Sophia Brook has been performing on stage from a young age. The Canterbury School senior has already appeared in 33 shows, including Anne Boleyn in “Six the Musical” and leads in “Mary Poppins,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “Grease,” “Mean Girls” and “Beauty & the Beast,” as well as in the award-winning independent film “The Remedy.” So it didn’t surprise her guidance counselor when Sophia said she wanted to apply to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. But they both knew the odds were long on getting accepted there, even with her resume.
“The acting programs are so selective at most schools, like 5 percent and you hear like all these tiny, little number of students that are accepted,” said Brook.
But Brook auditioned for a spot at Tisch nevertheless.
“I really fell in love with NYU Tisch because not only is NYU so well known for their acting program, but also their film, and I’m interested in pursuing acting for the camera specifically,” Brook added.
Like any audition, putting yourself out there is tough enough. But it’s the waiting that’s so brutal.
The day finally came when Tisch was going to announce the members of next year’s incoming class. Brook rushed home from school and plopped in front of her computer.
“My parents weren’t home yet,” said Brook. “My dad was still at work. My mom was going to get her hair done. I opened the portal and then I saw ‘status update.’ So I click on it and then I’m screaming and I’m crying and then I’m calling my mom and I’m like crying, and she said, ‘What happened?’ And I was like ‘I got in! I got into NYU Tisch! And then, only afterwards, I saw like a button … and that’s when I found out that I had won a full tuition scholarship.”
Now a new journey begins for Brook — a journey taken by Tisch alums like Adam Sandler, Kristen Bell, Bryce Dallas Howard and Billy Crystal. She knows there’s a boatload of hard work ahead, but if the past predicts the future, Brook clearly has the talent to join them on the silver screen.
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Naturally, Sophia Brook's parents were ecstatic their daughter had gotten into the college of her dreams. But the news that she’d received a full tuition scholarship made her acceptance all the sweeter.
“When my dad got home, I said, ‘I think there might be something more to it [than me just getting in].’ And he’s like, ‘OK, let me look and see.’ And he’s like, ‘Oh my gosh,’ and we’re like screaming and I call my mom and we’re just jumping up and down and crying. And then I called my grandma, because, of course, Grandma comes next, and my brother. They’ve all always been just so, so supportive. They were the first people I had to call.”
For someone with screen acting aspirations, getting accepted by NYU Tisch is huge.
NYU Tisch School of the Arts was founded in 1965. Over the past 60 years, Tisch has emerged as the country’s preeminent center for the study of the performing, cinematic and emerging media arts.
The school offers B.A., B.F.A., M.A., M.F.A., M.P.S. and Ph. D.degrees in a wide range of disciplines. Students come from around the world (46 states and 58 countries) to study acting, dance, cinema studies, collaborative arts, design for stage and film, dramatic writing, film and television, game design, interactive media arts, interactive telecommunications, moving image archiving and preservation, musical theatre writing, performance studies, photography, public policy, and recorded music.
Tisch students benefit from NYU’s location in the loci of the entertainment industry. For some, New York City will become the set for their first movie or photograph. Students train at professional actors’ studios in Manhattan. The sounds of the streets inspire their music and writing. They journey across the Brooklyn Bridge to attend classes at 370 Jay Street. They intern in the best organizations in the country. And the unsurpassable cultural life of New York supplements their education in a way that is unmatchable. From the streets, to the parks, to the world-class institutions, the entire city is their college campus.
As exciting as that sounds, Brook knows it will be an adjustment. The Cape Coral native has always lived in Southwest Florida.
“I’ve lived literally in the same house my whole life, except for a semester when I was a toddler, I studied in Brazil,” Sophia said.
While she’s visited New York with her parents a few times, she’s never lived in a big city or cold climate before.
“I’m actually going to go again to New York in about two weeks,” added Brook, who will be checking out the campus and her dormitory.
One area of uncertainty remains. In addition to subjecting applicants to one of the most rigorous admissions processes in the nation, the Tisch faculty pores over their academic histories, essays, portfolios, writing samples, images, and performances to pick the studio program best suited to each student’s interests and skills.
“They decide which studio you will be placed in,” Brook pointed out. “I’m not quite sure yet which studio I’ll be in. We’ll find out by the end of May. I’m really excited to find out whatever it is, and I trust their process. I trust whatever they think will be best for me. But I have said before, and I feel very strongly about pursuing acting specifically for the camera.”
While Brook loves both straight plays and musicals, she ultimately wants to work in film. Besides “The Remedy,” she had roles in two other independent films, “Rough Draft” (Emily) for Dangerous Curves Productions and “DEAR …” (Victoria) for Brandon Via Productions.
She credits Aaron Jackson with engendering her interest in film. Not only is Jackson part of the theater department at Canterbury (along with Catherine Truesdale and Michael Lynch), he directs shows periodically at local community theaters and coaches hundreds of aspiring actors through his company, Dangerous Curves Acting.
“He put me on camera,” Sophia recounted. That gave her the opportunity to see how she came across in film. “It’s a different approach when you’re on camera versus the stage. On camera, everything is so much more simple — all the different little movements. You find that there’s really beauty in simplicity.”
In comparison, theater requires an actor to be bigger, louder, almost larger than life. Some shows actually place a premium on melodrama. Film places greater value on simplicity, subtlety and nuance. The skill set for film is almost the inverse of that needed for the stage.
“I love, love, love acting on stage,” Brook added. “It’s fun. It’s very different. You’re doing these big movements, and I love all the dance numbers and singing. But there’s something that’s so real about acting in front of a camera.”
Film acting also places a premium on versatility and immediacy. In theater, rehearsals work synergistically toward the play or musical’s final scene or denouement. In film, exigencies such as sets and locations often dictate that scenes be filmed out of chronological order. It’s incumbent on the actor to conjure the appropriate emotions even though the events upon which they’re predicated may not have been filmed at that point in the production process.
That’s precisely what occurred in “The Remedy,” where the director filmed the final scene first. But her work in that project underscored the realization that she’s meant to work in film.
“Oh my goodness, that was the moment that I knew that I wanted to do acting as my career. I had always loved it. I’ve been performing since I was little, but being in ‘The Remedy’ just showed me, you know, I can do this and this is what I want and I love it.”
Brook’s enjoyment of the moment was enhanced by the experience of watching the film with family and friends at the red-carpet premiere at Regal Cinema at Bell Tower.
“We took pictures on the red carpet, which was not real life. I said to myself, ‘This isn’t happening.’ I couldn’t process it. I couldn’t believe what was happening.” Then, suddenly, she was inside the darkened theater, waiting for the film to start. “And there I was, on the big screen, which was surreal. That was awesome.”
As was the experience of watching the film with her support network, especially her mother, Teresa Brook.
“When the film was first starting, we were holding and squeezing each other’s hands. It was so overwhelming, in a wonderful way, though, along with the amount of support the community here in Fort Myers gave me.”
Theatregoers underestimate the significance of their attendance to the cast and crew who put on a play or musical. But for Sophia, the support she drew from the theater community over her years on local middle, high school and community theater stages made a big difference in both the satisfaction and self-confidence she drew from her performances. In fact, that support gave her the confidence to chase her dreams all the way to New York.
Tisch School of the Arts will take it from here by working hard to inculcate in Brook and her classmates a deep curiosity about themselves and the world around them as well as a collegiality that will encourage them to become lifelong friends and collaborators.
“A tightknit community in a massive school in a massive city,” she sagely summarized.
And it is a community augmented by the more than 45,000 Tisch alumni who work in the arts and related professions, influencing the world around them in myriad ways. Some (like Kristen Bell, Bryce Dallas Howard, Debra Messing, Adam Sandler, Billy Crystal and James Franco) have earned great fame. Others have achieved great success in less public ways.
All form a network of contacts and support that’s available to members of the Tisch family.
Brook ended the interview by saying, “I’ve learned so much up to this point, and I’m excited to learn more at NYU Tisch. It’s crazy to even say.”
Watch this space for future developments.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
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To read more stories about the arts in Southwest Florida visit Tom Hall's website: SWFL Art in the News.