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“Yeah, I’m a grandma, but I don’t really feel like a Grandma”
Director, writer, and theater professor, and grandmother Anne Byrd talks about always feeling like she wasn’t the right age or following the right life timeline.
“I feel stuck at a certain age. I still think I’m in my early 20’s, but I’m clearly not.”
Anne talks about how long it took her to figure out she couldn’t be the directors she’s experienced but had to be the director she is, whatever that may be. She talks about how challenging it can be to explain that concept to college students who are studying theater directing. And how teaching at University has a lot of overlaps with being a parent except it’s easier to allow for failure and bad choices from students than her own child.
Anne talks about how her working in the theater made people ask and assume that her daughter would be involved in theater as well. And how that idea may have worked to push her daughter away from involvement in the theater.
“I feel like I probably didn’t push anything enough, really.”
Anne talks about wanting to expose her daughter to a lot of different creative activities and skills but wondering if she should have put more pressure on her to stick with specific things longer. She also talks about how a teacher in her early life supported an interest in making theater even though it wasn’t what the class was supposed to be about.
Anne talks about being a mentor to her students and being mentored. And about not realizing she was being mentored by others until her experiences with them were long past. She also talks about what its like to be a University student while also being a new mother and trying to still be an active part of the theater programs.
“If this is where my heart is, if this is where my brain goes, then I’m just going to do this”
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