Jennifer Carroll is a 21 year old actor and writer. She first began writing for the Uxbridge Cosmos in 2007 when she had the opportunity to share her experiences as a Canadian ambassador for an international conference for women in Dubai. At the beginning of 2008, she moved to Ireland to pursue a career in theatre and film. Far From Home is her monthly account on living and working in Dublin.
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Finding Home
It's confusing at times to determine exactly where I call home. Canada and Uxbridge are where I'm from, they're in my blood. My body settles in Uxbridge in a way it can't manage to anywhere else on earth. The deepset familiarity of faces, smells, the same streets and ever present potholes are comforting, registering deep in my bones as being part of a place where I truly belong. However over the last three years different faces, smells and bumps in the road have greeted me daily, and it's in those daily markers that I've grown to know Dublin so intimately.
With each trip back and forth, I feel myself splitting further. I leave tracks in both places and every time I leave those tracks set themselves deeper in their respective grounds. I love both countries intimately, deeply, committedly.
So perhaps this evolution is natural.
You see, I've never been someone who needs to be led by the hand, to be told what to do. In three short years past graduation, I've already tired of carting my passion around town, having strangers determine the value of my fervour and skill. I'm weary after spending the short span of my young artistic career listening to individuals preach boisterously about the humble value of art from their hypocritical pedestals. I've had enough. I already know the type of art I want to create. No more wasting time.
This evolution certainly feels natural.
After hundreds of late night hours trying to counter the time difference between Dublin and home, after gruelling budgets and endless arguments, after what seems like hundreds of drafts of the same amazing play with some of the best friends and business partners in the whole world, we have it sitting in the palms of our hands: The Organic Theatre Collective.
We're initiating the next evolutionary step in theatre. It's about time.
“The Organic Theatre Collective is a group of energetic and ambitious artists striving to inspire and entertain their community with thought-provoking theatre while maintaining an environmentally conscious attitude. The OTC endeavors to infuse green schemes into each production without sacrificing the integrity of the written word, focusing on, but not limited to, new Canadian works with new, ambitious actors and artists who are eager to challenge the current standards and limitations of today's theatre.”
...cool, right?
I truly believe in Canadian theatre. It's authentic and sincere and a has a candour that is not afraid of exposing who we honestly are as human beings. Canada is where I have to be to start the theatre company of my dreams, and so my bi-continental life has begun. So cue my plane hopping, country juggling, time-zone defying life. I imagined this jet-setting adventure to be swift, glamorous and romantic. I would act and work in Dublin, maintaining my affable relationship with that amazing city and its wit and charisma. Then frequent Toronto, dropping in for work-holidays before swooping back to Dublin in an amazing, effortless flourish.
As I sit on the floor of Dublin airport having given up on ever getting a proper seat, I start to think romantic may not have been quite the right description. I pull out my books to start on my budget revisions and my moleskin goes flying. Apparently, the three year old beside me finds it to be a perfect soccer ball, and giggles at me as I crawl over to retrieve it. The guy beside me mumbles in Italian over his revision pages that stick out of his law textbook. I silently thank the genius of the iPhone gods for their free internet roaming, and as I confirm a walk-through of our theatre space after checking my emails... my backside falls asleep. I bounce the tingling feeling out of my bum, and I realize that this will be far from romantic. It's maybe closer to tedious.
But it's more than worth it. I have found home on both continents, and I can't wait to graft the two together to create the most exciting chapter of my life so far: The OTC.
