Performing is not simply a “by night” activity for local teacher, director and actress Lori Turner. On the contrary, it consumes her life to the point that she’s devised a unique system to stay organized.
“I have four different tote bags, and each tote bag is for a different job,” said Turner with a laugh. “And that’s how I keep track of what I’m doing.”
It would be easy to feel overwhelmed; currently Turner juggles several part-time positions, all in the field of music or theater. She teachers the junior high and high school choir at St. Peter’s in Mansfield, teaches a voice class and a music history class at the Pioneer Performing Arts Academy, runs a private voice studio of about 20 students, directs a choir at Grace Episcopal Church, directs Youth Opera Theater at the Renaissance Theatre, and performs herself when she has the time.
The biggest challenge, Turner said, is trying to keep everything straight – hence the different tote bags along with several planners and a myriad of scraps of paper all over her house scribbled with notes to herself.
“In your teaching capacity you always have to have lesson plans and be preparing for programs and thinking in advance, and then in the performing capacity you have to always have in the back of your mind what your schedule is, because you can’t commit to something if you’re booked elsewhere,” she said. “Every once in a while I try to consolidate it all into one calendar.”
Still, it’s a lifestyle Turner knew she wanted even as a little kid involved in school choirs. By the time she was in high school Turner said she knew she wanted to major in music, much to her parents’ chagrin. But they never said no, and Turner eventually earned enough scholarship money to attend college, first at the University of Tulsa then transferring to the California Institute of the Arts. She credits her teachers in California for helping her kick off her career.
“The teachers I had at California Institute of the Arts were working professionals, so when I got ready to graduate my voice teacher said let’s line up auditions,” Turner remembered. “I was working professionally two months after I graduated. They were really instrumental in helping me get work and I was in a place where there was work to be had.”
After graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in vocal performance, Turner worked for 10 years in Los Angeles for the Los Angeles Master Chorale, touring 13 months of the year within the continental United States and every other year touring in Japan, Korea and Hong Kong. During that time she also held a day job working at a costume shop that gave her enough flexibility to take off and go on tour as needed. It was also during that time she held what she calls the only “real” job of her career.
“The costume shop had no work, and it was also in-between concert gigs and touring and stuff and I had nothing to do, and I needed to make a living. So I went to a temp agency and I got an office temp job,” she explained. “It just about drove me crazy. I was insane. Fortunately after two weeks of it the costume shop called and said hey we’ve got a show coming up, we need some stitchery. That’s the only time I’ve ever done any ‘real’ work.”
After touring with the Master Chorale, Turner landed a full-time, salaried position with the Royal Flemish Opera in Belgium, where she and her husband lived for 10 years. She noted a salaried position in the performing arts is very rare in the United States, but not in Europe.
“For the opera, the only place that has full-time salaried positions is the (Metropolitan Opera), in the whole United States,” she said. “In Belgium, which is a country the size of Los Angeles, they have three professional opera companies with salaried positions. But it’s government subsidized – we don’t do that here.”
Since moving back to the United States and settling down in Mansfield about 15 years ago, Turner has been constantly busy and working, save for a six-week period every summer when her husband and son visit family in Oklahoma and San Diego, California. Her biggest challenges, she says, are keeping her schedules straight while trying to stay healthy.
“You can get so tired when you’re using your voice every single day; you have to be careful you don’t abuse your voice,” said Turner. “The most difficult with that is the classroom teaching, because we instinctively start to raise our voice to be heard over the constant noise, and I can’t do that. But as a singer, it’s not good for the vocal chords to speak low, either.”
Turner said her favorite musicals to perform, and to teach, are those that are intellectual or incorporate classical music. She added she delights in introducing a more challenging repertoire to the kids in Youth Opera Theater at the Renaissance.
While there are times when she thinks about settling more into teaching as opposed to performing, like her musician husband who teaches a studio of about 70 piano students, Turner points out she still has to make a living.
“When you do this kind of work in our society in America, you don’t have a pension plan; you don’t have health care,” she said. “You have to work as long as you can work, or you have to find a different profession.”
And in order to work, Turner said it’s important for aspiring performers to be aggressive and take initiative when looking for roles.
“That can be really hard to do for an artistic personality, and it can be hard in that it’s easy to be overlooked,” she said. “So you really have to have enough energy and drive to follow the work to get the part. If you don’t have a passion for the business, you shouldn’t be in the business.”
Passion is something Turner is not short of; whether it’s performing herself or teaching kids about performing, she finds great joy in what she does. She said she feels she actually has an advantage over other performing-type people in that she never had the goal to be a star.
“I think the primary goal is you have to be able to say to yourself, I want to be the best artist I can be, not I want to be really rich and famous, because that’s not going to work,” she said. “I just wanted to make a living. I’m happy that I can make a living in the performing arts.”
Actors and actresses are mostly thought of as celebrities living extravagant lifestyles in major metropolises, unaware of a simpler existence and unattainable to the common person. In Mansfield, local actors and actresses are writing your news, teaching your children or simply passing you on the street. Richland Source takes a look inside the lives of three local theater contributors who are merely actors by night:
