I have rlly personal exp w/ this place so this is gna b long.
I was practically raised in this building. My first show here was at age 11, my last at 19. In that time I'd been in so many productions I have actually lost count. If this was a real workplace it would break numerous labor laws. To start acting here you NEED to come in with little self-respect and leave with none. Actors are expected to volunteer their money, clothes, pets, children and any sign of second thought is looked on as selfishness. There are contracts for the volunteer work here which do not exist for the protection of the laborer. I'm pretty sure they're accessible from their website. You can read them yourself. You'd have to be really naive to think you weren't being taken advantage of.
Dude who owns it; a man actually named Jamey J. Jameson. I spent my adolescence trying to know this man. The only conclusion I can come to is that at some point he got bitter and his heart died. He holds himself with such disdain toward everything around him.
ACT has a reputation for doing shows without licensing. This is because Jamey has made an enemy of nearly every prominent licensing company he's worked with. He has consistently refused to try to make amends because doing that would require admitting fault. He could fix this problem by being an adult and owning up to the person he's become but I know he'll never do that. This stubbornness is legitimately destroying his business. I'm embarrassed to have once considered him a mentor
For a long time he would punish hyperactive KIDS in his KIDS productions by giving them 'the shirt'. Which was a punishment where Jamey's often unwashed sweaty t-shirt was pulled over a kid's head and they were held against his bare, stinking, damp, hairy torso. that's a deeply fucked up thing to do to children, man.
At age 14, while I was still acting here, I developed an eating disorder. The adults around me spread the rumor that I had a sexually transmitted disease because I'm queer. Jamey would routinely mock me for having rapidly lost weight. I guess he thought it was like. Unmanly or something? Because there's nothing cooler than calling a child a fag (which he also did). Made him feel big and funny. I later learned he used my recovery as a story in a bid to receive funding from the city without my knowledge or consent. I wouldn't have allowed him to do that if he asked me. Pretty scummy thing to do, man.
The summer of that year I had been volunteering as a counselor for the kid's theater camps and I was called ungrateful for taking a break to eat my lunch. Which considering the eating disorder thing that he clearly knew about. Dude??? I guess the work itself was the reward for the work.
Many of the ppl in this building are known sex pests who are allowed to continue to work around their victims either because they supply funding to ACT, or out of desperation for actors who are naive enough to supply hours of unpaid, unsafe manual labor on the ever-instilled belief that they have no chance of acting in any other environment.
As a child I felt unsafe. As an adult I felt degraded. I've seen this building ruin lives. Rend families apart. ACT likes to sell itself as a struggling haven for outcasts but it's not. It's a little dying hole in the wall where a sad little man's dead dreams poison everything around him. I loved this place. I made and lost some of the deepest friendships I think I'll ever have here. There's so much I learned about myself here, but I REFUSE to give the art centre theatre credit for that. That was me. This place drains people of every bit of passion they bring and claims credit for the things they achieve on their own. The effort and love of performers and directors is so brightly evident! It's what draws people
In, makes the shows watchable. But performers are told that they are lesser for it. That nobody else will take them. That they're annoying and broken and that they deserve to work tirelessly and thanklessly to keep a man who hates them's dying business afloat. It's manipulative and considering that this place markets itself toward like. Kids and teens, it's evil.
I hope you're reading this, Jamey. I hope one day someone gives you a wake-up call that actually works and you realize that the people around you are as real as you and that each of them goes through things just as miserable as the things you go through. Kindness is a choice you can make, and one that will reward you. That you are not stuck in your position because you are the victim of the world, but because people do not like you. And they dislike you not because of some unchangeable part of you, but because of how you've chosen to treat them. If you don't change you will die miserable. I'm only writing this in a public forum because I know you care so much about reputation and I think it actually might be the only way to reach you. Take it how you will but I'm finally done with this place read more
