​Actor Spotlight: Megan Pearl Smith

​Actor Spotlight: Megan Pearl Smith
In conversation with Jessica Laskey

This month, actor Megan Pearl Smith will join SOSS to read an excerpt from Alia Volz’s new memoir Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco. Our casting director Jessica Laskey talked to Smith about her background, how she prepares for performance and how being a professional musician contributes to her comfort in front of an audience.

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April 30 performance - register today!

​Jessica: Megan, you’ve done so many interesting roles over the years, including productions at Capital Stage, Sacramento Theatre Company, California Shakespeare Theater, Tahoe Shakespeare Festival, San Francisco Playhouse, Colorado Shakespeare Festival and many more. How did you decide to become an actor?
 
Megan: I decided sophomore year of high school (in Davis). I don’t know why exactly, it just came to me. I was painfully shy and had issues getting out in front of people—being the focus of peoples’ attention was terrifying to me. However, I found that I really enjoyed improv. I joined an improv group in high school and was really embraced by the drama department. At a time when I didn’t know where I belonged, (drama) really helped me socially get through high school. I had always been a kid who played pretend and when I found I was actually quite good at it, it felt good to be good at something—to be part of something larger than just me. I’ve always loved ensemble work and being part of a team.
 
Jessica: You’ve said that college was really formative for you as a performer.
 
Megan: I got my formal training at the University of Oregon, but more than anything, my fellow students taught me a lot. I was blessed to be in a group of out-of-this-world talented people. We formed our own improv troupe, Absolute Improv—which I think is still going—and did a lot of student-run productions, which was so formative. My mentor had worked at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and ran a professional company in Eugene, so I did professional theater right out of college, which taught me a ton about how the American theater works. When I graduated, all my friends moved to New York, Chicago, LA. I was like, ‘Nah,” so I went back to Davis to figure out what to do and then ended up spending nine years working and teaching all over the Bay Area, meeting amazing people.
 
Jessica: How do you prepare for a role?
 
Megan: The most important thing for me is to really familiarize myself with the story. The actor is in service to the story. It might seem obvious, but I don’t want to be the kind of actor to put my own personal stamp on a story, so I approach it from the inside out, starting with the written word. After reading the story to myself multiple times, I record the story on my phone and listen to that multiple times—we’re talking 20 times—to really get inside it so there are no surprises. That helps me with the rhythm and flow of the piece, especially in this context. Because this is an excerpt of a larger story, I need to build my own story arc and build the energy I’m giving. Discoveries (in the text) need to pop—those are my favorite parts of any story, when you get to have an audience discover new information in the moment. When I do any reading, but especially on Zoom, the aim is to give the smoothest flow of energy to the read so the audience isn’t worried about me searching for a word or stumbling. That way, they’re not taken out of story, they can just relax and take it in and go along for the ride.
 
Jessica: You’re also half of the folk/rock band Misner & Smith (with partner Sam Misner), which means prior to the pandemic, you performed live all the time. Now that you’ve had to go virtual (Misner & Smith stream free “Live from Our Living Room” concerts on Facebook every Saturday), how has that changed performing for you?
 
Megan: How people value live performance is changing. With online performance, it feels like you need to scale it back a little bit. It’s a bit more like film. The energy level coming at the audience needs to be dialed back slightly, more intimate—less bonfire, more blue flame. My actor training helps a lot, knowing how to endow things with meaning and substance that just aren’t there in real life. You have to pretend people are (in the same room) giving you something—you just have to believe in your own mind that people are engaging with you. Reality is in your mind’s eye.

Register for April 30 Performance Today!

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Jessica Laskey, SOSS Casting Director

​In addition to being a professional actor and casting director for Stories on Stage Sacramento, Jessica Laskey is also a freelance journalist. Her work has appeared in Comstock’s, Sacramento and Sactown Magazines, as well as in The Sacramento Bee, Inside Sacramento and OUT North Texas.

More information at jessicalaskey.com.