Expat Interview – How a German Aspiring Actor Settled in America with This One Bold Tip

In this expat interview edition, our guest is Celine Berger, a 23-year-old German graduate, discussing moving to the United States and what it’s like working within the American theatre community in Chicago.

On Cultural & Personal Background

Lenny Borzov: All right, Celine, can you tell us more about your culture and personal background in a little more detail?

Celine Berger: Yeah, so I grew up in a really small town in Eastern Germany, and it was always a very slow life there, but I’ve always wanted to move to a big city.

LB: So what were you doing whilst living there? What were your hobbies and favourite activities?

CB: Early on, I was in a swim group, which was like lifeguarding, and we were trained to become lifeguards with the Red Cross. Then later on, I became a dancer. I started being part of a dance group and was with them for about 10 years. Those were my two main things. And then eventually, a friend of mine started doing theatre in the next town over—a local theatre sort of thing. So I joined that, and that was my main hobby. I rather stopped doing the other stuff once I was solidly in that theatre group. Acting was my main hobby and my main goal in life.

First Experience in the United States

LB: If I understand you correctly, your first experience moving out of the country was in the years 2018-2019, when you first went to Missouri. Can you tell us more about this experience?

CB: Yeah, so growing up on American media, I always wanted to go to the US because it seemed like a storybook land—whatever you want to think about that.

But then I had a friend through the theatre group that I was in, and she had gone on and on and on about an exchange programme here in the US, and I asked her about it. She was honest and told me it’s expensive, it’s a lot of emotional turmoil, and all of these different things. But she said, “I recommend it to anyone, if you want to do it, you will always regret not doing it.”

So I talked to my parents, and we found a German-based exchange organisation that partnered with an American exchange organisation, and then I went through the whole application process. I was awaiting my family placement, and then I finally got that. I contacted them—my family in Missouri—and then all of a sudden, I was in the US, and I was like, “Whoa.”

LB: What was it like moving to the United States, especially to Missouri? Because this is not, you know, the most famous place that people know about all around the world.

CB: So when I first heard where I was going, I didn’t have a ton of specific knowledge about the different states. I just thought that Missouri was Massachusetts. And I was so excited. I was like, “Oh my god, I’m going to be so close to New York. It’s going to be brilliant.” And then I realised that I was completely wrong about that.

It took a little bit of adjusting at first when I arrived in Missouri, because it wasn’t as glamorous a life in the US as I had grown up watching, right? But my secondary school, which I went to, was really focused on the arts, so I immediately found a theatre community. It helped that there were other exchange students at my school, too. So there was an exchange student who was from Switzerland, and he and I were speaking German. So we had that connection. We also both did theatre. So I rather easily fell into doing what I already liked doing, despite being in a place that is not necessarily known for these things.

LB: Did you experience any culture clashes there?

CB: Yes, and this is going to sound like I’m flaming Americans. (Laughs). But before, when we were still in the prep phase, before I actually went to the US, we had an information session with one of the people from the exchange organisation, and they were like, “Hey, just a fair warning. American standards are a lot lower than German standards when it comes to cleanliness.” So they were like, “Your house might be dirty in the US.” And I was like, “That’s mental.” And it was a little bit less clean than what I was used to from home, but it was fine.

And then the other thing was that everyone drives everywhere. Especially coming from a really small town, I was walking everywhere. And then that was just not an option in the US because it’s so focused on car infrastructure.

Personal Changes After America

LB: So after your studies in 2019 and graduating from secondary school, you went back to your home country, Germany. What did it feel like when, after living in America and experiencing certain cultural customs, you came back home with a different perspective?

CB: I remember a very specific thing that my dad pointed out to me once I got back to Germany. Obviously, Missouri is in the Midwest, right? So the people are very courteous with each other, right? There’s a lot of “thank yous” and “please” and “sorry” and stuff when you’re in public, like in grocery shops.

And then I remember specifically my dad was shocked by how I was interacting with strangers in public in Germany, because in Germany, people don’t really talk to each other unless they know each other, even in small towns. So in the grocery shop, I would say, “Oh, I’m sorry” when I was passing someone, or like, “Oh, excuse me.” And he went, “That’s new. You’ve never done that before. America changed you.”

Returning to the US

LB: So then in 2021, you decided to enrol in an American college again. What made you decide to go there again and attend college? What was the process of finding a specific college or university there?

CB: Yeah, so after I had my exchange here, I knew that I wanted to go back because I had made so many really solid connections—which, ironically, I don’t really have any of those connections anymore. But I really wanted to study acting in the US because, again, I had grown up with all of the American media, so I thought that was the only place to do that, which is obviously not true. That was just sort of my thinking at the time.

But then I actually met one of my friends from Missouri, who also ended up studying acting at a different college. We were talking, and she sent me a list of colleges that offer acting degrees in the US. And then I started narrowing it down, because my first thought was, “I want to be somewhat close to my host family because that’s the only people I know in the US.” So I narrowed it down to schools in Missouri and to schools in the states around Missouri. And then I had actually only applied to two different colleges, one of which was in Missouri, which was in a really small town. It was a very small college.

And then the other one, which is the one that I ended up going to—you know, Columbia College Chicago—was in Chicago. And that’s when my brain started going, and I was like, “Okay, so I’ve always wanted to be in a big city, and Chicago is not New York, but Chicago is the third biggest city in the US, so I guess I’m going to go there.”

Life of an international college student

LB: And so in September 2021, you moved to Chicago and started your first year there. What was it like for you as an international student now studying at a higher educational institute?

CB: My first semester, I had never been so homesick before. I was feeling that because this time, there was no safety net. I didn’t have a built-in family. This time, it was literally just me, and I had to fend for myself, and I had never been so homesick as I had been during my first semester. I was really doubting whether or not I was doing the right thing at that time because it was just so much at once. It was this huge city. Random flatmates. Random classes.

I felt a little bit lonely at first, but then through my theatre classes, I met a really solid group of friends, and they welcomed me in, and that gave me the ability I needed to push through and keep going.

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LB: So you were able to connect with an international community of students, both American and non-American, but were you trying to find a German expat community in Chicago? Did you have any attempts?

CB: Sort of. After my first year, when I was living in the residence halls at Columbia, I ended up moving out of the residence halls into my own flat, which happened to be in Lincoln Square, which happens to be the German neighbourhood in Chicago, which I didn’t know when I moved there. And then I was like, “Why is there so much German stuff around here?” There was a German grocery shop. There was the German American association called DANK Haus that was literally a block away from my flat.

So I ended up meeting some of the people from the DANK House at a street festival that was going on in Lincoln Square, and I talked to them a little bit, and they were like, “Hey, you should totally reach out to us and become a part of the community”—which I tried doing, and I never heard back. So that was rather the end of that.

The American Theatre Community

LB: What made the international and the theatre college community so special to you?

CB: Never before, never since, have I been in a place where theatre was so accessible to me. So at Columbia, shows were going on all the time. We had, especially in the last few semesters, a show every single week. Basically, it felt like there were weeks of opening nights.

Also, just the people. So many brilliant, creative people that I got to meet, that I got to work with, that I still have either friendships or working relationships with. So many opportunities to connect with other people who want the same thing that you want—you feel more seen. You start to understand what the industry actually looks like, and that everyone’s in the same boat, and no one’s trying to, you know, steal anything from anyone.

There’s always this misconception that everything is a competition, but it’s not really like that. We’re all just trying to get cast. We’re all just trying to get on stage, on screen. So yeah, just seeing like-minded people and being able to have access to the theatre.

LB: Speaking of theatre productions, what was your first college theatre production experience as an actor?

CB: Oh, my very first one. My very first one at Columbia, I was part of a play called The IT. And out of all the shows that I’ve done at Columbia, that was probably the least successful one. There was a lot of chaos behind the scenes. We weren’t even sure if we were actually going to go on with that show until two weeks, or a week or so before opening. It was really messy.

LB: Was it the first or second year when you got cast in it?

CB: I think it was the second year.

LB: It’s very early for a first-year student actor to be cast in a professional student production.

CB: No, no. Actually, I was rather late to the game because I didn’t really know how the auditioning process worked. During my first year at Columbia, I didn’t audition. I went to exactly two auditions in my first year, which is way too few, because, like I said, there are so many shows going on all the time. But I didn’t understand yet how the auditioning process worked, how I could find auditions, and all that stuff.

So I was rather late to the game with my first performance being in my second year, which ended up being fine. I wish now, looking back, I had known more immediately how to audition, where to audition, all that stuff, because I would have loved to be in a production before that. But looking back, it is what it is—that’s just how it happened.

The Triumphs and Challenges in Theatre

LB: I’m interested in the topic of the relationship between language and theatre. Language is very important in theatre because it’s something that playwrights construct so that actors can communicate the plot and the themes of the text to a large audience. And since American theatre is predominantly in English, and English is your second language, did you face any challenges communicating the text of the play in English throughout all the productions you participated in?

CB: Not really, I would say, but I feel that’s not just international students. I feel that’s everyone, where sometimes you read your play, and you’re like, “I don’t know this word. What does this mean?” And then a lot of plays actually have a glossary or something like that, where they have in detail all of those uncommon words and what they mean. Or I would just be like, “Hey, what actually does that mean? I have no idea what that means.”

And also, the only time where I ever felt that my not being a native English speaker was a problem, I was in some auditions where I would do my monologue, and I was feeling great about it, and then the director would be like, “Oh, that was fantastic. Can you do that in an American accent?” And I was like, “So this is my American accent. I’m trying so hard right now.”

LB: Did you always find that to be a problem? Were you able to overcome it?

CB: Well, you know, in those auditions where people went, “Oh, can you do an American accent?” I would be like, “No, I can’t.” That was just that. I was just not going to get cast.

But apart from that, I think my second or third play—I don’t know, I don’t remember which order the plays were in—but I ended up getting cast in a play where I was playing a little German boy. So it actually was an asset to me that I spoke German because the character was supposed to have a German accent and was supposed to speak German and say German words here and there. So yeah, it ended up being an asset more so than it was an obstacle.

LB: What would you say were your easiest and hardest theatre productions you participated in?

CB: I think the hardest was The IT because I was so unsure if I was even going to stay with that production. But it was also my first production, so I felt I couldn’t leave even if I wanted to.

And the easiest… Oh, I don’t know, they were all really fun after that.

I think theatre is always hard because you put so much of yourself in it—physically, but also emotionally—but it’s always rewarding. I’ve never left a theatre production except for maybe being like, “Oh, this is crushing me,” you know? I’ve always ended up being really proud of the work that I’ve done and really proud of the work that my team has done and all that stuff. So even if the process can be hard, I’m usually just happy to be there and happy to do it.

LB: And what would you say your personal favourite is—the one you enjoyed doing the most?

CB: I did a 20-minute cut of a play that’s titled—oh, it’s such a long title—A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay about the Death of Walt Disney by Lucas Hnath. I got to play Walt Disney, of all characters out there, and I had the greatest time of my life. I was so in the moment—I’ve never done that much character research before for anything I’ve ever done. I also got to meet my favourite director I’ve ever worked with through that production.

LB: But also, apart from acting, you became a playwright. You wrote a few plays, one of which was staged at a one-act play festival at Columbia. And you also wrote this text in English. And I’m interested in what’s going on in your mind when you write a text in a non-native language. Can you explain the process happening in your mind as a playwright?

CB: I’m just so immersed in English that I don’t use German as much. So it rather almost comes more naturally to me to write in English now, or to speak in English, think in English, dream in English—all of those things. There wasn’t a ton of thought put into writing it in English. And also, I knew that I was writing it for Americans, you know. I couldn’t really write a German play for them because none of them speaks German.

LB: And did you enjoy the playwriting process?

CB: Oh, yes, I loved it! Oh, that’s another thing. I was also writing it for my playwriting class, as my final for the playwriting class, so it had to be in English, even though my professor was like, “Oh, you can totally write something in German.” But I was like, “How are you going to judge that then?”

On the German & English languages

LB: And since you were saying that you got so used to English, would you say that English, in a way, became your native language by this time?

CB: I will never, ever claim that. I will never, ever say that. I think it’s really cool that I speak two languages. I think that is brilliant, but I would never want to… I don’t know. I feel that would be such disrespect to my parents and who I am, and my upbringing, to say that English is my native language now, or whatever, because it’s not.

LB: And whilst living in the United States, were there moments where you were losing touch with your German language, and if you did, how were you able to keep it?

CB: I am currently feeling that.

I’ve met a couple of Germans recently who were visiting me in the US. And every time I hear German, I speak German. So I go up to them, I’m like, “Oh my god, hi. Sorry, sorry, I heard you speak German. I’m German too. Do you want to talk to me? Can we please talk to each other?” And we’ll speak some German, and then we will chat a little bit. And the Germans I’ve met, they’ve been like, “Oh, how long have you been here? Because you sound American when you speak German.” And I’m always like, “No, don’t say that.”

So yeah, I’m rather losing a little bit of touch with my German.

Future Plans

LB: So now you have graduated from Columbia this May, and congratulations on that. What are your current plans for the future regarding the United States or Germany?

CB: I do want to visit my country soon. I probably won’t be able to within the year because that’s pretty expensive.

LB: How do you see your future career as a theatre actor anywhere in the world?

CB: I’ll take what I can get. I also want to branch out into film. I’ve been doing a lot of film auditions. I’m literally—whatever comes towards me, I’ll take it. I have specific styles and genres that I’m more interested in. But right now, at this point, I don’t really get to choose. I just rather have to roll with whatever I can get.

LB: And my final question is, what’s your number one advice you would give to all expats around the globe?

CB: If you’re going to do it, commit to it. You can’t just stick to what you know. If you want to have the full experience, you have to really commit to it.

End of interview.

Follow Celine Berger’s Instagram: @celiineer.

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