By ROBERT TRUSSELL
The Kansas City Star
(Edited for blog)
Jennie Greenberry’s creative life pivoted on a heart-to-heart with her mother in her senior year in high school.
For four years Greenberry’s entire extracurricular life had been theater — play rehearsals, speech and debate tournaments, rehearsing with the school improv team — but now she was looking at the real possibility of leaving all that behind.
For four years Greenberry’s entire extracurricular life had been theater — play rehearsals, speech and debate tournaments, rehearsing with the school improv team — but now she was looking at the real possibility of leaving all that behind.
One day Greenberry’s mother saw her pacing up and down the hall in their suburban St. Louis home and decided it was time to have a talk.
“Up to that point, I wanted to be a nurse and I wanted to go to William Jewell, but she could sense that I wasn’t really excited about doing that,” says Greenberry, 21. “And truthfully, I just wanted to study nursing because I thought that would be a practical job, whatever that means. And she just asked if that was really what I wanted to do.”
Greenberry’s answer: “I don’t think so.”
So her mom asked what she thought she really wanted to do.
“What makes you happy?” her mother asked. “What do you think God has given you the ability to do?”
“Act,” Greenberry answered.
Her mother’s advice, in so many words: Go for it.
So it was settled. She would go to Stephens College and get her bachelor of fine arts.
“From then on, I was determined that that was what I was going to do, even if I was scared to do it,” Greenberry says.
“From then on, I was determined that that was what I was going to do, even if I was scared to do it,” Greenberry says.
Last year Greenberry, who projects unforced elegance and a commanding stage presence, moved to Kansas City to begin her professional career. (Kansas City offers more opportunities to actors than St. Louis.) She signed on with a talent agency and so far has been in two shows at the Coterie and one at the American Heartland and has appeared in a handful of TV commercials.
She says she plans to stick around.
“I love it here,” she says. “I grew up in the suburbs. I like the city life.”
“I love it here,” she says. “I grew up in the suburbs. I like the city life.”
Rollen, Greenberry and Swenson are just three examples of the young artists in Kansas City pumping energy into the city’s cultural life, which seems to be expanding exponentially in quality and quantity. But their stories also reflect the circuitous route some people take before making a mark in the arts.
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The artist’s life is, virtually by definition, composed of uncertainty. Nobody knows where the road will lead. Nobody knows if an audience can be found. Greenberry is acutely aware of all of this because, she says, the theater faculty at Stephens drummed the reality of an actor’s life into every student.
“I don’t know what other theater programs teach, but I do know that at Stephens they drill professionalism into you from your first day there,” she says. “It’s all about how to conduct yourself as a professional and, of course, how to deliver the goods as an actor or actress. But they really try to convey the business side of acting as well as the creative side.”
The artist’s life is, virtually by definition, composed of uncertainty. Nobody knows where the road will lead. Nobody knows if an audience can be found. Greenberry is acutely aware of all of this because, she says, the theater faculty at Stephens drummed the reality of an actor’s life into every student.
“I don’t know what other theater programs teach, but I do know that at Stephens they drill professionalism into you from your first day there,” she says. “It’s all about how to conduct yourself as a professional and, of course, how to deliver the goods as an actor or actress. But they really try to convey the business side of acting as well as the creative side.”
And she says there was another important lesson. Nobody without a desire for applause will become an actor, but to succeed actors need to keep it all in perspective.
“They (the faculty) try their best to make sure that by the time you leave there, any sense of ego or diva attitude is gone, because that won’t get you work,” Greenberry says. “No one wants to work with someone with an over-inflated sense of self. The reality is that most actors are a dime a dozen. If you have a bad attitude, they can easily find someone to replace you.”
Greenberry is part of a kind of Stephens College mafia. Graduates of the theater program seem to keep coming to Kansas City to start their careers. She lives with two other Stephens grads in Hyde Park. Three other Stephens actors are in the next Unicorn Theatre show.
Greenberry, sporting an impeccable British accent, held her own quite nicely with some of Kansas City’s best veteran actors in “Murder by the Book,” a comic murder mystery at the Heartland. And comedy, she says, is what comes most naturally.
“It’s kind of like living my real life on stage and getting paid to do it,” she says. “In normal life, I’m so flamboyant and kind of crazy, it’s just easier for me to do, I guess.”
A moment later she thought better of her word choice.
“Not crazy,” she says. “Outgoing is a better way to say it. Very outgoing.”
Greenberry supplements her acting income by working as a hostess at a Country Club Plaza restaurant. Her next show will be “U-Bug-Me” at the Coterie in June. And then?
“After that, it’s anyone’s guess,” she says.
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