My story – Carol Jacobanis

In another life I was a classical ballet dancer.

Imagine that hyper-focused, over-achieving kid from your high school… now imagine she wore tights and a leotard under her clothes and disappeared half way through the day to go train at an elite ballet academy. As fate would have it, I got injured in my first year dancing with a professional company. I was 19 and I was every kind of broken. *Cue identity crisis.* At my dad’s not-so-subtle urging I surrendered to my not-at-all-needed-worst-case-scenario-dooms-day “safety plan”: deferred enrollment at one of the Seven Sisters, Mount Holyoke College. I sang in an A Cappella group, became the goalie for the Ice Hockey team

, fell in love with a girl and all but shaved my head in protest of the Patriarchy of which I was now suddenly aware. It was a whole new world and I was a whole new womyn. I took history and politics classes and set my sites on studying International Human Rights at Harvard Law School. I was going to save the world, of course. Feeling confident I had out-grown (or out-studied) the masochistic tendencies one needs to pursue artistic vocations of any kind, my junior year I signed up for an Intro to Theater class. I was soon performing in MHC’s theater productions.

*Cue my Spielberg face* (and add a slow dolly push) to the moment of profound realization that nothing in my life had ever felt as right as acting. It challenged and excited every part of me. The power and responsibility of moving an audience with story, I discovered, was not only the most fun a gal could have, but was undeniably harmonious with my passion to sprinkle a little more humanity into the world. I had tripped over The Complete Works of Shakespeare and stumbled heart-first into my new raison d’être. I graduated cum laude with a BA in “It Doesn’t Matter, You’re not going to Law School” and packed my bags for NYC. (Dad was juuuust thrilled.) I grew up just outside of Washington, D.C. in Arlington, Virginia (What’s up, Sandra Bullock!) I’m a textbook middle child.