Today we’d like to introduce you to Amy Vorpahl.
Amy, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I’m an actress/writer/host/gamer/Dungeon Master who can mostly be seen on the internet these days on sites like Nerdist, Geek and Sundry, Buzzfeed, and College Humor. I host a fictional and narrative late night comedy live chat show on caffeine.tv, and also stream D&D and other role-playing shows on twitch.tv with D&D, D&D Beyond, and Saving Throw Show.
I moved to LA over 12 years ago to pursue acting, but I had no idea that ‘acting’ could mean a hundred different things. With a BFA in Acting, I was a little tired of strict scenework focused on plays and characters written by Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller so I took an improv class and got hooked! For years, I spent most of my nights in an improv class, rehearsing improv with a team, watching improv, or attending improv events with friends made at UCB, Groundlings, and iO West. I was on the mainstage as an improviser and a sketch writer/actor for the majority of my time there. I learned a lot and gave all those schools and theatres thousands of my dollars so that they could make me funny. Whether or not they succeeded, I definitely found my comedic voice and was able to translate that into my other passion–D&D. With the surge of popularity of tabletop RPGs due to Critical Role, I’ve been able to translate my passion for the game into actual gigs, finding homes on the internet with other gamers, and have been able to make a name for myself as a ‘professional nerd.’
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I experienced the biggest depression I ever had along my journey.
I was in Groundlings Sunday Company for six months, an intense program where, like Saturday Night Live, we put up a sketch show of all new sketches each week. We writer/actors not only had to pitch, cast and perform the sketches–every writer for each of their sketches was in charge of purchasing and producing the costumes, wigs, and props for a full live theatre production. It was intense but a creative dream, to have an outlet for comedy in such a concentrated environment. Almost immediately afterward, I was hired at Buzzfeed to produce videos, another mass output creative endeavor.
Shortly after that, my residency ended, and after about a year of constantly using my creative comedy brain and performance skills at their highest degree, I was left without a job, with a car that had caught on fire aka totaled, and broke (wigs totaled my highest category for tax deductions that year). I immediately became depressed and wasn’t able to get out of the depression until months later. I had assumed I was catching a momentum wave of my acting career taking off, and when it came to a full halt, I realized I still had to make money and took four jobs: tutoring for high school math, managing an escape room, headhunting nurses for nursing homes; and on the weekends, traveling to sell college prep programs to low-income families. None of these jobs were related to my degree nor my passion, nor the momentum I had built up the previous years. It felt like starting over.
But I needed money, so I compiled the four jobs into a reasonable income and moved on. In the absolute worst of my depression, I shot a video anyway called “If RPG Video Game Characters Were Honest.” After the shoot, I went home and cried the rest of the day and didn’t get out of bed for two days, for a reference. Still, the video went viral, and that set me on the path to selling my first TV show. The depression lasted for about nine months, but I was somehow able to still create. I believe it was situational depression (not clinical), and getting through it is the achievement I’m most proud of in my life. I no longer fear being out of work as a freelancer (or at least the fear isn’t crippling) because I’ve been there, I fought hard to get out of it, and I know I can fight through that again.
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I’m inspired to talk about what I do using Emily Wapnick’s TED talk about finding your true path by looking at your own personal Venn Diagram–instead of saying what you do best, finding your purpose at the intersection of several things you do pretty well. As a high-fantasy-loving book reader and Dungeon Master, I have found a fun way to tell epic adventure stories in relation to the real world, giving characters immense demons (metaphor for emotional turmoil and problematic relationships) to overcome while grounding them in a world where what to eat for breakfast can be equally important. As an improviser and sketch-writer, I’ve been able to provide a lightheartedness and playfulness to my stories and characters when the tensions need to lift. As a singer-songwriter, I am able to quickly boil down a story or a character to a 3-minute entertaining piece of content, whether in the form of a song or a video. Having participated in several aspects of filmmaking and D&D, I can bring a group of people with varying talents and backgrounds together and give them a space to have fun while being productive at the same time.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
Two mentors come to mind at first. My high school theatre teacher, Jackie deMontmollin, made us all work our butts of rehearsing for plays and musicals and gave me the knowledge and the courage to believe that I could have a career in the entertainment industry. She never stopped working with those of us who made it clear that was what we wanted, and she pushed us to continually problem-solve in creative ways, both as an actor and as a decision-making adult.
Also, Bernie Reifkind hired me as soon as I got to LA. He is a recruiter for the healthcare industry, which is less important than he was a literal angel who gave me work and supported my creative pursuits the entire seven years I worked for him. He agreed to letting me take some hours off work for auditions, days off for shoots, and weeks of for longer shoots. He constantly said, “I want for you what you want for myself,” and he paid me a generous rate without batting an eye for the entire time I worked for him. Not only that, we became friends, and we trusted each other enough to be able to candidly share our dreams and passions. I would never be able to achieve my dream career that I now have without the confidence (and income) that Bernie’s generosity and love allowed me.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.amyvorpahl.com
- Instagram: @vorpahlsword
- Twitter: @vorpahlsword
Image Credit:
Orange shirt hosting headshot, Main spaghetti strap headshot, and Green hood headshot: https://www.huebnerheadshots.com/, For red shirt action shot: Christopher Parish
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