photo by Lynda Chilton
by Dakota Antelman
[dropcap type=”2″]K[/dropcap]at Meyer dreams of Broadway glory. Her dream is not uncommon among participants in theater. But unlike most of her fellow dreamers, Meyer will not seek a college education on the path to living her dream.
For most of her senior year, Meyer has been open about her decision. She will not attend college. The price of admission to any college that she believes would suit her needs is one that her family simply cannot afford. In place of college she will, over the course of the next four years, and beyond, run through a tight schedule of auditions and casting calls as she looks to jump into the professional acting circuit.
She has a casting call for a Broadway production of Phantom of the Opera lined up in November. She has already completed two rounds of auditions for a local production of Hairspray, and she is just finishing up a run as an ensemble member and understudy in a local production of The Addams Family.
She also entertains the option of moving to New York to get closer to Off-Broadway and Broadway shows. Even if she does not move though, she will have the opportunity to be making money. Many of the shows she has already auditioned for offer salaries to their performers.
While most her age will be emptying their wallets at universities, Meyer hopes to be filling hers on stage. This career has truly been one years in the making.
Meyer starred in the first show she ever took part in. She played Hansel in a kindergarten rendition of Hansel and Gretel. She has stuck with theater ever since that first show. She has taken part in four years’ worth of shows as a high school student and recently earned starring roles in HHS productions of The Addams Family and Into the Woods. Capping it off, she has garnered critical recognition, as shown by a nomination for the “Best Actress” 2014-2015 TAMY Award, a prestigious honor among Massachusetts high school actors.
In recent years she has reached far outside of Hudson to gather acting experience. Last summer, in her hometown of Auburn, she sang and performed a montage of Disney songs and scenes on an outdoor stage. In doing so, Meyer says she has discovered why she loves theater.
“We did Disney, so of course you expected the little girls to come dressed up,” she explained. “There were a good solid dozen of them; they all showed up, and they all sat in the front row, and afterwards they would come up to me and I would go to them and sit there. I crouched down, and they would be awestruck. I just love making kids happy. If I can make kids smile with theater, then I’m going to keep doing it.”
[dropcap type=”2″]N[/dropcap]o matter the scene, joy is a major part in many of Meyer’s characters. Just this year, she portrayed Alice Beineke in The Addams Family and delivered her performance in bright yellow dress, with sing-song poetry intermingled.
She says she hopes to continue bringing out joy in audiences as a professional actor.
But at the same time Meyer has eyed the critical spotlights of Broadway with both giddiness and worry. This past year, as well as the next four years, are uncharted territory for Meyer. She plans to venture into the acting world without college and try to build herself into a New York star.
“I’m a little nervous for her,” Meyer’s high school director, Kathleen McKenzie, said. “I understand that she’s doing what’s best for her. I think that Kat still does have more to learn, and that is something that college brings to people. However, she’s doing what she has to do for herself, and all I can do is bless that and support her.”
Meyer admits that the plan has not been an easy one to come to terms with. But at the same time, she understands the circumstances that made it the best possible option for her family.
“We don’t have money, and college needs money,” she said. “It was too much to even handle. We would have to remortgage our house; we would have to refinance everything. We would probably have to move to a cheap apartment that was a hundred square feet. I just couldn’t do that because they, my parents, would be forced to pay hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
College tuitions have skyrocketed in recent years. The College Board estimates the exact rate of tuition inflation to be approximately 35% over the last 10 years. In many ways, Kat Meyer is a casualty of the rapidly changing culture surrounding post-secondary education. But money was not the only factor that made Meyer forgo college. She says that the competitive nature of college academics also drove her away.
“I’m not one to sit behind a desk,” she said. “I love the teachers here, but I’m not the best student. I at least don’t enjoy sitting behind a desk learning about who assassinated who in 1911 or whatever. I enjoy performing.”
Meyer later jabbed at college, saying briefly, “College will always be there to take your money.”
She is part of an evolving generation of theater students. She loves performing, and, over the course of many months, she has decided that college is not integral to her performance art.
This younger group of actors is different from the generations that have predated them. When Kathleen McKenzie was graduating high school and eyeing college, she says that she was surrounded by a vastly different culture; one that celebrated how readily available a college education was.
“I came from a family where it was never ‘Are you going to college?’ It’s, ‘Where are you going to college?’” McKenzie explained. “I have the benefit of saying that my great-great grandfather went to college, three of my grandparents went to college, so I kind of came from a different situation.”
In the present day, the decline is shown by sheer enrollment numbers. Only 40% of 18-24 year olds are actually enrolled in college according to the United States Census Bureau. Furthermore, a 2014 announcement by the Census Bureau reported that college enrollment dropped by 463,000 students between 2012 and 2013 alone. The sudden change indicates that on top of those who never attended college, massive amounts of students made it partially through college and dropped out.
A follower of professional theater, McKenzie sees this trend in the growing variation in the paths students take after high school.
“I think half of the people out there go to college first, and half of the people don’t,” McKenzie said of theater students. She sees the value in both going to college and forgoing it. Speaking on the subject of attending college she says, “When one is in high school, theater is their hobby, and what college makes people realize is that sometimes, your hobby, it is really hard to make it your life. College allows people to explore other things.”
That being said, she hypothesized that, in the coming years, students will start at prestigious conservatories but realize halfway through that the tuition is too much. She commended Meyer and her family for determining that college was too expensive before she even started it.
As of May, a recent Hudson High School graduate, pursuing a theater degree, was forced to drop out of college for just that reason.
The last nine months have still been tough for Meyer. Both she and McKenzie understand that college remains deeply entrenched as the place you go after high school, especially in the town of Hudson where recent figures estimate that 80% of graduating seniors attend college. Many who do not attend college are written out of jobs and at times even scoffed at for not seeking more education. As she has faced people, even within her own school, who have questioned her decision, she says her emotions have been wild.
“In order, [I felt] disappointment, sadness, anger, guilt, I don’t know why guilt, there was guilt in there,” she said. “Then it was just defiance because ‘I don’t care what you’re saying. I don’t care what people say. This is my path. I don’t have to go to a college. After that I had a lot of pride, and then finally I was just completely giddy like ‘Oh my gosh auditions everywhere!’”
Both McKenzie and Meyer are adamant in saying that you do not need a college degree to succeed in theater. Both say that theater is a field based on personal connection. But Meyer says that you do not need college to connect with people.
While McKenzie admits that college does allow people to learn technical aspects of theater, Meyer and McKenzie agree that she already has a strong foundation to become a successful and well-rounded actor.
“I’ve had directors tell me that I take notes very well,” Meyer says. “It’s because I take notes, and I do it how they want. The thing is, what I’ve learned from doing a professional show, if you didn’t do it the way they wanted you to do it, you would be out. So you just have to roll with the punches.”
McKenzie elaborated, speaking from the perspective of a director who has seen Kat grow from a 14-year-old transfer student to the 18-year-old star she is today.
“She gives her all at rehearsal,” she says. “She doesn’t horse around at rehearsal. She does take notes well. She tries very very hard, she is mature, she is respectful. All of those things are things that not only will get you a job but will get people to hire you again.”
In the end, Meyer is not bitter about not attending college. “If people want to go to college for theater, then go for it! But this is my choice, and that’s who I am,” she said.
Her path is not what many expected. In fact, it is not even what she expected four years ago, back when she was immersed in the absoluteness of the so-called educational path (grammar school, high school, then college/military/trade school). But she is excited nonetheless about her professional future.
Always one to follow the script on stage, Meyer has gone against the life script that society has set for 18 year olds.
