Inaugural Season Direction + Executive Producer
Interview w Donya K. Washington
[In media res, a conversation about streaming theater and accessibility]:
The game is the National [Theater]. That's the target.
I think it's a good target. Have you been watching the Young Vic? I don't know if they're still doing it, but they've been also doing a lot of streamed stuff.
Yeah, I've seen a little. It is so great for accessibility, in all the senses. I'm thinking about myself as a kid in upstate New York, where I was maybe able to get to New York City a few times to see shows. But not always. It's because of things like Great Performances [on PBS] when I was growing up that I saw as much Alvin Ailey and ballet as I did, because I wouldn't have been exposed to it otherwise in the same way.
So... Donya, who are you and what do you do? And what did you do in A Simple Herstory?
My name is Donya K. Washington. I am a director, and I directed A Simple Herstory, the Victoria Woodhull season. I got involved with it around the time when Hillary Clinton was running for president – that was the first time Jocelyn [Kuritsky] talked to me about this idea that she had. And at the time I was like, that sounds mad cool. We should talk about this more. But then, you know, people get busy, like, you know, pre-pandemic life there was a lot. And then during the pandemic, she reached back out. And I was like, you know, working on a podcast sounds really good right about now, and I've got time, but also given what's happening in the world....it’s great.
And before the [2020 presidential] election, just in talking about what people want for president, why certain people are ignored, what that's about? What are the stories there that felt important, but also just interesting. Like: how people talked about Kamala Harris versus how people talked about Joe Biden, what are those tropes? Especially having two major candidates who are both women in two back-to-back elections. Right? It wasn’t that I hadn't heard it before, because as much as I have feelings about Sarah Palin it was also true about the way people talked about her. And hearing those things repeated and repeated and repeated, it's like, Oh my God, can we please talk about that? Because that's a whole kind of mess.
I cannot believe I'm saying nice things about Sarah Palin. It's also in the way that she sold herself. It was very important that she be seen as a wife and a mother. But her being seen as smart-for-her demographic, that was not a good thing, She was not supposed to be smart. She had to be pretty, she had to be charming. There were certain boxes that she checked, and I think by design, by choice, she was setting herself up in a certain way. But what was fascinating to me is that Hillary Clinton also had to do the wife & mother thing, tick the boxes. But somehow her using all three of her names was like a huge problem, right. She had to use her married last name. She couldn't use her maiden name as her middle name. That fact that we knew her as a wife and a mother was apparently key to our understanding of Hillary Clinton, the politician, which I'm like, I don't know, how she uses her Blackberry actually might be more relevant to the job, but, like, I digress. Right? Like, those images of her with her Blackberry, that meme image, which was hilarious -- I also found fascinating because she was allowed to be somebody powerful in those images, but then they were only used for fun.
That's right. Even Sarah Palin had to turn her power into a joke: She was like, I'm a barracuda, grrrr.
Right. It has to be fun. She had to be funny. She had to take it a little bit too far.
Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin could not be more different as humans and as politicians. And yet there were certain marks they both had to hit. Which to me, it just kind of like, What, really? And the fact that Elizabeth Warren had been a schoolteacher was used as a way to help sell her to people. She hadn't been a schoolteacher in a long time. She's been in the Congress and the Senate for a long time, but it was more important for us to know that she had been a schoolteacher.
Right. And then they used it against her. Schoolmarm!
Right. Or -- God forbid Hillary talk about her own legal career. It was more important for us to know that she was married to Bill, and What was Bill up to? What was he building? What did he think about things? But she's a rock star in her own right. And she kind of doesn't need to lean on him. She can do it by herself.
But again, listening to the story about Victoria and the way that people talked about her, the ways in which it's the same language, it's the same thing. It just was fascinating to see how little has changed and yet how much has changed.
One of the things about the way that Jonathan [Goldberg] wanted to tell this story is by giving Victoria back the power over her own narrative. To ask her, What do you think is important to know about you? What do you care about, what do you want to make sure that we don't forget to mention? What do you like? Giving her back that power, and letting it be as contradictory and as confusing as people are. Like, we're not forgetting the fact that she was eugenicist. That is part of her story. Also this whole free love thing -- while weird for the time period -- also part of who she was. That she came up from this family of hucksters and tricksters, and how that influenced her run for politics.... Arguably, that was good training for running for president.
Being an actor is excellent training for running for president.
Right! I really appreciate that. Jonathan didn't want to make her nice. He didn't want to make her fit in a little box. He was deliberately trying to bust that box open because, again, because to put Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton in the same box makes no sense. One can see Russia from her backyard. The other one literally has been involved in trying to help make world peace. WHY are they the same? Not the same.
Just both white, both mothers, and not from New York or California.
Victoria Woodhull, not from New York though. Victoria was from Ohio, which was then considered the frontier. She lived in New York for a long period. One of the things that really intrigued me about the script is that busting through what we think we know about Victoria, if you know anything about her at all. The first woman to run for president, yet a lot of people don't know her name. If you ask people who the first woman to run for president is, their responses might be by generation -- because I think in my generation, Shirley Chisholm was the one that I would have named. But even though I knew there was somebody before her, I wouldn’t have remembered who it was.
The only one that I remember, that I was alive for, was Geraldine Ferraro, who wasn't even running for president, she was running for vice president.
Yet we remember her as the top of the ticket. When you're a blockbuster [like she was], we can’t help it.
And then also, just this idea of like during the pandemic: What can we do with this time? What can we do now that we couldn't do before? Zoom has now become ubiquitous – pre-pandemic, zoom was like, we used it where I work for design meetings because we're in a remote location and getting people here can be difficult, but like I only use it for situations like that. I did not use it to talk to my college friends who live in three different cities.
It didn't occur to us to use any of these tools that we have access to.
It's becoming normalized, I think that helped us start to conceive of how it might be possible to record with me in the Pacific time zone. Jocelyn, Jenny and Jonathan in east coast timezone and actors, as far east as the UK and west in California. And in a moment where people are really separated to bring, to have a way of bringing people together, to be able to work with people who had lived and worked together [from OSF] -- we hadn’t seen each other in a minute – and people who had never worked together....to me, that was also part of the fun of it. Trying to figure it out. The technological fun of it all. It’s like: Welcome to the wonderful world of technology. We're going to send you a microphone and we're going to teach you how to plug it in. And you're going to download this other program called Reaper, and you're gonna have to do this other thing, like there's hoops to jump through. But hey, Jane Shaw got us through all of those hoops.
Oh god, she was so good. So good. She was amazing!
OK. Next question: what dead historical figure would you want to haunt you?
Ooh. That's a good question. Okay, I got options. One would be Zora Neale Hurston. Because I'm such a fan of hers, and because I feel like she'd be a fun ghost. And Harriet Tubman, because I feel like she’d kick my butt, I wouldn't be able to be lazy. I would be like, I gotta get out of bed because Harriet’s yelling at me. Okay. Like, I'm coming. I'm coming. I'm coming.
I mean there’s so many interesting... Mozart’d be funny I think. He would be a good ghost to sic on other people. Like if the ghost and I could work together to mess with people, Mozart would be a good option.
And there’d be times that William Shakespeare would be as good as it gets. Cause I would want to go to the bar with him and just argue with him for a while.
What would you argue about first?
Well, first I would argue that he's a very loud ghost. I feel like I've been arguing with him for years and he's a little bossy. When he doesn't like what you're doing with his play, he just won't let us work and that's kind of annoying. So I’d want to have some conversations with Mr. Shakespeare about that. And really just to argue about the parts of Hamlet that don't actually make sense -- like, What were you trying to say there, was that supposed to get cut? Like, didn’t you actually cut that? But the actor remembered it and then somebody wrote it down and now you’re embarrassed? Yeah...that's still in play!
I’d also want to ask him, How do you feel about the work that we've been doing with you? So, like.... do you like it? I'm curious. I'm not gonna listen to you sometimes, but I'm curious to know what you think. Right? Just for the inside scoop.
I think Shakespeare, like any good writer, was a straight up thief right? He'd have a conversation with you, you’d tell him a story and then you turn around and it's onstage. And you're like, No, I did not tell you that so you could tell everybody, what is wrong with you? That was between you and me! No, you can't have that. I think he was a thief in that way. Like any good writer, right? Like, if you are friends with a writer, you sometimes will learn the hard way that your life has become their resource, and you might show up uncredited in their stuff.
Ha! OK. So now....We're at this inflection point in the American theater, as in many places, but in our field in particular. I am curious to hear from women who are working in our business about concrete things that you think could happen to move the needle towards better balance, better redistribution of power.
Distribution of power? Or better balance as in work-life?
I'm thinking about this as a labor issue in re: the conversation around race that we're having, around equity. But I don’t think that’s separate from work-life stuff. What is one practical thing that you could see making happen?
Well, is it's partly why I applied for the job I now have. Nataki Garrett was appointed the new Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the first Black woman to run this place in its history, and the first Black woman to have a place of this size in the American theater ever. One of the biggest English speaking theaters in the world. I came to help. I came to do what I could to support her vision and to make this place what it could be. And so in a simple way, what I do to do that every day is my job. I try to listen to her vision and try to help make this place succeed. If this works, then more doors will open. It’s less about me than about the women behind me.
So many people, when I came up, reached out to help me who didn't look like me. I do have several white male mentors who were not just kind to me, but treated me like an artist, treated me like an adult and talked to me like a person. They didn't condescend. They were like, You're an interesting artist. Let me have a conversation. I've got a few of those that I'm very grateful for, but I didn't have a lot of people who looked like me to look at and say, Oh, I could do that one day.
What I feel like I'm trying to do is two things, right? One: Do what was done for me and reach out behind me and pull somebody else up. I'm trying to keep that chain going and hope they will do the same. That's part of what keeps this industry human. You have the power to reach out to somebody, tell somebody something that you wish you had known at their age and to make it a little bit better for the next generation. If we can make it even a little bit better, please let's do that.
And two: There is a lot of sentimentality about the way we’ve always done things that we can jettison. We can get a lot done if we can get past that. For example, I don't know that we need 10-out-of-12s anymore. I feel like we're capable individuals. We can get it done in 8 out of 10. No one likes them [10 out of 12s, in which union members are permitted to work 10 hours out of a 12-hour period], no one is interested in keeping them going. Why did that start, anyway? I don't know. I don't know where it started, but it’s just about time, trying to get more done in less time. But since the rules were implemented, we have gotten faster with some things that we used to spend a lot of time on in tech. Things have become digitized and mechanized. Some things are just flatly faster than they used to be. More things are possible in less time than they used to be.
It’s one of those things that once you sit down and do the math, it's actually not that complicated. But the psychological aspect, letting it go for some people is really big. I think the next hurdle that we all need to work on is asking ourselves things like: Do we really need a six-day rehearsal week? Why do we need six days? Can it be five days? I feel like it's necessary, in order to have a functioning human in the rehearsal hall. You need a day to do laundry, run errands. Do that kind of thing. You also need a day to sit on the couch and stare at the wall. Your stare-at-the-wall time may be blank meditation. It could be you like thinking, remembering things that help you with your character next week. It could be you learning, or having brain-space to just relax. So the lines have someplace to go inside your head. I am a fan of the five day, week. It's complicated. I get it. It means losing eight hours a week. But: can we be more efficient with the rest of our time? Are there other ways of distributing time? Yes -- sure. There are lots of things to figure out.
It would also be nice if we maybe made up those eight hours of another few days of rehearsal. Do you know what I mean? Like instead of packing it into three weeks, we could have a less intense four-week period, which would cost more money, but maybe it would be useful in the long run. But also I would argue, we might not need to replace all eight hours because we gave people's brains a break. You might actually be able to work faster at other points, without working harder.
Meanwhile, a stage manager friend of mine said this to me in February of 2020. And I was like, What? That's crazy, that can't work, oh my God. No, no. Because one of my jobs in my day job is to help build a theatre’s production calendar. And then I sat down and tried it and I was like, Huh. Okay. That kind of makes sense. I can see that. So we trialed it for the summer show. And we’re trialing it again for the fall. We'll keep playing with it.
So it's time for a rethink. I was on a call with some folks from the National Theater [in London] during the pandemic, talking about other stuff, but some of this came up. And it was really reassuring to hear from another theater company in another country saying, Yeah, we're having some of the same conversations. There is a bunch of stuff, not necessarily the same ones we are talking about here, but things that didn't work for anybody. NOBODY LIKED THAT! So why would we keep doing that? We've all had a moment to reflect. Maybe now we can agree not to do that thing that makes everyone cranky.
But it's also stuff like being able to audition for certain things like this [i.e., on Zoom], so a little bit more efficient for your time. You don't have to get on the train, go to the place, wait in the line... you can be in your house doing other things. When it’s my time, I'm gonna sit in front of my computer, I'm gonna do my thing, then when I'm done, I'm going to close my computer. I can bitch to my friends right now about it. I don’t gotta behave while I'm still in the elevator and they can still hear me. You can have all of the emotional responses in the privacy of your own space. Right?
There are things that are possible now because we've got more of this kind of technology accessible to more people. I just worked on a reading series for OSF and I could cast who I needed to cast. I didn't have to think about where they were. And people with younger kids, it was easier to say yes, because it's like, if all we're working around is bedtime, we can work the rehearsal schedule around bedtime. And you don't need to find a babysitter, you're there. Like, your kid might scream for you and I'll be like, Cool, go
do what you need to do. I'll see you when you come back. It's not the end of the world. You're not gonna be gone for forever. You're gonna be gone for like 15, 20 minutes. Okay.
As a parent I'm so grateful for the amount of art and projects and work that I was able to both watch, and participate in, exactly for the reasons that you're saying.
It makes me wonder, Are there ways in which we can use this in a rehearsal process to support people? Because for example: on a show where somebody accidentally has an overlapping booking, they are in a different city, but are going to be able to be in this city for the second week of rehearsals, just not available to be physically in town and it's table-work week. I mean, you can be on a screen for table work.
Also, people being able to work from home no matter what your health status is. You're vaccinated, but you're not ready to be in the office. Ok -- we can work like this. You've been doing it for a year. We're fine. Would it be nice to be in person? Absolutely. I mean, maybe. But can I do it? Absolutely. How can we be more responsive to each other in that way?
Again, as a parent, I so appreciate that mindset. Like, I’m not a total flake, but children do make it harder to be utterly precise with your time. My tendency would be to take myself out of a situation if I couldn’t be perfectly available. But with a little flexibility and grace, parents can still participate.
Allow the person to be who they are in the room and you're going to get a better collaborator. You know, they'll be able to bring more colors and flavors into the room. If you can just let them be them, and not try to put them in a box, what you think this is what an actor is supposed to be, or what whoever is supposed to be. You know? You never know. I mean, it's happened a few times in rehearsal as a director, right? Like we're working on a table working a scene. Right, and the playwright’s not in the room. And we're trying to figure out what they were referring to in this moment. And nobody can figure it out. And it's the intern who says, Um I think that's from this movie, and we're like, Ooooooh, you're right. Oh my God, thank you. Right? Let the intern talk! They may know.
I firmly believe in a rehearsal environment where people can be their full selves. But also, I'm thankful to work for a place where I can be me. I can wear my hair in twists today. I can wear it out and natural tomorrow. I can have a braided the next day. And it's not like a big dramatic thing.
I actually think it's huge. It's so important.
OK, last thing: plugs that you want to make sure that you mention in public space.
I’m directing a play called Shutter Sisters by Mansa Ra, for the Old Globe in San Diego, we start previews on October 7th, open on October the 14th and run through November the 8th. A two-person show about two women, both named Michael/Mykal, who are adopted, and who we meet later in their lives at a moment of crisis, where they confront that moment, when you think you know who you are, and then you find out something that makes you think Am I the same person as I was before? I don’t know. I'm excited about that.
It's a fun piece too, because it's also parts for actors, actresses of a certain age, that are real and meaty and all of that. I say of a certain age because I'm not blowing up anybody's actual age. But: no longer the ingenue, well over 30, not Hollywood of-a-certain-age, theater of-a-certain-age. Solid parts where they get to play like actual people, which still doesn't happen as often as it should, because there are so many actors of that generation that don't get the work that they should get.
And at OSF, we're doing Fannie by Cheryl West, and Greta Oglesby is going to be closing out the run for us, a rockstar who needs no introduction. And then this fall we're doing It's Christmas, Carol! which is a new play --
--with an exclamation point.
With an exclamation point! It's kind of like a Marx brothers take on A Christmas Carol, if you will. We've never done a holiday show at the festival so far as anybody can remember in our 85-year history, this is a new thing for us. So we'll see how it goes.
The game is the National [Theater]. That's the target.
I think it's a good target. Have you been watching the Young Vic? I don't know if they're still doing it, but they've been also doing a lot of streamed stuff.
Yeah, I've seen a little. It is so great for accessibility, in all the senses. I'm thinking about myself as a kid in upstate New York, where I was maybe able to get to New York City a few times to see shows. But not always. It's because of things like Great Performances [on PBS] when I was growing up that I saw as much Alvin Ailey and ballet as I did, because I wouldn't have been exposed to it otherwise in the same way.
So... Donya, who are you and what do you do? And what did you do in A Simple Herstory?
My name is Donya K. Washington. I am a director, and I directed A Simple Herstory, the Victoria Woodhull season. I got involved with it around the time when Hillary Clinton was running for president – that was the first time Jocelyn [Kuritsky] talked to me about this idea that she had. And at the time I was like, that sounds mad cool. We should talk about this more. But then, you know, people get busy, like, you know, pre-pandemic life there was a lot. And then during the pandemic, she reached back out. And I was like, you know, working on a podcast sounds really good right about now, and I've got time, but also given what's happening in the world....it’s great.
And before the [2020 presidential] election, just in talking about what people want for president, why certain people are ignored, what that's about? What are the stories there that felt important, but also just interesting. Like: how people talked about Kamala Harris versus how people talked about Joe Biden, what are those tropes? Especially having two major candidates who are both women in two back-to-back elections. Right? It wasn’t that I hadn't heard it before, because as much as I have feelings about Sarah Palin it was also true about the way people talked about her. And hearing those things repeated and repeated and repeated, it's like, Oh my God, can we please talk about that? Because that's a whole kind of mess.
I cannot believe I'm saying nice things about Sarah Palin. It's also in the way that she sold herself. It was very important that she be seen as a wife and a mother. But her being seen as smart-for-her demographic, that was not a good thing, She was not supposed to be smart. She had to be pretty, she had to be charming. There were certain boxes that she checked, and I think by design, by choice, she was setting herself up in a certain way. But what was fascinating to me is that Hillary Clinton also had to do the wife & mother thing, tick the boxes. But somehow her using all three of her names was like a huge problem, right. She had to use her married last name. She couldn't use her maiden name as her middle name. That fact that we knew her as a wife and a mother was apparently key to our understanding of Hillary Clinton, the politician, which I'm like, I don't know, how she uses her Blackberry actually might be more relevant to the job, but, like, I digress. Right? Like, those images of her with her Blackberry, that meme image, which was hilarious -- I also found fascinating because she was allowed to be somebody powerful in those images, but then they were only used for fun.
That's right. Even Sarah Palin had to turn her power into a joke: She was like, I'm a barracuda, grrrr.
Right. It has to be fun. She had to be funny. She had to take it a little bit too far.
Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin could not be more different as humans and as politicians. And yet there were certain marks they both had to hit. Which to me, it just kind of like, What, really? And the fact that Elizabeth Warren had been a schoolteacher was used as a way to help sell her to people. She hadn't been a schoolteacher in a long time. She's been in the Congress and the Senate for a long time, but it was more important for us to know that she had been a schoolteacher.
Right. And then they used it against her. Schoolmarm!
Right. Or -- God forbid Hillary talk about her own legal career. It was more important for us to know that she was married to Bill, and What was Bill up to? What was he building? What did he think about things? But she's a rock star in her own right. And she kind of doesn't need to lean on him. She can do it by herself.
But again, listening to the story about Victoria and the way that people talked about her, the ways in which it's the same language, it's the same thing. It just was fascinating to see how little has changed and yet how much has changed.
One of the things about the way that Jonathan [Goldberg] wanted to tell this story is by giving Victoria back the power over her own narrative. To ask her, What do you think is important to know about you? What do you care about, what do you want to make sure that we don't forget to mention? What do you like? Giving her back that power, and letting it be as contradictory and as confusing as people are. Like, we're not forgetting the fact that she was eugenicist. That is part of her story. Also this whole free love thing -- while weird for the time period -- also part of who she was. That she came up from this family of hucksters and tricksters, and how that influenced her run for politics.... Arguably, that was good training for running for president.
Being an actor is excellent training for running for president.
Right! I really appreciate that. Jonathan didn't want to make her nice. He didn't want to make her fit in a little box. He was deliberately trying to bust that box open because, again, because to put Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton in the same box makes no sense. One can see Russia from her backyard. The other one literally has been involved in trying to help make world peace. WHY are they the same? Not the same.
Just both white, both mothers, and not from New York or California.
Victoria Woodhull, not from New York though. Victoria was from Ohio, which was then considered the frontier. She lived in New York for a long period. One of the things that really intrigued me about the script is that busting through what we think we know about Victoria, if you know anything about her at all. The first woman to run for president, yet a lot of people don't know her name. If you ask people who the first woman to run for president is, their responses might be by generation -- because I think in my generation, Shirley Chisholm was the one that I would have named. But even though I knew there was somebody before her, I wouldn’t have remembered who it was.
The only one that I remember, that I was alive for, was Geraldine Ferraro, who wasn't even running for president, she was running for vice president.
Yet we remember her as the top of the ticket. When you're a blockbuster [like she was], we can’t help it.
And then also, just this idea of like during the pandemic: What can we do with this time? What can we do now that we couldn't do before? Zoom has now become ubiquitous – pre-pandemic, zoom was like, we used it where I work for design meetings because we're in a remote location and getting people here can be difficult, but like I only use it for situations like that. I did not use it to talk to my college friends who live in three different cities.
It didn't occur to us to use any of these tools that we have access to.
It's becoming normalized, I think that helped us start to conceive of how it might be possible to record with me in the Pacific time zone. Jocelyn, Jenny and Jonathan in east coast timezone and actors, as far east as the UK and west in California. And in a moment where people are really separated to bring, to have a way of bringing people together, to be able to work with people who had lived and worked together [from OSF] -- we hadn’t seen each other in a minute – and people who had never worked together....to me, that was also part of the fun of it. Trying to figure it out. The technological fun of it all. It’s like: Welcome to the wonderful world of technology. We're going to send you a microphone and we're going to teach you how to plug it in. And you're going to download this other program called Reaper, and you're gonna have to do this other thing, like there's hoops to jump through. But hey, Jane Shaw got us through all of those hoops.
Oh god, she was so good. So good. She was amazing!
OK. Next question: what dead historical figure would you want to haunt you?
Ooh. That's a good question. Okay, I got options. One would be Zora Neale Hurston. Because I'm such a fan of hers, and because I feel like she'd be a fun ghost. And Harriet Tubman, because I feel like she’d kick my butt, I wouldn't be able to be lazy. I would be like, I gotta get out of bed because Harriet’s yelling at me. Okay. Like, I'm coming. I'm coming. I'm coming.
I mean there’s so many interesting... Mozart’d be funny I think. He would be a good ghost to sic on other people. Like if the ghost and I could work together to mess with people, Mozart would be a good option.
And there’d be times that William Shakespeare would be as good as it gets. Cause I would want to go to the bar with him and just argue with him for a while.
What would you argue about first?
Well, first I would argue that he's a very loud ghost. I feel like I've been arguing with him for years and he's a little bossy. When he doesn't like what you're doing with his play, he just won't let us work and that's kind of annoying. So I’d want to have some conversations with Mr. Shakespeare about that. And really just to argue about the parts of Hamlet that don't actually make sense -- like, What were you trying to say there, was that supposed to get cut? Like, didn’t you actually cut that? But the actor remembered it and then somebody wrote it down and now you’re embarrassed? Yeah...that's still in play!
I’d also want to ask him, How do you feel about the work that we've been doing with you? So, like.... do you like it? I'm curious. I'm not gonna listen to you sometimes, but I'm curious to know what you think. Right? Just for the inside scoop.
I think Shakespeare, like any good writer, was a straight up thief right? He'd have a conversation with you, you’d tell him a story and then you turn around and it's onstage. And you're like, No, I did not tell you that so you could tell everybody, what is wrong with you? That was between you and me! No, you can't have that. I think he was a thief in that way. Like any good writer, right? Like, if you are friends with a writer, you sometimes will learn the hard way that your life has become their resource, and you might show up uncredited in their stuff.
Ha! OK. So now....We're at this inflection point in the American theater, as in many places, but in our field in particular. I am curious to hear from women who are working in our business about concrete things that you think could happen to move the needle towards better balance, better redistribution of power.
Distribution of power? Or better balance as in work-life?
I'm thinking about this as a labor issue in re: the conversation around race that we're having, around equity. But I don’t think that’s separate from work-life stuff. What is one practical thing that you could see making happen?
Well, is it's partly why I applied for the job I now have. Nataki Garrett was appointed the new Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the first Black woman to run this place in its history, and the first Black woman to have a place of this size in the American theater ever. One of the biggest English speaking theaters in the world. I came to help. I came to do what I could to support her vision and to make this place what it could be. And so in a simple way, what I do to do that every day is my job. I try to listen to her vision and try to help make this place succeed. If this works, then more doors will open. It’s less about me than about the women behind me.
So many people, when I came up, reached out to help me who didn't look like me. I do have several white male mentors who were not just kind to me, but treated me like an artist, treated me like an adult and talked to me like a person. They didn't condescend. They were like, You're an interesting artist. Let me have a conversation. I've got a few of those that I'm very grateful for, but I didn't have a lot of people who looked like me to look at and say, Oh, I could do that one day.
What I feel like I'm trying to do is two things, right? One: Do what was done for me and reach out behind me and pull somebody else up. I'm trying to keep that chain going and hope they will do the same. That's part of what keeps this industry human. You have the power to reach out to somebody, tell somebody something that you wish you had known at their age and to make it a little bit better for the next generation. If we can make it even a little bit better, please let's do that.
And two: There is a lot of sentimentality about the way we’ve always done things that we can jettison. We can get a lot done if we can get past that. For example, I don't know that we need 10-out-of-12s anymore. I feel like we're capable individuals. We can get it done in 8 out of 10. No one likes them [10 out of 12s, in which union members are permitted to work 10 hours out of a 12-hour period], no one is interested in keeping them going. Why did that start, anyway? I don't know. I don't know where it started, but it’s just about time, trying to get more done in less time. But since the rules were implemented, we have gotten faster with some things that we used to spend a lot of time on in tech. Things have become digitized and mechanized. Some things are just flatly faster than they used to be. More things are possible in less time than they used to be.
It’s one of those things that once you sit down and do the math, it's actually not that complicated. But the psychological aspect, letting it go for some people is really big. I think the next hurdle that we all need to work on is asking ourselves things like: Do we really need a six-day rehearsal week? Why do we need six days? Can it be five days? I feel like it's necessary, in order to have a functioning human in the rehearsal hall. You need a day to do laundry, run errands. Do that kind of thing. You also need a day to sit on the couch and stare at the wall. Your stare-at-the-wall time may be blank meditation. It could be you like thinking, remembering things that help you with your character next week. It could be you learning, or having brain-space to just relax. So the lines have someplace to go inside your head. I am a fan of the five day, week. It's complicated. I get it. It means losing eight hours a week. But: can we be more efficient with the rest of our time? Are there other ways of distributing time? Yes -- sure. There are lots of things to figure out.
It would also be nice if we maybe made up those eight hours of another few days of rehearsal. Do you know what I mean? Like instead of packing it into three weeks, we could have a less intense four-week period, which would cost more money, but maybe it would be useful in the long run. But also I would argue, we might not need to replace all eight hours because we gave people's brains a break. You might actually be able to work faster at other points, without working harder.
Meanwhile, a stage manager friend of mine said this to me in February of 2020. And I was like, What? That's crazy, that can't work, oh my God. No, no. Because one of my jobs in my day job is to help build a theatre’s production calendar. And then I sat down and tried it and I was like, Huh. Okay. That kind of makes sense. I can see that. So we trialed it for the summer show. And we’re trialing it again for the fall. We'll keep playing with it.
So it's time for a rethink. I was on a call with some folks from the National Theater [in London] during the pandemic, talking about other stuff, but some of this came up. And it was really reassuring to hear from another theater company in another country saying, Yeah, we're having some of the same conversations. There is a bunch of stuff, not necessarily the same ones we are talking about here, but things that didn't work for anybody. NOBODY LIKED THAT! So why would we keep doing that? We've all had a moment to reflect. Maybe now we can agree not to do that thing that makes everyone cranky.
But it's also stuff like being able to audition for certain things like this [i.e., on Zoom], so a little bit more efficient for your time. You don't have to get on the train, go to the place, wait in the line... you can be in your house doing other things. When it’s my time, I'm gonna sit in front of my computer, I'm gonna do my thing, then when I'm done, I'm going to close my computer. I can bitch to my friends right now about it. I don’t gotta behave while I'm still in the elevator and they can still hear me. You can have all of the emotional responses in the privacy of your own space. Right?
There are things that are possible now because we've got more of this kind of technology accessible to more people. I just worked on a reading series for OSF and I could cast who I needed to cast. I didn't have to think about where they were. And people with younger kids, it was easier to say yes, because it's like, if all we're working around is bedtime, we can work the rehearsal schedule around bedtime. And you don't need to find a babysitter, you're there. Like, your kid might scream for you and I'll be like, Cool, go
do what you need to do. I'll see you when you come back. It's not the end of the world. You're not gonna be gone for forever. You're gonna be gone for like 15, 20 minutes. Okay.
As a parent I'm so grateful for the amount of art and projects and work that I was able to both watch, and participate in, exactly for the reasons that you're saying.
It makes me wonder, Are there ways in which we can use this in a rehearsal process to support people? Because for example: on a show where somebody accidentally has an overlapping booking, they are in a different city, but are going to be able to be in this city for the second week of rehearsals, just not available to be physically in town and it's table-work week. I mean, you can be on a screen for table work.
Also, people being able to work from home no matter what your health status is. You're vaccinated, but you're not ready to be in the office. Ok -- we can work like this. You've been doing it for a year. We're fine. Would it be nice to be in person? Absolutely. I mean, maybe. But can I do it? Absolutely. How can we be more responsive to each other in that way?
Again, as a parent, I so appreciate that mindset. Like, I’m not a total flake, but children do make it harder to be utterly precise with your time. My tendency would be to take myself out of a situation if I couldn’t be perfectly available. But with a little flexibility and grace, parents can still participate.
Allow the person to be who they are in the room and you're going to get a better collaborator. You know, they'll be able to bring more colors and flavors into the room. If you can just let them be them, and not try to put them in a box, what you think this is what an actor is supposed to be, or what whoever is supposed to be. You know? You never know. I mean, it's happened a few times in rehearsal as a director, right? Like we're working on a table working a scene. Right, and the playwright’s not in the room. And we're trying to figure out what they were referring to in this moment. And nobody can figure it out. And it's the intern who says, Um I think that's from this movie, and we're like, Ooooooh, you're right. Oh my God, thank you. Right? Let the intern talk! They may know.
I firmly believe in a rehearsal environment where people can be their full selves. But also, I'm thankful to work for a place where I can be me. I can wear my hair in twists today. I can wear it out and natural tomorrow. I can have a braided the next day. And it's not like a big dramatic thing.
I actually think it's huge. It's so important.
OK, last thing: plugs that you want to make sure that you mention in public space.
I’m directing a play called Shutter Sisters by Mansa Ra, for the Old Globe in San Diego, we start previews on October 7th, open on October the 14th and run through November the 8th. A two-person show about two women, both named Michael/Mykal, who are adopted, and who we meet later in their lives at a moment of crisis, where they confront that moment, when you think you know who you are, and then you find out something that makes you think Am I the same person as I was before? I don’t know. I'm excited about that.
It's a fun piece too, because it's also parts for actors, actresses of a certain age, that are real and meaty and all of that. I say of a certain age because I'm not blowing up anybody's actual age. But: no longer the ingenue, well over 30, not Hollywood of-a-certain-age, theater of-a-certain-age. Solid parts where they get to play like actual people, which still doesn't happen as often as it should, because there are so many actors of that generation that don't get the work that they should get.
And at OSF, we're doing Fannie by Cheryl West, and Greta Oglesby is going to be closing out the run for us, a rockstar who needs no introduction. And then this fall we're doing It's Christmas, Carol! which is a new play --
--with an exclamation point.
With an exclamation point! It's kind of like a Marx brothers take on A Christmas Carol, if you will. We've never done a holiday show at the festival so far as anybody can remember in our 85-year history, this is a new thing for us. So we'll see how it goes.
This interview was conducted by Kyra Miller, 2021.
* This interview has been edited for clarity and cohesion.
* This interview has been edited for clarity and cohesion.
