Show Business: How did you get your start in theater?
Wendy Herlich: I started doing plays in school when I was a kid. One of my first big roles was Gollum in The Hobbit when I was around 11. I had to wear a mask over my head with these huge fake eyes. One time during a performance, one of the eyes fell out onstage. I impressed everyone with my character commitment and improv chops by collapsing to the ground and yowling, “My eye! My eye!”
SB: How has your improv training helped you as a writer and performer?
WH: It’s been a huge gift to me as a creative person. The
difficulty involved in embracing the kernel of an idea, not knowing where it is
really going or what it will become, and having the faith to follow it and
trust that the path will reveal itself cannot be overstated. I was writing all
my life before I recognized myself as a writer. I just didn’t have the courage
to give myself over to that process. I think improv probably helped me get to
that place.
SB: I noticed that you received your improv training in
Seattle, which is one of the more improv-friendly towns outside of Chicago and New
York. How does working in a smaller market compare to doing stage in New York
City?
WH: It’s much less competitive, obviously, in a smaller city. In terms of the number of performers, but also in terms of building an audience. In Seattle, we always faced difficulties cultivating audiences, just like performers do here, but we were — and the company [Seattle’s Unexpected Productions] still is — a big fish in a little pond. Here in New York it is just much harder to get stage time, to stand out from all the options for entertainment that people have.
SB: What was your inspiration for An Evening of Awkward Romance?
WH: I started writing this show at a point where I was truly embracing my voice as a writer for the first time. It took me a while to discover it, and then after I did, to own it. As artists, so often we are terrified of being pigeonholed, or of being tied to one thing. And so we resist it. In my case, I would write a scene or a piece of fiction and I’d be saying, “I don’t want it to be a love story!” But often that’s the direction things would take. So I decided to wholeheartedly go with it in the creation of this show.
SB: What made you decide to self-produce the show?
WH: I just had this sense of urgency, to put the work out there. I had a child a couple of years ago, and that really shifted all my priorities, in the best way. Suddenly it was very clear what I wanted to spend my time on and what I didn’t. And with this show, it went right into the “must” category. And the quickest way to give it life was to self-produce.
SB: For some people, the term “self-produced theater” will always conjure up images of solo Fringe shows and other vanity projects. What are some of the things that performers and writers can do to reduce that stigma?
WH: I find this question so interesting. I never really think too much about that “stigma”; our job as writers and performers is just to create great work. It may be true that in the realm of self-produced theater there are some pieces of questionable quality. But we are also living in a time when arts funding is shrinking, and consequently, theaters are taking fewer and fewer chances on unknowns — whether those unknowns are performers, subject matter, or anything outside their particular comfort zone. So often it has seemed to me that if theaters are interested in producing a play, they want to workshop it to death, maybe to put their stamp on it, and maybe to make extra sure there are no flaws. Not to mention, women are still being under-produced relative to men. In March 2010, Theresa Rebeck eloquently spoke to this point in her Laura Pels Keynote Address. All those reasons are good reasons to self-produce. It’s risky, expensive and a gamble, but it’s better than having the piece stay in the darkness of your hard drive all your life. People will always respond to work that is of a high quality; I’ve already been blessed enough to experience that.
An Evening of Awkward Romance; February 11 - 26; The
Tank, 151 West 46th Street, 8th Floor; www.brownpapertickets.com
