Camron Jones sets out to challenge stereotypes

Most USC students remember their college application season well: meticulously written essays, carefully assembled resumes and maybe the occasional interview. For students in the School of Dramatic Arts’ highly competitive acting program, applications include an additional component, a grueling audition. Out of the countless potential television, theater and movie stars who apply to the program, only about 20 end up at USC in the fall.

One such admittee, Jones, began his freshman year with a specific goal in mind: challenging black stereotypes in the media.

“Ultimately, I believe that theater, television and just the arts in general have the ability to change the mindsets of people across the nation,” Jones said. “I want to change the view of the black man in America, so that people can see that we all aren’t the stereotypes portrayed on television.”

For Jones, getting into USC represented a dream come true.

“Even before I wanted to act, I was in love with this school,” Jones said. “As early as my freshman year of high school, this was the school I wanted to come to.”

Jones’s first acting experience was a required middle school performance of Shakespeare’s King Lear, in which Jones played the King himself. The show sparked an interest in acting, and Jones began preforming in improv shows. Though he spent most of high school juggling sports and acting, Jones’s junior year marked a turning point. He decided to focus primarily on acting, noting support from his parents as one of his motivators.

“I liked acting but saw it as just something to do for fun,” Jones said. “It was my mom and dad who really told me that I should go to college for this.”

The audition process for the B.F.A. in acting program requires applicants to memorize two contrasting monologues, for example one classical and one contemporary. They’re also asked to have a third monologue prepared, just in case judges ask them to perform something else.

“Compared to all my other college auditions, I wasn’t that scared or nervous [for USC’s audition] because I felt very welcomed,” Jones said.

Jones only performed one monologue during his audition, a scene from the contemporary play, Fences, by August Wilson. It wasn’t the first time Jones was rewarded for this performance; it once earned him fifth place in the Dramatic Interpretation category of California’s Speech and Debate competition. The competition requires performers to cut a play into a 10-minute piece, and perform the roles of multiple characters.

The School of Dramatic Arts program uniquely offers conservatory-level intensity within the traditional college experience. Traditionally, acting and arts conservatories focus primarily on professional training, with extensive instruction in voice and movement techniques. Additionally, students take courses on topics like the history of theater, stagecraft and critical studies.  The B.F.A. in acting program at USC offers this same instruction, but students also take USC’s traditional general education courses, and can supplement their theater training with minors. Jones would like to minor in writing for screen and television, in order to one day work both in front of and behind the camera.

And Jones isn’t in acting merely for the possibility of fame; he hopes to utilize his talents to combat prominent racial stereotypes in the media.

“I just hope that [my work] helps people see our country’s citizens as people and not as stereotypes,” Jones said. “Eventually, I hope we can just see a man as a man — not as a black man, a white man or an Asian man.”

In addition to acting, Jones is already combatting prominent stereotypes through his music. During the controversial Ferguson decision, Jones and a friend, Cole Pham, harnessed their emotions into a song. Jones said the two already had plans to record a song about racial profiling, but Ferguson pushed them into action.

“When the Mike Brown trial ended and he wasn’t convicted, I felt betrayed by my own country, because it made me feel like I was less of a human being and that my brothers and cousins and friends were less,” Jones said. “We made the song because arts are an avenue for us to express our emotions and explain our opinions.”

The song, titled “Who’s Next,” is written from the perspective of the consciousness of an emerging artist who was just shot, as he is transported to the hospital. The song, which is available on Jones’s SoundCloud account (Kosmosis Jones), includes haunting sounds from actual footage of a police shooting in New Orleans.

“When you get into politics, everything is red versus blue, he said she said, but music is bipartisan.  When we made this song, we wanted to put the listener, regardless of their background, in the shoes of whoever’s next,” Jones said.

Though only a freshman, Jones is eager to bring his goal of altering stereotypes to USC’s many acting opportunities. Drawing from his prior experience in improv, Jones currently performs on Trojan Vision’s new sketch comedy show, SCA Live. The show’s next episode is scheduled to air on Friday, March 27.