Tess Higgins Would Rather Have Horror Stories Than Zero Stories

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Welcome to another episode of the Comedic Pursuits podcast. I’m your host, Seth Payne.

This is the podcast where I sit down and I talk to other DC comedy brethren and sistren and go over people’s backstories, their histories, how they got into comedy, what they’ve done so far, and where they want to go.

Today’s episode features Tess Higgins, a member of WIT Harold team Captain PhD.

Highlights from my interview with Tess Higgins

Tess Higgins is also an actress, and she performs in plays and musicals. She trained in England and went to school for theater at William and Mary.

She’s also a playwright. When we recorded this interview, she was writing a script. She’s since completed it and is working to get it produced.

But without further ado, here’s the kickass episode of Tess Higgins. Some of the responses have been edited for clarity, but you can hear the full interview by listening to the podcast.

What’s your performance background?

I did plays in middle school and high school. When I was thinking about applying to colleges, I knew I wanted to do theater. For a while, I wanted to do a BFA program, where you literally do theater every day, all day. I was looking at NYU and Emerson, but my dad pointed out that I could go to an in-state school in Virginia for super cheap. They’re such good schools, and some of them have good musical theater programs. I looked into it a little more, and William and Mary seemed like it had the academic vibe that I wanted. I took a tour and learned more about their theater department and thought it was cool. Then I applied and got in.

The transition to college was weird, though. When you’re in high school you might be able to get a big role in every play, but suddenly there are so many more people. I tried out for three plays in a row the first month of school and got into none of them. That was a huge bummer, but as a freshman, it was not going to happen.

I didn’t do a lot sophomore year either, but that was when I made the decision to do a study abroad acting program in London. It was the best decision I ever made. It was the first time I really felt challenged. It was so hard. It was nine to five every day doing intense theater stuff. You had to be physically and emotionally there every day. But our teachers were so good, and I use everything I learned there.

I came back from study abroad too late to try out for a student production on campus and decided to sit in on crew just so I could see my friends. I remember sitting in on their first run-through and feeling like a huge pretentious loser because everything from London was in my head. I just kept thinking, “This is wrong. Everything is wrong. This is so bad.” My standards were higher and better, which made me a better performer. I came back from this program and got my first lead at school.

Now I do theater professionally. My parents are the coolest because they’re very supportive of me doing arts. I did a show last spring, and my mom saw it five times and brought all these people every time she came. I have a lot of friends who, when they’ve chosen to be professional theater makers or things like that, their parents will nervously give them a couple years to see if it works out. But my parents have been totally the opposite. My dad told me he didn’t want me to have a backup plan because it makes it easier to give up.

The theater scene in DC is actually super huge. I like to say that it’s big enough to feel like there’s a lot going on but small enough to feel like you matter. I’ve had a lot of success here and have been able to work pretty consistently. If I lived in New York, I don’t think that would be the case. I’m also a pretty specific type, especially as someone who plays instruments. A lot of the reason I get cast in certain things is because I can play an instrument and read music.

Thinking back on when I was just starting out, I think my biggest mistake was not being consistent. I felt like I was flinging spaghetti at a wall and seeing what stuck instead of leading with who I am. I decided to get really good at what people think I’m good at and lean into that. When I did that, I started booking more. At the end of the day, you are something you’re selling. You’re an object to them, basically. And it helps the casting people do their job by being good at what they think you’re good at.

When did you start writing plays?

The first time I’d ever written a play was at this summer camp I went to, Stagedoor in New York. They had this thing called Dramafest every summer where you could write a 10 minute play and submit it. They would pick five, then you would get to direct your play and do it at camp one weekend.

The first year I went, I remember thinking all the plays were so depressing. I wanted to write something that would make me laugh, so I wrote this dumb little play about how Cupid puts couples together. It’s narrated by Cupid, who’s a bro who wears white pants and sunglasses. They picked it, and I directed it.

The really funny thing about this was, this is a camp where a lot of people who end up becoming famous go. Ansel Elgort, from Baby Driver and The Fault in Our Stars, was in my play. I remember seeing him on the cover of Teen Vogue five years later and thinking, “This kid was in the first play I ever wrote.” It’s my claim to fame.

I also took playwriting in college, and for a while I was really into it. Instead of doing a senior thesis, I went to my playwriting teacher and asked if I could write a play. It was something I worked on for two years, and the whole process was great.

It didn’t end up happening when all was said and done. Something happened to one of the cast members the week of the show, so we couldn’t do it. That was super intense for me. It was an emotional experience, not only losing my art, but losing a friend. Because I was at the center of this thing that was happening, it was almost like I had to answer for a tragedy, and I couldn’t be that person. People were looking to me for answers, but I didn’t know what to do.

It was kind of nuts, and I wouldn’t say it was the reason I stopped writing. But I think I wasn’t as motivated because this thing I spent two years on never happened yet. I ended up putting that aside a little bit. But over the years, I’ve always wanted to get back into it. I don’t really know what motivated me when I started writing this new play.

What’s the play you’re working on now?

I’m obsessed with The Bachelor and think it’s so interesting. But what’s most interesting to me are the female friendships that come out of the show more. I’m interested in how the contestants deal with being one of 25 women a man is dating at once.

It’s been exciting because I have a lot of really talented girl actor friends who really want to do something meaty and fun. A really good friend of mine is a director, and she asked me to send it her as soon as she’s done because she wants to direct it.

The storyline is, it’s the five final girls on a season of a show that’s like The Bachelor. They find out that the bachelor hasn’t been totally honest with them about how he feels about all the girls and why he’s there and what he’s done. They have to figure out how they’re going to handle this person that they thought they knew, if they should stay or go, if they should expose him, or if they should be on the show at all.

I’m trying to answer the question, “Do you care more about being in a relationship or do you care more about being loved because other people are watching you?” So the central question for the main character is whether she’s in love with love or whether she’s in love with this person. Does she care more about what other people think of what her relationship is or what it looks like on Instagram or if other people are seeing it, or does she actually like her relationship?

I think that’s a very interesting thing to think about because if you’re dating someone for a long period of time but find something out about them that’s a huge red flag, how many times do you go, “But I like him!” and just push it aside? That’s what these five women are dealing with. I feel like we constantly get tricked into needing to have someone because you need to have someone, not having someone because you want to have them.

How did you get into improv?

The first time I actually did improv was when I took a WIT class three years ago. My parents gave the class to me as a Christmas present because they wanted me to try something new. It was great. When you’re in the theater world, those are the only people you meet. It’s not as intense in DC as it is in New York or LA, where if you do improv it’s probably a lot of people who are like, “I’m trying to do comedy. I’m trying to do acting.” Here, it’s people who work at the Washington Post but do improv for fun.

It’s so great because I get to meet a bunch of people I wouldn’t normally get to meet. That reason alone kept me coming back because I was making new friends and meeting new people and having a good time doing it. It was also a place where I could perform but not have this added stress of it being my job. I can just go and have fun.

What’s your experience with Captain PhD been like?

I got onto Harold the second time I tried out. WIT was starting a brand new team, and some of the members were holdovers from Fran. It’s been an awesome experience, and it keeps getting better and better.

Joe Dawson is our coach right now. I feel like he really challenges us because he has high standards and is picky in a good way. It’s been cool to see what our team has accomplished in the past couple months. I feel like we’ve had a lot of the same people on the team for a long time now, and we all like each other a lot. I’m very close with my teammates, and we hang out outside of improv.

I feel like that only makes you stronger when you actually trust the people you’re playing with. Instead of just feeling like these are my improv people, I feel like these are my people.

Have you done any other special projects or indie teams?

I just did Heavy Rotation, which was great and super fun. It’s an improvised rock comedy. The music is being made up on the spot with a lot of different instruments. It’s the story of a band who’s getting ready for their gig or something. I played piano and sang in the show.

It was a little stressful because there were a lot of moving parts and a lot of people with different skill sets in terms of music. For a while, I wondered if the show was even going to happen or if people were going to like it.

But we had a super fun format, and it was a cool group of people. I feel like a lot of special projects cast a ton of WIT people, but we had some Dojo people, too. It was people you don’t always see on stage at WIT. I felt like it was really inclusive and made an effort to be a diverse cast, too. Kudos to Erick Acuña for that.

Has improv helped you with your theater skills?

It’s helped with film stuff more than theater. A lot of commercials and commercial auditions are all improv. There’s usually no script. I also did a feature film this summer, and they gave us a lot of freedom to improvise. It was so fun, and I felt more comfortable doing that than I might have two years ago.

Overall, I prefer theater. Film is hard to do when you have a theater schedule. You need to be available all the time, and I’m not. But when I didn’t have a show this summer, I decided to go out for a lot of film gigs because I had the time to do it. I got to do a 10-day shoot on a really cool film that’s going to be great for my reel. It was my first SAG project, and we had some really cool actors in some of the main roles. It was a lot of fun.

What’s been your biggest aha moment in comedy or acting?

During study abroad, we were sitting around in a circle with our acting teacher, Kathy Pogson. She was very British and really intense. She just asked, “What is acting?” And we all had to go around and say what we thought acting was. She’d just say, “No. No. No.”

She made us keep going around and coming up with different answers, and nobody got it. Finally, she said, “Acting is doing something to someone else.” That’s so simple, but that’s what it is. When you’re on stage, you don’t have an objective to get off the stage. You’re there for a reason. And the thing that you want is to make or to get something from someone else.

For example, “I want to make Seth give me his cup in order to fill it with water. So hand me your cup.” The intention behind that is, “I want that so I can do this thing with it.” But it makes the thing about the other person, and whatever your performance is, it’s not about you. It’s about the other person.

I love that, and I try to think about that in improv, too. The most important person in the scene is not you. It’s the other person. You’re there for them. I think a big tendency in comedy is to make yourself the funny one or be a scene hog. But if you’re there to get something or make this other person do something, then it’s case closed.

What’s been your biggest failure or one of your biggest failures and how did you overcome it?

I don’t think these are “failures,” but they’re times when I’ve asked myself, “What am I doing, and how do I fix this?”

Like I mentioned before, I think when I first got into college and wasn’t getting in any plays, I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. That was a funky situation, having to adapt to this new place. I think that motivated me to want to do more and be involved, even if I wasn’t going to be doing the exact thing I wanted to do. That was a tough experience. But I worked hard, went to another theater school, and got better.

I guess a second one is recent and a little personal. The gist of the situation was, a theater in the area was doing a dream show of mine, Once. It has a role I’m perfect for that involves a girl who plays the piano. I was in final callbacks for the role on the national tour three years ago when I got out of college. I know the show very well, and it’s very close to my heart.

So when a theater in the area was doing it, I felt like there was literally no one else who fit the role more than I did. I kind of thought it was mine, signed, sealed, delivered. But I didn’t even get a callback for this role I was supposed to be good at.

It made me wonder how they could not pick me. There’s not another show in this entire universe that’s more perfect for me. I had to remind myself that this isn’t the only place that’s doing this show. And if they didn’t want me, then whatever. I will be in the right production of it, for me, at some point.

Even though I was upset about it for a while, I realized I’d rather have horror stories than zero stories. I think it’s just such a weird situation that all I can do right now is laugh about it. And at the end of the day, no role is yours. When you go into the room and you audition, the role is yours for 15 minutes, and that’s all you can do. But it took a while to get to that point.

That experience ended up being a great thing to use. When I went in for a general audition for the same show in Richmond, I played one of the songs from the show, and the director worked with me on it. I just felt all these feelings, like how much I care about the show and how the situation of not getting it got to me. I destroyed the piece and started crying while I was playing it. I could tell the casting people were impressed. It was one of those things where I walked out and said to myself, “They’re going to leave today and say, ‘Hey, remember the girl who cried on the piano?”

So you can take that thing that bothers you and let it be the fire under you.

Where can we find you online?

I’m on Instagram, and I have a website. Captain PhD is on Instagram and Facebook and sets sail most Tuesdays at Source.

Thanks for tuning in!

This has been the Comedic Pursuits podcast. Thanks for joining us, and come back next week for our interview with Erick Acuña.