Meet Emma Yarbrough

Today we’d like to introduce you to Emma Yarbrough.

Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
I grew up in Eufaula, Alabama in a family of artists. My mom was my high school art teacher and directed me in all my school plays, my dad is a musician, my brother took after the both of them and is a painter and musician. We’re a bunch of goofs—a family of clowns.

I was a pretty brainy kid, so everyone (including myself) expected me to go to college and make good as a doctor or a lawyer. Instead, I took an acting class from Janice Akers during my first semester studying at Emory and never looked back.

I’m tall for a lady (6’1), and if I psychoanalyze myself, the draw of performing is pretty clear. Growing up in a small town looking the way I do, I got a lot of stares and questions. I still do even in Atlanta. When I’m onstage, the power dynamic shifts and I’m in charge of the gaze. The audience looks at me because I’ve decided they should.

Studying clowning and commedia dell’arte in at a school in Italy helped me embrace the theatricality of my stature. All of the theater I’ve made with my collaborative partners (Caitlin Reeves and Nicholas Surbey) is firmly rooted in what I learned there: comedic improvisation, ensemble work, the expressive power of the body.

A lot has changed for me in the past few years, so while that is my story, it feels very much like prologue at this point.

Please tell us about your art.
Four years ago, I took a break from artistic work following a series of traumatic events in my life. I started obsessively listening to comedy and storytelling podcasts because hearing about the crazy shit that happens to other people helped me feel less isolated and reframe my suffering as something essential and human.

I started writing down my family’s oral history. I didn’t have any aims beyond wanting to get the stories down before something else terrible happened to me or a family member and the chance to preserve them evaporated. That may sound dramatic, but trauma does strange things to the mind and a safe future didn’t seem possible to me at the time.

Then, a call for submissions from the Bleux Stockings Society caught my attention and I ended up reading one of my personal essays publicly for the first time. Now, I perform at storytelling events semi-regularly and have somehow landed a dream gig as an Atlanta producer for The Story Collider, a science-based storytelling podcast.

Currently, I’m at the beginning stages of creating a multi-media performance and documentary about my family. I plan to make use of filmed interviews with my parents, archival video and audio recordings, personal monologues, and clowning to create a live show that I hope will provide the blueprint for a stand-alone, documentary film.

Depending on how you look at it, this project is the culmination of 75 years of family history, my 30 years of life, the four years following the inciting tragedy, or the past year of my focused, creative work. It’s what I’m working on because it’s all I can work on. It’s pretty much all I think about these days.

I make art because I want to be understood. That’s selfish, but also very human, and more than anything else, I hope my work conveys that being a human is often messy and ugly—and isn’t that hilarious and beautiful?

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing artists today?
Well, there are the obvious challenges of functioning in a capitalist economy when your work can be difficult to monetize: affordable housing, performance/rehearsal space, healthcare, a living wage, etc.

I think one challenge that isn’t talked about as often is the psychological ramifications of operating in a society where the arts are undervalued. Creativity is such a vulnerable practice and there’s a lot of messaging out there that frames artists as lazy or self-indulgent—that because their contributions to society are less measurable and more ephemeral, they can easily be written off. As a result, I see a lot of my creative friends (including myself) struggling with an inner monologue that makes them feel unworthy and hesitant.

It’s a constant battle, but I try to nurture that part of myself that’s fearful and look to the bravery in my creative friends for inspiration to keep at it.

How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
I’ll be co-hosting the next Story Collider event at the Highland Inn Ballroom on June 26. Tickets for that are on sale now at storycollider.org (we usually sell out, so get your tickets fast!) A story I told at the live show in March is slated to be released on The Story Collider podcast this fall, so keep an eye out for that.

Later this year, I will be workshopping the performance aspect of the documentary here in Atlanta and then hopefully developing it further at an out-of-state residency.

Contact Info:

• Email: emma.e.yarbrough@gmail.com
• Instagram: @emmayarbs
• Twitter: @emmayarbs

Image Credit:
Sparkler image: Brinson + Banks
Pirate images: Wes Cummings
photos from 7 Stages production “The Breakers”: Stun Gun Photography.

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