Actors are occasionally called gypsies and the term couldn't have been more accurate as far as Althea's parents were concerned. Bruce and Jenna met while working together on a production of Twelfth Night. By the time the sets were taken down and they started work on Oklahoma, they were an item. Althea came along about ten years later. By now they owned their own touring company, Fools and Players and were traveling the country living the sort of life they had always dreamed of.
Her parents never really aspired for much more than being able to put food on the table doing what they loved. They had no desire to work in TV or film, but the idea of travel had always been appealing to them. They thought long and hard before bringing Althea into the world, knowing that raising a child in a slightly unconventional environment would be difficult, but were overjoyed when she finally arrived.
Taking joint responsibility for her education (and because it just so happened that one of them was hopeless with math while the other was a whiz with reading), they homeschooled her, though they sort of had no other option. Her childhood was a relatively happy one, though occasionally lonely. Althea often wished for a sibling, or at the very least a steady playmate. Growing up around mostly adults caused her to mature very quickly. Soon she was a miniature grown up herself, more comfortable having conversations with them than with her peers. Then again, Althea had always been something of an old soul, wise beyond her years and to this day she still doesn't seek out the company of others, even when she has the chance to. She supposes her independent streak wasn't learned. It was in her all along. Her mother, a textbook extrovert, tried her hardest to bring Thea out of her shell with any and every activity she could think of. When dance, acting, soccer and karate lessons were a bust, Althea's father decided they had put her through enough and told his wife to let her be, hoping she would blossom in her own, due time.
The only time she had ever felt like she was in a stable home environment was when they would stay with her aunt Jessica during Christmas and Easter holidays. She found more in common with her aunt, who was an accomplished pianist than she did with her actor parents and spent most of these visits talking her ear off or shut up in the piano room, tinkering around on the instrument she loved so much. Thea had finally found her creative outlet, something that let her pour all of her thoughts and emotions into. Music became an all consuming passion, but it would take years for her to gather up the courage to share it in front of an actual audience.
When she was fourteen, she gathered up the courage to ask if she could stay for good. Althea craved a bit of teenage normalcy and reveled in the idea of putting down some roots for once. Her parents reluctantly agreed and she stayed there with her in Texas until she graduated a year early. In truth, Althea wanted to go to a "real" high school more than anything in the world, though her insecurities got the better of her. Very bright, she had skipped a few grades and she supposed there was nothing worse than being the new kid and a baby on top of it. So, after much in the way of begging, Althea's aunt reluctantly agreed to let her keep being taught at home, though by this time, she was old enough to go over her lessons herself.
Finally away from her mother, who had gotten more and more overbearing and frustrated with her daughter's shyness over the years, Althea thrived under the care of the one family member she felt she could relate to. Though she was as introverted as ever, she managed to build up a small, tight knit circle of friends and more and more confidence in herself. By the time she was 16, she had joined a garage band that did very crappy heavy metal covers, but she had never been happier. It was one of the first steps she had ever taken to share with others. Lyrics were no longer hidden in notebooks under her bed. She could actually sing outside of the shower, but she still had a long way to go. Even then she knew music was a huge part of her life and made plans to make sure it always would be. She knew the odds of making it as a musician were slim to none, but she figured teachers were always in demand. Even if she wouldn't always get to play exactly what she wanted, she reasoned she would still be able to play and listen to what her students came up with. On a deeper, much cheesier level, she hoped she would be able to inspire someone like her aunt had inspired her years earlier.
After finishing high school , she got into NYU and immediately fell in love with New York, though it was a big adjustment. She had never really been on her own before, let alone in a big city. She threw herself into her studies, but found herself more and more bored and creatively stifled by her lessons by the day. After three years of trying to stay focused, she dropped out. Music, she decided, was something that had to be lived and experienced, not learned in a classroom. If she couldn't see herself being a music student, she definitely couldn't see herself be a teacher. She was going to make a living through music, her music, though she didn't quite know how. Her father supported her wholeheartedly, knowing that Althea was a bright girl and not usually prone to rash decisions, though he was worried about her ability to make ends meet. Her parents were all artists themselves, after all and knew how difficult that could be. Her mother, however, didn't approve of Althea essentially wasting time and money on a degree she didn't even finish. She struggled through her early 20's, determined to get by on her own and refused to leave NYC, no matter how pricey it was. In 2005, she got a break of sorts. She finally stopped waiting tables and working retail to join the touring band of one of her favorite artists and sold her EP in the booths. In 2007 she finally recorded her first real studio album and the rest? Well, that's history and she's keeping track of it one day at a time.
