Q&A with

(From an interview with Education for the Arts, at the beginning of the Lincoln Center Program's outreach tour of BOXHEAD in Michigan schools.)

Todd Espland - Artistic Director, Commedia Zuppa

Allision Williams - Managing Director, Commedia Zuppa

How was Boxhead born as a character?

Todd : Basically, Boxhead was born from a picture I drew of a body with a giant box for a head about three years ago, and I wanted to make a mask out of it.

Allison: That's part of our philosophy as creators—a lot of the theatre we do, we do because something in us said, “Hey, I think this is cool. Let me see what I can do with it.” We very seldom start with a big, universal, all-encompassing, “This is my creative vision ! I will make this!” We're a lot more likely to start from a tangent and work back to the center by asking questions. So we had this idea that we wanted to have someone with a box on his head. Ok, so what happened? Where did he come from? Why does he have a box on his head? Also, on a technical level, if we want to get good at something, we put it in a show. With TRUE STORY [London Fringe 2002] I wanted to get better at aerial work, so I put it in the show. This time, we wrote a show with a boxhead, so we had to learn who this character was and how he moved and reacted. It's in our teaching philosophy, too—that the technical side is important, it's important to execute skills well, but it's also important to dive in and make something imperfect that you can refine later.

Todd: It really teaches the student, myself included, to honor your first creative impulse; to say, all right, this is good, now where can this go? And it may go nowhere, that's ok, because it may come back later on.

 

Do you create works based on what you've got a passion for, or is it more based on what you think might be marketable, or is there some kind of mix that you have in mind as you create?

Todd: I think it's some kind of a mix. BOXHEAD started out as something that I wanted to create and then after doing a lot of prep work, we discussed how it could be marketable for a specific audience. The Boxhead was originally an adult, and then we changed him into a child. This decision took me into a whole world of books that I really enjoyed as a child, Where the Wild Things Are , The Phantom Tollbooth , and that perspective opened up a realm of other stuff with this character learning more about himself.

Allison: There always comes a place in the development of a show where we become conscious of the audience. Sure, we want to be fulfilled as artists, and we want to feel good about our creative vision, but we also have a fundamental belief in theatre as a consumer medium. People should walk out after the show feeling that the time they spent with us was worth spending, whether they were puzzled or amazed or confused or enlightened or just entertained.

 

You've talked about the “transformative nature of mask”—what does that mean?

Todd: The mask, and how the masks' physicality is speaking, is what's actually playing for the audience. The actor is simply a vessel that the mask is working through.

Allison: And yet it's not a religious experience! [laughs]

Todd: I tell students that they are actually doing that work on the inside, that emotion or action or intention, and the mask is helping them open it up. You're really finding, accessing another spect of yourself.

Allison: And the mask is both a doorway in for the actor and an amplifier of what's going on so that the audience can see it and feel it. It's very external.

 

Is BOXHEAD a kids' show?

Allison: Yes and no. We like to think of it as a kid-friendly show. The school tour will be for K-6, but we presented it to just the teachers last week and got a lot of laughs.

Todd: I love this idea of the little kid who's a bit of a monster and gets sent to his room. While in his room, he creates this imaginary world where he loses his head and runs into all these different eople who end up giving him knowledge about being relaxed, having some responsibility, and dealing with one's anger. Every kid and adult can relate to getting angry, what your personal drives are and how you overcome them. For me, it was helpful to vest it in something personal.

Allison : BOXHEAD is appropriate for all ages because it doesn't deal with adult themes, it doesn't deal with adult language, but the show contains levels that can be gotten by various ages. The kindergarten student may see some interesting characters and funny situations that they can relate to their life in the playground, and a grownup might see something darker or deeper, but the show is accessible to people on a variety of levels.

KIDS GALLERY

View artwork by children inspired by the performance