This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Leah Walsh: Hi, and welcome to The Compass, the podcast documenting the struggles of life as an artist.

[0:05] Leah Walsh: I'm Leah Walsh.

[0:06] Leah Walsh: My guest today is Marcus Crawford Guy.

[0:09] Leah Walsh: Marcus is a great actor who went to Juilliard after me.

[0:13] Leah Walsh: We were never there together, but we met a few years ago when we were both asked to do a workshop with the Center for Innovation in the Arts at school.

[0:20] Leah Walsh: We got to create these pieces with full access to all their interactive technology in the new black box space there.

[0:26] Leah Walsh: He's a really thoughtful artist with a unique point of view, and you can check out his work at MarcusCrawfordGuy.com.

[0:34] Leah Walsh: On a different note, Frankie and I are moving apartments this weekend, so wish us good luck.

[0:38] Leah Walsh: I'm very excited. We're gonna be on the top floor at this new place so I can start recording at home again.

[0:43] Leah Walsh: I haven't really been able to have guests over for the podcast because I've been working during the day and at night the kids upstairs are running rampant, and it sounds like a whole soccer team up there.

[0:56] Leah Walsh: So I'm very excited about that.

[0:59] Leah Walsh: I hope you enjoy the 115th episode of The Compass.

[1:15] Marcus Crawford Guy: What do you do to try to keep from going to the dark side as an artist?

[1:20] Marcus Crawford Guy: Uh, exercise has become the thing recently. That's really helpful.

[1:27] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah. To like keep energy moving in my body rather than sitting in the feeling.

[1:35] Marcus Crawford Guy: Exercise has become the thing. That's that keeps me buoyant in a way that I never thought it would be.

[1:44] Leah Walsh: Is it what made you see it in a new light?

[1:48] Marcus Crawford Guy: I guess I had been running for a long time, and then my knees got sore, and so then I stopped and didn't realize that that was the thing that was negatively affecting my thought processes and when I was getting destructive and looking at what people I went to school with were doing instead of focusing on what I could be doing for myself.

[2:19] Marcus Crawford Guy: And then I took a CrossFit HIIT class and found it to be so exhilarating and like competitive.

[2:32] Marcus Crawford Guy: Like I could choose how competitive I wanted to be with the people around me. They did not need to participate in my competition.

[2:41] Marcus Crawford Guy: I could just like take heavier weights than them, put myself, put my own work rate in relation to theirs without them knowing.

[2:52] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, and it exercised that energy out and I've been doing it for five months now.

[3:00] Marcus Crawford Guy: Wow, money that initially I was like, oh, why is this leaving my account?

[3:07] Marcus Crawford Guy: And now I'm that transaction goes and it's like, okay, game time.

[3:14] Marcus Crawford Guy: Well, one, it holds you to it, like then you have to do it if you've already paid for it.

[3:19] Marcus Crawford Guy: 'Cause I've been doing the same thing with ClassPass and I it's horribly expensive but I kind of look at it as like a mental health budget.

[3:26] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[3:29] Marcus Crawford Guy: And it's like better than coffee. If I go early in the morning, I don't need the coffee so soon.

[3:38] Marcus Crawford Guy: Which means I don't get the like tragic come down.

[3:44] Leah Walsh: Um, so you mentioned maybe comparing yourself a little bit, but what happened? What does the dark side usually look like for you?

[3:52] Marcus Crawford Guy: Uh, the dark side is me on IMDB Pro seeing what other people have done, and then it always circles back to me thinking about what would have happened had I not chosen to come to America.

[4:16] Marcus Crawford Guy: Because the path to employment would have been so much easier in terms of not necessarily that I am a superstar actor who would have booked, but I do find myself signing in auditions.

[4:34] Marcus Crawford Guy: I have to declare my emigration status, which so people know that before they even see your audition.

[4:41] Leah Walsh: Yes.

[4:42] Marcus Crawford Guy: And I've had a couple of instances where that's been spoken about before I've gotten to show my work.

[4:50] Marcus Crawford Guy: And I know that back home that would not have been the case.

[4:55] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, I'm sure in London people would have rolled their eyes at me being Scottish, but um, but yeah, that's definitely the dark side for me is going, it's uh, I guess it's the path towards regret.

[5:15] Leah Walsh: Right.

[5:15] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah.

[5:16] Leah Walsh: If you had made different choices.

[5:17] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah.

[5:19] Leah Walsh: What can we talk, um, just to give people a little bit of a picture of your path? Why did you choose to stay after Juilliard?

[5:27] Marcus Crawford Guy: And to like what do you see as the industry back home?

[5:33] Marcus Crawford Guy: Like what sorts of opportunities would have been available there, do you think?

[5:38] Marcus Crawford Guy: Is it just like an issue of scale? Like there's just so much more being made here.

[5:42] Marcus Crawford Guy: I mean, I stayed after Juilliard because I moved here right after my eighteenth birthday and yeah.

[5:52] Marcus Crawford Guy: I learned how to be an adult here.

[5:54] Marcus Crawford Guy: Right.

[5:55] Marcus Crawford Guy: And kind of sacrificed a lot of friendships and whatnot to be here for four years.

[6:05] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, and so my life felt like it was growing rootsier and it just didn't, it was certainly an option to go home, but it didn't feel like, I don't know, it didn't feel like it would, it felt like I'd go back to square one.

[6:23] Marcus Crawford Guy: Going back home. There was this sense of like, oh, I will have to go and in some way like make up for the five years that I've been gone.

[6:35] Leah Walsh: Right.

[6:35] Marcus Crawford Guy: Well, that's what I kind of felt about like moving to LA after school. I was like, well, all our connections are in New York, all the directors we've worked with, casting directors we've met.

[6:43] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[6:44] Marcus Crawford Guy: That sort of thing.

[6:45] Marcus Crawford Guy: And then in terms of opportunity back home, I the week that I moved here, I guess in the UK school starts like a month later.

[6:56] Marcus Crawford Guy: So I moved here and then within that week I got offered placement at a school in London with like a full ride.

[7:03] Leah Walsh: But you didn't find out until you'd already moved.

[7:07] Marcus Crawford Guy: Until I'd moved, yeah.

[7:08] Marcus Crawford Guy: I came off the wait list.

[7:10] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, and that had initially been like if this comes through, it's like government subsidized.

[7:15] Marcus Crawford Guy: It's right, like financially think about it.

[7:19] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, my dad's not gonna let me think about it. He's gonna back my cases.

[7:24] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, I was here.

[7:26] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[7:27] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, and I just think in terms of like coming out of a prestigious institution back home being Scottish, I do think that I would have been, I mean I was the only Scottish person here.

[7:45] Marcus Crawford Guy: But there are so few Scottish actors that get trained south of the border that I would have been, I would have been seen and I would also have been employable.

[7:56] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, right now I'm definitely one of very few but I often come up against, oh you don't have a green card so and it's actually much easier sometimes for especially in television, it's much easier for producers to buy someone who's in the UK a visa for a certain amount of time than it is to take my visa which is independently held meaning I can work for several employers.

[8:29] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, for some reason the networks don't like that.

[8:34] Marcus Crawford Guy: It gives me autonomy and if they buy someone's visa they are held to that network.

[8:41] Marcus Crawford Guy: Which is, I understand it from like it's complicated and not useful for an actor.

[8:46] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[8:47] Marcus Crawford Guy: Not helpful for me having to like make rent.

[8:50] Leah Walsh: Right.

[8:51] Marcus Crawford Guy: And when you're somebody who's living here and contributing to the economy here and invested in the city, you know, like why not employ you?

[9:00] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[9:01] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, how frustrating.

[9:03] Marcus Crawford Guy: And again, that's a conversation that's not coming up when it's like decision time.

[9:09] Marcus Crawford Guy: That's a conversation that comes up before my work has even been seen.

[9:12] Leah Walsh: Right.

[9:13] Marcus Crawford Guy: Which is when it's really even more frustrating because it's then like a subheading under which everyone sees my work.

[9:26] Marcus Crawford Guy: Or it's hanging over you when you're trying to just think about the audition, which is hard enough.

[9:30] Leah Walsh: It's hard enough.

[9:32] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[9:33] Leah Walsh: Have you found any different ways of dealing with that situation in the years since you've gotten out of school?

[9:39] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah, I mean, I'm now at a point where most people know that I'm Scottish, but if I'm meeting someone for the first time, I haven't, I use my American dialect because anything to throw people off the scent is helpful.

[9:59] Leah Walsh: That's interesting.

[10:00] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, yeah, I mean, it's a really silly thing to say, but like we're actors, and if you can convince someone of something, um, that's like helpful in proving that you're good at the job.

[10:17] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[10:17] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, it'd be annoying that you have to do that, but it's annoying, but it's also helps get around that roadblock, then.

[10:17] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah, and also I've, I think I've taken enough casting workshops now that I like, I'm like it's their job is to find the best fit for the role.

[10:41] Marcus Crawford Guy: And so if I can come in and pitch myself as something closer to that ballpark then I should do that without like costuming myself.

[10:56] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[10:56] Marcus Crawford Guy: But how about any like, um, like mental, like to make it mentally more palatable?

[11:04] Marcus Crawford Guy: It's just something I've grown used to.

[11:07] Marcus Crawford Guy: And I also when I got issued my last visa, my lawyer when I got back to the US, she was like, come and visit me in my office.

[11:16] Marcus Crawford Guy: And I was like, that sounds horrible.

[11:19] Marcus Crawford Guy: And she gave me a list of the requirements for a green card, like what makes you eligible.

[11:27] Marcus Crawford Guy: And she was like, carry this around everywhere with you.

[11:31] Marcus Crawford Guy: And just like always do something every day that moves you towards this permanent resident status.

[11:42] Marcus Crawford Guy: And that's been really helpful for when I feel disruptive and like I'm not making forward movement to like pull out that list and go, okay, well I've done enough teaching now and I have presented at different places and if I can get verification of that, or if I can use that as leverage to get more work of a similar nature.

[12:14] Marcus Crawford Guy: That's all that all goes in the file for that long term goal.

[12:19] Leah Walsh: Right.

[12:20] Leah Walsh: You just need a lot of documentation, right?

[12:22] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah, I mean it's just lots, lots of paper with people using superlative language.

[12:30] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, I've, it's what's kind of tragic about it is that oftentimes it's more important that the people recommending me are prestigious and established and it is that I am important in any way.

[12:51] Marcus Crawford Guy: So yeah.

[12:53] Marcus Crawford Guy: And I've grown to see that it's like there's something humorous about it, especially in the current political climate that I'm like desperately trying to stay here while other people are making jokes about trying to every day.

[13:13] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, that's there's like a really sick irony in there.

[13:21] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[13:21] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah. Um, just because I'm wondering if this is helpful to anyone else who might be in this position.

[13:28] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[13:28] Marcus Crawford Guy: Like, are there any resources that you've found kind of working through all of the rules and laws and stuff since you graduated that has been helpful to you?

[13:39] Marcus Crawford Guy: Just to be transparent with people about what you need. I think people in New York are just like inherently busy and I left everything to the last minute and then was not clear with what I needed.

[13:59] Leah Walsh: You mean last minute like that?

[14:01] Marcus Crawford Guy: Last minute in terms of trying to pull together documentation so that I wouldn't need to go home and wait for things to process.

[14:10] Leah Walsh: Right.

[14:11] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, and for the record, I'd spent seven months at home waiting. Um, when I got back to the US before I took any job, I always made it 100% clear that I was gonna need some kind of proof of the fact that this had happened.

[14:32] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, and if I felt any kind of resistance towards that, I started to make contingency plans of like, oh Broadway World will write about this and they will write about it even if I have to ask them right to or finding other ways to acquire that documentation if the person who was employing me directly wasn't willing to testify to that.

[15:02] Marcus Crawford Guy: But yeah, being on having that be a forethought rather than an afterthought has been empowering because now at the point when I'm reapplying for a visa I already have so many things checked off the list that I'm not intimidated by it.

[15:20] Leah Walsh: Right and if people are so busy that you know if you worked for them six months ago it's much less likely that they're gonna take the time to write the thing for you.

[15:29] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah and it probably wasn't important to them in the same way that it was important to me.

[15:36] Leah Walsh: Of course um yeah and I've grown to like sympathize with that um besides the career stuff do you find New York to be somewhere that you find inspiring that you think you want to like make a life here long term?

[15:51] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah.

[15:52] Leah Walsh: New York itself.

[15:53] Marcus Crawford Guy: Sure. So when I I grew up in a village where like by the shape of my face, people knew my last name.

[16:05] Marcus Crawford Guy: I was a Guy boy. From I mean people I still I still don't know to this day. They would see me at church and walking down the street, and you be your Ian Guy's grandson.

[16:19] Leah Walsh: Yes.

[16:20] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, the thing that's always appealing to me in New York is getting on the train and being anonymous.

[16:30] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, that's that's fascinating to me. That there are more people in this city than there are in the country that I come from.

[16:41] Leah Walsh: Wow.

[16:41] Marcus Crawford Guy: That's that's amazing to me. Um, and I feel so comfortable being on the train and doing all the stuff that we as actors need to do and walking down the street and talking to myself because I know there's someone four steps behind me doing the same thing.

[17:02] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, I love the anonymity here. And I love that I think the thing that I prefer here versus Los Angeles is that there's still interpersonal connection.

[17:20] Marcus Crawford Guy: Like I'm walking into people, I'm apologizing to them or asking them to apologize to me.

[17:28] Leah Walsh: Um yeah, I think the car culture out west is it's very different.

[17:36] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, I'm someone who's always been outdoorsy, and even if that's walking down the street.

[17:44] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah, even if it's concrete, like it's still I like knowing that if I had to, I could get there on my feet.

[17:51] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[17:51] Marcus Crawford Guy: You know?

[17:53] Leah Walsh: Yeah, it might take me two and a half hours, but I could.

[17:56] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, can we talk about your teaching? Now you're doing a ton of stuff right now with Artists Striving To End Poverty.

[18:03] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[18:03] Marcus Crawford Guy: When did that start for you?

[18:05] Marcus Crawford Guy: That started Well, it's it was interesting because I'd heard about it all throughout my time at Juilliard, but it was one of those things that I never took the time to research.

[18:17] Marcus Crawford Guy: I guess I'd always been like, at some point in time someone will talk to me about this, and no one did. And then when I was at home for seven months, I like did the research and filled out the volunteer application and immediately started volunteering like two weeks after I got back.

[18:36] Marcus Crawford Guy: And that was a game changer for me in terms of seeing parts of New York that I wouldn't otherwise see, but also my very first ASTEP workshop.

[18:51] Marcus Crawford Guy: I went in the classroom and I was talking about me as an actor and some of my goals, and I said I'd love to be on Broadway.

[19:00] Marcus Crawford Guy: And this kid turned around and looked at me and was like, what the street outside? And we were in like East New York, and I was like, oh I'm here living some kind of gold plated dream, and I'm looking survival square in the eye.

[19:23] Marcus Crawford Guy: And that was incredibly sobering and made me let go of this like chokehold that I had on auditioning, and like I must, I must, I must, and I started to check my privilege.

[19:40] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, and I had been teaching quite a bit before that, but the ASTEP work is just so specific because you're dealing with non-traditional classrooms.

[19:54] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, at the moment I'm working in a juvenile detention center, and that's so I mean sobering, but also like just such a it makes I reflect for hours when I come out working with young people who are so vibrant and spirited and inherently like much more creative than I am, but who have made life choices that will keep them in the system for the rest of their life, and I can't help but be thankful that I was born in that like small village where sheep outnumber people the I just was never raised to see the kind of things that I'm sure these kids saw and then did.

[20:54] Leah Walsh: Right, or the positions they were put in.

[20:57] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah, that's just so they probably see more people in a day than I would see in a week, and they're the rate at which they experience things is just vastly different from my own.

[21:17] Leah Walsh: So you said you had done quite a bit of teaching before you uh started with ASTEP?

[21:21] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah.

[21:21] Leah Walsh: What kind of teaching?

[21:22] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, I took over a program in Central Florida called Start, um, which was established by another Juilliard graduate, Evan Todd.

[21:33] Leah Walsh: Oh yeah.

[21:34] Marcus Crawford Guy: And that was like a two-week summer arts workshop that grew into um like a secondary program called The Road to College, which is all about focusing high school students that want arts careers because there is a specific application process for arts schools, but no one tells us about it in high school, and then if that is your chosen path, you're like, wait, it's October of my senior year and I need four monologues.

[22:14] Leah Walsh: Right.

[22:14] Marcus Crawford Guy: Three months from now. And if you don't have the resources, then all of a sudden the dream has to sit on the back burner.

[22:24] Leah Walsh: Right.

[22:24] Marcus Crawford Guy: So that was more for kids who are already interested in the performing arts.

[22:29] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[22:29] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah.

[22:29] Leah Walsh: And then with the ASTEP work, you're do you're kind of teaching other things using the arts.

[22:34] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah.

[22:34] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah. Uh, I'd hate to describe it.

[22:38] Leah Walsh: Yeah, I think it's amplifying it by skills as such.

[22:44] Marcus Crawford Guy: Distraction, but there is this sense of like today we're gonna learn to cooperate with one another by those are important skills.

[22:54] Leah Walsh: Yes.

[22:54] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yes.

[22:55] Marcus Crawford Guy: Flashback to like being on the subway and watching people try and navigate the doors opening and closing.

[23:02] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[23:03] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, yeah, the work is just like endlessly powerful. I worked with um the International Rescue Committee last summer.

[23:14] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, and that was just crazy to be in a classroom with 18 kids, many of whom do not have a common language with each other, never mind with me, and to begin to try and teach a class that everyone can participate in.

[23:34] Marcus Crawford Guy: And I had so many grand plans for what we would do in this storytelling class, and it became like an hour of mad libs.

[23:46] Marcus Crawford Guy: We like taught all of these different words and then would play mad libs, and then we would act out the mad libs.

[23:52] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, because we had constructed like all of this gesture work related to each word that could possibly come up.

[24:01] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, and that felt if I had told myself last July that that was all I would achieve, I would have been like, you're a failure. Don't do this.

[24:11] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, but it felt really triumphant to watch kids on stage acting out their mad lib in a new language.

[24:22] Leah Walsh: No one to find like a common a common language and the gestures and everything.

[24:26] Marcus Crawford Guy: That's great.

[24:27] Leah Walsh: Yeah, yeah.

[24:29] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, it was it was so special.

[24:33] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[24:34] Marcus Crawford Guy: No, I definitely I mean, I know it's hard to hang on to that all the time when you go when you switch back to like career mode when you have a day where you're going to auditions or something.

[24:44] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah.

[24:45] Leah Walsh: But you hope that that perspective carries with you into the room and you can put things a little less on a pedestal or on the high wire when you walk in there.

[24:54] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah. I do try and as cheesy as it sounds, I do try and think about my students who would long to be in the waiting room that I am in before an audition as a way of settling anxiety.

[25:13] Marcus Crawford Guy: Because that's my that's the big thing for me. As I go in the room and all I see are my nerves in front of me and

[25:21] Leah Walsh: Right.

[25:21] Marcus Crawford Guy: Half the time I come out and I'm like I wish I could reflect on that audition, but I was so not present that that's not even a possibility.

[25:31] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[25:31] Marcus Crawford Guy: And reflecting on work that's actually so much harder to be in a secure facility working with um young offenders.

[25:45] Marcus Crawford Guy: Like that is a much much harder task than memorizing words and going in a room and regurgitating them with a sense of truthful experience.

[25:58] Leah Walsh: It's crazy though how much your body can take over in those moments though.

[26:02] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah, I mean like why I feel good about I know what I'm doing. Why is my hand shaking? Like I have no control.

[26:10] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[26:11] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah.

[26:11] Marcus Crawford Guy: It's bizarre.

[26:16] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, what is your family make of your choice to be an artist for your career?

[26:20] Leah Walsh: Well, it's funny, my parents are both not artistic at all.

[26:27] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah.

[26:28] Leah Walsh: My m my mom will flinch at that. She'll be like, I can draw. Um, but my brother and I are both artists. My brother is a design engineer who works for Apple.

[26:39] Marcus Crawford Guy: Older or younger?

[26:40] Leah Walsh: Older. Fiercely intelligent. Um, and just really smart and creative in a much more practical way.

[26:55] Marcus Crawford Guy: I certainly have the like wandering brain. Like lots of unfinished projects on my MacBook that I hope never dies. Um how do you handle that distance, that long distance between you you and your family?

[27:14] Leah Walsh: You know, it's funny, because when I was young, I was I could never do like I couldn't even do sleepovers. I would like stay until like 10 30, and then I'd be like, I'm tired, so I need to go home. Um I guess when I came to Juilliard, I felt like for the audition, I felt like this was a place where I would be supported even when I was struggling, and I cried several times during the audition process and felt nurtured.

[27:53] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um which made that transition easier. I remember I've never been more scared in my life than when my dad left me before I'd like unpacked my room. He was like, I'm gonna go, because you need to like do this on your own. And that was terrifying. But then we made an agreement that regardless of how homesick I got, no one would visit me before the end of the semester, and I would not under any circumstance go home. And that was hard and at times I was so lonely because I had very few things that felt familiar around me.

[28:36] Leah Walsh: And I had to like plug in my webcam to my old laptop and like pray that Skype would work. Um but it's gotten easier and now my brother lives in San Francisco, so he's the same distance away in the other direction. Um and this is home now. And when I was in Scotland in 2015 waiting on my visa processing, I felt homesick for New York in a way that I never felt homesick for Scotland.

[29:16] Marcus Crawford Guy: I was I was longing for the freedom to be able to jump on the subway and go somewhere and even if it was only to kill time, knowing I can do that in New York is really amazing. And I know people are listening going, but in Scotland there's millions.

[29:39] Leah Walsh: Yeah, like No, I understand that. No trespass laws, blah blah blah. I think you can you can still love both. I grew up in the country and I I miss aspects of it and then when I'm there I miss things about the city and Yeah. Each are better if you get away often.

[29:58] Marcus Crawford Guy: I remember also I guess because sometimes I do go like nine, ten, eleven months without seeing my parents. I remember going home and being like, oh, people got like slightly older. And that was that was slightly terrifying to just be like I am not away having accumulating all of these experiences and like time stops. It like continues for everyone. Um and that's that's I'm sure only going to get harder as time passes.

[30:36] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[30:37] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah. I know that you've been very involved in like doing uh multidisciplinary work.

[30:43] Leah Walsh: Yes.

[30:43] Marcus Crawford Guy: I don't know if that's the right word. Um and we had first kind of spent time together when we did that project here. What did they call it? Beyond the machine. Was that part of Beyond the Machine or was it called something else?

[30:55] Leah Walsh: I guess it was. The CIA.

[30:58] Marcus Crawford Guy: Oh yeah, this what is that standing for?

[31:00] Leah Walsh: The Center for Innovation in the Arts.

[31:03] Marcus Crawford Guy: That's right, yeah. Which, you know, was projects involving technology and stuff.

[31:07] Leah Walsh: Yeah. Um what sort of things are you excited about right now with like non-traditional ways to use your your skills or collaborations that you're interested in or stuff like that?

[31:20] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, well, I I'm always interested in the fact that everyone always asks me if I'm a dancer, and like I'm always I'm always interested in work where I can be mm be moving as a dancer and I don't know the stuff that I guess my issue with the with the project that we did here which was so creatively fulfilling was to then try and move that project and like have a conversation about how do I try and self-produce this and f just hear how much insurance would cost on like a single piece of technology. I don't know if they've advanced that since we did it, but that was a flaw, I think, in the idea. I was like 'cause Jenna and I had the same thing. Yeah, I was like, I don't know if I want to ensure like a twelve thousand dollar electric xylophone.

[32:23] Leah Walsh: Right.

[32:23] Marcus Crawford Guy: It was cool to like be given these tools to play with, but then it's like, well, how do we take this beyond the workshop? Like Yeah. Since we don't own them. Um so that's that's been like this the stumbling the stumbling block there. Um I at one point I had dreamed up this like this idea of like creating a a digital piece that was like twenty-four hours on Twitter where every minute you would take the like top trending topic and the first tweet that comes up and just like have dramatic readings of them to like document twenty four hours in the world where someone doing the most asinine thing can become um can become amplified.

[33:30] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[33:31] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um there was a story about a woman who she tweeted something really silly and irresponsible about AIDS before she got on a like 17-hour flight to South Africa, and then she turned on her phone when she arrived in Johannesburg, and she had been the internet had like eaten her alive and spat her out and moved on, but she was not aware that that had happened. And I remember hearing that story and being like, that's that's interesting that we lit it's like vultures. It's so fast. Um but yeah, that this the thing that I loved about that project was that I am such a technophobe that Ed Bellows really made me interface with the technology and get to know it.

[34:27] Leah Walsh: Um and I totally recognize its value in the theater.

[34:36] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um, and I'm glad that we got that like one-on-one time with artists behind the scenes and like really were performer, producer, collaborator, designer. Because usually if they are if those kinds of elements are in a production, like the director and the designers are just dealing with them, you're just told where to move.

[35:00] Leah Walsh: Yes, yeah, yeah.

[35:01] Marcus Crawford Guy: And and that was really interesting and I I remember making requests and them being like, This is like man-made technology. So while it can do lots of things, it can't do what you want it to do. And me being like, but they told me I could do anything.

[35:22] Leah Walsh: Um Yeah.

[35:25] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um but I do I enjoy making my own work. I like writing my last year I self-produced a short film just to like see if it was possible. Um and I did it on almost almost no money. Um and that was really exciting and that's been a relationship and a project that's grown very quickly into like a dare I call it a pilot script.

[35:59] Leah Walsh: Oh yeah.

[35:59] Marcus Crawford Guy: I mean I think writers would slap my wrist. But we have to start somewhere.

[36:04] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[36:05] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um so that's that's really exciting and me and my collaborator Evan Margolis submitted it to Sundance for a lab because why not?

[36:18] Leah Walsh: That's great.

[36:19] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um and I think that's been really amazing to go like where's the ex where's the extreme that we could take this to?

[36:29] Leah Walsh: Right.

[36:30] Marcus Crawford Guy: And and then you start to hold yourself to a higher standard.

[36:34] Leah Walsh: Well and it's great to have those things that you can work on with one other person or work on in your room alone when you're not cast in something.

[36:41] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah, yeah. And it's and it's fun as well 'cause you we wrote it and I was like I I'm so in this, and I'm an actor, and I have written a part very clearly for for myself. And then and then just like wishing up a way to make that happen. And it's like at a point in time I didn't think that there would be a script. And now there is.

[37:11] Leah Walsh: So that tells me there's a way for me to make this and be in it.

[37:17] Marcus Crawford Guy: And people are doing that. Like right now, I feel like especially is the time for that. People are writing their way into things. Um and also to just be in be inspired by things that you see and then try and make something that's your own in a similar image. That's that's really exciting. Evan and I love like mockumentary stuff, like The Office and Parks and Wreck, and definitely feels like in television at the moment, there's a there's a gap there.

[37:54] Leah Walsh: I don't see the thing that's filled that space, and we were like, let's let's agreement up.

[38:02] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um and so the origin the original short film is called Making David Harper's Actor Real. And it's about these two pushy parents who are just so proud of their talent free son making his real that they hire a documentary film crew to film the real being filmed.

[38:25] Leah Walsh: Oh my god.

[38:25] Marcus Crawford Guy: And it's just like so many layers of like obnoxious rich white people. Um yeah, and it's like I'm smiling, so it's obviously it's obviously joyous for me.

[38:43] Leah Walsh: That's great.

[38:44] Marcus Crawford Guy: Um is there a lesson you've learned in the last couple years that you're really proud of that you want to tell me about?

[38:44] Marcus Crawford Guy: I've learned that I don't need to be any version of anything that's ever come out of the Juilliard school in order to be successful. And I love this place with all my heart, but like I'm no Oscar Isaac, and nor do I want to be. I'm Marcus Crawford Guy, and I think I have some really exciting and probably weird things to offer the world, but I spent like two and a half years sitting on my sitting on what's truly unique and wonderful about me because I felt like there was a formula that I had to meet and fill.

[39:48] Marcus Crawford Guy: And lo and behold, as soon as I took hold of the thing that's essential to me, which I think is like my strange and odd sense of humor. I'm auditioning better. I'm showing up in how I prepare my work and how I talk to myself before I go in the room when I go in the room, and then like promptly tearing that stuff up and throwing it away and going that was an opportunity for me. It was not me. And I think I, you know, when you're twenty-two and you're out of Juilliard and like you get auditions for Broadway stuff and you think you're like the bee's knees, I would come out of those auditions and that would be the next four weeks of my life. That was my naive me not realizing if this is going any farther you will hear within the next four hours.

And that's gonna make a great story, but yeah, I'm really proud that I think I have something to offer that's not based on where I went to school, right? Because if the Juilliard School was the be-all-end-all, then someone would have come and saw me at my showcase and been like, this is it, click, click, we're done, like you don't need to work. And actually at that point in time, I was like so shrouded in training that the thing that was vibrant and sparkly about me was not ready to be showcased. It had really good tongue tip agility, that was about it. Yeah, well that is a huge, huge lesson I would like to say that I've learned that as well, some days more than others.

[42:01] Leah Walsh: Oh yeah, and I mean, please, I have days where I'm like, oh. But no, but there's a weird pressure you put on yourself, right, when you graduate, which is so unhealthy.

[42:12] Marcus Crawford Guy: It's so unhealthy. And I remember people gave me such great advice, and I was like, hmm. It's not necessarily that like the teachers are putting it on you or anything, although I'm sure there's some things about fourth year that obviously get it in your head, but you pick it up from other students, or you've just put the pressure on yourself from people who you see who are working, you're like, that's the only thing you can do. But I remember one teacher who I did not have a particularly healthy relationship with pulled me aside before the showcase, and immediately like my anxiety topped out at like a 17 out of 12. And she was like, you know that we're not worried about you. And I was like, oh.

I didn't quite understand what that meant. And I think after the showcase, when I didn't get good response, that was I felt like that was her way of letting me down gently, like this will pay off at some point in time. But actually, I've been such a fiercely hard worker since the minute I got here that that was her way of saying, like, if you keep going on the path that you're forging for yourself, there are only great things in store. But at the time I was like, is this like, what are you trying to do to trick me? I was so suspicious. And then I had other people that were like, 22 and 23 are gonna be the worst years of your life. But when 24 comes, and then 24 came. And then nothing. Yeah, my birthday's at like the start of the month, and I just paid rent, and I was like, I'm 24 and I have no money. I'm ready. Where is it? Yes. It was like I was told there would be a pot of gold. And of course my birthday cards are like stuck somewhere over the Atlantic. It was truly nothing.

[44:13] Leah Walsh: Do you have any artistic mentors that you've found in your career that are important to your process?

[44:20] Marcus Crawford Guy: You know, this is someone I've never met, but I think if I did ever meet Gillian Jacobs, I would probably like wash the floor in front of her so that she could step on it. Because there is something about the—and I'm sorry to make this Juilliard-centric—but about the way that she was able to move forward from that. That was when I read the Lenny Letter article that she wrote, I was like, whoa, that's the path that I need to be on to empower myself. And that felt like huge. It felt like someone was speaking to me through my computer screen. And also she's such a joyous comedian. I haven't seen a ton of her work. What do you really recommend of hers?

[45:32] Leah Walsh: Love on Netflix, I just think is genius. I think the way that like toxic behaviors, specifically addiction, is dealt with, and these two like painfully neurotic characters at different ends of the spectrum find a meeting place and build the ground on which they both can walk is like so wonderful and powerful. And I'm sure other people are like, it's trash.

[46:12] Marcus Crawford Guy: Well, that's the nice thing about art, it's subjective. And yeah, it just finished and I'm so—I have to watch it. I always, for some reason, I haven't clicked on it whenever I see it.

[46:29] Leah Walsh: Yeah, I mean it's called Love, it feels whimsical. But it's nice when you hear somebody who you—who's ahead of you on the path articulate something that you're feeling, you're like, oh, I'm not the only one. Yeah, that's been amazing. And then I always, always, always felt like Moni Yakim was someone who just like was able to see me and was able to see the struggles that I was going through as an actor to like I had my hard worker and like must get this correct, and then he was like, but the improviser who is trained to make mistakes and fail is so much more interesting. And he was always so wonderful at celebrating my successes because he knew that I would beat myself up over the failures. Yeah, I just think he was the first—he was the first person I met at the school.

He was in the room when I auditioned, and I remember going, you are so quirky, and like laughed at all the things that I never thought people would laugh at in my work. I just think he understood my neuroses immediately. Special, special man.

[48:05] Leah Walsh: So special, yeah.

[48:06] Marcus Crawford Guy: So, so special. And also just an incredible teacher.

[48:10] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[48:11] Marcus Crawford Guy: I don't think I could ever be a teacher like that.

[48:13] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[48:15] Marcus Crawford Guy: And he listens. He really...

[48:39] Leah Walsh: I love reading Gertrude Stein because I have like a book of her essays, which I love because it's so hard to make sense of that I can't have anything else going on in my head. So it like undoes the knot. It's like a—it feels like a puzzle. Uses that energy in another way. And then also taking myself to places where I have experienced extreme happiness and joy. Like the Highline. That was like the first place publicly in New York that I held a boy's hand. And like that just gives me great joy to like be there. Cause I'm like, I'm not with him anymore, but it was wonderful. Yeah, like retaking myself to a physical location where I was in a brighter spot. Because my couch has seen it all.

[49:40] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[49:41] Marcus Crawford Guy: I love that. Yeah, New York is interesting that way because it really is so small that like all of that history starts to overlap all the experiences. Like I, whenever I come in Lincoln Center, I'm like experiencing ten different years of my life at the same time.

[49:58] Leah Walsh: I love that. And then the final question is, have you seen anything lately that you want to recommend of any art form?

[50:06] Marcus Crawford Guy: Oh. Yeah. Friends' shows or anything. Mmm, ding ding ding. I'm trying to think. Well, I saw Three Tall Women.

[50:15] Leah Walsh: Oh, you did?

[50:16] Marcus Crawford Guy: Yeah, and Glenda Jackson is just—I wanna see that.

[50:20] Leah Walsh: Outrageous.

[50:21] Marcus Crawford Guy: She's so wonderful and so vibrant, and there is something—there's a really great lesson for us all in the fact that she like put down the work for quite some time and went and did something else, and now she has picked it back up again and she is like so exquisite.

[50:49] Leah Walsh: Okay, I can see that.

[50:51] Marcus Crawford Guy: And if anyone hasn't seen—I mean, this is older now—but if anyone hasn't seen Mr. Gaga, the documentary about Ohad Naharin.

[50:57] Leah Walsh: Oh, I still haven't seen it.

[50:59] Marcus Crawford Guy: That's—I do need to see that. It's really something. Two very important things to put on my list.

[51:06] Leah Walsh: Yeah. Well, Marcus, thank you.

[51:09] Marcus Crawford Guy: Thank you so much. This was great.

[51:20] Leah Walsh: Thank you for listening to The Compass Podcast. If you find these conversations valuable to your life as an artist and would like to support the ongoing production of The Compass, please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash The Compass Podcast. Pledges start at as little as one dollar a month. You'll get access to bonus content, and anything you can give would be greatly appreciated. Also, if you have a moment, please rate or review in iTunes. Every little bit helps other listeners to find the podcast.

[51:57] Marcus Crawford Guy: Audio assistance from Nick Choxie, and a special thanks to Frankie J. Alvarez. See you next time.