We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Angela Madaline-Johnson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Angela below.
Angela, appreciate you joining us today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?
I sometimes drive my oldest son to school in the mornings, in my yoga pants & sweatshirt, sans makeup, and I am often both grateful and envious of the teachers I see helping with the student car line. I look at them–put together and already working at something important at first thing in the morning–the education of our kids, and I think “Wow. How cool to have a well-respected career with a clear purpose, steady, consistent schedule, and be out shaping the future at 7:30 AM”. Almost simultaneously, I have the thought that I am so grateful for these amazing folks teaching my kid, and I’m so glad that they are doing this important work instead of me, because it means that I get to do the specific work that God has gifted me with–performing, writing, and leading. I just wish it wasn’t so messy. So inconsistent. So HARD. I wish that when someone asked me what I do for a living, it didn’t require a very long and in depth explanation of what it is exactly that I do. But then, I remember the days when I DID have a “regular job”. I worked as an executive assistant for years, and I had a steady schedule and a regular paycheck, and I felt…..dry. It’s hard to remember that the artistic path that I believe God has paved for me is important even thought it’s not “normal” or “regular” or “steady”, because it is mine. It is my path and it contributes to the world in a unique, valuable, and often-overlooked way–and that makes me happy to be a creative.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Like so many performing artists, I got into the entertainment industry by way of high school theater, which led me to major in musical theatre in college. After earning a B.F.A in Musical Theatre from Catawba College, in NC, I moved to NYC with every theatre major’s dream of hitting it big on Broadway. Things didn’t quite pan out that way—I had success working in Off-Broadway & regional theaters but quickly discovered that living the NY actor’s dream may not be my path. I had fallen in love with a southern man who had no dreams of living in NYC, despite the fact that he willingly agreed to join me on my crazy journey, and the actor’s life is a challenging one. I struggled with the age-old artist’s problem of “not having a REAL career”, along a with serious confidence crisis–not a good combo. Despite the support of my husband and family, my dream started to feel tarnished. After 4 years of this life, my husband found himself in an IT management career which offered us the opportunity to move to northern California and we jumped at the chance to try West Coast living. I thought I was done with my “childish” dream of becoming a performer, and I didn’t perform professionally for another 9 years until my youngest son was born and we moved to Nashville. I found myself in an acute state of postpartum depression, and through much prayer and professional counseling, I discovered that I missed my favorite creative outlets–singing and acting. I began taking acting lessons and vocal coaching to get myself back into shape, found an agent for film and television work, and started auditioning and booking gigs. That was seven years ago. Since re-establishing myself in entertainment in my late 30s, I’ve been shocked to find that I have other talents and interests I didn’t know I had! I am now a songwriter. Four years ago, I read my husband something I wrote while journaling and he said “That’s a song!”. We started writing together and it has become an incredibly important outlet for us both as a couple and individually.
I’m also an Artistic Director. Two years ago, I was tapped to artistic direct a group called Stoke, a membership-based group of professional and semi-professional performing artists, interested in growing together creatively, by exploring and engaging in new and familiar performing arts mediums. We produce original works in found spaces (restaurants, breweries, etc.) within our suburban Nashville community of Nolensville. Basically, we’re making original bite-size theatre in places where people are already gathering for nightlife. The goal is to give local artists an opportunity to write and perform, but also to introduce live theatre to a group of people who may think that professional theatre only exists on a large scale, in a traditional theatre. It’s kind of an original theatre company geared towards the “everyman”. We’ve completed two projects that will be produced this year: a dramatic reading of community social media posts & an original “live sitcom” series based on a small, suburban southern town, eerily familiar to our own. Our hope for Stoke is that it will entertain folks locally but will also point people back to the Nashville theatre community at large, thus introducing new audiences to larger local professional theatre companies.
I’m also a teacher. Most recently, I’ve found myself teaching theatre classes and leading spiritual-based creative studies to people ages 5-70, which is a route I never would’ve imagined taking a few years ago! Performing, writing, and teaching has all come together to create quite the combo of artistic endeavors in my life and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ve found myself to be a better wife, mother, and friend when I am engaged in a myriad of creative work. I am thrilled, and feel blessed to have the opportunity to help others discover and explore their artistic pursuits and gifts, while still pursing my own performance career.
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
I wish I had read “Waking Up Grey” by Jennie Schut earlier in my creative journey. It is a creative spiritual study for women, that taught me to truly own my identity as an artist created in the Great Creator’s image. In the process of walking through that study several times, I’ve learned to allow myself permission to be a novice in new creative endeavors, and to understand that because I’m a human, I need to create. I didn’t always understand my desire to be creative. I knew it was part of who I was but didn’t always know what to do with it outside of performing. Sometimes, I couldn’t even understand how to get more creative as a performer. This book opened up a whole new way of thinking about creativity in the spiritual sense, and all of the different ways that we can be creative. It has increased my palette as an artist, and has opened the door for me to explore my creativity in a variety of new ways, many of which are income generating.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
I am driven by the hope that something that I create, do, or put out into the world can effect another person’s life in a positive way. If what I do can help a person explore their feelings, learn something new about themselves, or create a space for them to succeed in their own creativity, then I believe my role as an artist/creative is completely fulfilled. The biggest reward for me as an artist, is when I feel that I’ve reflected light to someone else through my art, which I hope they in turn will somehow reflect to someone else, and so on and so on.
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Image Credits
Monstersongs Photo: Andrew Morton Midsummer’s Night Dream Fairy & Macbeth Battle Photos: Michael Gomez Husband and Wife Musician Photos: Ilde Cook Stoke Logo: Michael Hutzel