URTA Interview with Beth Malone: Tony Nominee and URTA Alum

06April

URTA Interview with Beth Malone: Tony Nominee and URTA Alum

Beth Malone is a graduate of the MFA Acting program at UC Irvine. Last year, she originated the role of Molly Brown in the world premiere of a wholly reimagined The Unsinkable Molly Brown at the Denver Center for the Arts. This year, she received a Tony Award nomination for her portrayal of Alison Bechdel in Fun Home, the acclaimed Broadway musical based on the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel.

Last week, she spoke with URTA about graduate school, auditions, and making a life as an actor.

URTA: Beth, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us.

Beth Malone: Absolutely.

I believe you’re familiar with the URTA Auditions.

I did URTAs to go to grad school! That is how I found UC, Irvine.

You had an undergrad degree and had been doing some work. So what was it that made you want to go to grad school?

Um…fear. Fear of waiting tables, of growing and old and needing help. It can be very bleak. I think that’s the honest truth. I just wanted to give myself more options as I grew older, as an actor and an independent contractor, and as a person who is going to be a sole bread winner for myself. So that’s why I went to grad school, to support myself with teaching and also form some good, solid knowledge.

Having a BA enables you to do a few things, but a Master’s degree opens a lot more doors—practical doors for an actor. Who knows what’s going to happen? I thought, and I still think, some day that I am going to use my Master’s degree to become a tenured professor at a beautiful college town that has a ski area. That’s my future goal.

I bet you’ll be getting a lot of phone calls from universities in the mountain west now.

Not yet, but I haven’t really put it out there yet! I am putting it out there now. I am open for conversation.

Aside from the practical applications that a MFA affords you, such as teaching, what did you take away from grad school?

Way more than I ever anticipated. Even as it was happening, I couldn’t really tell what I was practically, actually learning. But then after I graduated and I stepped out into the work force I realized I had all of this self-knowledge; knowledge of what my strengths are, what my tools are, my marketability as far as who I am. But not just that, I’m not just talking about the bottom line of getting the job, but also good, solid acting training and vocal work. Whenever I’m with actors who haven’t trained, the thing that outs them to me is their vocal work, how they use their voice and how just good, solid…I mean–be credible, be believable, but be heard. You can be honest, like on this phone call I am being really soft, but can you be honest in a thousand seat theatre and be heard? Can every syllable you utter be heard? It’s that kind of vocal work, and also the physical work. There was a lot of movement training in our program that just enables you to throw it all out there as committed physically as you can make it, and then you pare it down and pare it down to the size of a 500 seat house, and then to the size of a camera lens. There are all these different tools. Your body is your medium. You have your voice, your face, and your body, so let’s just explore all of the things that it will do. Can we just not be afraid to try a million things, and there’s no fear of being judged or being wrong in this space. You are a complete and total vessel for exploration in this scenario. We had a lot of fun, but it was really grueling. We had long hours, some overnighters, there were some epic fails, but you learn as much from your failure you do from the times when people heap accolades on you. It was really amazing. And also the ten years after grad school and putting it all together and starting to think that “Oh, it took ten years for me to really own all of it.”

All of the principles start to fall into place.

Right. I didn’t walk out of there and think “Oh, I’m cooked!” I walked out of there and ten years later I’m still putting it all together.

What do you remember most about your URTA auditions?

It was crazy. I really wanted to go to Penn State because I thought that would be a good segue way to the East Coast. But then I went to the UC Irvine interview and I called my wife and I said “I want to go here! This is awesome. Southern California is amazing and the campus is awesome and they have amazing facilities here, and the teachers—this guy named Robert Cohen who is a guru—I’ve read all of his books.” And then, at that point Penn State was not interested in me and there were a handful of schools that were, but I was really smitten with UC Irvine right from the get go.

That was the best match for you.

It was.

On that topic, every year we have a crop of candidates who are doing the auditions and trying to find the school that’s best for them—what things should they be looking for in a program?

It’s funny. You just have to trust your gut. I interviewed with Eli Simon at UC Irvine and we just really got along. I interviewed with some other people and I really liked them, but I ended up going somewhere where the program itself was what attracted me, not the offer. If you get that offer that is like this carrot dangling, you have to separate that carrot from what your goals are. Sometimes it’s like “I want to leave grad school with no debt.” So that’s a whole other set of goals. I knew geographic proximity was a very important thing for me. That’s the kind of person I am. Things scare me, so I like to take them slowly. I grew up on a ranch in Colorado and I moved to New York at 18 to become an actor and I had no skills. That really informed how I went to it later in life after I had taken several years to lick my wounds and figure out, “Ok, why was that a colossal failure? What did I do wrong?” That’s when I was like—I need a parent; I need a mom and dad. I need a school. UC Irvine was my parent during that time, and I needed that.

I suspect that’s not unusual.

I think a lot of people need that. Unless you have parents who are really supportive and really sophisticated and have a lot of money, who want to get you an apartment in New York and come with you to all your auditions and learn the business for you and hold your hand. That’s what it takes. They say that artists need support, and I needed to get those support systems in place for myself. Because I came from ranching people who were not—I was like an anomaly in my family—so it wasn’t like “Oh yeah I’ve got all of these connections, and here’s what you do, honey.”

Your transition into the professional world went pretty well, I guess you could say.

molly_brown_dcpa_2

Beth Malone and Burke Moses in The Unsinkable Molly Brown at the Denver Center for the Arts. Photo: Jennifer M. Koskinen

It went really well, even before this year with the large scale success, I’ve had a lot of success since grad school. I’ve barely ever had to get a survival job which, as an actor, that is the level of success that I mark. I’ve made a lot of commercials and a lot of TV shows and a lot of theater before this year and that, to me, shows my ability to sustain a successful lifestyle, where I have a mortgage and a car without having to be a barista.

In terms of preparing for auditions, do you have anything you would call a routine?

I’m a terrible auditioner. This is the type of thing that you should never take my advice on. I am an abhorrent auditioner. I have all of these voices in my head telling me that I am terrible, and I believe them and then I get really nervous and my nerves take over my personality and I become someone I have never met.

How do you overcome that?

I never really have overcome it. My most successful audition was when I went in for [The Unsinkable] Molly Brown recently because I had a successful Off-Broadway show and people were sort of aware of me. That made me walk into there and say “Ok. They think I’m this thing, but I know I’m this other thing and I know I have this skill set that they don’t know about, and it’s like this great secret and I am going to walk in there and I’m going to spring it on them.” And I did. That was an unusual situation, and I killed in that audition and I got Molly Brown from it.

You’ve been with Fun Home from the beginning, through all its phases of development.

Yes.

Given your self-described troubles with auditions, how did you–

There were no stakes. Initially my agent called and said “Will you put yourself on tape for this reading? Lisa Kron saw you in a play and she liked you and she may want you to come to the Public and do this reading.” So I set up a camera and I was just rehearsing it, because there was no pressure to be perfect, and I looked at it and I was like “Eh, it’s good enough,” and I sent it. That’s how it was. I sent my rehearsal, and I booked it.

There you go.

So I sent it to my agent and they sent it on. Then I sent them a more cleaned up version later and they sent that on also. But I had already booked it. Lisa [Kron] said she had gone online and looked at all of my commercials. I had a bunch of commercials on YouTube. There’s this McDonalds commercial where I think really fast, from thought to thought to thought, really facile—now I’m doing this, now I’m doing that, now I’m doing this, and this—these really fast thoughts, and she was like, anyone who can do that can do this play that I’m writing.

Beth Malone as Alison in Fun Home at the Circle in the Square Theatre photo: Joan Marcus.

Beth Malone as Alison in Fun Home at the Circle in the Square Theatre photo: Joan Marcus.

At this point you’ve gone from reading to development to Off-Broadway to Broadway. How much has your approach to the role grown or evolved over that course of time?

With a person like Alison Bechdel, it’s a static thing. She’s a person that exists. I’m always trying to be her. But Lisa, as she’s been writing it, the operating system of a narrator/memory play—it is really projected out of my mind, out of this characters mind. So, how do you write a character that has something at stake? I can’t just be a narrator because a narrator is just telling something and there’s no cost.

Right. And then the story has already happened and…

It’s already happened. It’s a safe place to be, sitting on your little chair and telling the story. But this was different. This was a person who was creating a work of art in front of you. I am working on trying to write a book about my father’s suicide and I’m trying to get to the bottom of all of these memories. In theory, it shouldn’t really cost me anything but in actuality excavating all of these memories ends up being enormously cathartic, painful, and ultimately a very freeing exercise. That is the arc of Big Al—my character, Large Alison. So how do you write that? There were all of these different manifestations of how that behaves, and it was murky because in the book my character doesn’t exist.

Right, because it’s…

The block captions that appear at the top of each panel. You know, if you look at the book, the [captions] at the top have: “My father treated his children like furniture, and the furniture like children.” So there used to be a lot of things where my character would simply tell the audience. This is information that Lisa wanted them to know. But then that’s not dramatic. That is a book. That is the way a graphic novel behaves. The way a play behaves is if you tell the audience what you want them to know, you’re a really bad playwright.

Right!

The first tenet of great playwriting is ‘show don’t tell’. Instead of having that line be in the play, they just had Bruce come out and lovingly arrange his couch and then gruffly shoo the kids off into the corner. You know, show him treating his children like furniture. And in that way, my line went away. That’s another thing that happened. My spoken lines went away, largely. In the latest iteration I barely speak. It was a drag for me. Initially I was like ok, now I’m just a thing. Down at The Public, I was in a proscenium house and I had to stand off to the side a lot and the action would be the star and I would be like this scarecrow stuck in the back. No one would even notice I was there half the time. But in the round version I am standing in the center, and things are swirling around me and I am really projecting out the memories from my mind in a much more visceral way. So, my arc is a lot more at the center of the experience of watching Fun Home. You really do perceive it through my perspective a lot more, in that way. I feel the Tony nomination would not have happened if I was in a proscenium house. I’m relatively sure.

That’s fascinating. An intrinsically theatrical situation—very interesting.

Having something in the round has really served my character more than any other character. And my character has gone through the most changes from version to version. All of the other characters have always behaved as if they’re seen through the present. It’s a day in the life of the Bechdels, in their house and whatever day they’re living, they’re just behaving in the way that I’m remembering them. My character—I used to be in my actual office, and I would be drawing, actually physically drawing panels and you would see them projected on the back wall and all of this stuff, and it would be much more literal from the actual book. Now, I don’t draw much. I draw as I’m remembering. Mostly I am in the act of reaching out and putting together and trying to nail something down. That’s a lot more active than having my head down on the drawing pad. It’s a lot more active.

You also created a one woman show, is that right?

Yeah! I recently did it down at Joe’s Pub. It was really, really fun!

What was the impetus for creating that?

I was really thinking I was going to quit. There were a few years that I was not getting the kind of work I want to do and I really, actively searched out my ‘next life’, which would be the teaching thing. My friend Peter Schneider, who is a director and a producer, said “Why don’t you make yourself bullet points before you walk away?” So I did that and one of the things was, I want to do this thing that’s always been nagging at the back of my mind. It’s like I’ve been afraid of this, but it’s something that I’ve wanted to do. Something about my personal story always seemed like it would be helpful to others to hear. Hilarious, tragic, and all of the wonderful things that a good piece of theater has. Everyone has a story and my story about coming out and being disowned, and then my really redneck father coming back. And then, the third act of this story is Fun Home and like, becoming this notorious lesbian and having my dad come to see Fun Home. So, I wrote it and it had taken a long time to get it right, get the songs right, get the cuttings of the songs right. So, all of that is to say that this last version was the most tight and…It was a kick ass night. I had guest stars. I had Alison Bechdel come up and play me. She played me in my show which was hilarious, and Lisa Kron came up and we did a section called “Ask the Lesbian a Question You’ve Always Wanted to Know but Have Been Afraid to Ask.” It was a blast and it was sold out. Two back to back shows sold out at Joe’s pub. I think I’m going to do it again because there was such a huge demand for it.

That’s Fantastic! Keying into what you were talking about with not being able to find the work that you wanted to do—it often seems like young artists are focused on getting that job and getting hired to do a thing, but maybe less thought is put into creating their own work, or finding their own opportunities, rather than just waiting for a conventional process to “hire” them.

Life is a long thing, and I feel like you have a lot of choices of whether to grow or to not grow. A lot of people leave grad school with the expectation “I’m going to go out and I’m going to book a Comedy Central special and then I’m going to get on Saturday Night Live and then I’m going to have my own sitcom.” And if these things don’t happen it becomes, “Wow! I’m really disillusioned. I don’t know what to do. I guess I’ll become a realtor.” It happens a lot. It just depends on what you’re made of and what you’re really willing to do for the art, to stay in the community. Ultimately, I feel like you will find the life that you are supposed to have. If you’re not going to push through those hard, hard things, then you really should have been a realtor all along. And I really feel like that’s actually true for a lot of people. And there is nothing—I am married to a realtor. I sort of continued to follow these little “yellow brick roads”; There was always somebody out there making art that excited me and I went to where they were and just made myself available to that person. I’m lucky enough to have been able to offer something to the people that I really admired. That’s not the case for everybody. A lot of people become producers or become company managers because they are still completely turned on by the work, but they don’t have the skills that are required to be in front of the audience. I just happened to be really lucky enough to go “Ok, I’m going to be in front; I’m going to have the script in front of me so I’m going to be able to give something to the written word, or whatever.” Or to collaborate on that level with people who I really admire. That’s really been a blessing to me.

Is there any advice you would offer to a theatre artist who is just starting on their professional life?

Social media can be a great tool! If you follow someone who is really, really big, and they tweet about something, look it up. If that person turns you on, then go to where they are making art. Go there! There are always little things…you can follow these little…to the end of the rainbow. You can follow who people are into, and if someone says, “Hey my friend is making art down at 54 Below and it’s really, really interesting. Go and check it out.” Then, go check it out! These are people who are accessible and they are young and fresh and sometimes they will have a theater company that they are just starting to form and are looking for people. There are a million ways to get involved on a groundbreaking level that helps you to figure out who you are as an artist and what kind of stuff you want to be making. And yes, you are going to have to have a survival job. Yes, you’re going to have to find eight roommates. But there is always a way to do it. It will lead you to the kind of work you want to be making. And that kind of work will lead you to the right kind of representation too. If you have an agent who really gets you, it’s way, way better than having an agent that is a big, high-powered agent who thinks you are the next shiny thing and when you turn out not to be the next big shiny thing, they dump you. It’s way better to have someone who really knows what your identity is and can get people on board who are hip to that identity.

Wonderful advice. Beth, thank you so much. We really appreciate your taking the time to talk with URTA.

No problem. Thank you so much.

Posted by URTA  Posted on 06 Apr 
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