Today we’d like to introduce you to Chelsea Sutton.
Chelsea, before we jump into specific questions about your work, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Oh, this is one of those questions where I want to have some fantastic, flashy, epic origin story – and luckily for you, I have one. You see, I was recently trapped in a Groundhog’s Day kind of Hell where I was forced to write play after play after play and story after story after story and hear over and over again how they are too weird or unproduceable, and I didn’t escape that loop until I truly perfected the most impossible piece of writing and had become a master at it. I’m actually 4,000 years old.
Okay. That’s only partially true.
The real stuff is pretty boring. Grew up in Southern California in Glen Avon (near Riverside) and Murrieta. The first story I wrote was about two dinosaurs falling in love. I had a speech impediment and was painfully shy when I was little (I couldn’t even pronounce my name correctly). Found a voice through some speech therapy and dance classes. Eventually worked through the shyness stuff through acting and I still love to get up in front of a crowd. But really I’ve been writing forever, studied playwriting with Naomi Iizuka in undergrad at UC Santa Barbara, wrote and directed my own play as a final project which I produced/wrote/directed on my own in LA a few years later. Just recently got my MFA in Fiction from UC Riverside. So I’ve never strayed too far from home, but home infiltrates everything I create.
My mom is an ER nurse so I blame her for my morbid streak and my dad for my sense of humor and both of them for my general outlook on life – which is basically work hard and don’t be an asshole and be kind as often as you can. My mom will bend over backward for everyone. My dad is the only person I know who consistently gives money to folks begging on the street without hesitation and will even strike up a conversation. I’m still trying to live up to that.
So I show up every day. I write stuff. Sometimes people pay attention.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I think everyone trying to have a career in the arts is constantly trying to find balance and meaning. The question is always about where you should put your time and energy.
There’s a lot of shame that’s plastered all over having a day job, and that sucks. I’ve always had to have a day job, and while I got to pay my bills with it, I also got to meet a lot of people I’m still friends with and have collaborated with – I never would have joined up with Rogue Artists Ensemble, which is my artistic theater home in LA, if I hadn’t had a day job. Even when I quit my job to go to grad school, I was still working 4+ jobs to pay my bills, and since I’m a few months out of school I’m struggling to find that new routine and balance again. I have 4+ jobs right now and am not making enough to pay all my bills – and I’m not counting writing or directing as a job in that list either, which I should. Working at your craft IS a job.
Shaming artists for their day jobs is silly and damaging; if you don’t have a day job and you’re not yet paying your bills from your craft (which can take years and a ton of work…”overnight success” is an illusion), then you come from privilege and money. Which is fine. Hooray for you. But recognize that leg up you got and don’t shame others for having to work.
The way I look at it is that working different jobs outside of your specific craft is rich fodder for stories you’re going to tell. I see myself as a collector of people and experiences and questions. I’m always writing, in a way, because I’m always looking for that new character or image or happenstance that’s going to set my next project ablaze.
And let’s be real – the folks who have had to have day jobs probably have a lot more skills, empathy, patience, and determination than someone who never had to work in customer service.
I was lucky and privileged in that I didn’t truly register how I was treated differently as a woman until later. I was probably 26 before I truly felt like being a young woman in this industry was a HUGE detriment and that I wasn’t being taken seriously. I had a series of negative experiences directing that made me step away from it for a while and only focus on writing – which ultimately was a good thing – but I have only just started calling myself a director again, after about five years.
Please tell us more about your work, what you are currently focused on and most proud of.
I’m a freelance writer, director, teacher and marketing consultant. My main focus has always been writing, and I write over several genres: fiction, creative nonfiction, playwriting and screenwriting. I just finished my first collection of short stories titled CURIOUS MONSTERS – which I’ll be shopping around soon – and have a novel in the works. I’ve also written 10+ plays and am working my way into screenwriting right now.
I’m probably best known for writing a play called Wood Boy Dog Fish with Rogue Artists Ensemble in Los Angeles. It’s a dark macabre take on the original Pinocchio story. We’ve done two productions in town and are hoping we can find a home for it in another city and beyond California.
I guess what I’m known for is the idea of “impossible plays.” Most of my stuff is weird and almost always something strange, magical, odd, or juxtaposing happens in my plays and fiction. I believe in theater and fiction that pushes boundaries and uses the whole of our imagination. We don’t spend enough time imagining.
I also direct, teach creative writing and have spent the last 12 years doing marketing and social media mostly for arts organizations, so I also know the business and marketing side of all this stuff and, boy…I sometimes wish I didn’t.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I want to say maybe it would have been nice to spend a few years living in New York and gotten involved with the theater and literary communities there.
But that gives New York too much of an inflated sense of ego, so instead I’ll say I wish I had retained all that high school Spanish.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.chelseasutton.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crsutton/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/wthcoffeespoons
Image Credit:
The Long Way Short Film, PEN America
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