Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Chelsea Marcantel. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Chelsea, thank you for being such a positive, uplifting person. We’ve noticed that so many of the successful folks we’ve had the good fortune of connecting with have high levels of optimism and so we’d love to hear about your optimism and where you think it comes from.
There’s a quote from Michael J. Fox that I love: “With gratitude, optimism is sustainable.” I think it’s important to keep track of an hold in your heart all things you have going for you, all the people who are on your side, all the things that are working in your favor. The obstacles will keep presenting themselves, the trouble will find you. You have to hold on to the things that are working to your advantage, and give thanks for them. If you do, optimism becomes easier. Some people think optimism is synonymous with naïveté, or people who aren’t really paying attention. But for me, optimism is survival. The belief that a better world is possible, and that everyone’s fate is bound up together, is the most worthwhile thing in life to keep fighting for. And it takes a lot of effort to keep fighting for it; optimism is far from the easy way out.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I write and direct plays, musicals, movies, tv, and animation. In my work as a story consultant, I provide generous, non-prescriptive feedback that helps people shape and strengthen their own ideas, scripts, and pitches in order to bring them to the next level of development. I also work to facilitate communities of care among artists and non-artists everywhere I am.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
My three personal qualities that have had the biggest impact on my creative journey up to this point have probably been (1) my insatiable curiosity for human interest stories, (2) my love of organization, and (3) my refusal to pre-reject myself from anything. As a writer, curiosity about your fellow humans and why they do what they do and love what they love will provide you with an endless well of things to research and write about; I don’t think I’ve ever had writer’s block or been at a loss for ideas. I’m also a very organized person, which as a freelancer, is crucial — even with agents, managers, and a lawyer, I still have to stay on top of my own deadlines, payments, taxes, project requirements, travel, etc, not to mention my notes and ideas for various different projects. “Art loves order,” I like to say.
But the last quality is the one that doubles as the piece of advice that would give to an early-career artist: don’t ever count yourself out of anything. I have applied and put myself forward for so many long-shot things that seemed crazy, and most of them I didn’t get — but some of them I did, and they were life-changing! I sometimes hear friends say things like, “why should I audition or apply for that? I’ll never get picked,” and I remind them, always, that we don’t pre-reject ourselves from opportunities. This is a business full of rejection, but we let others do that for us. We swing at every pitch. Sometimes, even if you don’t book the gig, you meet someone or get on someone’s radar or get a piece of feedback that moves the needle. And even if you don’t, the mere act of applying/auditioning/putting yourself out there keeps you mindful of the road you’re on, and moving toward the things you want.
How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?
I think that all of us who are working in entertainment right now, whether it’s live theatre, film/tv, animation, music, anything, are feeling a lot of uncertainty about the future. It’s not just one thing, it’s an almagam of: studios merging (which means fewer jobs), funding cuts for the arts, production moving overseas, audience overwhelm from all the content out there, the way that streaming has stripped sustainable wages from artists, threats from AI (which is less about sentient neural networks coming for our jobs, and more about corporations showing how little they value what we make), not to mention looming threats to free speech and free expression.
There are a lot of things to be anxious about, but one thing that is encouraging to me, is that I’ve noticed that the contraction of work has lead to an explosion in people no longer waiting for permission to make what they want to make. There have been so many amazing short films, and web series, and weird TikTok characters, and one-person plays, and bizarro music projects that have emerged over the last year or so, because people just got tired of knocking on doors trying to get someone to pay attention to them. There’s been a real punk rock, “screw it, let’s just make it ourselves” feeling bubbling up lately that I think is a backlash to the fear and scrounging — an abundance reaction to scarcity. I think it’s only going to grow over the next four years, and I’m here for it.
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