INTERVIEW: Margie takes a ‘Leap’ and charts her own path
Photo: Ron Domingo, Moe Angelos, Brian Demar Jones, Polly Lee and Andrew Lynch star in Leap and the Net Will Appear. Photo courtesy of Marina McClure / Provided by Matt Ross PR with permission.
Leap and the Net Will Appear, the new play by Chana Porter, is currently playing courtesy of the New Georges theater company in New York City. In the show, Margie lets the audience know she wants to be a lion, and she eventually heads out on a journey away from her family and former life to start trailblazing her own path.
The production, directed by Tara Ahmadinejad, continues at The Flea Theater through Sunday, June 30. Leap features Moe Angelos, Eliza Bent, Toni Ann DeNoble, Ron Domingo, Brian Demar Jones, Polly Lee and Andrew Lynch.
New Georges is dedicating to developing works by female and gender-nonconforming artists. The company was founded in 1992.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Ahmadinejad about the new show. She is a core-founding member of Piehole and has worked with Clubbed Thumb, Tender Claws and the New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect program. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
How would you describe the show to someone looking to purchase a ticket?
Leap is a play about a woman who wants to be a lion but spends her life trying to be a human. The play is an accumulation of events that take unexpected turns and takes us on a bumpy journey, wrestling with our assumptions about how to find fulfillment. It’s funny, sad and beautiful, in all sorts of combinations.
What attracted you to this project and interpreting Chana Porter’s words for the stage?
I was initially drawn to the play’s humor and idiosyncratic language, but have been continually drawn in by its layers and hidden depths. The play keeps revealing itself to me, and it presents such a rich and beautiful world to uncover with designers and actors, which is really rewarding and fulfilling for all of us involved. The play asks us to imagine a world that is similar to ours but just a little off. This process involves a lot of puzzles and creative problem solving, but it also requires boldness and a feelings-based approach. What a beautiful challenge this has proven to be!
Do you feel that the character of Margie speaks to certain issues that are occurring in 2019?
I do feel that there are resonances to 2019, but I also feel this play runs so deep, it would probably speak to specific issues in 2009 and 2029 as well. For me, it’s the constellation of journeys in the play that feel the most resonant in this moment. Margie is navigating many ‘supposed to’s’ about being ‘a woman.’ She seems to be barking up all the wrong trees in her attempt to ‘find herself.’ Her bumpy journey shows us how inhospitable the world around us can be to this task, especially when you presume something ‘out there’ will be the right thing for you.
But Constantine and Tim’s journeys show us another side, a kind of listening that can allow us to connect with one another, and lean on our own intuition as well as our community, to find strength in the bravery of existing (!) in a world whose structures are so impoverished and don’t seem to make space for us.
Because this play doesn’t exist in our exact world, these characters don’t have the same language we do around issues of identity (for example, they don’t have the internet), which allows us to look at these issues in a fresh light, through the back door, in a way that wakes up our language, lets us see/feel beyond think pieces.
When did you first fall in love with theater?
I watched a lot of TV when I was little, and I loved cartoons with dark humor, strange voices, dumb faces. And I wanted to be a cartoonist (among other things). Theater appeared to be the most direct route for exploring those interests, and then the first play I remember seeing that made a real impact on me was a high school production of A Piece of My Heart when I was about 10 or 11 — which made me cry and cry and cry. I found it so sad and moving. The intersection of these two aspects of my elementary school self might approximate a ‘falling in love’ type of experience.
New Georges is committed to creating and developing work by female and gender-nonconforming playwrights and female directors. How important are theatrical companies like this to directors, playwrights and actors?
More and more you can see the benefit of companies like New Georges to the overall theatrical landscape, and of course to the women and nonbinary artists they support as well. A lot of NG Affiliated Artists are making waves across the country (and beyond!) with their contributions to theater.
There are many more women writers and directors operating on the ‘downtown’ level than on Broadway, for example. But I truly believe that the downtown ‘feeds’ the mainstream and is operating on a level of preparing the public for these artists. They take the ‘risks’ that more mainstream theaters are more reticent to make. But by doing so, they reveal that these ‘risks’ aren’t really risks at all.
I don’t think that many people consciously believe that hiring women or nonbinary artists is risky — but in essence they operate as though they do. ‘Well, we know White-Guy-X has delivered time and time again, so let’s just give the job to him.’ They may not consciously think that a woman or nonbinary artist can’t get the job done, but they’re falling back on a default male artist who’s benefited from historic, ongoing bias.
I’m thinking about Rachel Chavkin’s Tony acceptance speech and her assertion that the lack of women directors and writers on Broadway ‘is not a pipeline issue.’ New Georges is the visible proof of that pipeline. You can’t look at the roster of programs and artists they support and think the talent doesn’t exist.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
New Georges’ production of Leap and the Net Will Appear plays through June 30 at The Flea Theater in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
