The Road Ahead: Kelsey Brennan

Sara: Oh, Kelsey. Of course we are happy for your next chapter, but I know I’m still getting my head around the fact that you’re retiring from APT. Can you talk about your decision to step away from the Core Company?
Kelsey: Sure. Gosh, where do I start with this one? It certainly wasn't something that happened overnight. I have loved being in the APT Core Company so dearly. It's been the centerpiece of my career. But in my life, and I think as I've gotten older, different things have become important. And one of those things is relationships. I love Spring Green and love that it’s a small town, but it also means there’s a certain level of isolation. That can be really great for making art but not always for having your loved ones close by, especially loved ones who don’t work at APT. It’s really about entering a new chapter of my life and meeting that moment authentically. A really hard truth of that authenticity is having to say goodbye to a previous chapter to respond to a new one.

What's funny is that it's really my time at APT that allowed me to grow into the person that would make this decision. At APT we value authenticity, value the measurable power of language and communication. It’s led me to use those skills in a new context, use them outside the theater industry in business and healthcare, to allow people to deepen connections with their patients and clients. That's where I'm putting these skills now, and it's really fulfilling in a very, very different, but I guess appropriate for the moment kind of way.

Sara: That actually brings me right to my next question: what you will be doing now that you’re not here with us?
Kelsey: I’m working with an international communications consulting firm called Stand and Deliver. They're based in San Francisco, and we work with leaders to help them communicate more effectively, and to create more powerful cultures within their organizations. And that also means serving their client base in a more profound way. People who work at Stand and Deliver have very diverse backgrounds, but a lot of us come from the arts, and a lot of us come from this shared love of language and storytelling and empathy.

I’m also working at the Center for Empathy and Compassion within the medical school at University of California, San Diego. We have a couple different programs where we work with clinicians within the university to enhance their skills in creating relationships with their patients and fellow clinicians. This is also this beautiful intersection of theater and something grand and beautiful that's serving the world in a different way. In this case, it happens to be medicine.

You can imagine that right now the level of burnout for physicians and other healthcare workers is very real. When doctors are dealing with those pressures, they don’t always step into a room with empathy. We provide the tools they need to find that empathy, to find that empathy or compassion when they just don't have it.

Sara: That sounds akin to what an actor does. It’s their job to call up empathy when they need it on stage.
Kelsey: Exactly. I realize this might have been one of the things that made me want to be an actor – my curiosity about emotion. Labeling emotion, talking about emotion, digging deep into why emotions happen when they happen.

Sara: Love that. Okay, so you were the Director of Professional Development at APT over the last couple years, and it sounds like some of the work you’re doing is sort of related to that type of work you were doing here. Now that you've stepped out on your own, will you be doing any programing for APT?
Kelsey: I don’t think so, because I won't be living within the community. And I think the way that I like to do professional development is all based on relationships. It's all based in understanding deeply what people's pain points are, what they need, what they want for their employees. I also realized over the two years I was doing that at APT that it takes a long time to establish relationships to do it well. Now that my community has moved, my relationships have moved with it.

Kelsey Brennan leading a Professional Development Workshop in Madison, 2023. Photo by Hannah Jo Anderson

Sara: Completely understandable. Okay, let’s do a little reflecting. What will stand out about your time at APT? Experiences? Favorite shows? Favorite roles?
Kelsey: This might be unexpected, but I think the most fun I ever had on stage was Flea in Her Ear.
Sara: Really?
Kelsey: Yes! I want to say Masha (in Three Sisters). I want to say Nora (In A Doll’s House), I want to say Eurydice. Those were instrumental in my growth as an artist. But I’ve never felt so strongly when a play closed that I could have done it for two more years.
Sara: That's amazing. It was so much fun.
Kelsey: Yes! And it was the last show I ever got to do with David Frank, and it had some of my very favorite people in it, and I laughed my ass off every single time we did that show Offstage and on. I think it was the most fun I ever had at APT.

Kelsey Brennan & Cage Sebastian Pierre, Eurydice 2016. Photo by Liz Lauren.

Sara: Oh, that's fantastic. I love that answer. Okay, next question: you spent a bunch of years in the core company. How do you think that affected your acting career?
Kelsey: Yeah, I think what's so fantastic about having a core company is that you have a system where you are creating pathways for younger artists to become great. Because what younger artists need is opportunity and support. And being in the core company meant that I had an incredible base of support, and I also had people challenging me to be better. And the people in that company not only became family to a certain extent, my well-respected friends, but they also became the people that I modeled my career on and modeled my aesthetic on. So I learned at a rate that there's no way I could have learned outside of the core company because I was learning next to the people I wanted to be like. Who also are always vocal about the fact that they're learning themselves. So there's this culture of learning, and modeling that learning, that's really extraordinary. And I hope that never, ever, ever goes away for the organization.

Sara: I agree. I think that culture of learning is so important to who we are as an organization. Okay, I know you'll visit APT because you have friends here. What will you look forward to when you come back to visit, other than seeing your friends?
Kelsey: Oh my goodness. I'm really excited to see how APT shifts in the coming years. What it’s like for APT as the core company that we’ve known changes and how that affects the work and how we do it. I love the APT that I was a part of, and I really care deeply about the future of the organization. And so I will be looking forward to seeing what the identity of APT becomes in 2030.

Sara: Yeah, We’ve been thinking a lot lately about “what makes APT…APT?” What is the essence that we want to make sure endures as time passes.
Kelsey: Right? Exactly. It's so important.

Sara: This is a question Brenda asked during those Six Feet Apart interviews during the pandemic. But it seems appropriate to ask again. What do you hope for APT’s future?
Kelsey: I hope that APT finds a very productive balance between its history and its future. that APT is able to identify the parts of the culture, the parts of the way that we do the work that will actually create a beautiful foundation to grow from. We don't do things the way that they were done in the eighties [when APT was founded], but there are things that have been maintained and passed down, and that process of passing things down is unique. So I hope that that continues.

Kelsey Brennan, A Doll's House, 2019. Photo by Liz Lauren.

Sara: It occurs to me how you are passing APT on out in other parts of the world. It's not just to the younger actors at APT, but throughout business, healthcare, the world. It's so cool. Okay, last question. Do you have any advice for APT?
Kelsey: Never forget that APT is the people, and it's the relationships with the people that have created the most memorable experiences on stage. And the relationship with the audience.

It's really difficult for me right now to adequately express my gratitude because it's so much bigger than thank you. And that includes my gratitude to the audience. I know individuals in our audience, and then I understand our audience in a more macro sense. I have really grown up on the two stages that were the hill stage and that is in front of people. And so to be kind of held that way and to have been in partnership with this audience from 22 to 39, there's no word to describe that. Maybe Shakespeare has one. I'll go look.

Sara: Take care, my friend. Stay in touch.