Today we’d like to introduce you to Caitlin Hargraves.
Hi Caitlin, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I have always loved to perform… I have a diary from when I was eight outlining my future: go to college in New York, be a theater actress, get on Broadway, get married, have some kids? I’m pleased to report to my eight-year-old self that most of that has happened (still holding out for broadway)! Growing up in a small town in the Floridian Panhandle culture was pretty hard to come by, so these were high aspirations for a small-town girl. I was lucky to have an incredibly supportive family; we spent most summers or winter breaks visiting family in Chile, where my mom is from and my sisters were born, and I credit those trips with broadening my horizons and exposing me to more artistic influences.
I started out mostly as a dancer, specifically a modern dancer, and in high school, I had the opportunity to work with a dance company based in New York. When I was 17, I had a pretty bad hip injury and decided to pursue acting for college instead of dance. I was accepted into NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and studied at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, in addition to a summer semester at the International Theater Workshop in Amsterdam. In college, I was lucky to meet a wonderful group of friends who became collaborators. After we graduated, we started a theater collective that focused on experimental and devised works, mostly inspired by the downtown theater scene of New York and the works of Richard Foreman, the Wooster Group, etc. It was an exciting time to be creating work and developing my own taste, while also just trying to make ends meet in New York working as a nanny, a bartender, and auditioning for whatever I could. I started working at regional theaters across the country, spending six months in New York and six months doing regional gigs, and did a couple of summers of Shakespeare repertory theater while continuing to generate my own work. Looking back on those years, there was a lot of hustle and discovery– I grew a lot as a person and an artist.
In 2015 I decided I wanted to invest in more training in an effort to solidify my process more, and getting another degree would mean I could set myself up to teach one day. I was accepted into the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) and received my master’s in classical acting. The training exposed me to a lot of new techniques and allowed me to really hone in on my craft. After graduating, I moved to Atlanta in 2017 to be with my then-boyfriend, now husband. The first thing I booked was a SCAD masters independent short film and walked away from that set with an agent. It took me a little while to find community and consistency in work, but I’m so glad I stuck it out here. In the first couple of years, I got to work with Synchronicity Theater, Theater Emory, The Weird Sisters Theater Project, Theatrical Outfit, and The Alliance. It has been such a joy continuing to work with these theaters and others; I’ve now had the opportunity to work with so many of the people whose work I so admired and revered when I first moved here.
In 2018, I started teaching at Emory University in the theater department as a Visiting Assistant Professor and loved getting to teach in a liberal arts environment where the students are all engaged in lots of areas of study and bringing those ideas and complexities into their acting work. I applied for a full-time teaching track professorship and have been a regular faculty member since 2019. I’m currently the Co-Artistic Director of Theater Emory, the producing wing of the department, and have really relished the opportunity to refocus our department’s efforts to center the student’s experience and engage theater artists from across the city for them to collaborate with and learn from.
While my theater career flourished, it has taken me more time to develop my film career here. I’ve done several commercials, voiceovers, one episodic, but have found most consistency and community in the independent film scene in Atlanta. In 2020 my good friend and collaborator, Erika Miranda, asked me to join her as a producer for the film production company she had just founded, Cafecito Productions. Erika and I had just finished our first year producing a summer theater festival, SheATL Arts, which showcases the work of playwrights of marginalized genders and provides the tools for workshop productions of new plays. Even in the difficulty of producing a theater festival in the midst of a pandemic, we found we worked well together and had a similar approach to process and practice. We also had similar backgrounds, being half-Latinos raised in the south. For Cafecito’s first short film, we worked with one of the playwrights from the festival that year, Jocelyn Rick, and turned one of her 10-minute plays into a short film. We shot Mi Casa in January 2021. Erika and I produced and starred in it and it was directed by Kristina Arjona.
Mi Casa is about two sisters who are trapped, haunting their 100-year-old house, and have the opportunity to communicate with their new, charming, living tenant. We submitted it to the Official Latino Film Festival and won their top prize in 2021, a distribution deal on all HBO platforms. It was a truly wild ride to watch our first project—something we self-funded, and shot in 1 night in the midst of the pandemic — get such recognition and acclaim. We had found something magical in our collaboration, and much of it was a result of applying the new-play process to film. Since then, we have completed two other shorts, Blood Orange, which premiered at the Cleveland International Film Festival and is currently making the rounds in the film festival circuit, and Sweetie, which was my film directorial debut and is part of the feature-length anthology Give Me an A (available on all video on demand platforms!). CP’s fourth project, Trailer Trash Magic, is currently in post-production and slated to be complete in early 2024. With each project, we have grown immensely and I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to work with the amazing collaborators we have found along the way.
This past year has brought on plenty of changes, the primary one being the birth of my daughter, Ophelia, in April. Navigating life as an artist and mother has certainly had its challenges… I’ve had to slow down and reprioritize a number of things. But it’s also the greatest gift and has brought a whole new depth to my creativity and inspiration. I brought Ophelia along to the Cordillera International Film Festival in Reno so we could screen and celebrate Blood Orange, and she was by my side at all of the technical rehearsals for this year’s SheATL Arts festival. There’s no doubt she will grow up surrounded by the arts! I’m currently directing A Christmas Carol at the Alliance Theater, a production that I’ve acted in the past two years but am grateful for the opportunity to flex some different muscles inside of a production I’m already so familiar with. And while the long days away from my baby can be tough, I know that one day (when she can do more than babble), she’ll be proud of me and the work I’ve created.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
One of the biggest challenges I think affects many actors is the lack of control you have over your own work. You’re reliant on collaborators, on agents, on casting directors… the list goes on. I think that’s why making my own work has always been so important, I’m taking back some of the control that I don’t have otherwise. Of course, there are many challenges in making your own work: adjusting expectations as your taste and ability do or don’t align, finding the right collaborators, and finding funding (or investing your own funds). It feels like it will always be a mix of logistical and personal obstacles, but ultimately the reward of having made something that’s your own, that you fought for, will always be worth it.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m proudly a multi-hyphenate artist. I consider myself an actor, an educator, a producer, and a director… in some circles, I’m known more as a theater-maker, in others more as a filmmaker. I’m also really proud of the work I’ve done as an educator and in arts administration. I’m really proud of being able to wear multiple hats at a time and actually relish those opportunities.
On almost all of the Cafecito Productions sets, I’ve been a producer and actor or director, and I love the ability to tap into these different skill sets on the drop of a dime. When we were filming Blood Orange, we filmed most of it in Florida at my parent’s beach house that I grew up in, and it was such a thrill to go digging through my dad’s shed for a rope just before being on camera heaving a fake body bag into the bay. It’s the hands-on, we’re all in this together, the camaraderie of indie filmmaking that is just the absolute best! There’s nothing like being on a film set or a theater production, where you know that every single person is being valued for their contributions and creativity– that we’re all there working towards the same goal and that we care about the process just as much as the product. I’m hopeful that when people work with me, whether it be in a classroom, a film set, or a theater production, they feel that.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Being an artist in today’s society, especially an actor whose work relies on vulnerability, requires risk. There’s no avoiding it! I think you have to embrace the risk of failure because playing it safe will rarely lead to the kind of opportunities I’m interested in. I think there’s a lot of truth to the old adage of “no risk, no reward”… If you don’t put yourself out there, then how will you know what you’re capable of? With every audition or short film submitted there’s a risk of rejection, but also the possibility of a new project. With every production I’m apart of, theatrical or film, there’s a risk that it will flop or be poorly received. But if you believe in the story you’re telling and see the value in it being told, chances are it will affect someone somewhere, and that’s enough for me.
I’m incredibly lucky in that I have a stable, full-time job in my field that feeds me (literally and creatively). There’s a lot of privilege in that, and it is not lost on me. That in itself has allowed me to take certain risks that I probably wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. Since I’ve become a mother, I feel more eager to take creative risks. I have a new-found sense of self, purpose, and power as a result of motherhood, and I have so far enjoyed applying that to my creative endeavors.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @caitlin.j.hargraves
Image Credits
Emily Lambert Photography, Naomi Smith
