Theatre + Cult

What are your deepest, darkest fears? What are you most afraid of? I teach kids every day that are terrified of public speaking. I once heard my stepmom emit the most blood-curdling scream because of an encounter with a non-venomous, baby garden snake. My dad is deeply afraid of confrontation. My mom is scared to death that she won’t have enough money for retirement. I’ve had countless partners who were terrified of intimacy and many friends who were afraid of their own power. For me, my biggest fear is probably somewhere between abandonment and rejection. Or maybe it’s never being good enough. Definitely not spiders or public speaking.

What if you were told that you could get rid of all of these limiting beliefs by just taking a few classes? What if these classes were to provide you with the tools necessary to live your life more freely than ever before? Would you go for it?

What if I told you that this curriculum could do all of this for you, BUT it comes at a hefty price. Thousands of dollars. And you are asked to do some free labor. But you don’t get paid for your labor. In essence, you are paying to work. BUT you are paying to improve yourself!

On the other hand, there may be something more sinister at play. You’ve heard through the grapevine that this program is emotionally draining, stressful, and highly demanding at all hours. It doesn’t really give you time to be a normal human being outside of “the classroom.” On top of that, you’ve also heard a bit about sexual misconduct within the program, which may or may not just be a rumor. It’s a lot. I know. But isn’t it all worth taking the risk? After all, you could easily end up becoming the best version of yourself that there ever was, right?

What if I told you that the program I just described to you is a perfectly accurate description of both the NXIVM cult and virtually any college theatre BFA program in America?

HBO’s newest documentary series, The Vow, masters the very same technique that the NXIVM organization, the subject of the docuseries, used on countless young people for nearly 25 years. The first episode lures you in. You are simply blinded by the positive presentation of self-improvement. You learn that low self-esteem isn’t a bad thing: this is simply you limiting your own abilities, limiting your own depiction of all the possibilities available to you. Why do you limit yourself? Because, over time, you accumulate between 400-500 limiting beliefs.

This would be what hooks me: removing my own limiting beliefs. This is what I tell my acting students every day who ask, how do I get better at expressing my emotions or making more expressions? I tell them, they already have all of that within them. They’ve simply tacked on hundreds of “protections” over the years. This is the same exact concept I was told at Atlantic Acting School, and it is simply way too similar to NXIVM’s “limiting beliefs” concept.

And then there’s the infamous EM: Elaboration of Meaning. You basically get up in front of the class and answer a series of questions posed to you by a coach. In the series, Bonnie Piesse (also a former actress and current musician) said this is what hooked her. And why is that? Because she saw her classmates having breakthroughs, and she wanted the same for herself. These Elaboration of Meanings were essentially carried out through hypnosis. The subject would pick a specific fear that they had (Mark Vicente’s was having panic attacks on LA’s freeways), and by the end of the EM, this fear would be gone. The next time they were faced with this limiting belief, it was as if it was never there in the first place. How did they do it?

Theatre, to me, is very similar in this way. Theatre education, in particular, is magical. In my conservatory-style program, I witnessed at least one “breakthrough” a week, and these would be impossible without the professor pushing all of us to our breaking points every step of the way. It was, essentially, training us to get rid of our “protections” or “bad habits.” It’s important, however, to understand what exactly is lost when these protections are knocked down for good.

NXIVM’s members were taken advantage of sexually, financially, and morally. If they voiced any concerns, leadership would simply excuse them as limiting beliefs. As much as it pains me to say it, higher education theatre programs, all too often, function in an extremely similar way. Why? Because theatre is intimate. It’s personal. When you are 18 years old and have no clue who you are, it is difficult to genuinely ascertain what is appropriate and what is inappropriate for you to think, believe, feel, etc. Hence, the recent and overwhelming demand for intimacy coaches in college productions around the country. What is even more frightening, however, is the idea that no one is immune to this kind of manipulation, trickery, whatever you call it. I’m talking about being exploited for your money, for your labor, and for your body. And it happens. It happens on college campuses every day. In every major. And most especially theatre. And it is even more concerning that, while watching The Vow, I notice that 90% of these people are artists. A majority of them are also women. What does this say about artists? It says we are trusting, but are we too trusting? THAT idea is scary, to me.

It certainly is an ongoing negotiation that doesn’t stop, even after you have graduated, started working, or have created your own family. Within the characters presented in The Vow it can be genuinely difficult to know who to trust. It’s a pretty extreme way of viewing things, I know. But as I tell my students, whatever choice you make, make it a bold one.

The Vow is currently available on HBO, HBO on Demand, and HBOMax.