We recently connected with Athena Saxon and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Athena thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

My parents are extremely supportive in my pursuit of the arts. Maybe inadvertently, they taught me how business and art are equally important. My parents own a mom and pop record store in the SF Bay Area. I grew up understanding the value of hard work and finding joy in the everyday. The store was my sister and I’s playground. We were often there after school, on weekends, during breaks in the summer, and even holidays! It was a second home and a place of deep and constant renewal. A place of work but also a place of great exploration. We seemingly had full range to engage within our environment. We’d climb the buildings and storage containers, run on the roofs, build forts, take in stray cats, shoot movies, garden, invent imaginary contraptions, and sell homemade jewelry. The store was a place for playdates, tutoring sessions, and family gatherings. It’s where I learned to play the guitar, use a drill, edit photography, and learned the art of negotiation. Business and art can often seem very contradictory, but in reality they work hand-in-hand. Art is a cycle, a living, moving creature. It needs to be fed as much as we need to consume it. Through the recycling of antiques, music, and stories breathes space for the new. The store, the family business, was vehicle for my artistry. Art is work. My parents taught me that. They worked hard everyday to build a life that allowed us all to have the freedom to consume and create art.

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.

I am an actor, theatre producer, and stage manager. I am a founder of an independent theatre company called Season 10 Stage Productions. I am also the resident producer and house manager at Rogue Machine Theatre in Hollywood.

I started as an actor as a child at the age of 8. My mom put my sister and I in the church production of Annie and we both fell in love with the stage. We chased every opportunity we could to perform. I was a little more shy than my twin sister, but I too felt a freedom in the music and escapism of it all. As many other performers will attest, the stage was one of the first places I felt truly safe to just be. At the age of 9 I had my first SF agent and began going out for modeling gigs and commercials. I don’t know if I had a specific vision of what I wanted to do as an actor at that time. I felt very much like Hannah Montana, living a double life. At school I touted that I’d become a doctor, but at night I’d go to acting classes and talk about auditions I’d had. I wouldn’t have called myself a “child actor” per-say, because I didn’t get a bunch of big fancy gigs; but auditioning, performing in plays, vocal coaching, and being on set was a big part of my life.

I always loved the arts: theatre, movies, tv, music, ect. I knew that would always be a focal point for myself. In college, I fell into production design for short films. I had to have production designed at least a dozen films in my last 2 years of college. Graduating, I fell into a post-production job which totally changed my perspective of the industry as a whole. I don’t like when people say “fell into” without explaining, so I will. Often “falling into” something for me just meant someone asked me for a favor or if I was interested in a job. My first art department gig was clearing empty beer bottles from a frat house overnight so a crew could shoot in there during the day. Stinky, sticky, smelly. There was something about the camaraderie that I loved. The sense of accomplishment and the freedom to put my mark on something. Small things, like rearranging a room felt very special to me, knowing my work was going to be memorialized. As for my first TV post gig, a friend’s brother was hiring and he just liked my energy. Sometimes it really is just about being in the right place, right time, right attitude.

Now I work mainly in theatre. Again…fell into it. An acting teacher wanted me to volunteer for his theatre company (IAMA Theatre). At the time, they didn’t need volunteers, but hired me to house manage. Show after show of house managing, I tried my hand at different jobs. Wardrobe supervising, assistant stage managing, prop design, associate producing, producing. And here I am, still hoping around falling into things.

I started my own theatre company with a group of friends and we successfully put up 4 shows in our first season! What a feat! Working with Rogue Machine, I’ve been able to continue my trend of wearing multiple hats and learning new skills. I’m only 28 and still very much figuring out who I am as an artist and a person, but what I hold on to every day is that nothing is permanent. That might sound scary for some, but I find it quite comforting. We, as artists, can feel a great weight to have a brand, a solid mission, or a legacy to leave behind. But what I’m learning is that this lifestyle is fluid. You have to be ready to change and open to new discovers. Major world events, personal hardships, deep relationship, amongst many other factors will constantly effect your art and how you express it.

From this, I hope you can gather that I am very much a work in progress and a life long learner. That is how I have allowed my life to be. I want to be affected by the world, people, and myself and that will always affect my product, my brand, myself. For now, I am producing theatre. That is where my hands belong at the moment, but check back in with me in a couple years. I may have fallen into something else.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

Yes! Many!

The Case for Servant Leadership by Kent M. Keith (Inspired by Robert. K Greenleaf). This concept as servant as the leader flipped my understanding of the world and my place in it upside down. Which is exactly the point!!!

Currently, I’m trying to “eat the frog”. I think there are books out there on this concept. But is means, start your day with the most difficult task. Get that out of the way first and everything else will feel easy.

You are a Bad Ass. Just read it. Everyone should. Listen to the audiobook.

The Bible. Yeah…I know. I’m one of them Christians, but having a source or a higher power takes a lot of pressure off yourself. Understanding the universe and time is so much big than you really helps you not sweat the small stuff some times. I often struggle with understanding what the point of living is for and God answers me every time. So, I can’t recommend anything better than that!

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Accessibility. There is a type of “high” you get from performing onstage, or writing a story, or building something with your hands that you just can’t explain but you constantly want more of. I have a desire to allow as many people as possible feel that. I love to push my friends to help me with an audition, or take an acting class, or join a writers group. I love watching people get silly, shed their adult constraints, and just be a child again. Sitting and watching a show also totally counts. Letting your mind run free, suspend disbelief, and just be. We all need that, I need that. I get to more often than most, and working to make the arts for accessible is a big goal of mine. Accessibility means so many things. Monetary, physical, societal, environmental. Every show I work on, I look for ways to bring in communities that not only crave theatre, but might also have hurdles to get to there.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.roguemachinetheatre.org/
• Instagram: thenie_saxon
• Other: @season10stage