone they knew or loved. When I fully immerse them in a story. When, because of what I’ve said or the way I have played a character, they look at a situation or person differently. Reaching people, moving people, making someone laugh, and being heard by people is truly the greatest reward and greatest honor.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.amandalynmclellan.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandalynm/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mandy.mclellan.3
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-M2OhU2buY&t=1s
- Other: IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5596538/
RiffRaff website: https://www.riffraffnyc.org/
Image Credits
Melissa Hamburg