Brooklyn Janae Boukather is an NYC based actor.
Brooklyn is an artist grown out of a thoroughly creative upbringing and a deep love for bold expression. Almost every moment of her childhood was full of paint, canvases, scripts, novels, dance classes, singing lessons, and any other artistic endeavor she could get her hands on. Admittedly, the musical aspects did not pan out, but her fascination with storytelling (visually and physically) blossomed into a dedication to performance.
She spent nine years at South Coast Repertory Theatre Conservatory with their intensive youth programs, and this was where she decided the only thing in life she wanted was to be an actor. In many ways, SCR set her life’s course; they taught her community, professionalism, and - most of all - courage. To engage, commit, and follow through courageously. To support fellow artists, onstage and off, courageously. I owe every success to this brilliant, beautiful establishment.
After years of constant shows, rehearsals, training, memorizing, and tech weeks, I was admitted into NYU Tisch School of the Arts. I moved to New York in August of 2016 and began my higher education with Playwrights Horizons Theatre School. The first two years were pure, untethered chaos; never had I unwillingly endured so many sleepless nights while also creating the most challenging, unapologetic art I had ever seen. Playwrights Horizons is a lawless land in all the best and worst ways, and it thrust me into the darkest depths of what it means to be an aspiring/struggling/inexperienced artist in the city that genuinely does not get any sleep. But it was here that I learned one of my most valuable lessons: “Don’t be afraid to kill your babies.” I’m not talking about murder, but rather the idea that your art can’t be ‘precious.’ You have to allow it to be discarded, destroyed, and (occasionally) brought back from the ashes not looking exactly the way you imagined it would. By letting go of the idea that my art had to be protected, I opened up to a freedom that could be applied to all my creative endeavors.
Riding high on 5-6 cups of coffee, I learned design, production, playwriting, movement, directing, and (a bit) of acting at Playwrights. It was essentially a hodgepodge of accomplishing whatever I could in whatever unbelievable time frame I was given. It was liberating and exhausting — being stretched in fifty different directions — but it forced me to get out of my head and into my body. I created on impulse because I had to. But two years at Playwrights gave me enough anxiety for a lifetime, so I decided to spend my third year of training with The Lee Strasberg Institute. I wanted every moment of my time to focus on the “craft.” Acting. The actual focus of my BFA.
The training at Strasberg was a gentle oasis of relief; we learned what our bodies needed to perform, in terms of preparation and self-awareness. We learned to study, interpret, and access humanness and actually act like human beings onstage. We were also taught that suffering does not equate to ‘high art’; in fact, Strasberg training even went as far as to tell us to care for ourselves generously before taking care of our art. Our work could only be full and embodied if we were. At the end of my third year, I was cast in the studio production of Machinal as Young Woman and my Strasberg technique was tested in a full rehearsal process. The production was directed by Matt Dickson, who was the most collaborative, thoughtful director I have ever had the opportunity to be in the room with. He guided us to a performance that was dynamic and electric in such a way that we (as an ensemble) felt we built it together, with our own hands. By the last curtain call, my body was drained but so incredibly, INCREDIBLY fulfilled.
I spent the fall of my fourth year studying at Stonestreet Studios, where I had my first in-depth experiences with being in front of a camera.