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Rod Gomez
What was that moment you realized this is what you want to do with the rest of your life?
I don’t know if there was a singular moment, I knew in college I wanted to perform, by the time I got to grad school, I was encouraged to take up directing. I had always thought about it, so I did it. I loved it, and I thought I should just do what I love. I love to direct and I love to sing and I love to perform so I just kept doing it. I grew up singing my entire life, I’d never felt like there was an epiphany, I was just always doing it from a time when I was very small.
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What does “thinking like a director” mean?
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To them I would see maybe outside the perspective of the performer. The performer sees the stage from the perspective of the stage and then seeing the audience, but as the director you reverse that imagery. You see from the house, or you see from different aspects of the stage. You’re more aware of the different elements that make a show viable.
You came from a family of singers where you did all types of different shows?
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We performed growing up as a family frequently for half a dozen years, but independently of that we pursued our own kind of performing. By the time I was in college I was doing all kinds of productions, musicals and operas, we were always singing in choirs, it was just something that felt super natural. The more I performed, the more people I would talk to who were in the production business who said, “You think like a director, you may really want to think about this.” I’ve been told that since I was in my teens, growing up in Los Angeles and worshipping film, going to retrospective theatres to see specialized programming had a part in that. In high school I was seeing an afternoon of Shakespeare in film or an afternoon of Tennessee Williams films. I think that really had a shaping effect on my wanting to be a director, viewing the whole performance world as a director.
Here at ArtCee we have a lot of emerging artists, a lot of artists looking for work and looking for different ways to collaborate with other professionals. What is some advice you have for them starting out in their careers?
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My advice for any professional in this career is be ready for when your opportunity makes itself known to you. They say there’s no luck in this business and I kinda believe that. Luck is when opportunity meets preparation. Be as good as you can be always. Give 100%, all the time. As a performer, as an actor, as a director I always ask that of my actors. When they don’t do it, it’s obvious and it’s too hard in this business to be noticed, to be remembered for not being your best. You always want to be remembered for being your best and give yourself every opportunity to be noticed for the right things which is your talent and your abilities.
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* "Juana" photos by Brian Long
Interviewed by: Christopher Aguilar, chris@artcee.co