Vanity Fair

Deep down, aspiring artists know that success relies on a certain amount of self-deception: a belief in one’s gift even when opportunity fails to knock. If years go by without any big breaks, most will allow this lofty hope to yield to the heavy weight of reality. Maybe a creative pursuit is better as a hobby than as a vocation.

In She’s a Lamb!, Meredith Hambrock satirizes what happens when a pipe dream hardens into an unshakable faith in one’s talent. Despite all evidence to the contrary, a wannabe musical theatre star is sure of her destiny. What might she resort to for a role — especially if she hates the philistines who refuse to see her genius and the gatekeepers who pass over her? Actors usually mean the line “I’d kill to get that part” figuratively. Not this actor.

Jessamyn St. Germain, twenty-six, moonlights as an usher at the Franklin, a suffering mid-size theatre in Vancouver, booking the occasional commercial while she dreams about a...