Dani Heard
@danieatscroissants on her front stoop with all her fan gear.
-Theatre-
I was excited when I found out Dani signed up for me to come chat with them. I’d never had the opportunity to just sit and chat with them one-on-one. They are just a cool person, you know? We also share an affinity for fandoms as you may or may not be able to tell.
What I think I liked most about our talk was that there was no falseness. It was all very honest. They shared with me things that you normally don’t share with a person you are just hanging out with. I have that affect on people but not usually with so much kindness and relaxation.
I hope I brightened their day like they brightened mine.
Interviewed 5.22.20
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Casey: So Dani, how are you?
Dani: I'm going to resist the urge to tell you that I'm OK because I'm not. But that's OK, you know what I mean? I think it's OK to not be OK. And anyone who's close to me knows that I had some non-pandemic kind of hard life stuff go down before even this happened. I feel like I did a lot of big change, big change, big transition, and had just started to get the world back under me in terms of, like, life. And then this all happened. And so navigating at—words are failing me. I don't know.
This time period for me has been about rediscovering what is it to function. Because on the one hand, I'm so happy to see you and it is lighting up my day. And I just had coffee on Zoom with Adam King, which again lights up my life. And I ordered some candles in the mail that came in yesterday. So my room smells like coconut. So there are little bright spots. That's sort of surviving and functioning within the fact that I just feel an undercurrent of sadness and anxiety kind of all the time and have for a while. And that's kind of been what my normal is. It's just like, well, I feel awful. How do we keep going anyway?
Casey: So what do you think is causing you the most anxiety?
Dani: So I'm still working part time remotely, but I had started a new job literally the month before this all started. And I am the kind of person who is very much in that perfectionist camp. And I don't feel like I 100% always know what I'm doing because a lot of the parts of my job are new to me. The parts of my job that I was gonna be good at all got canceled because we're not doing live performances at 7 Stages or anywhere right now. So getting to interact with patrons, and bond at the box office, and be bright and cheery and charming, I didn't get to do. Now it's just the individual giving side of things, which is totally foreign to me and interesting to me, but I don't know where to start. So having that anxiety and also for me, there's a narrative of, "Well, you're going to be bad at it, so why try?" . . . I think sort of that malaise that prevents me from wanting to be “productive” turns into such a strong sense of guilt that even when I feel like I could be relaxing or binging a show or reading a book, I feel so guilty that I'm like, well, you don't deserve to do something nice. So I kind of just sit and stew in my own guilt.
Casey: I understand that guilt. I'm curious to hear about if you have any motivation to create during this time.
Dani: Well, I do, actually. We're about to get real nerdy up in here. . .So I got really lucky. The beginning of this time was supposed to be my lab through Working Title Playwrights, and so we still did some of that work remotely, which was really exciting. So I'm slowly, like baby steps, time-to-time working on a couple of scripts because writing is kind of the one thing—it sort of bridges that like—it's enjoyable to me, but it still feels productive enough that it trips the wire in my brain that's such a jerk to me. Again, I can't get through a movie. I can't really watch a show. I've had a hard time reading books, but writing is a thing that I like doing. But my brain's like, "Oh, this is an accomplishment, so you're allowed to do this.". . . But honestly, I'm writing so much fan fiction and it is giving me everything because it's comforting. I feel like I'm becoming a better writer because I'm writing so much.
I'm part of a Dischord server with other authors who write in my fandom. And so having a chance to talk to other people who still care about this thing in the way that I do makes me feel—honestly, it's just been such a constant source of a virtual community. And it's simple because it's like, well, we're all here because we like this thing.
Casey: Is there one thing that others may consider trivial, but that once you're able to do it again, you'll be like, “I'm back, baby.”
Dani: I think a lot of us—don't want to speak for everybody—but I think a lot of us in Atlanta theater, like we've worked in attractions, we've done that theme park. We've either done Stone Mountain or we've done Six Flags or we've done the aquarium.
Casey: We've done all three.
Dani: Or we've done all three. Absolutely. And I think it's so easy for us to be self-critical and judgmental about that kind of work because it's not real performance. Although I want to push back on that because I've been thinking a lot about it lately. I think for a lot of kids, that might be the first time you see a live piece of anything. I think it was my experience. I know I saw the Wild West Comedy Gunfight show before I saw a play growing up, and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world.
That's all to say, in February, I had started working. I was in the entertainment department at the World of Coke, and I remember starting it being like, this is so silly, and so dumb and who cares? And I met some of the nicest people and was having such a good time . . . Honestly, the thing I miss—my job was to tell people to have a good day. You know what I mean? My job is to be, "This is what you're gonna see today. Here's a fact about this soda. I sincerely hope you have fun because you're here on, like, vacation or on a day off from school or on a field trip. So I hope your day is good." And so I miss having opportunities.
I guess this extends to my other job, as well, not getting to the box office side of it. I miss feeling like my purpose was, I sincerely want you to have a good time while you're here. And like, if I can facilitate that, it makes me feel like I just lit up from the inside.
Casey: Is there anything during this experience that you learned, whether it's a new habit or a sacred ritual that you're doing for yourself in quarantine that you want to take into the world after?
Dani: I walk everywhere, and sometimes it is really stressful—the logistics of, like, I got to make it to the bus stop or oh no, I don't have time. So I have to call a Lyft or an Uber, or now it's a mile from the train station to my job, or I don't feel like waiting for the bus, so I just walk two miles to get home. So I walked a lot before this, but it always felt there was sort of an element of stress to it because it was not a thing that was fun. I also am a runner, which again is the thing that gives me joy, but there's sort of like the training anxiety to it. So this habit of like, every day just for me to go on a long walk, and sometimes I listen to music, and sometimes I call my mom, but sometimes it's just like me looking at trees. And I think it's been the one time of the day in the midst of all this that I feel permission to not be doing anything else because if I'm just sitting in my room, it's like, well you should be doing work right now or you should be writing something. You know, you should be producing in some capacity, like figure it out. Why are you being so lazy? The narrative in my head is like, “you're lazy,” and it just causes me so much stress and grief, and I hate it. But when I'm out walking, that voice kind of slows down. So I would like to still take meaningless walks when this is over. I'd like that to continue to be a habit, and then I don't lose that once we're back in sort of the hustle of having places to go.
