.jpg)
“This is the whole point,” Alia Shawkat says. “I found a piece I love so much that I want to keep doing it every night.”
She and I are sitting in the empty Cherry Lane Theatre between the matinee and evening shows of You Got Older, in which she appears with Peter Friedman, Misha Brooks, Paul Cooper, Caleb Joshua Eberhardt, Nadine Malouf, and Nina White. There’s prop snow and confetti on the stage, and she’s drinking bone broth to keep her throat warm. (“Like a classic actress,” she says.)
Shawkat—the actor, producer, and artist best known for her work on Arrested Development and Search Party—had long wanted to dip into theater, but it took some time to find the right thing. That turned out to be a revival of Clare Barron’s 2014 play, in which Shawkat plays Mae—a young woman who, after a breakup and losing her job, moves home to take care of her father (Friedman), who has been diagnosed with cancer. Marooned in her childhood home, Mae has sexual fantasies about a cowboy, a real-life fling with a guy from her hometown, and a rash.
“My tongue-in-cheek logline for the play is that a daughter goes home to take care of her dad and can’t stop masturbating,” Barron tells Vogue over email. “But really it’s about the challenge of loving and being present with our parents—the way they drive us crazy when we’re with them, but then we miss them like crazy as soon as they’re gone.”
%2520(1).jpg)
Based on a period in Barron’s own life, the play is funny, weird, touching, and tender, like flesh. The set design makes you feel like you’re peering into a diorama where the figures have come alive. As the play’s center of gravity, Shawkat shines—especially during the scenes with her character’s three siblings, where the dynamic feels rhythmic and real. She brings “joy and wonder” to both the role and the behind-the-scenes process, director Anne Kauffman tells Vogue.
“It’s such a gift when you’re working with an actor who can articulate aspects of the character in ways that make the character and the play new to you,” adds Barron.
In a conversation that has been edited and condensed, Shawkat spoke to Vogue about making her theatrical debut after 27 years in Hollywood, sex fantasies, millennials, and more.
Vogue: How did you get involved with You Got Older? Were you familiar with Clare Barron’s work before?
Alia Shawkat: I’m going to be honest, I was not. I don’t read many new plays, but my agent sent it to me. I had always let them know that I really wanted to do theater, but I was never so obsessed with a piece, which I feel like, with theater, you really have to be.
I was sent this, and I was just taken away. I was uncomfortable. It made me sad, it made me laugh, and just so many things. I was a little scared of it, honestly, because it’s quite a demanding role. Now I have a kid, and I was like, Oh, this would be a big undertaking. But I loved it so much that I was like, If I don’t do this, then I’m never doing theater. This is the whole point. I found a piece I love this much that I want to keep doing it every night.
Do you feel like your approach to the role is different, acting for the stage rather than for the screen?
It is. I mean, there are similarities—always trying to understand a character and how you relate to it and process it in your body. But the way that you are learning the piece—and figuring out who this person is—is happening in a very different timescale.
With a film or TV, iyou have actually no time, compared to this. So it’s a lot more about: How do we create the illusion that we got there? And then they edit it and put music, and there’s sound and all these things that, by the time you see it, you’re like, Oh, wow. Well, that turned out cool. You’re so uninvolved in some way. But it’s also about having the energy in that moment, and you get that scene out, and then it’s done. You don’t have to think about it ever again.
This is a slow burn of processing something over time. Clare, the playwright, put it really well: “Doing a play is like casting a spell.” It’s quite ritualistic.
When you do something for a long time—I never get bored of it, ’cause it’s always a different environment, a new challenge—but it was great to do something that was so new. Where I was like, “What’s upstage? What’s downstage?” And everyone’s like, “Oh, you poor thing.”
What was the rehearsal process like?
We had three weeks of rehearsal, which I guess is a little more than most, but we were sitting at a table only for one day talking about it, reading it, and then Anne was like, “All right, let’s get up on our feet.” It felt kind of fast, but I’m glad her instincts were right.
I don’t want to say it’s a slow play, but the scenes are very droll and drawn out, and if you just look at the text, it might seem like nothing’s happening. So it’s important to understand all the layers of what everything represents and how it translates—the nervous energy, the anxiety, the tension.
I keep seeing people talking about it being a millennial play or millennial-anxiety play. In the past, you’ve been called the patron saint of millennials.
Have I? Wow. [Laughs.] Aging me forever.
So I was curious if the millennial label for this play resonates with you.
It’s funny. It’s just life, I guess. As you age, you’re not really aware of the labeling of your generation until you’re already not the new one. I saw this article in The New York Times that was like, “This is the year millennials became uncool.” Did you see that?
I’ve seen versions of that.
Everyone’s hating on millennials. I’m like, whatever. I don’t know. I’m just doing my best, trying to stay alive. I’m really proud of Search Party. Search Party is definitely of a time and definitely about millennials. It was also the beginning of social media and branding and this idea of what a hipster is and all those things. And it was commenting on it very acutely.
That’s not the case anymore. We’re in a whole other generation, and there’s a lot more even weirder, fucked-up things that the younger generation is having to deal with. But to bring it back to me, I’m just really drawn to this story. It’s quite timeless, honestly. I don’t really find it to be so specific to a generation. The voice maybe has that tone, if that makes sense; Clare’s poetry in finding something so deep in something so simple. I do feel like any generation can relate to that.
But I love to think that You Got Older will be a classic play that’ll go on for years and years. It’ll still hold up because it’s so real. It’s so subtle and realistic and hits this bone of: Can we ever be present enough with our loved ones? I don’t know if we can, and it’s really hard.
The play deals with sexuality and family. Was that one aspect of the piece that you were interested in? I know your parents own a strip club, and you’ve spoken about how that shaped your view of sexuality.
That was a huge draw. When I read it the first time, besides it being so funny and me crying, by the end I was like, Wow, this play made me uncomfortable, which is pretty hard to do.
Mae is really going through something so visceral. I relate to it so much—of having sexual fantasies that take over, and all of a sudden you’re overwhelmed by your fantasy. You’re like, Am I letting the fantasy get the fucking best of me? And I’d rather live in the fantasy than my own life, even if I’m masturbating or having sex with someone? It’s this idea of escapism. She uses sex as a balm, and I’ve definitely related to that in times of my life.
When Dad comes to play me his theme song and my fantasy is still there, it’s such a great moment of being like, I can’t escape it. I’m living with both. And that’s just really poetic and true and part of what it’s like to be a woman—that your fantasies, kind of sadly, can sometimes be the only thing you have. You’re not really getting laid that well in life, and you can’t talk about it with anybody.
.jpg)
Are you developing any preshow rituals?
I live in Brooklyn, and my ritual is I take the subway, I listen to music, and it’s really calming to feel like you’re just doing any other job. This guy’s going to work at a restaurant. This guy’s going to fix a building. I’m going to act on a stage, and then we’re all going to take the subway home.
I’m really into Cameron Winter, Heavy Metal. I’m really affected by his music. That was my soundtrack for working on this play, and it’s my soundtrack coming into town. If I’m having a night where I feel like I’m in a whole other world, I just listen to that, and it drops me back in for the feeling of the show. He’s like a cowboy, in a weird way.
What has it been like working with Anne Kauffman as a director?
Really amazing. Anne’s very specific. She knows what she wants. Everything has to work practically. It’s not just about: “We’ll get it for the shot, it looks real.” No, these doors have to move. The prop has to be there. The bed has to move. All these things have to happen.
She would always push to make sure it was the best version, including the performances. So I feel really lucky. She helped me a lot and also trusted me. But I needed that kind of guidance this early on.
How did you and Peter Friedman cultivate your father-daughter dynamic?
He’s just a brilliant actor. He’s quite a legend, so we’re so lucky to get him. And he’s so present and kind and giving as an actor, so it’s really easy to work with him, and he just makes me a better actor. He also kind of looks like my dad. He kind of looks like all our dads. We’re like, “Peter, why do you look like all of our dads?” He’s like the Rorschach of dads.
You Got Older runs at the Cherry Lane Theatre through April 12.
