How?

Rehearsal, catastrophe and revelation.

Trigger: Mentions of depression and suicidal ideation.

In May 2022, my book, The Lost Conversation: Interviews with an Enduring Avant-Garde was published by 53rd State Press. It was and still is, by far, my most successful book.

In it, I conducted long-form interviews with 26 legendary avant-garde New York City theater makers, most of whom started their careers in the 1960s and, at the time I interviewed them, were still making new work.¹

What makes my book The Lost Conversation different from other theater interview anthologies is that, for the most part, I only asked the artists “how” questions.

Things like:

How did you pay rent? How did you not quit? How did you deal if someone left the show suddenly? How about mental health? How did you have kids and continue to make theater? How did you make a play with no money? How did you respond to failure? How about a day job?

And much more.

The reason why I asked “how” questions to these towering theater makers was because, when I got the book deal in December of 2019, I was about to quit the theater.

Here’s what happened.

In the summer of 2019, I was given access to a massive performance space.

I could have lived and died there.

It was thousands and thousands of square feet of raw loft space. Imagine an abandoned factory, but with newly renovated floors, walls, ceiling and tech. A nomadic theater entity had parked itself here temporarily and because I had done a show with them before, they trusted me to play in the space for the summer, free of charge.

For someone like me, there is no better gift. Like, nothing.

My director and I had already been workshopping an exciting new play of mine. With this summer space boon, she and I made a plan to complete it, get it closer to production ready.

The play’s premise and aesthetic was experimental, but the source material was highly recognizable, which is my favorite thing to do. Delivering a familiar story in an unfamiliar way welcomes an audience into an avant-garde world, rather than holds them at a distance, which experimental theater can sometimes do.²

The 5 actors we cast were company members, frequent collaborators and friends. We paid them each a stipend for the summer, not a lot, but not nothing. And to turbo charge the rehearsals, we scheduled two public performances at the end.

Everyone was excited, me especially.

But right off the bat, we lost one of our company members.

You know when an actor is going to leave by the text message which usually requests a phone chat, but withholds any other information.³

No bigs though! Although she was an awesome performer and friend, we used this loss as an opportunity to get crazy. Rather than go with someone we knew, which we always did, we decided to cast a wider net and go completely against type. We wanted to see how far we could push this role.

So we put out a Backstage call and held a day of auditions in Manhattan.

We auditioned actors of all ages, races, genders and physical types. Our only criteria was: “Are they excellent?”

Toward the end of the day, Gio⁴ walked in.

Gio was extraordinary. He had memorized the audition piece, which freed him to go absolutely apeshit in the room. He physically bounced off the walls like he was boneless. He shrieked and bellowed. He was dripping sweat throughout. He was a one-man Wooster Group or Foreman show. I had never seen or imagined my lines done like that, nor had I ever seen anyone audition with that kind of fire.

When Gio finished the audition, we casually interviewed him. He was 22 years old and had just graduated from acting school that spring. This acting school detail is important. I’m not going to say which acting school Gio went to, but…think of one. Got it? Ok, that acting school you’re thinking of? That’s the one.

My team and I walked out of that audition true believers. We said things like “Everything happens for a reason!” and “Every setback is an opportunity!” and “We just discovered an untapped downtown genius!”

But Gio in rehearsal was…off.

He couldn’t take direction.

Let me re-phrase that: he didn’t appear to have any understanding of what direction was. My director would give him a move, motivation or action, Gio would nod his head, say “got it” and then… star jump? Or pretend to be Richard Simmons? Or inexplicably sprint around the perimeter of the room. Or do stage combat moves, faux-kicking and punching fellow actors. Sometimes he did a full-on Jerry Lewis thing. It was as if the entire framework of rehearsing, listening and responding was an unknown concept to him. Gio also rejected my script. He’d say he was off-book, he said it all the time, but then he’d paraphrase my every line. Sometimes he didn’t even bother to paraphrase, he’d just improvise, saying whatever popped into his head in whatever moment he felt like speaking. It was like Whose Line Is It Anyway? in hell.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.

Surely, Sara, Gio was neurodivergent or neuro-spicy, or maybe an actor on the autism spectrum or with ADHD. There are many actors with autism and a wide range of neuro-divergence, as there should be, and many of them are brilliant. Or perhaps Gio had Auditory Processing Disorder, which is when the brain has trouble interpreting and following directions.

But I know someone with Auditory Processing Disorder, and he is not like this. If anything, he is quiet and withdrawn, arguably more present and attuned, striving to focus on what’s happening in the room. Also, people with APD will often ask for clarification.

That wasn’t Gio.

The more I watched him, the more it became clear that Gio was consciously doing a comedy act, a vaudeville routine, an acting school showcase, a flex. I could tell he could do what we needed him to, but that he continuously decided not to, choosing instead some variation of this early Jerry Lewis bit. I tried to have sympathy. This was obviously Gio’s first professional experience outside of that (iconic) acting school, so he felt he needed to…act? Act act?

But with each passing rehearsal with Gio, my panic deepened.

One night, after a particularly trying hour of Gio, my director halted the rehearsal.

“Gio,” she said.

“Sir yessir!” Gio said, suddenly an army private for some reason.

“Quick chat?” My director and I walked Gio to a far corner and sat down. I remember that Gio swung a chair over his head and sat backwards in it, now suddenly that cool teacher in an 80s movie for some reason.

“Sup, boss.” Gio said.

“I have one question for you, Gio:”

“Shoot.”

Then my director calmly and directly said something I will never forget: “When is the actor going to show up?”

Gio went silent and still for a moment, nodded and said “got it.” From then on out… he did not change. The actor never showed up.

There are three modes a playwright slips into when things aren’t going well:

1) Denial.

2) Partial Collapse.

3) Full shutdown.

I was still safely in #1 solely because Gio went to that famous acting school. When I was an actor, I myself was rejected from that same iconic school not once but twice. If Gio actually got in and then graduated, well… he has to be good, right? Maybe this vaudevillian mania he is exhibiting is just… his process? It had to be because we were too deep in and too close to the showing to recast him. We would make it work.

That’s when we lost another company member.

She texted us a for a phone chat, withholding all other information. But I knew. She was out. Family crisis.

It was during that phone call that I remember feeling the first layer of my mental health slide away. I politely begged this actor to stay, asking if there was any way we could make it work? Could we work around your schedule? I even offered to re-write her role so her character was silent—she’d hardly have to rehearse at all, wouldn’t have to memorize a thing! Please, I remember pleading to her, please don’t leave.

She left.

We had about two weeks left before the public showing, which we had invited presenters to. So we had to recast.

The next thing that happened will always bewilder me.

My director and I asked another director friend of ours for actor recommendations for this role. This other director immediately sent us an actor named Tor. The director told us that he had worked with Tor once before and vouched for him. I valued his judgement, so we cast Tor right away and without an audition.

Although Tor was young, he was a sweet, funny guy with a bright personality, and an interesting vibe and look.

But in rehearsal Tor was… off.

The first thing that popped about Tor was that he said his lines like a robot.

Now, I don’t mean a dry deadpan or a subtle monotone or a Brando thing. I mean he sounded exactly like the robot from Lost In Space. I am not saying this to be a dick or to shame him or to be petty or funny. It’s just what he did. Everything. Was. Stilted. And. Flat. Like. This. Will. Robinson.

When my director heard and saw Tor’s delivery she halted rehearsal.

“Um, Tor? Quick chat?” My director calmly asked Tor what specifically he was going for with the robot voice.

This is what Tor said, I’ll never forget it:

“Oh, I have to deliver my lines like a robot until I actually feel it.”

Tor went on to describe this as the SomethingSomething Technique, which he learned from a famous acting coach named Something McSomething.

My director did her very best to explain to Tor the concept of an “Outside-In” acting style, which is a tacit downtown performance technique. “Outside-In” acting is quite literally the opposite of “Method.” The actor “performs” the emotion in rehearsal, until it becomes real, actually models the physical shape of the feeling, not the other way around. For avant-garde and contemporary downtown theater pieces, this is kind of the only way to do it.⁵ An actor attempting a full “Method” performance breakdown of say, a Robert Wilson or Richard Foreman role, would be…well, asking for trouble.

But Tor wasn’t interested in “Outside-In.” This was how Tor was gonna do it.

So there was nothing my director and I could do but wait for his sense memory to kick in.⁶

But there were other things Tor couldn’t do. Like, walking and talking at the same time eluded him. And retaining blocking was an impossibility. And getting off-book. Unlike Gio, who threw my script away, Tor did try to memorize, but couldn’t.

Rehearsal after rehearsal, as I watched my 3 remaining original company members navigate Tor’s robotic delivery and Gio’s Richard-Simmons-meets-Jerry-Lewis thing, I felt the second layer of my mental health slide away.

So in a Hail Mary attempt to hold on to my sanity, I gave more of myself.

I worked with Tor privately in 1-on-1 sessions for one hour before rehearsal and 2 hours after. I showed him exactly what to do and when to do it. I gave him line readings. In an effort to get him off-book, I ran lines with him over and over and over again. I even chalked out his floor pattern.

But it just didn’t stick.

It was at around this time, that one of our long-time company members, Kristian, started to… malfunction.

He began to show up later and later to rehearsals, his explanation being:

“My character would show up late.”

He would bring food on stage with him (sandwiches, SlimJims, fries) and eat sloppily during a scene, explaining:

“My character would eat during this scene.”

Then one day he showed up with his hand in a cast. He explained it thusly:

“My character punched a hole in his wall last night.”

“Um, Kristian?” My director calmly said on a break. “Quick chat?”

Kristian explained to us that he was currently lost in “Method,” and that he wasn’t coming back until the show was over.

Kristian became scary after that. He once arrived 2 hours late. Sometimes he’d just walk out. He’d sit by himself. He brooded and muttered. He stopped taking direction.

So with only a few days before the public showings, my 2 remaining company members, my director and myself held an emergency meeting. We all stood in a circle outside that beautiful, free, raw space, on the massive cement porch, under an industrial steel awning.

Should we cancel the showings? Should we just end this now, while we still can?

By this point, my mental health was destroyed. I was deeply and medically depressed. And I knew that I was. As I’ve mentioned in previous Substacks, I have grappled with Major Depressive Disorder since I was 16. So I know when it’s temporary and I know when it’s permanent. This one was definitely permanent. For me, permanent depression presents itself as a wave of dark, black clarity. You failed, it says. They failed. They are all against you, it claims. They hate you, it confirms. Because you are hateful and hateable.

I was spiritually and emotionally numb that night, but able to mask it for the emergency meeting.

We voted.

We came to that classic theater consensus: The show must go on.⁷

Then came my breaking point.

It was the day of the showings. My director and I did some triage and let Tor carry his script in performance because he just didn’t have the lines. I also cut most of Gio’s character’s lines so although he was physically Jerry Lewis, he wasn’t verbally Jerry Lewis and I could live with that.

And then there was Kristian, an actor we thought we knew, who had now gone full Daniel Day-Lewis on a relatively low-stakes experimental theater workshop.

Right before the showing we did a run through, trying to squeeze what little blood we could from this stone.

“So, Kristian,” my director calmly said, “on that last moment, can you try injecting a touch of sarcasm there?”

“I don’t think so,” Kristian said.

“Excuse me?” my director said.

“I said no,” Kristian said. “My character wouldn’t do that.”

And then I snapped.

“WELL, HE’S NOT YOUR CHARACTER, IS HE?!” I bellowed. “HE’S MINE!”

Now, obviously I didn’t come up with that line. Who was it? Harold Pinter? John Huston? Arthur Laurents? Elia Kazan? I knew I had read it somewhere, so I am not taking credit for it. But with a set up like what Kristan gave me, my depression went straight for his ego.

Kristian was shocked and speechless. My poor director was mortified. Everyone was. I had destroyed the room. Morale was gone. The collapse of this project was no longer the fault of “Method” or the B9 Robot acting technique or Jerry Lewis or mental health—- it was my fault this ship sank.

It had been my fault all along.

I ran out of that theater horrified, humiliated and brimming with shame. I sat in the green room across the hall and wept and wept and wept. That kind of crying, the kind with no beginning and no end, is called lachrymose.

But my shameful secret was that, by then, I had already been lachrymos-ing constantly at home. For days and weeks, I struggled to get out of bed, I white-knuckled it at work, I watched TV all night, I masked and performed good cheer with my kids. (Thankfully, my kids were very young at that point and I don’t think my breakdown registered with them. But of everything I regret about that summer, the thought of my kids seeing even a sliver of my depression is what I’m most ashamed of.)

Anyway, we performed the 2 showings that day. I white-knuckled my way through them both. They were exactly as bad as you can imagine. Worse, in fact.

And then it was over.

But my depression was not. It was worsening.

Late that same summer, I was in talks about another project at another theater in Manhattan. A few weeks after those catastrophic showings, the artistic director at this new theater wanted to have a preliminary meeting about my new show.

I arrived early.

I sat on a couch outside his office.

I numbly gazed out the window at New York City—- my city, my dream, my dream career, my dream life.

And then, almost involuntarily, I thought:

The city would be better off if I were dead.

And then I thought:

So, I should kill myself.

I remember those two thoughts arriving in quick succession, clear as day. They weren’t casual flirtations with darkness, they were real. They were an option.

Then at that exact moment, as if on cue, a friend of mine who worked at that theater walked by, spotted me on the couch and gave an enthusiastic greeting.

“Hey girl!” He said, “What up! Whatcha’ doing here?”

I silently looked up at him, said nothing, and wept. Lacrymose.

My friend immediately took my phone and called my husband. My husband called my therapist. I don’t really remember what happened after that, but I know I didn’t meet with the AD.

Over the next few months, I recovered. I attribute that entirely to medical science. Medical science is the one true miracle, the only true religion, and if I am ever in the same room as RFK, Jr. he better climb out the bathroom window.

As I was recovering, I remember deciding that I was done with theater. Forever.

Now, I would never say that the theater directly caused my break. It did not. The actors did not cause it. The play did not cause it. Casting did not cause it. Nothing caused it, but me. It came from a perfect storm of many biological and external factors.

The theater contributed to my break in only one way, a way that experts have agreed can tip a person already prone to depression over the deep end.

Which is:

When something you’ve always done, now no longer works.

That’s exactly what happened. I was 38 years old when all that happened and had been making theater since I was 5 years old. But this time, it no longer worked.

One night that fall, I remember walking to the train, still genuinely contemplating quitting. But then I thought: what would Richard Foreman have done if someone got “lost in method?” Or Mac Wellman? Or Bill T. Jones? Or Joanne Akalaitis? Would they have thrown their hands up and quit the theater? I mean, maybe? Because surely in their vast and storied careers, they must have gone through something like what I just went through?

Then I wondered if they would be willing to talk to me about it.

On a wing and a prayer, I pitched the idea for a “how?” interview book to a few publishers. They all said no or ignored my email, hoping I’d go away so they could focus on the next great audition guide or out-of-context book of monologues for men or the libretto to Hell’s Kitchen.

But pretty quickly, I did get a yes, from the wonderfully fearless and outside-the-box-thinkers at 53rd State Press, a small theater publisher. They actually went for it. I was over the moon.

And then Covid happened.

Which was bad.

Except for one thing: suddenly everyone I wanted to interview was… available. Like, right now. In fact, with all their shows, tours, classes and engagements suddenly canceled, all they wanted to do was talk.

Almost every single artist I asked to be in the book readily, eagerly agreed to talk to me, some having absolutely no clue who I was. I talked for hours at a time to my honest-to-god artistic heroes like Andre Gregory, Robert Wilson, Adrienne Kennedy, Richard Foreman, Jennifer Tipton, Lee Breuer, Maude Mitchell, Eduardo Machado, Lola Pashalinski, Black-Eyed Susan, Ping Chong, Joanne Akalaitis, Kate Valk, Bill T. Jones, Ching Valdes-Aran, David Henry Hwang and many more. I couldn’t believe my luck.

I ritualistically started each interview by telling the artist a much-shortened version of the story I just told you. So most of my interviews begin, more or less, with their immediate response.⁸

Probably my favorite interview in the book is with the great director, artist and intellect, Andre Gregory, founder of the groundbreaking theater company The Manhattan Project and of course writer and star of My Dinner With Andre⁹ and Vanya on 42nd Street.

At one point in my conversation with him, Andre Gregory said to me:

“I can tell you’re still really disturbed by this difficult rehearsal process you went through.”

And I said:

“I am, yeah. I just wish I had done about a thousand things differently.”¹⁰

And Andre said:

But you didn’t, so you have to move on. Now, the interesting challenge is to take what happened and make it into something.

And that’s exactly what I did.

Theater is Hard. But don’t quit. Make something instead.

1. RIP Lee Breuer, Richard Foreman and Robert Wilson. I’m honored you guys spoke to me.

2. Or at least has the reputation for.

3. Don’t get me wrong: I completely understand when an artist needs to exit a project. I know it’s not usually done lightly. I have done it myself.

4. I have changed all names in this story.

5. Obviously, this is subjective. All actors have their own personal toolboxes and I would never question how they emotionally reach an authentic performance moment. But to smear “Method” cream all over an experimental piece on day one is shooting yourself, and the piece, in the foot. Again, just my opinion.

6. It never did.

7. Does it?

8. After much consideration with my incredibly insightful editor at 53rd State Press, we decided not to dig into the “me” story, rather only reference it in my preface as “a disastrous workshop that left me hopeless.” This was the right choice. The book is never about me, rather about it, them and us.

9. The best movie ever.

10. This exchange happens on page 192 of the book.