Playwright, director and teacher Pat Nesbitt has a solution for Bermuda's economic woes: make performing arts the third pillar of the Bermuda business model.“The Island needs a new industry,” says Mrs Nesbitt, a pre-eminent member of Bermuda's theatre community. “We can offer more than beauty. We have talent that could, and should, be harnessed. There's significant business potential in the performing arts, and this is something that, as a country, we need to look at.”Judging by the slings and arrows of theatrical misfortune that have marked Mrs Nesbitt's impressive career, her belief in the economic potential of Bermuda's performing arts and her ability to help the industry grow should be in tatters.Not so. It's fully intact, reaffirmed this summer when Mrs Nesbitt travelled to Salem, Oregon to complete the first of a two-part course in the Meisner acting technique.After studying with master teacher and author Larry Silverberg at his True Acting Institute!, “I learned I am fearless and I am not afraid to stand alone in my thinking, particularly with what I feel about the direction of the performing arts in Bermuda,” says Mrs Nesbitt.The Bermudian with the unshakeable passion for the performing arts seems to have made quite an impression on Mr Silverberg. He describes Mrs Nesbitt as “a deeply loving, compassionate, empathetic, caring, open, vulnerable, sensitive human being”.“Unfortunately, many people get to a certain point and they think that's it. Learning is over,” says Mr Silverberg. “Potential is over. Possibility is over. Get on the sofa and turn on whatever is on TV and that's it. The potential for growth is over.“But then there are those people who retain this constant curiosity to keep growing as a human being and as an artist. Pat is one of those rare people”.Mrs Nesbitt joined actors, directors and instructors from around the world to study with Mr Silverberg on the campus of Willamette University. When she finishes the course next year, Mrs Nesbitt will be a certified Meisner master teacher Bermuda's first.The accreditation will add to a résumé that includes a Master's of fine arts in creative writing, a Bachelor's of fine arts in theatre, education and communications, and almost three decades' experience in acting, directing, producing and teaching in Bermuda and the US.Growing up on Smith's Hill in Pembroke, Patricia Pogson Nesbitt didn't dream of a life in the theatre. She was “very shy” as a child, but loved to sing in the choir at St Augustine's Church. When Mrs Nesbitt was 14, Terry-Lynne Emery (now Bermuda's first female gynaecologist, then a childhood friend of Mrs Nesbitt's) urged the teenager to audition for a Theatre Associates Bermuda (TAB) production of African American playwright Alice Childress' 'Wine in the Wilderness'.“I got the lead, and never looked back,” says Mrs Nesbitt, particularly after the production's director, Hastings Saltus, asked her to join the company.“If you were in that company, you were really good,” says Mrs Nesbitt of TAB, a troupe that featured a lineup of black Bermudian talent that included Ruth Thomas, Edwin Wilson and Shirley Christopher. Mrs Nesbitt went on to star in other TAB productions like 'A Raisin in the Sun', 'The Amen Corner' and 'The River Niger'. Mr. Saltus encouraged Mrs Nesbitt to consider a career in the theatre.“But my mother said 'no way',” remembers Mrs Nesbitt with a rueful shrug. “She said I had to go to secretarial school or be a school teacher. Those were considered good jobs for women in those days.”Passion overcame practicality and Mrs Nesbitt eventually made her way to the US where she studied at Howard University, graduating in 1983 with a BFA. Taking advantage of the year's grace given to international students studying in the States, Mrs Nesbitt spent the next 12 months working with the National Urban League, teaching African American folklore in primary schools, before returning to Bermuda in 1984.“I heard about the Bermuda Government's Youth Theatrical Travelling Road Show and that the director was Eugene Harvey,” she says. “I was interested because I admired Gene's professionalism and experience. The first production I was in, 'No, Not Me', was written by Gina Spence. People like Gita Blakeney, Suzette Harvey and Bootsie performed in it all the young people involved in the performing arts at the time. Its subject was controversial AIDS, drug abuse, teenage pregnancy. We performed at outdoor venues from one end of the Island to the other. It was an amazing experience.”When Mr Harvey decided to retire, he asked Mrs Nesbitt to take over as the director of the road show. She produced, directed, and wrote for the production for the next 14 years until funding for the initiative was cut, an event that she describes as a “painful closure”.As she worked to find a way to build a career in theatre in Bermuda, Mrs Nesbitt taught at a succession of Government schools including Devonshire Academy, Northlands and St George's Secondary. In many of the positions, her curriculum responsibilities included drama. She filled the hours outside of school with playwriting, acting and directing.Mrs Nesbitt's second chance to work fulltime in the theatre came in 1993 with the creation of the Jabulani Repertory Company. Colin (Dusty) Hind's professional troupe performed for five years in the Gazebo Lounge of the Hamilton Princess until the hotel was bought by Canadian Pacific Railways (now Fairmont). As co-producer and artistic director, Mrs Nesbitt led a multiracial cast and crew who presented 550 performances in two dozen productions.Jabulani's closing was a bitter disappointment. But Mrs Nesbitt soldiered on, continuing to teach, perform and direct. She worked as Programme Director at PRIDE, heading up the PRIDE performance team. During her three years with the youth non-profit, she encouraged a new generation of talented Bermudians: Nashanti Bailey, Shoa Bean, Eric Bean, Jr and Daren Herbert were all members of the PRIDE performance team.After earning her MFA from National University, Mrs Nesbitt joined the faculty of CedarBridge Academy in 2006, where she heads the drama section of a vibrant arts department (http://www.cedarbridgearts.bm).While Mrs Nesbitt's days are spent preparing students for GCSE exams in theatre and directing student productions, her time outside of school is filled with planning for new productions, new collaborations, new opportunities all in pursuit of that elusive third industry.“Pat has this wonderful sense of what is necessary to each one of us,” says Mr Silverberg. “She is very clear that learning and growing as a human being, with the ultimate goal of making a bigger difference, is necessary to her”.Even as she prepared for auditions that had to be rescheduled as Tropical Storm Leslie bore down on Bermuda (seeher Facebook page) , Mrs Nesbitt keeps her eye on her vision for the performing arts.“I want to establish a Meisner studio that's fully certified,” Mrs Nesbitt says. “I want to attract people from around the world to come here to study.“I have just recently established the Patricia Nesbitt Collaborative and through that company, I want to collaborate with other artists.“I also want to help young people learn how to prepare properly for auditions. One of the people I met in Oregon was Ingrid Sonnichsen, who teaches drama at Carnegie Mellon in New York. Ingrid and I roomed together, and it turned out she had Tsilala Graham-Haynes, Arlene Brock's daughter, in one of her classes. Ingrid was very impressed with Tsilala. I would like to bring her to Bermuda to run some workshops on how to audition.“And I have been talking to Larry Silverberg about coming to Bermuda to run classes in the Meisner technique. I know we can offer the talent of our people and we can market that if we network with the right resources”.Wendy Davis Johnson is interning with The Royal Gazette as a part of the requirements of a master's degree in journalism programme she's pursuing at Harvard Extension School.She can be reached at wendydavisjohnson@fas.harvard.edu