Check Out Isabel Hudson’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Isabel Hudson.

Isabel, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I’ve known I wanted to act professionally since my junior year of high school. My only questions were how I would go about it. I’m originally from Augusta, but I decided to move up to New York for college. I know you’re thinking New York City with the entertainment industry there! Well actually, I went to the University of Rochester, about a 6 hour drive away from New York City. Maybe not the most logical actor path, but I was able to get a business degree and a theatre minor there, all while figuring myself out and deciding how to go about the whole acting thing. When I graduated, I decided I actually wanted to return to Georgia and move to Atlanta for the first time – a chance to fully pursue acting while still being close to family. Now I’m coming up on the end of my fourth year in Atlanta.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I definitely had a lot of trouble when I first moved to Atlanta. Acting is a very open-ended thing to navigate. There aren’t necessarily wrong choices, but there’s also no clear path. Add to that losing the structure of school and my college support network, and you get a rough first year. Luckily, I was able to make a wonderful new friend group with the first show I did in Atlanta (A Christmas Carol at Woodstock Arts), and my community has continued to build since then.

In general, it’s hard not to have doubts along the way. Atlanta is an incredible place to be, but there are always comparisons to New York and LA, especially in the entertainment industry. At least once a month, I check in with myself to make sure this is the place for me. It takes a lot of conviction to trust yourself in this industry and not compare to everyone else’s careers.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Even though I’ve been auditioning professionally for four years now, I consider myself very new to the acting world. My day to day usually consists of working my day jobs and auditioning for various projects, both on screen and live theatre. When I’m lucky, I get to actually work an acting job for a while. The most notable of my acting jobs so far has been my work with the Center for Puppetry Arts. For the past three years, I’ve played Clarice in their holiday show, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. This past fall, I also got to work with them on Click Clack Moo: Cows That Type. I certainly never anticipated puppetry being such a big part of my journey, but I’m so glad that it is.

When I first auditioned for Rudolph, I didn’t have any puppetry experience whatsoever. I attended an open call that was looking for sopranos (yay that’s me!) and assumed I’d figure it out along the way. At the audition, they had me sing and act a little as myself, then gave me some rod puppets to work with. Two of the main puppets in my track were Clarice (a reindeer) and an elf, who was described to me as “a bowling ball on a stick.” With these puppets, they had me try a little puppetry and even do my monologue again as Clarice. It was a little bizarre to perform a monologue about an angsty high schooler as an iconic Golden Age musical character. Before I left, their only other question was, “How do you feel about pulling a really heavy rope for this role?” I, being the agreeable performer I am, said, “Sure, I’ll do it!” And all of a sudden, I had my first professional acting role.

The rehearsal process was one of the most demanding and rewarding things I’ve ever done. I was one of two new performers in a nine person cast, and my director, Tim Sweeney, and castmates taught me both how to puppeteer and the entire show in three weeks. I finally got to try the previously mentioned “really heavy rope,” which was, as advertised, really heavy. (For my theatre people, it was a roll drop, a backdrop for a scene that I would pull in and out with a rope backstage.) Puppetry taught me that performance is never perfect – puppets will do what they want sometimes, no matter how much skill you have.

So for now, my puppetry work is unexpectedly the thing I’m most known for. I’ll always value having puppetry as the foundation of my career.

What’s next?
I would love to work more with on camera acting! Most of my training and work so far has been in the theatre, but I’m still working toward screen roles. I’m lucky to have my agent, Barbara Garvey, getting me opportunities to audition in front of a lot of Atlanta casting directors.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.isabelhudson.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/isabel.m.hudson/

Image Credits
Chase Anderson – photographer for my Personal Photo
Jonny Yoder – photographer for the last Additional Photo (green boa with red curtain background)