Caroline Woodson, BFA in Theatre with a concentration in Performance, 2022
woodsoncaroline@gmail.com
@caroline_woodson
Caroline posted a reading from the novel she’s writing on TikTok. She went to the DMV to get a new license, and when she came out the video had 10,000 views. By the end of the day it was up to 200,000. Caroline has discovered this new way to market her skills by posting numerous readings from her two books, as well as writing tips.
In 2020, Caroline published her first book of poetry and was trying to figure how to advertise it. “Hardly anyone reads poetry online, and I thought that I can start sharing on TikTok.” Since she started, “sales have gone up exponentially—400%!”
Even though Caroline considers herself more a poet, she reports that her fiction readings get the most hits. She thinks “possibly because I’m using character voices. People were tagging Audible to ‘hire this girl.’ I would love for this to skyrocket me into voice acting.”
At VCU Caroline was in the Honors program, earning her BFA in Performance and Psychology with a minor in Writing. While in school, she was the event coordinator and marketing director for SALT (student theatre – Shafer Alliance Laboratory Theatre), and she received a research grant to explore “how comedy is used in the face of adversity.” The project culminated in a production of Noises Off this past April with performances in Shafer.
Caroline started taking ballet in NOVA at two and grew up a dancer, “When you dance, people tell you that you should do theatre to be in musicals.” Her first big role was Tatiana in a full-on version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with a cast of twelve-year-olds! Ironically, the first show she was cast in at VCU was a touring version of Midsummer.
After graduation, the show’s name came back into her life at BADA’s Midsummer in Oxford program, a partner program with Yale that allowed her to study Shakespeare and Chekov in England this past summer. She received the Department’s upper class scholarship in her senior year, “which was the exact amount of tuition and expenses for the trip.”
Caroline has just started her Marketing Fellowship at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California where she will be until next July. When asked what advice she’d give to people new to TikTok, “Be yourself. Don’t try to be like someone else. Just be authentic.”
Caroline’s anthologies are a combination of poetry and art-like scrapbooks:
Compiled by Liz Hopper (professor emeritus) and Jerry Williams (BFA ’71) for the November 2022 Theatre Alumni newsletter