TMT: You are an old friend of Target Margin, can you talk about your past work with TMT and what’s unique about Reread Another?
PB: I’ve collaborated and played with the lovely folks at TMT since I was a senior in college. David Herskovits directed King Lear at Williams College and cast me as Gloucester. The other night, my college friend Sean Tarrant who came to see Reread Another reminded me that it was exactly 20 years ago that David directed us in Lear. 20 years!! David really opened my eyes (I was as blind as old Gloucester) to the Target Margin way of seeing the world — and that view included the idea of non-traditional casting which was pretty new and mind-blowing. Gloucester being played by a 20 year old gal was a choice in line with TMT’s core value.
After Lear, I stalked TMT shows until I was cast as a spear carrier playing one of four Yakov’s in The Seagull at the Ohio Theatre. I really worked on anything TMT could offer me: striking sets, loading in, volunteering at benefits and whatever else. Yuri Skujins directed me in a lab production of Sonoma, and David & I worked on a number of pieces that either remained exploratory or that went to have full productions. I like to think that my work and our collaborations have grown in that time. I’ve matured in my aesthetic of what makes interesting theatre. The other day, David was giving me a note and I felt like I understood without him having to say any more. There’s a shorthand. It’s just what happens when you work with the same people over time. I love that.
I would say of all the plays I’ve worked on with TMT, Reread Another is the least like a story and also the most personal. What I mean by that is that most of the other plays had a pretty clear narrative linear structure, even if they were pretty experimental. For one thing the authors of the other plays we did wrote more traditional texts that sound like what we think of as plays: Rinne Groff, David Greenspan, Goethe, Tennessee Williams, Anton Chekov, or even letters from Elia Kazan and Tennessee Williams. But Reread Another‘s source material is the furthest from story or a play. It reads like a poem and you read it and think, huh, what the heck was that about? It’s the most open, and in that openness it’s become very personal for me. A play about memories, hurts, loves and losses. It’s about my relationship to these other lovely actors I get to play with: Clare, Ugo and Jesse. It’s about whatever is going on that day, that week, this year:
“My memory does not tell me who and what to remember.
So what do I do
I remember everything
How kind you are
I do very nearly love you
So do the friends of France.”
And really for me, this play is about memory and my memories and so it’s quite all encompassing.
TMT: A quick peek at your Wikipedia revealed you are an Indian American actress born in Chandigarh, and brought up in Belgium and the United States. Has being an Indian American actress posed a challenge for roles in the theater? A major aspect of TMT’s mission is to cast diverse people. As a woman of color how has working with us differentiated from other companies?
PB: Yes, yes. I didn’t really know what path would open up to me as an actress of color when I started acting professionally. And what I found in the theatre especially was that there seemed to be work for me when companies were casting Shakespeare plays or, in the case of TMT, when there was a mission to offer new possibilities or find truth by subverting expectations. There were very few plays with roles for specifically South Asian actresses — the number has certainly grown but getting those plays produced is another challenge. TMT unlike any other company has given me the feeling that I have an artistic home and as an actress of color, that’s been very special for me. With TMT, I feel like I could really play any role that may have been written, male or female of any color or nationality or age. That’s unlike most of the opportunities out there for me.
TMT: Can you speak about working with Gertrude Stein’s poetic language as an actor?
PB: There’s a world of rich material to mine in every sentence — Stein’s language is so simple in it’s structure and yet so often opaque in it’s sense. In this play in particular, we’ve had to make choices that seem arbitrary but as we work them in the theatre night after night, they actually take on deeper meaning and feel like they do make a certain sense. It’s beautifully evocative and often puzzling material even from the inside.
TMT: Throughout Gertrude and Alice’s relationship they sent love letters to each other. What would you sext Gertrude Stein?
PB: “I do very nearly love you. how kind you are. show is short. 730-830. drinks at brooklyn star around corner. great bone marrow and kale salad. xxx”
TMT: What’s next for you?
PB: A few things, this spring I’ll be in the 3rd installment of Idiot directed by Kristin Marting and written by Robert Lyons at Here Arts Center. I’ll also be appearing on television in a Guest Lead on Person of Interest and on screen in the Clint Eastwood directed film Sully.