2022 was a year of such growth for me. I accomplished many professional and personal goals. As I look to 2023, I want to celebrate this year’s wins in preparation for the journey next year will take me on.
Personally, I graduated magna cum laude from Bates College in May. After spending the summer working for The Telling Room in Portland, ME, I drove across the country to Denver to begin teaching middle school theater. Moving out has been quite the learning curve. I started putting all those Pinterest pins to good use and have become a very messy cook and baker. It’s been especially enlightening to experiment with high altitude baking. (My New Year’s resolution? To make brownies that don’t sink!)
In February, my thesis production of Rapture, Blister, Burn ran at Bates College. After months of tears, grit, and furious flipping through Staging Sex, the show opened to rapturous (see what I did there) enthusiasm. The production and the written thesis “Learning to Fly on the Way Down: Directing and Teaching Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn” earned Honors from Bates College in April. The show was adjudicated by a Region 1 respondent for the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, who later recommended that a scene from the play be performed at the February 2023 Region 1 Festival. While scheduling conflicts will prevent this, the invitation was such a wonderful way to celebrate my work on the production.
I had the privilege of working on three other productions this year as director and then assistant director, respectively. While A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Bates got shut down due to me getting COVID and spreading it to the cast, my first middle school show in December went off COVID-free. It was such a treat getting to work with middle schoolers for the first time and I look forward to continuing this work into 2023.
In writing news, I finished my tenure as the Managing Arts and Leisure Editor for The Bates Student. My assistant editor Robby Haynos and I worked our butts off to grow the section as best we could. We saw an explosion of new writers join us in 2022, allowing us to expand our coverage in new ways. The section is in very capable hands for the 2022-2023 school year. I’ve definitely missed arts and lifestyle journalism. I am currently brainstorming ways to continue it in my adult life. I have great inspiration in the form of Robby and our mutual friend and former contributing writer Eben Cook, who have both been writing since our graduation.
While the journalism has fallen by the way side, I still continue to voraciously write creative work. My Google Drive, Final Draft, and Microsoft Word continue to fill up with new projects and new drafts of old ones. Screenplays in particular began to carve out a larger role in my project roster (as evidenced by me caving and purchasing Final Draft, thanks teacher discount!). I joined the writing team for the forthcoming Season 2 of ACC Ink’s Hurt alongside my former dorm hallmate and Cedric Clarke and the Unsettling Dark collaborator Craig Selbrede. Season 2 is set to film in the winter/spring of 2023 with a release in late 2023 or early 2024.
2022 saw one of my first writing dreams come true: get published! I had four short stories published in three different online literary magazines this year. After submitting to four magazines in 2021, I submitted to twenty-eight this year and joined ChillSubs to help guide my submissions-and-publication journey. Miniskirt Magazine published my story “The Snow Globe” in January, followed by “Petersfield” and “actual thoughts i’ve had while emptying the lint trap (or: anxiety dream #293)” in May and August issues of Snaggletooth.
Other random 2022 highlights: earned CPR certification, visited Minneapolis for the first time, went to the flagship LL Bean at midnight, got my ear drained at an urgent care, was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, became obsessed with Qdoba, took hip-hop and ballet classes, and started this news section.
What 2023 will hold for me is still a bit of a mystery. I plan to continue to write and make art and travel and grow. Stay tuned for further updates as 2023 unfolds, and thank you for your support as I transition into full adulthood.
Wishing you a happy and healthy New Year,
Olivia