Dawn Vanessa Brown

I Survived Theatre School

Intro: Boz is getting an adorable dog, affairs and the ESPRIT outlet.
Let Me Run This By You: KNOW YOUR WORTH
Interview: We talk to Dawn Vanessa Brown about Syracuse, theatre outcasts, making it in New York City, and finding yourself in St. John.
FULL TRANSCRIPT (UNEDITED)
I'm Jen Bosworth from me this and I'm Gina . We went to theater school together. We survived it, but we didn't quite understand it. 20 years later, we're digging deep talking to our guests about their experiences and trying to make sense of it all. We survived theater school and you will too. Are we famous yet? Beautiful drawers.

1

00:00:34

I feel like it's still at the breeders. I forgot to tell you that. So they send us, they send us videos every week. We pick her up on the third. Yes. And you'll see her when you come, but she's pretty cute. So I have a dog. Everybody is, she's pretty cute. The thing is like, I, you know, I do have guilt about going through breeder. I do have guilt, but that's just the truth. I, my rescue dog, Peewee, Horton, bit me in the face. And, and, and, but my nephew and bit the mailman and was sick and it was a horrible experience.

1

00:01:14

Like, like I spent and also, you know, whatever money's money, but I spent a thousand dollars training him and it wasn't that it was that he had a tumor in his pancreas that was killing him and he was pissed off. So there you go,

2

00:01:28

Dog had cancer. I didn't realize the thing that, that he had cancer. You sends you all the cancer.

1

00:01:36

My husband had cancer, my mom the whole bit, the whole bit. How are you? What's going on on the east coast? How are you doing?

2

00:01:49

So it's not like in your twenties, it's a wild ride, right? It's like a rollercoaster it's twists and turns and your stomach hurts and you feel like there's elaborated and you felt it. Okay. It's in middle age. It's like a, like, you're just riding one of those trolleys kind of slow. And there are like in San Francisco and there's still Hills. And sometimes it is very beautiful, but a lot of times you're just slowly crawling towards your own death. Oh my God. I don't feel, I don't feel like, well, in terms of my own death, it's just that having to deal with death in my family, you know, just of course, makes me think about death and all, its various iterations that, and we don't know for certain cause autopsy is not finalized, but it does seem like she had a burgeoning medical condition that she did, not that she got maybe diagnosed for, but then didn't fill her prescriptions.

2

00:02:50

You know? And honestly like to me, this is how, the way, one of the many ways in which codependency is a killer, like she took care of everybody else. And she, she, there was somebody in her life that had had a stroke and she was taking care of that person and driving him around to make sure he got all of his medications and she didn't do her own. Then she didn't do her own thing. And, and like, it's, it's that, it's the stress of taking care of other people and not taking care of yourself. And it's also this thing that happens too. You know, one of the hallmarks of a traumatized child is that they're like hyper independent, independent to the point that it's not healthy.

1

00:03:34

No, that it's, it's super, actually super harmful and super debilitating and isolating. Yes.

2

00:03:42

And for a time in your life, especially when you're young, it's such a prized tendency, your parents love it about you. And you know, people are always are marveling. Like it's two things like, oh, you're so mature and you're so independent. And those are things that we both my sister and I were told for me, like I've made a very intentional choice to not, to become less independent, but to ask for help, which is, you know, hard for me to do or to, oh, I should say it's, it's not that I don't know how to ask for help. It's this. I don't know how to ask for it directly. I know how to, like, I know how to inspire other people's help, but not in a way that like me owning up to the fact that I need help.

2

00:04:26

And then being like, oh, sure, I'd love to help you. It's like me pretending, like I don't need help. And, and then, you know, basically making it such that the other person has to help me, then I never have to say I need help. So, so I'm trying to take it as a lesson. I'm trying to take it as, you know, like, even if you're not going a hundred miles an hour on the freeway with a motorcycle and no helmet, even if you're not doing drugs, even if you're not whatever, like you can still die from your inability to change.

1

00:04:58

Oh, that's very, very, very deep. I hear that loud E that is I believe. I mean, I believe that is what killed my father. I mean, he killed himself, but interpret that. That's what the root thing was. He could not change. And I it's very easy to like, it's I get it. Like, you know what? It changed sucks in a lot of ways. And it's scary as shit to be told. Here's the thing. If you don't do this, you're probably going to die. But doing this means changing your whole life and your whole paradigm and your whole belief system wants to do that.

2

00:05:39

Who wants to do that? And also there's this thing, this trope of like, you've changed as it's always something negative instead of. Yeah. Well of course you should definitely always be change.

1

00:05:51

Yeah, go ahead. No, no. I was gonna say you ha we it's changed your die. I mean like that and if you want me to die, like that's, it's interesting. Cause I have that no one in my life, because it's a pandemic and I don't see many people are like, oh, you don't eat Jack in the box anymore. And thank God I have a partner that's like, not like that, but I could see where people would be like, oh, come on, just come, come out to, you know, drink or come out to eat with us and you can do it. And I'm like, no, my heart will stop. Absolutely.

2

00:06:24

Absolutely. And another very close member of my family recently, you know, went to the doctor and got, you know, like a very young person, got a terrible report about cholesterol and triglycerides and psych, you know, you could be skinny and have high cholesterol. You could be fat and have local. I mean, it's just so, so you, you have to, we'll take care of it. And the

1

00:06:52

Thing is it's really, gosh, it's really hard to right. It's hard to say too. I was thinking like, okay, like you go to the doctor and they tell you, or you get any news, whether it's a psychiatrist or anyone saying, listen, this is a serious problem. You have. Okay. And they, and they tell you that it's scary and shocking. And, and I'm a bummer, a huge bummer. And like also pissed off. Like, can you imagine she took care of everybody. Else's stuff her whole life. And now they're like, PS, you've done it all wrong. Now you have to take care of you.

1