DIRECTOR STATEMENT
A pianist begins at the age of six and practices indefinitely. I was no exception. My passion for music grew from weekly private lessons, to gigs on the weekends, recitals, composition, and then, music school. That's when something snapped. - pressure of critical professors, my own perfectionism, grueling 7 hour practice sessions well into the night - What was driven by love was soon fueled by anxiety. After graduation, I was so haunted by the words and worlds I played in, I could barely touch the keys without shaking.
While this short film is fiction, the ghosts in my head felt real. In the process of making The Piece, I spoke to other graduates of my music program who similarly needed to take a break because they too were led to believe they'd never be good enough. Imposter syndrome is extremely common in the arts and I wanted to create a visualization of this feeling through film.
The Piece, is everything I have felt in ten minutes staring at a piano I no longer felt apt to play. If you could crawl inside my ears and listen to the voices that repeated "you don't deserve the stage", you may begin to understand why I left an art form that was my entire mission for 16 years. I wrote this short film to help others understand a trauma I was ashamed to voice, and hopefully, help musicians feel less alone if they're struggling through the same feeling.

DIRECTOR BIO

New England born and Manhattan made; Emma Young is a pianist, music producer, and actress from Westport Massachusetts. With a Bachelor of Music from Columbia College Chicago and additional study at PopAkademie in Germany, she holds the Manifest Song Award 2020 and has released her original music on a multitude of New England independent radio platforms.
As an actress, she can been seen on HBO's The Gilded Age, in national commercials for McGraw Hill's Sharpen app, Wantable Clothing, and recently made her NYC stage debut as Maisie in Playwright's Horizon's Remembering Morgan.
As a first time filmmaker, she drew inspiration from her love of horror and desire to unveil her darker stories from music school. She drew from a great network of accomplished creatives in film to give life to a script always stuck in her head.