Nico Fife (top left) featured acting, a passion he discovered in his teenage years. As Special Edition Editor Nina Fife’s eldest brother, Nico Fife wrote about his own experience finding revival through rediscovery.
Dear readers,
My name is Nico, I am the Special Edition Editor’s oldest sibling, and I’m an actor, writer and artist here in Los Angeles. No, you probably haven’t seen anything I’ve been in or know anything I’ve written. It is more accurate to say that what I do, and what I try to get people to pay me to do, is play pretend and tell ridiculous stories — what children do for fun.
It took me a while to figure out this was what I wanted to do. There are many visual artists in my family, but it didn’t call to me like I thought it had to everyone else . In fact, it was the performing art of music that called to me; I loved to play the clarinet and I quite enjoyed the saxophone when I joined jazz band in high school. But things change, and I had to find a new arts credit in school. On a whim and with some encouragement from friends and family, I joined the drama class.
My teacher at the time made it very clear to me that she typically did not allow students to join after the school year had already begun. I had to prove to her that I could catch up and keep up with the class via the first assignment: an improvised scene where we had to pretend to be someone we knew in real life.
I can’t really tell you how the scene went; I completely blacked out for it. I can’t tell you if my impression of my grandfather was funny or even slightly accurate. I can’t even tell you which of my classmates I was acting across from. What I can tell you is it revived something deep within me.
During a period of my life where I was quite lost, completely unsure of myself and what I wanted, I felt the weight of the world lift off my shoulders for a split second. Regardless of the quality of my work in that scene, my teacher must have recognized that internal spiritual revival. I continued in the drama department for the rest of my time in high school, and there was little question for me as to what I wanted my major to be in college.
Nico Fife (left) and Nina Fife (right) pose together when Nico Fife was cast as Captain Hook in the Orange County Children Theatre’s 2018 production of “Peter Pan.” Nico Fife was encouraged to pursue his interest dramatic arts in high school.
As working artists, it’s easy to fall into depressive states when facing the reality of the business side of acting. The day-to-day of the job is much more auditioning than working on projects, more about the side gigs that pay the rent while actors volunteer their time on friends’ passion projects. It’s a simple path toward abject negativity and pessimism, so I look for moments of revival to keep my hopes high.
It’s the little moments that actually do this for me: a child getting pumped about playing pretend, an audience member getting emotional watching a show, reading a new and exciting piece of theater, an adult finding out that they can still play pretend and make things up even if they haven’t done it in years.
It’s these small instances, rather than huge revelations, that help keep my spirit alive in the bleakest of moments, and it’s in that vein that this next section of the magazine continues — small moments of revival contributing to a total revival within oneself.
Thank you,
Nico Fife
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