Student Profile: LEXI DESCHENE

This spring, PAC will be featuring blog profiles of our second-year conservatory students. These students will be graduating in May 2013 and launching their professional acting careers. Here, they share with us their origins, goals, and insights into acting and life as a student at Portland Actors Conservatory.

Lexi Deschene
Photo: Owen Carey

Meet LEXI DESCHENE

PAC: What is your educational background and where is your hometown?

Lexi: I graduated from Pinkerton Academy in my hometown of Derry, New Hampshire, in 2009. I knew I wanted a college experience that would completely immerse me in theatre, but I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for until I saw a notice for PAC interviews being held in Boston.

PAC: When did you know you wanted to be an actor and how did you get started acting?

Lexi: I don't come from a particularly creative family, and I'm certainly the only performer, but I think they realized I wanted to be an actor before I even knew what that meant. I do have an aunt that is very boisterous and theatrical, and whenever she'd babysit me, I'd bounce around singing to her Leslie Gore albums and the soundtracks of my animated movies. Eventually, I decided that I was Belle. And Pocahontas. And Esmeralda. I was basically on board with any brunette Disney could throw at me. I was too young to recognize that as the early stages of "acting," but my parents decided it would be a good idea to steer me in the direction of theatre, and my first show was "Cinderella" at the age of eight; not a brunette, but still in the Disney neighborhood. Eventually my aunt began managing a theatre that housed national tours, and she would get me front-row tickets to every single show that came through, even the ones I was probably a little young for. I'm sure my parents were thrilled with my obsession with Rizzo in "Grease" halfway through elementary school. Even so, nobody ever tried to keep me away from theatre, and by the time I was old enough to realize that a career in this field would take serious effort, I was too in love with it to give it a second thought.

PAC: How would you describe what you are learning here at PAC?

Catherine Ross and Lexi Deschene in A Bright Room Called Day
Photo: Gary Norman

Lexi: There are hundreds of different keys you can use to unlock the door to a character. Each teacher at PAC is dedicated to providing you with as many keys as possible, each focusing on the ones they believe to be most helpful, and you're given room to find exactly which ones fit your particular lock.

PAC: What interests or excites you most about acting?

Lexi: Actors have the special ability to sample as many lives as we can during our time on earth. I live out situations I would never find myself in offstage, and I'm introduced to hidden, undeveloped aspects of my own self when I surrender to the thoughts and emotions of characters I play. Even the roles I believe to be the furthest away from who I am are able to touch a spark of truth inside of me that I may never have acknowledged otherwise, and I have a richer life experience because of it.

PAC: What scares or challenges you most about acting, and how do you deal with that?

Lexi: There are shields we develop as we move through the world that defend us from emotional vulnerability; it's both a blessing and a curse to learn that the most vital part of a truthful performance is accessibility to the "negative" emotions we try to save ourselves from. Making the choice to lower my shields is always scary and challenging, but the outcome is never disappointing. The only way to affect an audience is to allow yourself to be affected.

PAC: What has been your most memorable experience at PAC so far?

Lexi: Watching last year's graduating class perform their final show was really special to me; it shifted my frame of mind from "look at everything they learned" to "look at everything I'm learning," and inspired me to refocus and aspire to the level of performance I saw them reach, both as individuals and as an ensemble. 

PAC: What are your plans after graduating from PAC? What do you want to be doing 10 years from now?

Lexi: After completing the program at PAC, I'd like to go home and earn a BFA from Emerson College in Boston, where I hope to build a career as an actor.

PAC: If you could go back in time to your first day at PAC, what advice would you give your past self?

LEXI: Give yourself time to find your key. Some things will speak to you and some things won't, but just like your characters, there's a spark of truth in all of it.

Lexi Deschene (Center) in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Photo: Gary Norman