Today we’d like to introduce you to Mike Merchant.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
I was Born and raised in Bronx, New York. Life was pretty tough in my neighborhood growing up, and my mom was adamant about moving to a safer area. We then moved to Maryland for a couple years to finish out high school and I started to get my degree in Computer Science. During that time I was writing raps on my old laptop and recording them through a $15 Staples brand PC microphone. Wasn’t taking it seriously, just having fun. While I was in college for computer science, I realized that I had an elective requirement. I was always interested in acting so I decided why not. I sign up for the acting elective, and on the first day of class the teacher doesn’t show up. About 30 mins into sitting in the classroom a lady comes in and says our teacher was a no show and she would be the substitute teacher for us. So she gives us an assignment of memorizing and performing a monologue by the next class. I didn’t know what a monologue was. I went home and googled monologues and starting to look into what movies I liked and find some from there. I remember picking a movie I had recently watched “I am Legend.” I spent days just memorizing and practicing that speech, so unaware of what I was doing but so excited by the idea. I went into class the next week and performed my monologue. The professor seemed to really appreciate the work I put in. She then assigned us a scene to perform for the next class. After a few of these assignments, she pulls me aside after class and tells me she believes I have a knack for this and I should pursue it. I was grateful but too scared and told her I’d pass.
I was on track to get a degree in computer science and already had a job lined up. She then offers a compromise. She says there’s a program coming up that has auditions at Julliard and sends students to England to study acting for a summer. The deadline to audition was coming up, and she told me to at least give it a shot. If I don’t get in, then I just keep it moving, but if I do, then I’ll have to follow through. I tell her sure and leave. Fast forward to the deadline, and I get to class, and she asks me “did you apply?”, I say “Nah”, and she says “Good, well I applied for you.” During this time she extended the offer to everyone in the class. So then we spent our entire spring break going to her studio in downtown DC every day working on my audition pieces. The day of the audition arrives, and we all take a trip up to New York and go to Julliard and give it our best shot. I end up being the only one in the class to get accepted to the program. I’m shocked and stunned. I then spend my entire summer in England studying acting and realizing this is what I want to be doing for the rest of my life, I want to make art, and create, and tell stories. As soon as I got back to Maryland, I dropped out and applied for an acting school in California (CalArts). I got accepted to that school and moved to Cali! I spent four years there studying acting and performing music. I graduated about 2 1/2 years ago and have been doing nothing but acting and music since.
Please tell us about your art.
I am an actor and musician primarily. I write, perform, produce and engineer music. I want to tell stories that mean something to me. I want to show people that it’s possible, and I want to inspire people with smaller networks. Most of my work is either done solo or with incredibly small teams (1 or 2 other people). In the case of music, everything I’ve learned has been self-taught through hours of trial and error. I truly believe if you want something done, you’ll get it done; and I want that to come off in my work as well.
I also love the idea of being sad. I love sadder toned works, and I want to show people that there’s so much beauty in sadness.
We often hear from artists that being an artist can be lonely. Any advice for those looking to connect with other artists?
My biggest advice for connecting with other artists is to create what you can first. It’s so much easier to collaborate when you have work to show to people. Everyone wants to hire someone with a solid resume. I had such a hard time finding producers to work with I learned how to do it myself. Now that the album is out, it’s so much easier to reach out to people and collaborate.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
I just realized a Visual Album that’s here (early access link – not officially released) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr9NOzqQYdE
I have the accompanying album on all major platforms here: http://smarturl.it/thebeautifulbefore
and I’m currently in an immersive theater experience in Downtown Los Angeles that I’ll be giving out more details for on my instagram! @mikexmerchant
Contact Info:
- Email: mikexmerchant@gmail.com
- Instagram: @mikexmerchant
- Facebook: mikexmerchant
- Twitter: @mikexmerchant
Image Credit:
@nickasokan
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