Portrait of the Artist... As The Man

Originally published in January 2009.

As the lights faded to black, covering every crevice of Massey Theater in darkness, I knew I was hooked. It was the opening performance of Quilters – a musical directed by my wonderful former Greenwich Academy theater teacher and NYC director, Linda Ames Key – and I had felt a sense of connection and contentment I’d rarely felt before.

Through Quilters and many other GA shows, the theater became my passion: a creative space of human expression where exploring who we are and how we will respond to life’s challenges is central to making art.

The theater bug stayed with me throughout college and then into grad school. I gobbled everything theatrical, from Brecht to Broadway, and found myself in some unlikely situations: lugging lights into the grand old caverns of Oxfordian dining halls to mount a production of Grease (I was told my American accent was fantastic), and even forming a burgeoning theater company, Theatre Fille de Chambre, named aptly after a character in a Paula Vogel play.

But I was told by family, professors and mentors that the business world was calling, for reasons practical and financial. An achievement-oriented, fast-paced and multi-degreed young woman had much more room to grow in a business context, I heard, and with the American markets booming, why not shoot for the stars?

I ignored this logic for a while, thinking that it could never supercede the ideal niche I was carving out in nonprofit arts administration, and that the foreign, unfriendly norms of the business world were no place for me.

But, as it has for many idealistic young liberal arts grads, the tide began to turn. While studying Management during my second year at grad school, I began to see that other professional endeavors might provide at least a semblance of the deep communication and spark of innovation that I had pinned solely to the theater. I also watched many college friends step into their business careers with salaries that caused a double-take -- my stubborn mind began to soften. Why not try a business discipline outside theater? Why not experience something new and unknown, make good money, and then bring my learning back to the arts?

As I have surveyed my theater friends, I’ve realized that this change in path and perspective is not terribly uncommon. We’ll laugh now and joke that we have become “portraits of artists as THE man,” to make a pun of James Joyce’s great work. We’ll make the business world an anthropological study, hooting about the “ping-ing” and “circling back” that goes on in our well-heeled offices, stressing over client meetings, and occasionally pining that we have “lost our souls” in the tumultuous ocean of the market.

These conversations have become more frequent recently, but the tone has shifted. As we have watched our adopted business world grapple with shocks, upheaval and hubris in the wake of this ongoing financial crisis, we cannot help to think that the story is awfully similar to a Greek tragedy. The errors that mere mortals have made – which, as many commentators will tell you, involve “irrational exuberance” and pushing the limits of luck, fate and governmental prudence – have led to our unexpected downfall. We are left with a scenario only remedied by the proper absolution: a back-to-the-basics mentality where we choose not to spend beyond our means and resort to hard work, calm attitudes, and reliance on inspirational leadership to take us back to serenity.

Perhaps more important, I am left with a shocking revelation. Business, in all its corporate glory – a world we young artists now are aspiring to understand and relate to more fully –is just another stage for human endeavor, a platform for self-expression, developing self-knowledge, and challenges to be faced, just like the script of a Chekhov play. It even gives the same moral takeaway: through distress, we discover humanity. Brilliant. The perfect, Shakespearean, silver lining.

Christina Ciocca grew up in Darien and graduated from Greenwich Academy. She works in communications and public relations at The Dilenschneider Group in New York City.