by Erik Liberman, 1994 YoungArts Winner in Theater

While doing a reading not long ago, I noticed that four of the six actors in the cast were texting while their fellow actors were working.

During recent rehearsals for a play, I observed actors bringing their cell phones onstage, texting while it wasn’t their time to talk - or while the director was speaking with someone else. 

“Would you like coke? Or water, or something?”

There was a momentarily shy silence in which the seven of us YoungArts alums looked at each other, until someone finally had the courage to say, “Sure!” We’d just finished rehearsing the two songs that we were performing that evening, standing around slightly awkwardly in Ben Folds’ dressing room at the Kennedy Center. And he was offering to pour us something to drink.

To aspiring musical artists who have time to read this stuff:

I'm often asked for advice to aspiring musicians and I'm just immature enough to take a stab at it on this flight to Boston. Really, I'm not dead sure of any of this, but here goes... if nothing else, maybe I'm thinking aloud - stuff that I need to remember for myself. Forgive any perceived tone of all-knowingness. It just comes out that way when I'm trying to make sense of it all.