Madison Native Lydia-Renee Darling Has Developed Multiple Skill Sets to Make It in the Performing Arts: Many Routes to Show Biz Success
Above: Lydia Renee Darling is a 2016 graduate of La Follette High School and after studying in London, England, is awaiting a visa to allow her to act in the West End.
Below: Darling acting in a play.
By Jonathan Gramling
While she was valedictorian of her La Follette High school senior class in 2016 and could have easily — and in some quarters expected — become a lawyer or doctor, Lydia-Renee Darling had her heart set on doing something creative with her life. But she felt she needed to keep her career desires secret.
“When I was younger, I got conflicting messages about what I should do,” Darling said in a phone call from London, England. “It was kind of hard to tell other people about what I wanted to do because I felt that they didn’t take it as seriously as academics. But I spent all of my free time going on YouTube and teaching myself how to dance. It wasn’t until a couple of years of taking that seriously like in middle school that my mom got help from family friends and extended family to pay for dance classes and vocal lessons. That’s when I was like, ‘Okay, I really can do this.’ Before, it just seemed like it was something that I had to keep in the dark.”
Darling performed in plays and school musicals during her La Follette career and then headed to St. Louis to study at the Webster Conservatory in 2016 to earn her BFA, where she had a laser-like focus on the performing arts.
“It was a full-time conservatory program from 8-5:30 p.m. plus all of our productions at night and on the weekends,” Darling said. “When you come to these professional training programs, it’s your head down. You’re working and working and working for 12 hours per day, just performing. You’re prepping for this showcase, which is not the be, all, end all. But it’s a big launch pad for your career. It was a very intensive experience.”
And then just as Darling was getting ready for her Showcase, the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“It was a really strange kind of limbo,” Darling said. “The day Broadway shut down was like two days after my showcase. It was just this feeling of like you lost before you even started. But also because my parents were in health care, I was more concerned about them. And so it just felt selfish to even feel like we could grieve not getting to graduate or not getting those experiences because there were such huge things happening. It was very strange.”
Darling headed back to Madison to shelter in place with her parents. It was a strange new world for Darling.
“Coming from such a structured environment — like a conservatory — and I’m going straight into not just graduating as an adult where now everything is up to you into a pandemic where there is no sense of what to do for anyone at all because none of us has experienced something as significant in our lifetimes really.”
Sitting at home doing nothing was unbearable to Darling. And so she began to take an alternative route to show biz.
“I was just kind of losing it being alone with my own thoughts and I needed to channel it into something” Darling recalled. “I was always really interested in digital low-end with social media being so accessible for people as a form of entertainment. I wanted to see what I could make. My final assignment for school was actually to do a cabaret. That’s usually in person. But I made a short film instead. And I thought, ‘Okay I can do something with this.’ I was like, ‘Why don’t I create a web series? Why don’t I create a short film over Zoom?’ It was really like I couldn’t allow this feeling of limbo to stop me from moving. I just had to keep doing something. And that is what I came up with. ‘Alright, I will just try it because there is nothing to lose.’”
While the COVID-19 pandemic was a horrible time for all, it did force Darling into new paths of creative expression
“There was a professor in my undergrad who always said, ‘When you don’t know what to do, just do anything.’ I think I just kind of go where the passion leads. And it is also about creating a holistic life. When I was in conservatory, those programs are great because they are so intense and they are meant to prepare you for professional work in theater in New York and other fast-paced moving places. A lot of what I was told during that time was you have to focus on just this one thing. Otherwise your other interests are somehow detracting from it. If the pandemic taught me anything, I think it is that the more strengths you have the better. It wasn’t just my acting work supporting me anymore. It was also writing things that I could cast my friends in, marketing other people’s productions to bring in money to support my own kind of day-to-day life. I think that’s where the kind of multiple passions come from. You let necessity guide it and just try to make it as holistic as you can.”
As the pandemic eased up in 2021, Darling headed to London, England to earn her master’s degree, which she received on September 23rd. In addition to studying, Darling has been busy supporting herself through some of her new found talents.
“I’ve been working as a marketer and concept producer here,” Darling said. “I do marketing for anything that is entertainment. I work with the Royal Court here for crisis management for one of their shows. I’ve been working with individual content creators and people in the industry. And so that is kind of like my day job. But I’m still writing. I’ve been submitting to script writing opportunities, revising my work and then I get my new visa next month. I’ll be able to do professional acting work on the visa. I’ve been sending out queries to agents and starting auditions. It’s been really exciting to be able to actually get to do that now that I’ve graduated and be on newbies list.”
If Darling had said ‘It’s acting or bust,” she would still be living at her parents’ house. And while she has a dogged determination to make it, she has also been open to opportunities that would sustain her in the short and long haul. Darling knows a lot, but she knows she doesn’t know it all.
“It’s letting your clients choose you,” Darling observed. “When I started out, I really thought people would be looking for more full-service, social media management in the entertainment sphere. I’ve actually found it moves more towards consulting with people, which I love because I’ve always kind of been the marketing coach for all of my actor friends, letting them know how they can gain visibility. I’m doing something that I already do because I love it and I get paid and I get to work with content creators and let them tell me what they need and that helps me make my service as relevant as possible. It’s been great because it is a lot of consulting and I would say project-based work. I do a lot of writing for companies too, a lot of content writing and not full-service social, which is what I really thought would be happening going into it, more so doing strategy for them.”
Darling’s dream is to act on the West End in her own production and eventually split her time between the United States and England. Darling is making it in the performing arts field. She has gone around barriers and has done whatever it takes to stay in the performing arts game.
“A career in the performing arts is probably more sustainable than you think,” Darling said. “You don’t have to be a starving artist, but you do have to work smarter, not harder. Don’t just look at your career and say, ‘Okay, I want to be an actor. And that is all that I will do.’ Think about what you can do behind the scenes or behind the camera to support that work. And that way, you’ll not only learn about the people you work with and be a better collaborator, but you will also be able to support yourself better financially. I think a lot of kids are discouraged to go into the arts because they are told you can’t make money from it and that just isn’t true. But you have to make sure that you are giving yourself the best possible hand you can play.”
Lydia-Renee Darling has played her hand well.
