Category Archives: Female Artists

The FPI Files: Hungry Ghost” Completes “Her Vision, Her Voice” Season at Skylight

August 24, 2023Director, Female Artists, playwriting, ProductionArmando Huipe, Ben Messmer, Carly Bones, Carolina Pilar Xique, female directors, female playwrights, Gary Grossman, Isolation, Jennifer Chang, Jenny Soo, Jessica Hanna, Lisa Sanaye Dring, Skylight Theatre, Tasha Ames, The Theatre @ Boston Court, Tyree MarshallLAFPI

by Carolina Pilar Xique

“The writer’s job is to be brave enough to be nostalgic.”

I heard those words from an English professor once. At the time, they resonated with me as someone who is often referred to as a nostalgic person—always bringing up a story of the past, over and over again. I come from a family & community that shares and retells all kinds of stories every time we see each other, whether they’re laugh-out-loud funny or overwhelmingly heart-wrenching. Storytelling has always been a way for me and my community to record our histories and form connections when it feels like there are only differences.

That’s probably why I became a theater artist & playwright.

That being said, I recently had the thought, “I’m getting so tired of writing and talking about the pandemic.”

I guess it’s difficult to feel nostalgic about terrifying moments in the past, especially if it feels like they’re still happening. The uncertainty, anxiety, and grief of the last three years is still so fresh that the retelling of it can feel not only exhaustingly overdone, but terrifying to grapple with. For so many of us, the pandemic exposed some of the most vulnerable, heart-breaking, unlikeable parts of ourselves. It separated us from our communities—which are often our lifelines—and forced us to deal with momentous social & political shifts while in physical solitude. Who wants to remember all of that?

But yet, the idea of “returning to normalcy” in this current moment of endemic is insulting to the millions of humans who are not the same people they were before 2020, and all of us who have lost friends & family & community members.

So where is the middle ground? Is there a middle ground? When & how do we as artists become brave enough to remember?

These questions and the words of that English professor were swimming in my head when I talked with Lisa Sanaye Dring about her new play, Hungry Ghost, directed by Jessica Hanna and premiering at Skylight Theatre Company for the final installment of their “Her Voice, Her Vision” 40^th Anniversary Season. A play that centers the lives of a couple getting ready to start a family, a hauntingly humorous hermit, and a secluded house in the woods, Hungry Ghost invites audiences to meditate on ideas of true freedom, isolation from community, and the hilarity of tragedy.

So as weary as I am of the pandemic, after my meeting with Lisa & Jess, I was reminded of the importance & inherent absurdity of processing, looking back on, and learning lessons from resiliency & loss.

Carolina Pilar Xique: Lisa—What inspired you to write this piece and how has it grown since its inception?

Lisa Sanaye Dring – photo by Stephanie Girard

Lisa Sanaye Dring: It’s very beautiful for me because I found out I got into the Humanitas Stage Raw Group led by Shem Bitterman and Steven Lee Morris in April, 2020. And we all know what was going on then. *laughs*

I was so heartened because at that moment I didn’t know if I was still going to make art, and it was a lifeline for me to be like, “Oh no, you will be writing in this time!”

But I didn’t know what I was going to write.

I was watching a video article in “The Atlantic,” a story about the North Pond Hermit, Christopher Thomas Knight, who lived in the forest for 27 years and survived by pilfering from vacation homes. He would come out in the summer and get little supplies, get oil, and then he’d hibernate in the winter and just camp out in his location. I was really moved by him because I was isolated from my community at that time, and I found it to be excruciating at moments. And he went to isolation and found solitude and freedom.

He did an interview with “GQ “and quoted Thomas Merton; he talked about how when one is without reflection, one can become truly free. I thought about that impulse—that one’s true self is only without one’s community. And I thought about how we as theatre people make meaning inside community. And then it sort of distilled into this play, which is about someone who is about to be in community in a huge way because of birth. She’s about to grow a family with a woman she loves and is facing her own feelings of isolation and alienation from community, and has to encounter those two poles—to be with people and to be alone. She’s forced into this decision via her pregnancy.

Carolina: Jessica—What has the rehearsal process been like and how have your thoughts about the play evolved since you had first read it?

Jessica Hanna: It’s been a super collaborative room. Lisa has been really participatory and open to the collaboration and the questions that come up for both myself and the actors. We’ve been really heavily working on this play for some months, but in June, we did a workshop and did some really hardcore work of talking about the play, Lisa writing new pages, and trying new things .

I would say that the idea of “theater being a great experiment” is really alive in this room. I keep talking to the cast that being in this place of, “I don’t know,” is a really fertile, exciting, creative space. And it’s also deeply uncomfortable and sometimes can cause anxiety. I feel very lucky because nobody in the room is dictating what anything has to be. So the richness of the possibility feels heightened in our room. And there’s also the reality of like, this is the baby’s first walk, right? So I hope there’s another evolution of this play that is learned from these moments.

Lisa: Shout out to Boston Court Playwrights Group—they have also workshopped the piece with me over the last year, in addition to the Humanist Stage Raw Group. In this time where it’s so hard to make a play and harder for producers to get stuff up, it’s been a huge boon to this piece to have so many amazing minds and hearts of the theater pay attention to it as it grows, including Jess’s, including Skylight.

Carolina: How has it been balancing the hilarity and the weight of these themes, in both the writing and the directing process?

Lisa: I just think things should be funny. I think all plays should be funny. And I think these actors are really sensational at giving us humor and joy. I was taught in theater school, “You can’t make them cry unless you make them laugh.” Straight drama is easier than laughter because you can’t really fake laughter. Like you can hear that difference of really making an audience crack up as opposed to the sort of chuckles that you hear that where they’re helping a comedy be pushed along. And there’s so much play in the room that creates a really beautiful space where people can unfurl with each other and genuinely be with each other. And I think all these layers of trust is also helped by [intimacy coordinator] Carly Bones. My job is just giving them enough material that they can play with to make it happen.

Ben Messmer, Tasha Ames, Jenny Soo – photo by by Grettel Cortes

Jessica: Yeah. You have to have the light to have the shadow, right? For talking about grief, sometimes the best thing to do is to talk about the ridiculousness of life or to have that present in order to actually really feel those things. I think we’ve got a nice balance going. I find it [the play] funny. These three players, they’re all hilarious in their own, very distinct ways. And to give them space to find their funny or to be their funny selves makes them more human. Even the fantastical, possibly mystical character still has got to be based in some kind of reality for us to understand him and to bond with him.

Lisa: I find that laughter, humor, and play are paradigm-shifting and paradigm-breaking. So I’m hoping there is also a deep cognitive experience that happens with the humor. I’m hoping that this play celebrates the wisdom of this. We were talking with one of our actors about how this one character is light because they’ve had to be—they’ve had to cultivate a levity because the world is just so bizarre for them. And I think that there’s a deep beauty in the resilience of humor.

Jessica: I just want to also say that Lisa is very funny, straight up. *laughs* But also, there’s something really gorgeous about Lisa’s work. There are times as an audience member where your breath is taken away by the beauty that’s being brought to life through words, and then all of a sudden it’ll be, like, some left turn. You can’t help but laugh out loud. It knocks you out because the broken expectations are so exciting. That kind of duality is one of the really exciting things about Lisa’s writing.

Carolina: Why this play today, right now?

Lisa: I mean, I just got to play my first lead in [director/playwright] Jen Chang’s play this year, and I’ve been acting for a while. And so to be an Asian American actor who’s been a character actor their whole life and to create a big role for Jenny Soo is an honor, because Jenny Soo’s such a tremendous performer.

Tasha Ames and Jenny Soo – photo by Grettel Cortes

But I think it’s tricky because I don’t really write from that place of, “What does the world need?” I try to metabolize the world in a sincere way, and then write what’s in my heart and then be mindful of it along the way. And thankfully, I don’t have to make the decision whether to produce it or not, or have to be a critic, you know what I mean? The world will tell me if the world needs it, if that makes sense. I think as an artist, one just needs to be really deep in themselves and to try to be honest and as alive as possible, and then make what’s in their heart responding to their moment right now.

Jessica: I think the play also speaks to this place of grief and that processing that we are all in. I talk about theater as being the art form where we can work on, or build the worlds we want to live in, or try things out, or see examples of what we want to push back against in terms of the world around us. And I think watching characters make hard choices that are right for themselves, seeing an Asian American woman make those choices for herself and question and be a human is really important right now. It always is. But I mean, in particular, I think it is now.

Hopefully we continue having more awareness and revelations as a society, but also white people—myself included—are paying attention in a different way. This idea of the Hungry Ghost, which is a cultural phenomenon in many cultures… this idea of something that comes from grief not being taken care of, or not being cared for, and that it comes back at you, or that it haunts you—at least that’s why I’m interpreting it—I think that’s very appropriate for right now. Because the question of, “Are we going to take care of ourselves and our grief in this period of change after massive, massive upheaval and death?” I think is a big question. Are we going to fertilize the ground with our knowledge, or are we going to just try to go on and not deal with what’s been happening around us? That’s a question I think about when working on this play.

Carolina: What has the process been like working with Skylight for their “Her Vision, Her Voice” theme for the 40th anniversary?

Lisa: It’s really great. I really loved working with Skylight. I mean, this is of course playwright-centric, but their notes have been really good. They’ve helped the piece grow, and I felt like they understood what the piece was and gave me a lot of space to figure it out. But I really resonate with a simpatico of artistic vision, in terms of what the possibility of the piece is and where we all think it’s going. I felt like they—Tyree [Marshall] and Gary [Grossman] and Armando [Huipe] and everybody there right now—intuited and grokked what the piece could be when they read it almost a year ago. I’ve been really grateful for that.

And then it also felt, artistically, like an appropriate birth in terms of like trusting the vision. Jess came in with a workshop model that I’d never done before that was really beautiful. Because Jess is the director, she had a vision for this, and I feel like that started us off on a really good fit of trust and respect. And I also wanna say Jess is a really seasoned producer herself, so I think she makes producer’s lives easy. *laughs*

Jess, what do you think?

Jessica: Uh, I don’t know. You’re gonna have to ask Gary about that later this week. *laughs*

But I wanna just echo what Lisa’s saying in terms of the support. There’s been a lot of striving to make dreams come true as much as possible, which has been really kind of extraordinary. They’ve been really, really great about trying to figure things out and give us as much as they can. I love the fact that they’re doing this season, that we’re part of this season. It’s really exciting that they will have brought three new plays to life in a year. And the fact that they’re all plays by women is the extra cherries on top. So yeah, I hope people are inspired by it and see it as something to that they could also do. I hope it’s something that catches on.

The final installment in Skylight’s all femme-penned season, the World Premiere of “Hungry Ghost” by Lisa Sanaye Dring, directed by Jessica Hanna, runs at Skylight Theatre from August 26^th to October 1^st, 2023, with previews on August 19, 20, & 25. For tickets and information, visit https://skylighttheatre.org/event/hungry-ghost/.

Know a female or FPI-friendly theater, company or artist? Contact us at [email protected] & check out The FPI Files for more stories.

Want to hear from more women artists? Make a Tax-Deductible Donation to LAFPI!

The FPI Files: A Solo Show Journey

July 14, 2023Director, Female Artists, playwritingHollywood Fringe Festival, Kyla Garcia, Samantha Bowling, Solo Shows, women directorsLAFPI

We first met Kyla Garcia 2014 as a new “Fringe Femme” when she was gearing up for her Hollywood Fringe Festival show, “The Mermaid Who Learned How to Fly.” If you know Kyla you won’t be surprised that we were immediately smitten – her spirit and generosity envelop you – even before we saw her perform. (And she was amazing).

Of course we’ve kept in touch with her over the years, so were excited to check out the show she directed for this year’s Fringe: Samantha Bowling’s “This Was Never Supposed to Be a One Woman Show: A One Woman Show.” This extraordinary performance was such an unexpected gift. And we reached out to Kyla to talk a bit about her own solo journey and connecting with Samantha, as a collaborator.

Every solo show begins as a primal scream into the void.

by Kyla Garcia

At least, that’s how it started for me…

As artists, we so often have to answer to outside voices and opinions of folks who have no idea what the actual reality of being vulnerable onstage in this way truly means.

For years before I wrote my first solo show, I had agents and managers repeatedly tell me ‘Write a one-woman show! Casting directors and industry people need to see your range!’

I’ve never been able to create from that place, that surface place. So, for years I ignored them.

Until I shared a poem, a poem about the most shameful moment in my life, at a solo show workshop. And when the audience leaned in, I could hear a pin drop. And I thought, ‘oh no…this is the thing I have to write about. This is the thing I have to say.’

So, in 2013 I registered for the Hollywood Fringe with a show that was not even fully written yet. I had no ambitions with this show, my only goal was for ONE person in the audience to hear me and perhaps not make the same mistakes I had in life, perhaps not break their own heart and lose love in such a profound way. If I could get through to one person, putting myself in this vulnerable place and sharing my story, again and again, would be worth it.

I wrote my solo show because I had to; because I needed to say something and the person I wanted to say it to wasn’t there to hear it, so I spoke it out into the void for someone else’s heart to catch the message. It was one of the most terrifying and awe-inducing experiences of my life.

The Hollywood Fringe Festival provided the perfect womb; a loving, supportive, and nurturing environment for my idea to develop in. When it premiered in 2014, my show reached that one person and then some. Performing at the Fringe empowered me as a writer and gave me the courage as an artist to share my own stories; not just the words of others I’d been bringing to life for countless years before that.

I also met some of the most AMAZING humans in LA during that process (like Jennie and the badass women of the LAFPI) and I felt so grateful that I was now a part of this community of indie artists – who were also making art because they had to.

After I shared “The Mermaid Who Learned How to Fly,” I retreated.

The show had been received with so much love – awards, extensions, and most importantly, friendships I would cherish forever. But, I felt like a little crab hiding away in a shell as my art took me to other places and new adventures. I never forgot the courage this experience gave me and the love and support I felt from my community showing up for me the way they did during this time, and I kept showing up for them.

Now, almost 9 years later, I return to the Hollywood Fringe in a more powerful way than I could’ve ever imagined: behind the scenes.

In 2023, I made my directorial debut for one of the bravest stories I’ve ever witnessed: “This Was Never Supposed to be a One Woman Show: A One Woman Show,” written and performed by Samantha Bowling – an actor who everyone in this galaxy will know and remember once they see it.

Sam and I met in 2015, shortly after I had finished my last performance of “Mermaid” at United Solo in NYC. We had just become ensemble members at Native Voices at the Autry (Sam and I are both Indigenous, her people are the Cherokee and mine are the Taíno), so a mutual love of theatre and our Indigenous culture connected us.

She was always someone I admired from afar and wanted to get to know better. But, it wasn’t until a Facebook post in 2018, where Sam shared the tragic news of her best friend’s passing that I felt the strong urge to make a more conscious effort to see her. As someone who has navigated my own mental health journey for a while now, I know when people lose a loved one to suicide, there are very high statistics of the grief taking them too. Time and schedules and life had kept us from ever really having the chance to hang out, but I felt a fire light under me at that moment. I wanted Sam to know she wasn’t alone, and I meant it.

We went to a film festival together and talked in her car for hours. Sam jokingly confessed that I had always seemed so happy on the surface and she didn’t know if we’d get along outside of rehearsal. (She didn’t yet know about my own dark sense of humor.) I confessed that my happiness came from knowing my own dark night of the soul, a place I never wanted to go to again. And from that moment on, our friendship began.

Cut to a few years and a global pandemic later; the fear of Covid-19 had us all in lockdown – I was home in LA and Sam was in Boston living in theatre housing for a show she’d been cast in that ended up getting canceled. We talked on the phone weekly, and felt a deep responsibility to each other, especially to check in on the other’s mental health during the isolation of quarantine.

During that time, she had been working on a one-woman show that was originally supposed to be a comedy duo show performed by Sam and her best friend and creative partner Britt. They were writing it together to make fun of their mental illness and de-stigmatize all that comes with it, but when Britt lost her battle with bipolar disorder, Sam was left grieving her best friend and writing a show that was never meant to be performed alone.

Sam workshopped the show on Zoom for some of our Native Voices peers and I remember being BLOWN AWAY. She would run her ideas by me when we would catch up on the phone and I always felt honored to listen to her stories and process. When she came home to LA from Boston, I watched as she interviewed director after director, always thinking she’d found the right person only to realize she hadn’t.

Now, I am a professional director in the VO world… and I have directed some theatre, but I had never been part of a project of this magnitude; a project with this much personal significance. But at some point in early 2021, a tiny voice whispered that it was me, that I was meant to do this beside Sam, to be her champion. I sheepishly shared this with her afterward and rather than laughing in my face – she embraced me with utter JOY as if she too had wanted this all along, but didn’t want to impose if I didn’t have the time.

We rehearsed in our apartments with only our dogs as our audience; and spent hours going over the script continuing to shape and dramaturg what was, in my eyes – already a masterpiece.

Two years later (after Sam had been diligently developing this piece for FIVE years on her own), we brought it to the Hollywood Fringe stage and I was reminded of my own experience with Mermaid.

Sam’s show was received with pure love and support. Audiences were moved to laughter and tears night after night and finally, she was doing what she had dreamt of for so long! She was sharing her story with the world. We originally presented this piece as a one-off outdoor workshop in a friend’s backyard and now Sam is a Jaxx Cultural Arts Envoy Nominee, Best Solo Performance of Fringe 2023 Nominee and Winner of the Encore Producer’s Award. She has come so far from that first Zoom workshop and it has truly been the privilege of a lifetime to be a microcosmic part of her galactic process.

Sam’s mind is brilliant, she is a nonuple threat: phenomenal singer/songwriter, skilled dancer/guitarist, part-historian/scientist, prolific writer/actress, and a hilarious comedienne. Her story is one that every person on this planet could learn from… it’s a story about survival and the daily triumphs we have over our brain. It’s a story about learning to protect and heal yourself and about how we keep going after the unspeakable impacts our lives. I offer every trigger warning to our audiences: mental illness, suicide, sexual assault… and yet, I am able to confidently say this show is still very much a comedy. Only a mind as magical as Sam’s could find humor in all she has lived through. Only a heart as brave as Sam’s could find the courage to step onto that stage night after night and live through it again in the hopes of getting through to one person who may be struggling right now.

Samantha Bowling rehearsing for the Hollywood Fringe Festival

No one is you and that is your power. For a solo show to truly move hearts and minds, you must tell the story that only you can tell, the one you may not want to share, but the one that is whispering quietly from the depths of your soul – that now is the time for you to tell it.

“Shame dies when our stories are told in safe spaces.” I saw this quote by Dr. James Rouse and it really stuck with me. It reminded me of my own journey and the journey I’ve been on beside Sam. Shame disappears when we tell our stories; when we do the work to heal from them before sharing them – when we keep healing as we voice them.

Sam’s story heals me every time I witness it. For so long, I was the only one witnessing it, but now it has been born into the world and I want everyone else to experience it too.

You have one last chance to see her shine at her Encore performance. I will be there with bells on, probably in the front row. Will you come with me?

The Encore performance of ““This Was Never Supposed to Be a One-Woman Show: A One-Woman Show“ is Thursday, July 20th at 8pm at The Jaxx Theatre. For tickets and information, visit hollywoodfringe.org/projects/6625

Know a female or FPI-friendly theater, company or artist? Contact us at [email protected] & check out The FPI Files for more stories.

Want to hear from more women artists? Make a Tax-Deductible Donation to LAFPI!

The FPI Files: SheLA Arts Celebrates Summer at the Zephyr

July 12, 2023Female Artists, playwriting, ProductionAni Maderosian, Carolina Pilar Xique, Dean Grasbard, female playwrights, Maddie Nguyen, Margaret Owens, Nakisa Aschtiani, Natalie Nicole Dressel, Sarah Bell, Sarahjeen François, SheLA ArtsLAFPI

by Carolina Pilar Xique

After months of winter rain that persisted through June Gloom, I’m ready to get out in the sun and see some theatre! Aren’t you?

This July 11-16 at The Zephyr Theatre, five budding theatrical works by up-and-coming playwrights will be showcased at the SheLA Arts Summer Theater Festival, self-described as the premier festival for new, original, creative works by gender-marginalized playwrights and composers in Los Angeles.

I was able to speak with the wonderful playwrights and directors to give us a sneak peek into their vision, process, and hopes for these plays.

Carolina Pilar Xique (she/her): What compelled each of you to write your piece?

Maddie Nguyen (she/her, playwright of the moon play): I have a friend in college who is Native Hawaiian and was telling me about how Mark Zuckerberg wanted to buy land in Hawaii. My friend was really pissed off about that and told me about this dream he had where Hawaii colonized the Moon. Around that same time, my college friend group was graduating and I was having a hard time dealing with that emotionally – the loss of connection with people is something I’ve always struggled with in my life. I combined the two ideas of going to the moon and connected that with a metaphor of connection with other people, and no longer desiring that connection because it becomes too painful when it ends.

Margaret Owens (she/her, playwright, composer & director of RoseMarie – A Kennedy Life Interrupted): I was suffering from chronic fatigue from myalgic encephalomyelitis severely for about a year and a half, so I was in a wheelchair. I couldn’t do any of my normal daily tasks, so I was like, “What can I do to earn my right to live?” And I thought, “I can write a musical!” I put it out to the universe, and a very strong image came into my mind about the Kennedys, which I didn’t think was a good idea because everyone writes about the Kennedys. My husband mentioned that the family lobotomized this daughter, and I had never heard of that. I did a little research and learned that RoseMarie was the inspiration for the American Disability Act and all the Special Olympics. Since I was in my wheelchair at that time, I was becoming very, very grateful for the street curbs. You know who’s to thank for that? RoseMarie. I was trapped in my body and could do nothing else but write this.

Natalie Nicole Dressel (she/her, playwright of There is Evil in This House): What compelled me to write this piece was going to therapy in my thirties after coming out as transgender and losing touch with my mother, and talking about my experience growing up in a haunted house with my therapist. My therapist recontextualized my entire childhood experience, I had to go back and re-look at everything again. So it’s based on some real feelings I was going through. It was either write this play or keep bothering any halfway-friend Uber driver that I was meeting, because I had stuff to get off my chest.

Sarahjeen François (she/her, playwright & director of Sister, Braid My Hair): George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Elijah McClain. Ahmaud Arbery. All the unarmed deaths that were occurring at the hands of police officers. I was at home in the middle of COVID while all of that was stewing in my mind, and I was angry. But also I was yearning for a laughter and warmth that I wasn’t getting because I was so isolated from my family. I decided to create these sisters who thrive despite this political circumstance, and they have brought me so much comfort and joy. Just being in the presence of Black women is something special and I was craving that.

Nakisa Aschtiani (she/her, playwright of Bismillah, or In the Name of God): Years ago, I was having a conversation with my mom, and she had mentioned that a friend of the family said that if his son were gay, he would kill himself. It stuck with me and years later, I had to write about it because I couldn’t understand how you could say you love someone and say that simultaneously – the duality of that drove me nuts. I put that conversation in the play.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is 035d4b_1f7bec1907f24acab3c3747cfb323d12mv2_d_3000_2400_s_4_2.jpg-1-1024x872.webp — **Maddie Nguyen**

Carolina: What has been the process in bringing these pieces to life?

Sarah Bell (she/her, director of the moon play): What’s particularly wonderful about this piece is Maddie has put in this Vietnamese myth of “The Man on the Moon,” which includes a banyan tree on the moon, giving it an atmosphere. There’s also all this trash that’s in the play. Bringing it to life was actually quite easy because Maddie has created this perfect environment for me to kind of throw whatever I need in it. So it’s been a lot of fun. I’ve been collecting trash from my house for my moon play trash pile.

Margaret: Well, the story was down in my mind, so then I wrote all the songs. I was looking for a book writer, because I didn’t know how to do that, and – long story, short – I ended up writing it myself. It was intimidating because I didn’t know how to write or talk like the 1930s & 1940s. My husband’s a professional writer and he took a stab at writing one scene just to give me an idea. Catching the verbiage of that broke it wide open for me. I started in December of 2011, and I finally had it all written in 2014. A producer I knew did staged readings to raise money to take it to Broadway – that didn’t happen, and then COVID. I started submitting it to places, and SheLA picked it. And it’s this play that led me back to college where I got my degree in playwriting.

Cast of ***RoseMarie – A Kennedy Life Interrupted*** (l to r): Chris Riley, Lilli Babb, Jared Allen Price, Amanda Quigley, Taylor Bass; photo by Wendy Babb

Dean Grasbard (he/him, director of There is Evil in This House): It’s a really emotional piece. We have a loving cast that take care of themselves and each other and are doing a really excellent job of finding the humor in it. The deeper we get into it, the more we’ve been able to have communal healing. This play shows us paths to forgiveness for ourselves and each other. I don’t think any of us expected to walk out of rehearsals and feeling this light and with this sense of relief, which is really powerful. The play is so much funnier and more painful than I think any of us even imagined. It’s a play begging to be seen; it really aches for community and does a good job of creating it.

Sarahjeen: It has been a journey and the journey continues! When I wrote this play, I started thinking about quintessentially Black works of art because they’re a source of comfort, and there’s this one piece that can be found in many Black households. It’s a generational braiding photo with about four Black women seated and are grooming each other. And I wondered, what is the conversation? What’s happening that we can’t see? What if this is the only place where they feel safe? That’s where I birthed the characters and this world. I decided to take a chance on this play. It’s rhythmic in nature and is accompanied by djembe music, and it’s not something I’ve ever experienced in theatre.

Ani Maderosian (she/her, director of Bismillah, or In the Name of God): The dream for every director is to see things finally come to life, in the flesh. I did a radio play version of this [play] about two years ago. At that time, we needed that rendition, and it was creatively fulfilling and wonderful, but I sat there and thought, “Oh, God, this would be so great if we could get this on stage with people who can connect with it on such a deep and personal level and bring it to the community.” So it’s exciting. My process includes blocking organically, so a lot of the creative work is on the actors in following their own instincts and bringing out their own truth. Being able to work with this unique set of talented actors and tell this story from their perspective is my joy.

Rehearsing ***Bismillah, or In the Name of God*** (l to r): Aneela Qureshi, Saalika Khan, Sameer Khan; photo by Ani Marderosian

Carolina: Is there anything the audience should know before seeing your piece?

Maddie: There’s heavy language. It’s not recommended for children.

Margaret: Maybe bring tissue. Trigger warnings would be that there’s simulated surgery and there is a little violence, domestic quarrels. The play does mention the timely usage of neurodivergent terms of the 1930s and 40s.

Natalie: There are pop culture references, but I think I do a good job of taking people by the hand so you don’t have to know them to know what it means to the main character. And it [the play] won’t be in order, but I promise I will reorient you as to what’s going on.

Sarahjeen: They should know that this is an invitation – they’re being invited to a space that is sacred for these sisters. And to be prepared to go on a journey with these bombastic sisters who take risks and live life.

***Sister, Braid My Hair*** (l to r): Brittney McClendon, M. Bluette, Antonia LaChe, and Yesenia Ozuna; photo by SheATL Arts

Ani: I love this play so much because it encapsulates what we as artists do in this industry. I think we both agree that we have a civic duty to the public to tell stories and this story will educate, instill empathy, and the hope is that it will get people talking and create a little bit of change when they leave the theater.

Carolina: What would you like audiences to take away after the performances?

Sarah: Something I’ve been talking a lot about with Maddie & the cast is what qualifies or even quantifies a friendship? How do we define relationships that can feel fleeting or deep, lasting, and meaningful – is it the time that we’ve known someone or is it how deep our knowledge of them runs? I guess I want audiences to be more open to that definition.

Margaret: People may know of Teddy, and of Eunice, and they certainly know of Jack, but they don’t know all the work they did because of RoseMarie. We’re lucky that she came into this family that had so much power and money. By being in that family, she changed the world because rights for people with disabilities are better because of the Kennedys.

Dean: I want people to walk away with the feeling of complexity, and the acceptance around complexity. Because nobody is just good or bad. And I want people to walk away knowing they have options. There is no one way to deal with trauma or to reconcile with yourself or your family. That is something to exquisite that I so rarely see – the idea that there is no lesson other than figuring out what’s right for you and holding that complexity tenderly.

Rehearsing ***There is Evil in This House*** (l to r): Dana DeRuyck, HRH Marian Gonzalez, Kit Sheehan

Sarahjeen: I want them to feel the absolute joy amongst these Black women. Second, I want them to go home and do a little bit of research after seeing the play. And the last thing is I want them to make space for grace as it comes to the complexities of being a woman of color in America.

Nakisa: Fundamentally, we’re all the same. We have stories to tell. When we were casting, it was important for us to cast people of color – Middle Eastern actors. Even though we can take this story and put another family into it or imagine people that you know who are like these characters, we’re fundamentally the same and we come from the same stock. And we all have stories to tell.

Carolina: Is there any other play in the Festival you’re particularly excited to see?

Maddie: I really want to see Sister, Braid My Hair. Every time I see the title, it just strikes me. The description, portrait, and title feel very intimate so I think that’s the one I’m most excited for.

Sarah: I got to talk to most of the production members of There is Evil in This House. Talking to the dramaturg, I asked her what her favorite part is about that piece and she said how healing and transformative it is as a witness and as someone who is working on it. So I want to see that one for sure.

Margaret: I would love to see them all. I like the idea of Sister, Braid My Hair.

Natalie: I spent a great deal of time talking with Sarah [the director of the moon play], and I’m fascinated. It sounds like a fairytale book come to life and if that’s not a good time at the theatre, I don’t know what is.

Rehearsing **the moon play** (l to r): Kate Vu, Natasha Kong; photo by Sarah Liz Bell

Dean: I’m excited for Bismillah, or In the Name of God. I’m really glad we have representation of queer stories of color in this festival. I know Nakisa and I haven’t seen her work before so I’m really excited.

Sarahjeen: I’m really excited to see all of them, but Bismillah is snatching my soul with interest. But I really want to see them all, and I’m going to, so it’s going to be tasty.

Nakisa: One of my friends was saying that RoseMarie is absolutely phenomenal and will probably go very far.

Ani: The great thing about this festival is that it’s always vastly different stories, genre, and styles, so I’d like to see all of them!

For more tickets and information on the five plays – and playwrights – featured in the 2023 SheLA Arts Summer Theater Festival July 11-16 at the Zephyr Theatre, visit shenycarts.org/she-la.

Know a female or FPI-friendly theater, company or artist? Contact us at [email protected] & check out The FPI Files for more stories.

Want to hear from more women artists? Make a Tax-Deductible Donation to LAFPI!

The FPI Files: No Place Like the Past, Present & Future

May 25, 2023Director, Female Artists, playwriting, Production10th Century, Alma Reyes-Thomas, Carolina Pilar Xique, Catholocism, Charrell Mack, Elizabeth Dement, female directors, female playwrights, Gary Grossman, Germany, Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, Jamey Hood, Lauren Gaw, Me Too, Randee Trabitz, Shannon Barondeau, Shannon Holt, Skylight TheatreLAFPI

by Carolina Pilar Xique

On November 7^th, 2020, I was at a Starbucks in Long Beach, on my way to my mom’s house, when I scrolled through Facebook and saw that Kamala Harris would become the next Vice President of the United States.

The only way I can describe that moment was that it was similar to the first time I saw snow at 20-years-old: shocking, like my brain was taking its sweet time processing something I’ve never seen before.

It wasn’t until 3 hours later, when I watched on my mom’s television our incoming Vice President, that my shock turned into tears down my cheeks, joined with a choked sigh. Because despite my issues with her previous stances & policies, and despite enduring another presidential election in which I felt I was choosing “the lesser of two evils,” a woman, who looked just like me, was going to be the Vice President of the United States.

That day, I believed I was fortunate enough to be witnessing a steppingstone that would change the world for the better.

But how much has really changed?

Since President Biden & Vice President Harris have taken office, the Supreme Court has voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, countless laws have gone into effect throughout the nation that restrict women’s access to healthcare, birth control and abortions, and today, states like Florida are banning books in children’s libraries with subjects related to “wokeness” (whatever that means), including important historical figures throughout history who do not fit the white, male, cisgender narrative.

Being a woman, these days can often feel like one step forward, 50-years-worth-of-steps back; a losing chess game.

But those special moments—moments like seeing Kamala Harris, our first Black-Indian female Vice President, on screen right before our eyes—these are the moments that inspire us to dream of a bigger and better world, moments that are meant to propel us into action. We have a responsibility to keep that momentum going, even when it feels like we’ve fallen behind.

That’s what Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, a nun in 10^th century Germany, invites the audience to consider in Elizabeth Dement’s No Place like Gandersheim.

In the second interview I’ve had the pleasure of doing with Skylight Theatre’s 40^th season theatre-makers, I got to sit down with playwright Elizabeth Dement and director Randee Trabitz, to talk time traveling, Catholicism & the film industry, 10th century Germany and women’s rights.

Carolina Pilar Xique: I would love to hear more about the inspiration from this play and who the real “Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim” was. What elements of her life are embedded in this piece?

Elizabeth Demet: The play came out of my experience as a writer, because the play is about a female writer—the first female playwright, who was Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim.

Oftentimes, writers—women writers in particular—get notes that seem to take them farther away from what they initially intended to write, especially in Hollywood. And I was wondering, “How far back does this go?” So I started to look and I landed in 10^th century Germany in this abbey with Hrotsvitha. I discovered she was a nun who wrote a sex comedy and I thought, “This is a woman I have to write about.” That’s where I started—in the abbey.

I will say that the play is not historically accurate—it is a comedy, a reimagining of Hrotsvitha’s life, or a life she might have had in a parallel universe. There are certain elements that are accurate: she did live in the abbey, she was a canonist, and she did adapt a play by Terrence, a Roman playwright, and it was a sex comedy. She adapted it to be more of a religious piece, and she was very close friends with the Abbess. They had an intensely loving friendship, and so that character is also in the play. At the time, Otto was the Holy Roman Emperor, his niece was the Mother Superior at Gandersheim, and his wife was Theophanu, who is a wonderful character in the play. I think that’s all the parts that are historically accurate—with everything else, I took a lot of liberties. I had to sort of infer what people’s personalities might have been and what their desires were. And there’s a little time travel in the play, so I don’t think that happened in the 10^th century. But who knows?

Randee Trabitz: We’re not sure.

Elizabeth: I didn’t find any in my research.

Carolina: In reading about the production, we could feel your enthusiasm for staging the time travelling that happens in the play. What has that process been like?

Randee: It’s quite a thing—apparently time travel isn’t as easy as I thought. (laughs) It’s been a challenge and it’s been kind of a delicious, creative one. Beth [Elizabeth] has this tendency to write elements into her plays which are like crack for directors. Like, “I don’t know how to do that, but I can’t stop thinking about it.” And time travel is definitely one of those things. I don’t want to give too much away, but there are a few different elements. We’re working with our lead actress, Jamey Hood, who is playing Hrotsvitha and is an extraordinary performer, so capable of many things physically, emotionally, and temperamentally. We’re working with her, our videographer, Shannon Barondeau, and our sound designer, Alma Reyes-Thomas, as well as the rest of the cast who are kind of swirling around the elements to make it possible to happen since Jamey never leaves the stage. So she time travels and stays exactly where she was.

Carolina: There are a lot of parallels between Catholicism & the Theatre/Film Industry being male-controlled spaces. What has that exploration been like? Have there been any surprises in their similarities or differences?

Randee: Even though the play is under 90 minutes, it’s still structurally broken up into 3 acts and 3 places. And we keep discovering more ways that the play refers to itself and we’ve also put in some placeholders in one time period that then refer back to another. I love when there’s something planted early that then we can mine and it comes into fruition sometime later in the play. I think it’s delicious for close-watchers in the audience to start to put those pieces together. We’ve had two very different audiences so far—one that just laughed and laughed, and one that was just very quiet, paying attention, and piecing everything together, and it kind of works on both of those levels.

Shannon Holt and Jamey Hood – photo by Jenny Graham

Elizabeth: The other thing I’ve found in rehearsals is that the play talks about—without explicitly talking about—where these people stand in history at that moment; different eras of history. I find that really interesting and it goes in tandem with what Randee was talking about. Each act talks to the other acts: this is where we were, this is where we are, this is where we’re going; and this is how things changed, and this is how nothing has changed. So there have been lots of discoveries. I knew there was some of that when I wrote it but, of course, you get in the room, and you have these amazing actors and director, and they make all of these discoveries, and when you see it up on its feet, you can physically see the resonance of each time period.

Randee: This has been a long time coming. The play was set to go forward just as the pandemic began; the world has already shifted since then and the play has shifted in response to it, which I think is amazing. There’s a whole other dimension to it now. Ultimately, the way women are placed in the world and the way their voices are listened to is a story as old as time and it’s one that keeps spiraling. In the time-traveling, we’ve been talking a lot about spirals which seems appropriate.

Carolina: How has it changed since the pandemic?

Elizabeth: When I was writing this, Me Too was happening and it’s a component of the piece. And now, Me Too is still very important but it’s not as hot & present an issue as it was in 2017, when there was this cascade of awareness of what women have been going through since the beginning of time. When I wrote the play, that period in the script said, “Present Day” and now I have to put “2017″ or “2018.”

Lauren Gaw, Jamey Hood and Shannon Holt – photo by Jenny Graham

Randee: That’s the part I find really compelling: We’re looking at piece that is now in the past and we’re assuming that we’re post-Me Too but the reality is we’ve just lost interest in talking about it. Something else has supplanted it on the front page but all of those same issues of representation and women’s voices are still problematic. Like Black Lives Matter, we had this swell of interest, but nothing has been fixed. It’s not over, and we’re not progressing beyond that. That’s how the timing has been particularly profound to me.

Elizabeth: It reminds me of a documentary called, “This Changes Everything”—which if you haven’t seen, you should see. It’s fantastic. Basically, they talk a lot about these moments, particularly in movies like Thelma & Louise, where there was all this press saying, “Well this changes everything for women. Now, it’s going to be different.” And not that we haven’t made any progress over the last decades, but we haven’t yet had that moment that changed everything on a level that I think we all crave. In the play, the characters are in time periods where they think it’s that moment when everything is going to change or is changing, and the main character is very obsessed with making change in the world.

Lauren Gaw, Shannon Holt, Charrell Mack and Jamey Hood – photo by Jenny Graham

Carolina: What has it been like working on this uniquely feminist play with an all-female creative & production team?

Randee: I’ll just out myself and say I’ve never been in that kind of room with all women. It’s quite extraordinary. It’s a new experience on so many levels. There’s a lot of grace, a lot of listening, support, and nobody every raises their voice in anger. It’s not something we have to think about or deal with, which is kind of great. The thing about being my age is that I don’t want to be in this work unless I’m having a good time. And I am having a great time in the room. It’s very pleasant

Elizabeth: From the moment I wrote the play, I wanted this to be all-women, including, ideally, the entire creative team. I didn’t know if people would go along with that request but Skylight & Randee were great to make it happen. When we had our first readthrough… you walk in the room and you go, “Oh my God! It happened!” It’s ephemeral, it’s like alchemical. There’s a vibe in the room that’s just different, and it’s lovely. We have a blast and we make each other laugh. I said to someone else, “There’s never a line for the bathroom because we can use the men and ladies’ rooms in rehearsals.”

Charrell Mack and Jamey Hood – photo by Jenny Graham

Carolina: What do you want audiences to take away after they’ve seen this play?

Elizabeth: I’d love it if people walked away thinking about the play and about history and women and feminism. One of the key messages in the play is that we’ve the same problems for centuries: What’s going to happen in the future? Will there ever be a moment of severe change? I don’t want to say we’re in the exact same spot women were in the 10^th century, but we haven’t made as much progress as we would have liked to. And the other part of it is the really human part—there’s a huge discussion about mortality and legacy. What are you leaving behind? What is truly important to you? Those questions come up for the main character and I’m hoping people will be moved by how she responds to them.

Randee: For the longest time, I’ve been aiming at Beth’s reaction to the play when we first did the reading in her living room. We all laughed and laughed and laughed and I looked over at Beth and she was weeping. I want the audience to laugh and enjoy and fall in love with these characters and then, at the end, just burst into tears.

The play speaks to me very profoundly as a creative person and what it is to be an artist—to take it seriously and at what cost? I’m one of the few mothers in the room, and one of my assistants is a young mother of two. I know that it is of great cost to her and her children to be in rehearsal, and I certainly remember those days. It’s a different payment for women than men. That decision to pursue what you care about the most feels like a privilege. So the play definitely speaks to that strongly and loudly. Even with the one man in our room, Gary Grossman, we’ve had this conversation about what it means to still be making theatre at an age when you could have just retired and gone to the beach. That’s the part that makes me cry at the end.

The second play in Skylight’s all femme-penned season, the World Premiere of “No Place Like Gandersheim” by Elizabeth Dement, directed by Randee Trabitz, runs at Skylight Theatre through June 25, 2023. For tickets and information, visit skylighttheatre.org/event/no-place-like-gandersheim/.

Know a female or FPI-friendly theater, company or artist? Contact us at [email protected] & check out The FPI Files for more stories.

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The FPI Files: Fight Choreographer Jen Albert on Women With Rage

April 25, 2023Female Artists, Interview, ProductionAllegra rodriguez Shivers, Battlesong of Boudica, Christopher William Johnson, Elana Luo, Fight Choreography, Iron Age, Jen Albert, Jesse James Thomas, School of Night, Violence Onstage, Women's RageLAFPI

by Elana Luo

Perhaps it’s been too long since LA theatre has seen a good bloody fight to the death on stage.

School of Night remedies that with “Battlesong of Boudica”, an “epic revenge tragedy” based on the real-life Iceni Warrior Chief Boudica’s uprising against the Roman empire in 61AD. Multi-hyphenate Jen Albert produces, fight choreographs, and stars as the queen herself. Onstage, Jen as Boudica slashes, stabs, and beheads her way through one epic battle after another. Offstage, we chatted a bit about her work as a fight choreographer, being a woman with rage, and stage fighting as catharsis.

Elana Luo: How did you get into fight choreography?

Jen Albert: I went to school in Chicago, I went to Columbia College [for acting]. One of the classes on offer was stage combat, and I immediately knew I wanted to take that . I loved it, and every semester I just kept taking more and more classes and weapons : ‘Now I’ve learned swords, okay, now I’ve learned quarterstaff, okay, now I’ve learned shield.’ I just kept going.

Elana: Why did you want to take that class in the first place?

Jen: I think just as part of being an actor. You watch movies, you watch plays, you see all these actors doing these cool cool stunts and things, and you’re like, ‘I wanna do that.’ And I also think at that time I was an angry person, and I liked to hit things. I think the opportunity to hit things and create a cool fight sequence was just a way to get my rage out.

Jen Albert – photo by Shandon Photography

Elana: I feel like the stereotype is that men are the ones who are angry, or it’s mostly men who want to fight. Do you work with a lot of women who are also full of rage, or this fighting drive?

Jen: Yeah. I don’t know that people see how much rage women actually have. I’m surrounded by women who have rage, for a multitude of reasons. It’s not over being less equal than other folks, it’s the violence. I’m certainly tired of being scared all the time or worried about my life because somebody’s just going to be angry and do something to me. Just in general, you know, we all have rage. The idea that women don’t have rage is silly. I know a lot of very, very, angry women.

Elana: Does the character of Boudica have any special significance to you?

Jen: There’s a scene in the beginning of the play where she’s sort of beating her daughter a little bit. When I read that, I was like, ooh, that’s a lot. And Chris [longtime collaborator Christopher William Johnson, Battlesong of Boudica writer and director] was like, ‘Well, I kind of wrote it to be a bit like your mother.’ And not that my mother was abusive, but she didn’t know any better. That’s how she disciplined. Back in the 80s and 90s, that was not weird, that was standard. And [in the play] it’s 61AD. There was no line about what’s abusive and what’s not. There’s no line about animal sacrifice. These are humans at the beginning of time, doing what they do with what they know how to do.

Elana: So that initial response of ‘oh, I don’t know about that,’ was that modern-day you thinking?

Jen: That was me being the actor going, ‘people are not going to like her.’ And on top of that, later in the play, she burns down entire towns of civilians. She’s not actually a nice person. And so I don’t think we really knew how people were going to receive that.

Allegra Rodriguez Shivers and Jen Albert in “Battlesong of Boudica” – photo by Jessica Sherman

Elana: When you were playing her, did you feel unlikeable? Did you want people to root for her?

Jen: Honestly, after I read it and started playing it, I didn’t really think about it, nor did I care. I’m playing a human being going through whatever she’s going through, it doesn’t really matter what anybody thinks about it. And if they don’t like her, great! And I think it makes for more interesting drama if we’re [having] feelings about the character. Yes, she’s in the right, but also… not.

Elana: She’s complex!

Jen: I used to… I still get a little irritated when people are like, ‘You’re playing a strong female character.’ I don’t want to play a strong female character. I want to play a complex character. I don’t need her to be strong. Women are not always strong. We get to give in to our vices. We get to be bad. We get to be evil. You know, like, we’re not saints and I don’t want to play a saint. I want to play somebody who’s complicated. She’s not perfect. She’s so not. She gets bloodthirsty!

What do you see as the importance of showing violence on the stage?

I think in our normal lives we don’t normally get to react with violence. And so I think that [the] stage is sort of an outlet for that. I think theater in general is an outlet for feelings and emotions or thoughts, situations that we don’t normally get to have or be a part of. So I think that translates to stage combat as well. It’s just like watching an action movie. We all want to be able to do that or participate in that. It gets our adrenaline going, it gets us excited.

It’s just like musical theater. When the emotions get to be too much, you sing. So when the emotions get to be too much, you are violent. And I always say that an actor has to have a reason to fight. So if it’s executed well, then it supports the emotional context of the show. It’s telling the story as it should be told.

What were your goals with choreographing the fights on this show?

Jen Albert as Boudica fights Jesse James Thomas as Camulos – photo by Jessica Sherman

Jen: My goal is always to tell the story. What is the story, what are we trying to say with it? Like with the fight with Camulos [one of Boudica’s many enemies, played by Jesse James Thomas], my goal was to build tension. What I really wanted out of that was for her to make him angry, because that’s her strategy. If he’s angry, he’s gonna be off balance. And Jesse and I talked about this, because we worked on this fight together. And he [as Camulos] plays up the anger of it. Then I [as Boudica] can calm down and go, ‘Okay, great. Now you’re now you’re going to do something stupid.’ So each fight has its own sort of story.

Go see Jen destroy the need to be well-liked, as well as a respectable chunk of the Roman Empire, in School of Night’s Battlesong of Boudica at The Hudson Backstage, running for one more weekend, April 28-30. Click Here for Tickets. For more information about School of Night and what the company is up to next, visit schoolofnight.org.

Know a female or FPI-friendly theater, company or artist? Contact us at [email protected] & check out The FPI Files for more stories.

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The FPI Files: Talking a “Blue” Streak With June Carryl

April 22, 2023Female Artists, ProductionBrian Otano, Echo Theater Company, female playwrights, Hannah Wolf, January 6th Insurrection, John Colella, Julanne Chidi Hill, June Carryl, Kat Vondy, LAPD, Michael Matthews, playwriting, Rogue Machine Theatre, Ryan Bergmann, The VagrancyLAFPI

by Katherin e Vondy

I first got to know June and her writing as we were working on new plays together as part of The Vagrancy’s 2020-2021 Writers’ Group (though she had been involved with several Vagrancy productions before joining the Writers’ Group). Reading her pages that year, I was continually struck by her ability to write dialogue that felt wholly grounded and natural while placing her characters in situations that allowed their words to transcend the scenes, thereby always speaking to larger issues and ideas. “Blue”—June’s engrossing two-hander currently playing at Rogue Machine’s Henry Murray Stage—is a perfect example of this skill. With an knack for stripping down the many layers of personal identity while exposing the underbelly of national identity, “Blue” is a unique theatrical production that gives audience members the experience of peering behind the closed doors of the LAPD—with a few revelations about human nature along the way.

Kat Vondy: When we were writing plays together as part of The Vagrancy’s Writers’ Group, there was a very specific structure and schedule involved with the plays we developed there, with new pages due every two weeks over a period of seven months and a few workshops along the way. How does that compare to your writing process in general, and for Blue in particular? Do you tend to dash out a full draft over a weekend, spread the writing out over a longer period of time, or does it depend on the project?

June Carryl: The structure at Echo Lab where I had the chance to write Blue was a meeting once a week with two moderators, the incredible Hannah Wolf and Brian Otano. There were nine of us and we shared a few pages from one play. We’d sign up and had six-to eight weeks to develop pages. My process is kinda all over the place, honestly, depending on the play. I’ve started working with a character biography (who the main players are, especially the protagonist, what they want versus what they need, what their wounds are) and then just fly by the seat of my pants. With Blue I knew the first scene right away and so had to go back to do the character outline. It evolved over time as I was pointed to the need for a deeper relationship between Parker and Sully by the two wonderful directors who shepherded the workshops and a reading down at Curtis Theater, Michael Matthews and Ryan Bergmann.

KV: In addition to being a playwright, you’re also an accomplished director and actor. How do your experiences in those areas inform your writing?

JC: I’m always learning a little more about storytelling from doing the other two things. Character development and how language fits (or doesn’t) in an actor’s mouth, clarity of intention all come from acting while focusing action even if I’m not always clear about why consciously something is happening I get from directing. It’s really fun. I’m really always learning.

KV: In Rogue Machine’s production of Blue, the theatrical space is so intimate and immersive that it’s easy for the audience to suspend their disbelief and forget they’re watching a performance; the audience has the experience of being a fly on the wall of an actual interrogation. This sense is heightened because the play is one unbroken scene that plays out in real time. Did you always conceive of Blue in this way, or were there earlier iterations of the play that had scene breaks and dealt with the passage of time differently?

JC: Credit Michael Matthews, my amazing director, with how that space came to be and Rogue Machine just ran with it. I’m so grateful he said yes. The play has never had scene breaks and was always conceived of as happening in a single scene in real time.

John Colella and Julanne Chidi Hill in *Blue*; photo by Jeff Lorch

KV: In some ways, Blue feels like a companion piece to the remount of Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 that was just at the Mark Taper Forum. Both productions highlight the fact that police violence against people of color continues to plague our country: Twilight by recounting a piece of history from over thirty years ago, and Blue by telling a contemporary story that incorporates recent national events. The shows bring into focus a pattern of racism that has not changed in the decades between the 1992 LA Uprising and today.

While thinking about Blue, I was struck by the way that the conversation between LaRhonda and Sully keeps circling back to the same concepts; both characters repeatedly return to certain topics in efforts to continually angle for different responses.

To me, there’s a way in which the structure of Blue echoes the structure of our history: being stuck in a pattern that we can’t (or won’t) break free of. You also explored the theme of patterns in the play you wrote for The Vagrancy, N*gga B*tch. How do you think about patterns and repetition in a storytelling context? What do you think audiences can learn by examining patterns and repetition?

JC: There’s this tick in American culture where we broach a place of change, a watershed moment, and rather than breaking through, we revert to nostalgia and a looking back, usually to the 50s. It’s incredibly annoying. Not that change doesn’t happen. It does, but we are constantly on repeat. The hope is that in the story the characters are initially locked in a repetition, look at the thing in question from one angle, then another, then still another and that the audience recognizes its own patterns and breaks that pattern because to repeat it once more is to remain in stasis, to fail. I never really thought out loud why I do it. It’s kind of an obsession.

KV: We were scheduled to have a Vagrancy Writers’ Group meeting on January 6, 2021—the day of the Capitol Insurrection—and I remember wondering whether it was even possible to access a creative frame of mind given what was happening in DC. The situation was leaving so many people distraught and stunned that it was difficult to focus on anything else. In Blue, the Capitol Insurrection comes to have a particular significance as we get deeper into the story; as such, it feels as if you were able to transform something that was initially a creative barrier into part of your creative work. Struggling to make art while grappling with the weight of disturbing world events is an issue that I think many creative people contend with. Do you have strategies that help you navigate this challenge?

Julanne Chidi Hill and John Colella; photo by Jeff Lorch

JC: Writing itself is my strategy. I journal every day now, have for a long while. It’s this info dump. Whatever obsession or gripe I’m grappling with I just download for three pages. It just really helps. And the great thing about writing plays is that you can break things down and look at them, at what you think, at what is and isn’t true, and you can decide what your reaction is; so you’re not just feeling helpless or enraged. You can engage. It’s really therapeutic.

KV: Do you have a specific audience member (or members) in mind when you write?

JC: I don’t quite know what that means. I kinda write to talk to anyone who’ll listen. One of the most gratifying things anyone has ever said to me is that I said something in the play that they were feeling and didn’t have the words for. That makes all the stress and self-judgment worth it.

KV: Is there anyone (dead or alive, real or fictional) you’d like to share your work with who hasn’t yet had the opportunity to see or read it?

JC: I wish my mom were alive to see my work. I was supposed to be a lawyer and have tooootally gotten away from that and quite happily. She was always proud of me—I found out she wanted my brother, sister, and me to be happy whatever we chose to do with our lives. I was the quiet one. t would be amazing if she could see how I turned out.

KV: What are you reading/watching right now? Any recommendations for books or shows (on film or stage) that we shouldn’t miss?

JC: I have The Amazing World of Gumball seasons 1 through 3 on repeat. It’s on Hulu. It’s a cartoon about a blue cat, his adopted brother, a goldfish, his sister who is a pink bunny like his dad and his mom who is also a blue cat. Before they decided to make him jaded in season four it was just this hilarious look at 7th graders—just in that in-between place of still being kids and having to contend with he world with kid logic. The first three seasons are incredible and hilarious.

I’m also reading Wilson Harris—slowly. He was a Guyanese author (I’m Guyanese on my mom’s side), utterly brilliant, totally over my head and absolutely worth it, I think, though half the time I literally no idea what he’s talking about. I’m also getting ready to read The Emperor’s Babe by Bernadine Evaristo.

KV: What are your hopes for the future of theater in LA? What would you like to hold onto, and what would you like to change?

JC: I really want theater to make good on the last two years of promising to share the stage with people of color. Workshops are great, genuinely great and a gift; but to see that gift translate into actual PRODUCTIONS rather than just throwing dollars at us and bailing when it comes to sustained support and full production is paramount. What I loved about getting to work with the Vagrancy is that dedication is there. The point is to put the plays up, to support getting the plays up elsewhere when y’all can’t do it yourselves. More theaters like Vagrancy. That’s my hope for the future of LA Theater.

June Carryl’s “Blue” is now playing through Sunday, May 14th at Rogue Machine’s Henry Murray Stage. Tickets are available here. The Vagrancy will present Blossoming 2023, featuring new works by LA playwrights Jennifer Bobiwash, Natalie Camuñas, Anna Fox, and Katherine Vondy, from May 19-23; check out The Vagrancy’s website next month for more info.

Know a female or FPI-friendly theater, company or artist? Contact us at [email protected] & check out The FPI Files for more stories.

Want to hear from more women artists? Make a Tax-Deductible Donation to LAFPI!

The FPI Files: Out There in a Familiar Place – “Do You Feel Anger” at Circle X

February 20, 2023Director, Female Artists, playwritingCasey Smith, Circle X Theatre, Elana Luo, female playwrights, FPI Files, Halena Kays, LAThtr, Los Angeles, Mara Nelson-Greenberg, Napoleon Tavale, Office Empathy, Paula Rebeldo, Rich Liccardo, Tasha Ames, women directors, women playwrightsLAFPI

by Elana Luo

Right from the first unsettling anecdote about a boyfriend who’s a serial killer, Mara Nelson-Greenberg’s Do You Feel Anger grabs you by the throat. Or ear. The play itself hounds an empathy coach who is assigned to teach at a debt collection agency, where the two sole emotions that the male employees can name are hunger and “horn” (horniness). Meanwhile, the only woman at the agency scampers around furtively, terrified of her male colleagues. As the training ekes along, one might begin to wonder exactly how much compassion there is to go around, not only in the office.

*Tasha Ames, Casey Smith, Napoleon Tavale,* *Rich Liccardo and Paula Rebelo* *in “Do You Feel Anger”* – *Photo by Jeff Lorch*

The play upsets the typical office drama in favor of dollop after dollop of absurdism. As a director, I figured the key to putting together this piece would be to gather a cast and crew willing to go as far as Nelson-Greenberg’s extremes. Some people say 80-90% of directing is casting, and I imagine that this play was no exception.

*Director Halena Kays*
*Photo by Joseph Richard Mazza*

I spoke with Director Halena Kays, who confirmed that casting and collaboration were indeed key to putting the production together. Many of the characters are challenging and incredibly outré, demanding their actors to do and say outlandish things with nonchalance and whip-sharp comedic timing. The cast uniformly rises to the task, which I suspect is the result of dozens of rehearsals of exploring just how far one must push to meet a character (and at times in this play, caricature).

Kays saw the world premiere at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in 2018, and experiencing the play for the first time, she was impressed with Nelson-Greenberg’s bravery in writing about a difficult issue and managing to turn it into a comedy. Kays tells me that during rehearsals, the cast somehow managed to find humanity and complexity in the monstrous characters, creating a beautiful, deeply unfunny play that left the realm of comedy. So, they pulled back. But going so far may have helped them understand where those characters stood as antagonists, resulting in the ridiculous but dangerous performances of the final production.

*Casey Smith, Paula Rebelo,* *Napoleon Tavale and Rich Liccardo*
*Photo by Jeff Lorch*

This story is one that could work no where else other than the stage, as the audience leans forward and recoils as the stage crackles with danger and surprises. You know how every sentence will end…exactly none of the time. The seemingly simple office setting turns into a flaming, molding brawling ground—or breeding ground. Who knows the difference? Certainly not these debt collectors.

I laughed, nervously and delightedly, throughout, and positively cried at the end. Go see this if you have a beating heart. And when it’s through, perhaps you too will feel a little angered, or saddened, or entertained, or hungry.

“Do You Feel Anger” runs through February 25 at Circle X Theatre. For tickets and information, visit circlextheatre.org

Know a female or FPI-friendly theater, company or artist? Contact us at [email protected] & check out The FPI Files for more stories.

Want to hear from more women artists? Make a Tax-Deductible Donation to LAFPI!

Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non‐profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of LAFPI must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax‐deductible to the extent permitted by law.

The FPI Files: We Have Space – “Desert Stories for Lost Girls”

September 22, 2022Female Artists, playwritingCarolina Pilar Xique, Carolina Xique, Desert Stories for Lost Girls, female playwrights, Genízaro, Indigenous People, LATC, LAThtr, Latino Theater Company, Lily Rushing, Los Angeles, Native Americans, Native Voices at the Autry, Slavery, Sylvia Cervantes Blush, women directors, women playwrightsLAFPI

by Carolina Pilar Xique

What are you going to do with this piece of history now that you know it?

Do you remember sitting in history class? I do. I’m not certain if all artists feel this way, but I loved history class. There was something about the storytelling, the backtracking of tales and social movements that directly affected how the world operates today that felt almost like a responsibility to know, retell, and learn from as a human moving through on planet. Although I don’t consider myself a history buff by any means, there are those stories that stuck with me—some obscure and random, some retold again and again, sticking to the sides of my brain like Papier-mâché. I can tell you about The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in the Industrial era and how that event sparked momentous conversations about child labor laws; I can tell you about the Atlantic slave trade in detail, not because of history class, but because I would take my history homework to my sister, who told me all about how Columbus first stopped in the Caribbean islands of Jamaica and Cuba, where my father’s family was from. Because of yearslong lessons about the American Revolution (and the help of the hit Broadway musical, Hamilton), I can explain in detail what led to the American Revolution, how the British forces lost, and the principles on which this country was “founded.”

Who is there to tell the stories of lost history? And when we learn that lost history of a nearly-forgotten peoples, what do we do with it?

This is the question Sylvia Cervantes Blush, director of Desert Stories for Lost Girls, wants the audience to leave with. In this world-premiere play by Lily Rushing, 18-year-old Carrie is thrown into a world of memories and stories of her ancestors as she learns the history of her people, the Genízaro, a tribeless tribe of Native American slaves who deserve to have their stories told.

I got to sit down with the Lily and Sylvia to get a taste of what we can expect to see in Desert Stories for Lost Girls before its debut.

Carolina Pilar Xique for LAFPI: Having the piece produced through Native Voices at the Autry is huge, especially because the company is the only Actor’s Equity theatre company in the country dedicated to developing Native works. What has the experience been like getting to produce this show with a company that’s committed to that mission? And how has their partnership with Latino Theater Company affected that experience?

Lily Rushing: Everything with them [Native Voices] is so Native-centered in an incredible way that, as a native playwright telling a native story, it’s such a relief, you know? You don’t have to educate anyone, you don’t have to explain anything to anyone, or feel like you’re entering weird, emotional territory because everyone in the room is like, “Good, got it. Let’s do the work.” It feels like a step forward.

*Director Sylvia Cervantes Blush*
*Photo by Jean Carlo Yunen Arostegui*

Sylvia Cervantes Blush: I’m not Native. Soy Latina. And when they [Native Voices] reached out to me, I did an interview and some of my first questions and concerns were, “Am I the right person to help bring this story to life?” Because I don’t have that lived experience. The most in-tune person can still make some really poor choices or not know how to help the process, so that was at the forefront of my mind. But they were so incredibly inviting and immediately transparent. To know that this collaboration between Native Voices and Latino Theater Company was happening, it felt like a way to open audiences to the work that they are both doing, together and separately. Latino Theater Company are such a mighty engine of a small army of people that get stuff done and I’ve yet to hear a “no”—I’ve just seen solutions. We started rehearsals on the actual set, in the theater. Not only in the space, but with a built set. That’s not your typical experience. It speaks to the level of support Latino Theater Company has for this story and lifting up the work Native Voices is doing. This is the first time in 30+ years that the Native Voices is performing in a full theater space. They’ve made magic at their location [at the Autry Museum’s auditorium], but now, coming out of a pandemic, doing it in a theater and at a space like LATC, it’s really special. When the actors walked into rehearsals, it was like, “Wow. We have space.” And I get to be a part of that. It’s really special.

Lily: I think it’s so beautiful that getting that space and working in there comes from two brown companies helping each other out! That’s the icing on the cake—two brown theatre companies supporting each other and lifting each other up. We love to see it.

Sylvia: And it speaks to the uniqueness of this story—it evolves from the Southwest and our cultures in this story mix. It’s the perfect project for this marriage between these two companies to happen right now.

Carolina: You touched on the process of being in the room with Indigenous artists. What has it been like and what measures are being taken to care for their ancestral trauma while also displaying it on the stage?

*Playwright Lily Rushing (Genízaro)*
*Photo courtesy of* *Native Voices at the Autry*

Lily: Native Voices hires a trauma consultant to make sure we have that extra level of care if we need it which is really important. We had eyes from a lot of Indigenous people but also from Sylvia about where we need to have a little extra caution, a little extra care. That made me feel prepared before going into the process. One thing I love about working with Indigenous actors is the lack of need to educate. Because when you are in the room with artists who don’t have that heritage of being colonized or stolen, they might have questions or not understand something, and you feel like you have to defend it. Native Voices has set up this system of interacting with the storyteller or playwright so that actors can ask their questions, but I don’t have to answer or defend anything. So that takes care of both of our needs. In that way, it allows actors to interact with the emotion of trauma—the expression of it—rather than having to interact with the truth of it. When I got into the room with the actors, I felt like we were all protected.

Syliva: You get to just exist and understand that you are not all trauma—that you carry joy and other parts of you into the room, and that, as we explore the trauma in the play that the characters are exploring, even if there is a similarity, you have the permission to create space and just exist as a character. By being able to have a room of People of Color, and specifically with this play, having Native people telling a story about Native people, it allows us to really explore the complexities that are beyond and within the trauma, and find the joys in these character’s lives. When it’s performed, the audience experiences those complexities and can have a different lens from the ones that we hear on the news. They don’t have to explain anything, we just get to have the conversations about them.

Carolina: Sylvia, you said in a quote that, “The play challenges us to let go of a safe narrative.” Would you like to expand on that?

Sylvia: It’s so funny because when you catch me at different phases in the process, and I’ll have a different response. (* Laughs*) Because I grow with the process of it. I feel like what Lily has done is she’s combined different parts of the human brain on stage. We have memory, the existence of the present time, the existence of a disappearing memory—the grandmother is grappling with these phases of dementia, and at the same time, desperately trying to connect the memories to help her granddaughter understand her own legacy. There are fascinating moments in the play where multiple generations are on stage, or the same character in two different phases in their life are on stage and are conversing with each other. I’ve been leaning into that and challenging myself to not make the choices arbitrary in this illogical world, but there still must be something that allows an outsider without the history and breadth of knowledge that we have to experience and feel moved. That’s the journey we’re on now in the space. I think what Lily has offered us is the dangerous nature of the topic of this play. Things are unsettling and they should feel that way. It’s okay for an audience member to feel a little discombobulated at the end of the experience. We’re taking them on a ride.

Carolina: Lily, this play is almost autobiographical because you had a similar experience to the main character, Carrie. Can you walk us through what that was like for you?

Lily: We always knew that we had Indigenous heritage, but my dad has this joke where he calls us and his family, “mocos,” which in Spanish literally means boogers, but also means “Mexican Or Chicano Or Something.” It’s his way of saying that, in the time he grew up, we weren’t having conversations about identity or heritage that we’re having now. I talked to my cousin Larry; he wrote this beautiful story for us called “Stories from Ojo,” where he wrote his memories. He kept using this word, “Genízaros.” My mom dug up the Census and found that there were multiple documents that read, “Indian,” “White,” or “Genízaros,” that were part of our family history. The same people had different races and different ways of being categorized as the years went on. After they were baptized, this zealous priest somehow convinced whoever to write down that, because of their baptism, these Indian people were no longer Indian and were now white. I was in college when we found the story of Placida, who is a character in the play but also my real-life great-great grandmother—she was a Genízaro, which is a native slave in northern New Mexico—who was 13 or 11 years old when she bore my great-grandfather. She was removed from the settlement and would walk 20 miles every day to see her son in extremely rugged, mountainous territory. In the family legend, it was said that her feet were stained black. We knew immediately why we didn’t have a concrete answer [in terms of heritage]—because that is the goal of forcefully separating tribes, the goal of colonization. When you try to find the people in your community, you can’t find them; they’ve taken away all the answers from you. Something the play deals with is why the women in this family needed to know that history. They need it not only to keep them safe in a literal sense—when you know your history, you can be prepared for it—but also, women have a need to know our mothers, grandmothers, and family. For me, I needed that connection for myself. I feel like it made me understand so much more about where the legacies of confusion, shame, and Catholic guilt all stemmed from. I feel Placida’s story and carry her with me all the time. Her incredible resilience is the lesson I take with me everywhere.

*The playwright’s family in 1950s New Mexico*

Carolina: That’s amazing! That sounds like an enormous undertaking, both physically and emotionally, but I’m so happy you found them. The tagline of this play reads, “Do you believe your ancestors walk with you?” I wanted to pose the same question to you both.

Sylvia: That belief is something I’ve adopted in the last few years. My friend had a conversation with me one time. We were at the park, talking, and she was talking about how, sometimes, to convince herself to walk out that door, she’s adopted this way of closing her eyes and imagining that with each step she takes, her ancestors are walking with her. I’ve taken that to heart. I think about the people I know in my lifetime who have passed on—my sister, Tina, who passed away seven years ago. I carry her with me all the time. She’s always part of me and I have her as someone of strength that I can come back to, even if I’m not feeling strong in that moment, because I know that she’s the makeup of my grandmother—my mom’s mom, who also had a strong presence—and then my great-grandmother. Even my husband’s mom, who passed away a year or two after my sister did. It’s the carrying of all those generations with me when I walk into a room that allows me to lean on the strengths of who they were and use that to shape myself. I came from that stock of strong women, even the ones I didn’t get to meet. I feel a connection to them with this piece.

Lily: That reminds me of what we talked about in that first week of rehearsals, about spinning tops, that time isn’t a line or this flat thing. When we go about living our day, that’s one top spinning on the table. And those stories that live in us are another top spinning, too. All these events that my ancestors went through, like Placida, or even things that I’m going through, it helps me to think of them all sort of happening at the same time, on this same plane of existence. I feel like my relationship with my ancestors is active. When I live my day with courage, when I choose to thrive, I’m feeding them, just as their choices and sacrifices feed me. There are things being talked about now—ancestral healing, inner healing. I think the first step to do all of that is to look and open yourself up to looking at those stories, even if they’re really hard, and then you can start the process of walking with your ancestors. But first you have to look at them and see them for who they really are.

*Characters in“Desert Stories for Lost Girls”* *were inspired by the playwright’s* family
*Her* *grandparents, pictured above in Ojo Caliente, New Mexico*

Carolina: What message or feeling do you hope audiences leave with after seeing the show?

Sylvia: I hope that this play can break open for someone the things that they think they know about the Southwest, and the inception of when the continent was being explored and then commandeered. I hope that this play will break open that curiosity and ask, “What are you going to do with that piece of history now that you know it? Are you going to put it in a book and put it on the shelf to collect dust? Or are you going to actively find a way to share that story?” That’s the space where we can heal—when you can name the history and acknowledge that it happened. It happened many moons ago, but our country was built on it. How do we fix the systems in place that continue to inflict violence on Black and brown bodies? I hope more than anything that people can recognize the responsibility that comes with witnessing this story unfold.

Lily: I hope Californians learn about Genízaros—learn about who we were and are—because we are a tribeless tribe. We have found and made a tribe out of that horrible history. I hope they learn something new about the country’s history that they never knew before that inspires them to start their own journey of learning and unlearning, to challenge their own narrative about labor, ownership, land, and belonging. And I hope people leave the theater and go straight to calling their grandmother. (*Laughs*) Something any grandchild can do is acknowledge that it was a hard world out there for our ancestors, and was only made harder by these constant, oppressive systems. All we can do is continue telling these stories and thank each other.

“Desert Stories for Lost Girls” opens on Friday, Sept. 30 at the Los Angeles Theater Center and runs through October 16. For tickets and information, visit latinotheaterco.org.

Know a female or FPI-friendly theater, company or artist? Contact us at [email protected] & check out The FPI Files for more stories.

Want to hear from more women artists? Make a Tax-Deductible Donation to LAFPI!

Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non‐profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of LAFPI must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax‐deductible to the extent permitted by law.

#FringeFemmes 2022! Meet Mareshah Dupree & Jairis Carter

June 17, 2022Female Artists, Fringe Festival, playwriting#fringefemmes, Abortion, Abortion Weekend, CalArts, Fringe Femmes, Hollywood Fringe Festival, Jairis Carter, Mareshah Dupree, Roe v. WadeConstance Strickland

By Constance Strickland

Fringe Femmes 2022 are a bold cohort of women who are presenting new plays, original works and solo shows that have raised the bar on what it means to be an artist, tell one’s story and continue the work by any means necessary. Each year I am reminded that no matter the obstacles or the times in which we live, you cannot stop theatre as an art form from expanding, thriving and being a vessel to reveal, heal and nurture. LAFPI has the special ability to connect women from a wide variety of cultures and experiences together in their shared love of theatre.

This year continues to expand on that legacy and it is my honor to introduce you to Mareshah Dupree and Jairis Carter, the creators of Abortion Weekend. These two talents are widening the lens on performance, writing and creating in real-time a new way of existing in the theatre.

Constance Strickland: What’s been your biggest battle in terms of your development/process?

Mareshah Dupree & Jairis Carter: Our biggest battle was quite unique as the script was initially written for the screen. It was challenging to convert it for the stage especially because our show is a two-person show. Since the Fringe process is so fast-paced the script was undergoing edits all the way up until the opening night.

Constance: After the lights and the audience disappear what do you hope one takes away after seeing your show?

Mareshah & Jairis: We hope that everyone who is able to attend gains a better understanding of agape Love. We want them to remember that God is Love and their Love is unconditional.

Constance: What joy did you discover when creating your show? Did you face any obstacles? What has been the most delicious discovery?

Mareshah & Jairis: The greatest joy came on opening night when our loved ones attended and told us how proud and emotionally moved they were of the work we created. The biggest obstacles were self doubt, insecurities, and an aching inner fear that our families would be offended by the production. The most delicious discoveries were the realizations we made about each other. We learned so much about each other throughout the process putting up this production and it’s been beautiful to witness the growth that has occurred within us both.

Constance: How does it feel to have an opportunity to share your work with an in-person audience? COVID expanded in many ways how the work can be seen and done, what personally changed if anything for you in how you approached creating your show?

Mareshah & Jairis: It feels surreal. It’s so incredible that we are finally at the space to share our three-year passion project. We were both like “finally someone can see what we’ve been working on for the past three years.” The major change is the fact that we adjusted the film script for the stage, however we still do plan on making it a feature length movie as it will be our thesis film for CalArts. It is eye-opening to see the reactions in person and very gratifying. We are immensely grateful that we have been blessed with the opportunity to be the vessels that tell this story.

Constance: What influenced this new work? How long have you been sitting with this work? Why now?

Mareshah & Jairis: Our ultimate influence for this work has been from the Great Creator since they placed this idea on our hearts and simultaneously in both of our mouths three years ago. We said the words “Abortion Weekend” at the same time after a conversation with a friend about the multiple methods that women/femmes all over the world have used to terminate pregnancies. Our sisters have also had a profound impact on the work. Their personal experiences made the text more tangible and alive. This show is dedicated to them. Our friendship also bleeds through the text. The Fringe has been a goal of ours for a little over a year now and we both felt it would be the perfect place to bring our idea to life. It was simply a matter of coincidence that Roe vs. Wade had come back into the political debate. It’s all divine timing.

#FringeFemmes 2022! Meet Charlotte Galbreath

June 16, 2022Female Artists, Fringe Festival, playwriting#fringefemmes, Charlotte Galbreath, Debra DeLiso, family, Fringe Femmes, Grief, Hollywood Fringe Festival, Loss, Solo Shows, traumaConstance Strickland

By Constance Strickland

This year continues to expand on that legacy and I am thankful to be able to introduce Fringe Femme Charlotte Galbreath. Charlotte’s Looking Past Loss is a personal and vulnerable solo show that explores the traumas that simmer beneath the surface, yet eventually always rise to the surface. How did COVID-19 force you to reckon with yourself and old traumas? Charlotte investigates her own family stories and what she discovers may be a lesson for us all.

Constance Strickland: What’s been your biggest battle in terms of your development/process?

Charlotte Galbreath: My biggest battle has been honoring the accuracy of my relative’s stories and experiences while exercising my own artistic freedom in the process. With an autobiographical show that features key figures in my own life, I want to do justice to their trauma while also serving the play and message being sent at large. Thus, I’ve had to navigate that balance of preserving their truths while expressing mine as well.

Constance: After the lights and the audience disappear what do you hope one takes away after seeing your show?

Charlotte: I hope that my audience takes away the power of what loss can do for us. While it is undoubtedly a painful part of life, it yields new meaning to our existences if we let it, so I encourage the audience to reconsider how the darkness in their own lives can be turned into a motivating factor that gives us a profound sense of purpose in life.

Constance: What joy did you discover when creating your show?

Charlotte: I discovered the joy of life and the preciousness of it throughout my process. Having to reflect on my losses and trauma has allowed me to have a greater appreciation for everyone in my life. It also has reframed my interactions with others as I’m constantly thinking about how I can be the light in other people’s lives. It was definitely a challenging feat having to reflect upon these losses in my life, but it’s also served as a healing process.

Constance: What has been the most delicious discovery as you created your original work.

Charlotte: As an actor, I’ve always been drawn to the power of theater to enact change, but as I’ve created my work, I’ve realized the extent to which I can reach and move audiences. My solo play that explores different memories of loss highlights the highs and lows of this journey, and guides the audience to the light at the end. Bringing the audience on this ride with me, they’re able to see for themselves how to reframe the darkness we feel during the lows, giving hope to a world that has felt so hopeless the past couple of years.

Constance: How does it feel to have an opportunity to share your work with an in-person audience?

Charlotte: It is an incredible opportunity finally sharing this with an in-person audience because it brings everyone together on this journey, creating a support network amongst the entire audience experiencing these memories simultaneously. Since many of these memories are painful to live through, I recognized the importance of finding levity throughout to make the piece more digestible and to capture the highs and lows of this whole process.

Constance: What influenced this new work? How long have you been sitting with this work? Why now?

Charlotte: I have been working on this solo play for the past couple of years, but had a change in perspective on how I wanted to end the performance and the message I wanted to leave the audience with over the past year. With Covid, all the political tension, racial discrimination, and losses we’ve all experienced over the past couple of years, I feel like this story needs to be told in order to give hope to our world and show that there is a way out of all the darkness. Theater has the power to take audiences on a journey and make them consider how the story being portrayed and message being sent can translate to their own lives, and this is crucial right now with the play I’m performing.