Virginia Grise
Interviewed by Elena Araoz
Elena Araoz: Let me begin by saying that “Innovations in Socially Distant Performance” is honored to be making your virtual production of a farm for meme. Thank you for trusting us with your beautiful words and this very personal story. You were in the process of developing a community-oriented full-production in Texas when the lockdowns began. Can you describe what you originally thought this production might be and how you pivoted? How are you continuing to consider community through this virtual production?
Virginia Grise: Let me begin by saying how wonderful it has been to collaborate with you and the other artists, including your students.
I was about to begin my three year tenure as the Mellon Foundation’s Playwright in Residence at Cara Mia Theater in Dallas, Texas when the pandemic hit. I had always planned on working on a farm for meme while in residence, but it was slated as one of my later projects on staff. I wanted to create a shadow puppetry piece and imagined doing it outdoors. When we received shelter in place orders, I really utilized that time to think about practice. What do I need to sustain my practice as an artist despite our inability to gather? I discovered that as a writer (that works in a medium about the body) I had neglected my physical self and so I returned to movement as a daily practice from walking to exercise to somatics and dance classes, and this really helped me work through an immense amount of grief that I was experiencing not only because of the cabronavirus but also a grief that I had been holding on to for a very long time. I needed to work out the grief through the body. So initially this work was incredibly solitary, and I was very guarded with my time. I avoided Zoom and screen time as much as possible and limited speaking so that I could sit with silence. I really reflected on what I need to say right now, what is necessary.
I decided to work on a farm for meme for a number of reasons. Initially, I began working on the text as a coloring book so that young people could have something to do at home. I want the coloring book to be a tool for reflection and imagination. From there, the work has spun into a series of short artistic experiments with multiple collaborators in multiple forms: coloring book, podcast, radio play, Zoom performance, backyard garden.
The work has become a conversation with the present moment of both pandemic and rebellion. The story is about the building of a 14-acre urban farm in an empty lot after the ‘92 rebellion in Los Angeles. As I wrote the piece, we planted large garden beds in our backyard and we are growing squash, tomatoes, tomatillos, melon, cucumber, okra, pumpkin, Mexican honeysuckle, purple coneflower, Spanish lavender, ginger, Texas hibiscus, basil, mint, rosemary, Mexican oregano, sage, French thyme, dill, and fennel. We will prepare the soil for fall planting this weekend. When I began writing a farm for meme I did not know we would be in the midst of another rebellion in this country. It’s been 28 years since the Rodney King verdict.
In the middle of all of this, I have really begun to think about the question of abolition, land, food, and liberation, how we build and sustain healthy communities but also how we dream even when our communities are under attack. The current movement in defense of black lives and to defund the police creates opportunities for us to really prioritize the needs of our communities. In the most ideal scenario, I would like for the rest of my residency at Cara Mia to actually take place in a vacant lot, and I would love to create spaces for dreaming, for and with community in that empty lot – what can we imagine here and create together? This for me is the foundation of theatre - imagining, building, and creating worlds together. a farm for meme in some ways is a vehicle for that type of work.
EA: You have said in public panels and conversations that you are not really a fan of virtual theatre and you question if virtual theatre can be theatre. What made you feel that you should still delve into this form of virtual gathering?
VG: To give context, I dislike a whole lotta things (especially when it comes to theatre). I always say, “If theatre were more like a party, I’d go more often.” But I actually think anything can be theatre, and in fact, the best theatre I have ever seen may not be what we traditionally think of as theatre – from drag shows to just general ghetto gay drama, from halftime shows to dance battles, from house parties, to DIY fashion shows.
I don’t yet fully know what I think about working on an online platform – I think it is just another form for working, for making work together, so I have valued the time we have spent discovering new possibilities for staging this piece but I have not quite fully embraced the internets as a virtual gathering space. There is a reason I work with LIVE performance. I am really interested in returning to this text with you at the end of my residency, looking at what is different about the way in which we approach this text three years from now.
EA: You have also spoken about the internet and social media as essential tools for activists, organizers, and protestors. How has their successful use of these tools inspired you as an artist?
VG: The fact that they use it as a tool is inspiring. I think that’s a useful way to think of the internet and social media. It’s just another medium. How you use it or not – is completely up to you.
EA: a farm for meme has brought together an amazing group of sponsors and producers invested in this project. Is making this project virtually expanding the scope of collaboration?
VG: Making this project virtually has allowed us to think of collaboration across geographic lines so we are collaborating with different communities in different states and countries even, different time zones, different languages, different levels of experience as theatre makers, and that is exciting for me.
EA: a farm for meme is based on a true story and real people. It centers on the destruction of the South Central Farm in South Central Los Angeles, one of the largest urban community farms in the US. It also centers on a Chicana character and her community. Can you speak to why it was important that the production had performances in English and others in Spanish and both with ASL interpretation?
VG: I almost always begin my writing from true stories and real people and then allow my imagination to take over. It is important (for all my work) to make performance as accessible as possible. For this project, I wanted to be sure that the farmers from South Central who might be monolingual Spanish speakers could listen to this story, to know how I was inspired by their farm and their struggle. I am a Chicana and so is our performer. I am actually terrified of making working work in Spanish, but we both agreed it was important.
EA: The enduring presence of the walnut tree stands out in a farm for meme. Towards the end of the piece, we learn that it is illegal to kill walnut trees in Los Angeles. Can you speak to the exploration of endurance and survivorship in the piece? Do you feel that there is a contemporary connection between this garden that was bulldozed in 2006 and our country’s current situation?
VG: I am always inspired by my people’s ability to not just endure and survive but build, create, sustain, and thrive. I think there are many connections we can make to this present moment, particularly because we have an opportunity to imagine our world in different ways, so I think the question really is, “What is your walnut tree? What are you willing to defend? What gives you life?” And while the internet gives us the chance to reach audiences beyond our geographic confines, I have noticed that as an artist, I really have a strong desire to focus my work in hyper-local ways right now. I think it is important to honor the lived realities, daily practices, rooted wisdoms, and embodied knowledge of our local communities.
EA: You have worked in all kinds of non-traditional spaces; one of your latest productions happening below a freeway overpass. What invests you in making work in these non-traditional performance spaces? Does that same investment occur while you are making a virtual production? Do you see this as site-specific performance?
VG: I talked about a lot of this already but certainly accessibility is important to me. An elder Raul Salinas (quoting someone else I am sure) would say, “La poesia esta en la calle.” I am a callejera. Some of my earliest work was in the street – theatre as disruption, disorientation and protest. I think I have always been interested in site specific performance – the relationship to the physical place but also to a people and community. You talk about this work as site specific - the computer, the screen, Zoom - but the other space that is “site-specific” about this work is also our actor Marlene Beltran’s home. I think there is something very intimate about the way in which she has invited the whole team to her house so to speak.
EA: “Innovations in Socially Distant Performance” has learned so much with this opportunity to work with you. Is there anything you have learned by making a farm for meme? Do you feel what you may have learned will change the way you think about theatre making once we can gather again?
VG: Collaboration is a muscle. Elena, more than anything I really appreciate the opportunity to work with you right now because I learn so much from the ways in which you create opportunities for exploration, how you are not scared of the unknown. Or, if you are, you face that fear and do it anyway. I have loved that this process really has been about discovery and I hope to hold on tightly to that idea – to always remain in a state of curiosity and learning. This piece began when you asked your student researchers, “How do you make nature grow inside – only using things you can make with your hands, with what you have in your house?” It was so exciting to see people make gardens out of construction paper, measuring tape, string lights and shadows.
EA: Making virtual theatre and using technology that is not really made for finding beauty, to me, is anxiety inducing. I feel that I have so little control, and in a way, there is a lot of freedom in giving myself over to the whims of wifi. How has making a text-heavy production online challenged or affirmed your ideas of being a playwright/producer in the rehearsal room?
VG: I like that I can turn off my camera during rehearsal! As a writer, the rehearsal room is both a space I love being in but it is anxiety inducing for me for some of the same reasons virtual theatre might be anxiety inducing for you. So I think I am learning how to sit in my anxiety better, breathe through it, but also really enjoying the openness we have worked while exploring this particular text. It is text heavy but it is not long (4pages) so it is great to see the ways performance has expanded what is possible with the text and breathed new life into it (it’s now a 20 minute performance). It has actually been incredibly satisfying to dedicate serious time to really explore four pages of work. As theatre makers, how often do we get to do that? Even in the short form, my work is very dense so I think I would like to do more of this – instead of traditional full length plays – I am interested in how we can collectively break open my text in the room together.
EA: When we can gather again to make and witness live productions, what do you hope the American theatre field and industry will look like? Do you hope it will have changed?
VG: It is my hope that we can work towards creating a theatre that in its very process offers cultural models for social and political interaction that reflect the world we imagine, the world that we dream. I hope we stay committed to radical curiosity and exploration and work that is artist driven. It is my trajectory as an artist to not only delve deeper into my own artistic practice but to invite others to create with me, to collectively imagine, dream and build new worlds into existence, to create uncompromising work that is transformative, work that hopefully incites movement.
Learn about Virginia Grise here and “a farm for meme” here. Register for tickets to an English or Spanish performance of “a farm for meme” here.
