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Werqing It with Ed Sylvanus Iskandar

Regardless of discipline or geographical location, we all come to know this about show business: without friends in the right places, it can be difficult to advance your career. The need for connections is amplified in New York City, especially for aspiring directors. While actors at least have the illusion of open call auditions, playwrights have the one-in-a-million shot of blind submissions—to my knowledge, for beginning directors (and designers) there are no “objective” mechanisms in place where one has the luxury to dream of being discovered. Directors have to work it, to cultivate a love of the hustle. And carving out a seat at the table in the New York theatre scene can turn into a decade-long pursuit, working your ass off to get VIPs to simply see your work. But emerging NYC-based director Ed Sylvanus Iskandar has found a way to revise that tired narrative. Iskandar doesn’t work it, he “werqs” it instead. Urban Dictionary defines “werq” as:

An expression used when praising someone for doing something that goes above and beyond expectations or for looking “fierce.” Originally an Ebonic term, it has now been appropriated into camping/queening language as a gesture of sisterly approval.

Werq is a word that Iskandar passionately uses when he approves.

In a very simple way, Iskandar shifted the paradigm. Instead of waiting for a seat to open at New York’s crowded theatre table, Iskandar invited artists to his table—literally his dining room table. Iskandar is the Artistic Director of Exit, Pursued by a Bear (EPBB), a theatre company housed in his loft in Hell’s Kitchen. Through small productions, salon-style readings, and perhaps most notably, hearty portions of Iskandar and posse’s Indo-Chinese-influenced (usually vegan) meals during act breaks, EPBB and Iskandar have become the buzz about town. He was recently nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Best Director for Sean Graney’s five-hour epic adaptation of Sophocles’ existent plays, These Seven Sicknesses at the Flea—a production that was originally workshopped at EPBB. Sarah Wansley, the Flea’s company manager, attended EPBB’s workshop and wholeheartedly recommended the piece (and Iskandar) to Jim Simpson, the Flea’s Artistic Director. Werq.

Through small productions, salon-style readings, and perhaps most notably, hearty portions of Iskandar and posse’s Indo-Chinese-influenced (usually vegan) meals during act breaks, EPBB and Iskandar have become the buzz about town.

Like the cuisine he prepares, Iskandar is quite the cultural fusion himself. Born in Indonesia to Chinese parents, he went to boarding school in Great Britain then attended Stanford in California. I’ve had the privilege to get to know Iskandar over the past year and a half as I’ve worked with him to develop my piece Bacha Bazi (Boy Play). He contacted me after serving on the Princess Grace Awards committee that named my play Runner-Up for the 2011 competition. Since then, we’ve been fortunate enough to secure an option for the script from Ken Davenport and Davenport Theatrical. In August, Iskandar and I were invited to be artists-in-residence with New York Theatre Workshop at their annual retreat at Dartmouth. On the seven-hour train ride back from New Hampshire, I tried to uncover just how Iskandar werqs it so well. This is an excerpt from our conversation.

Ed Sylvanus Iskandar at a table.
Ed Sylvanus Iskandar. Photo courtesy of www.ediskandar.com/bio.

GJD: Maybe because I’m hungry and the options on Amtrak are dire, I think we should talk about food. You brought your own hot sauce to Dartmouth.

ESI: Yes, Dave’s Gourmet.

GJD: Can I try some?

(I tried some and had difficulty speaking for the rest of the interview.)

ESI: Are you all right?

GJD: Uh-huh.

ESI: Werq.

(I clear my throat and drink some water, which makes it worse).

GJD: So, food. It seems to be a major part of who you are and your aesthetic. Tell me about your passion for food. Is it something you've developed, or has it developed you?

ESI: Early in my career, I realized that days when I spent my meal break from rehearsal frantically preparing for the next rehearsal, I'd in fact missed out on a critical opportunity to connect with my collaborators on a basic human level. And so I began every rehearsal process by cooking a huge meal for the entire company—my gesture that the door of friendship was open and that I considered the well-being and connection of the group as primary stimulants for our work together. I've cooked all my life—I moved away from home at a young age, so the kitchen became a place where I make a home for people around me. At Carnegie Mellon, where I went to graduate school, I cooked a huge meal every Sunday night and pretty much left the invitation open to anyone who wanted the comfort of some casual social company and some healthier options than the deep-fried everything that was available at the cafeterias. Observing one such evening, my mentor (Mladen Kiselov) delivered a ruthlessly astute critique of my directing aesthetic based on how I cooked: how I prepared the ingredients ahead of time, which ingredients seemed to reappear consistently, what order I chose to cook the food, and—critically—the fact that I stay away from recipes. These evenings became a constant in my life, and I started creating a theatrical culture around it. At EPBB, our Sunday Salons are the staple of the programming, allowing audiences and artists to stage more casual encounters around a meal and a cold reading of a neglected classic or wonderful new play. It has come to define our particular kind of hospitality. I want to nurture both literally and spiritually, and I find that the kind of socially immersive environments I thrill at creating invites further engagement, tolerance for risk-taking, and ultimately, a recognition that we are all human beings sharing an evening together for both audiences and artists. I'll be working on a particularly food-centric play next year for The Play Company—Roland Schimmelpfennig's extraordinary The Golden Dragon—and am delighted to see what further experiments I can inflict upon my company and my audience.

I want to nurture both literally and spiritually, and I find that the kind of socially immersive environments I thrill at creating invites further engagement, tolerance for risk-taking, and ultimately, a recognition that we are all human beings sharing an evening together for both audiences and artists.

GJD: Now I’m hungrier! Bread might absorb this heat. We should talk about something else. What got you into theatre?

ESI: I discovered the theatre as a student in London. I’d watch the blockbuster musicals and the Shakespeares and great new British plays, but the real events were the do-overs of musty classics—much of it from Europe—that theatres like the National, the Old Vic, and the Donmar love to investigate. All the great sirs—McKellen, Gielgud, O’Toole—and dames—Dench, Smith, Mirren—regularly took their turns treading the boards in fascinating plays that provided exquisite food for my young brain and heart.

GJD: There you go with the food again.

ESI: It’s always on my mind.

GJD: So you’ve seen a lot of theatre. What was the most riveting theatrical experience you've had to date?

ESI: Really, anything with a sense of event. Robert Lepage’s Lipsynch really challenged my thinking in terms of what is possible within a theatrical event. Like a lot of people, I came in intimidated by the nine-hour spectacle but left utterly changed. Ivo von Hove’s Roman Tragedies—due for a stop at BAM later this fall—was another revelatory experience, demanding extreme engagement and interaction from its audience. But the theatrical moment I cherish the most takes place at the end of Anthony Minghella’s ravishing Madama Butterfly (currently in the repertory at the Met) when Butterfly sings her final aria, sinks the stiletto knife into her neck, and bleeds out through red silk scarves that stretched from her body to the corners of a vast raked stage. God. (Spoiler alert): There’s a giant suspended mirror above her and an image of an enormous butterfly released in her death, fluttering on wings of blood. That has seared itself into my mind.

GJD: Let’s do something like that in Bacha Bazi. Something that sears itself to our audience.

ESI: Check.

GJD: So, how did you get here—emergent NYC director?

ESI: That path was a bit circuitous, but ultimately any success I’ve had, I give all the credit to my great teachers who’ve showed me the way: Martin Tyrrell at Harrow, Kay Kostopoulos and Rush Rehm at Stanford, Mladen Kiselov at Carnegie Mellon, Bill Rauch and Anthony Heald at Oregon Shakespeare, and Jim Nicola, Billy Porter, and Jeff Whitty in New York. My biggest theatrical influence has been the playwright Amy Freed. I’m excited to be directing her wonderful Restoration Comedy at The Flea this fall. Amy’s this creative anthropologist with a wanton passion for words and hunger for ideas and sheer love for entertaining her audiences. I know her from Stanford and she shaped all my early instincts into a vision for theatre as a place of community, learning, and joy.

GJD: For me, something that defines you is your love of community. Can you talk about how you've cultivated the social animal in you and how that has led to your aesthetic?

ESI: I remember my first days as a seven-year-old at boarding school: I didn’t speak the language, didn’t know the proper etiquette at the dinner table, and didn’t have access to a telephone to call home. It was a good twelve years before the internet entered school life. I was not a terribly happy teenager because I was surrounded by people who ostracized me on the basis of race, class, or sexuality whether they meant to or not, so coming out to Northern California into the thick of a melting pot where everyone smoked pot and you walked barefoot to class with a Mason jar full of coffee was an utterly transformative experience. It freed me up to focus on who I was and who I wanted to be. I think the isolation I felt in England became the foundation of my artistic philosophy. For me, the value of art is in its ability to bring people together. I don’t feel that I am practicing anything radical or revolutionary or, god forbid, “experimental,” which is a label that gets used on my work with alarming regularity, but rather than hoping that the thousands of strangers who come will manifest community by themselves, I make it my focus to design immersive experiences that encourage active engagement. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree. My parents, who both still live in Indonesia, are legendary hosts, and I have taken many a leaf from their book. I think that if theatre once again became a place where society goes to mingle, it would once again become necessary to society.

GJD: That’s big. And that’s one of the things I love about you. You aren’t afraid of big ideas or big theatrical gesture. Tell me about a dream of yours. Where do you see yourself in five years? Think as big as you wish.

ESI: I want to run a National Theater of America whose culture nurtures and sustains a core value of community. I want to create theatre experiences that go beyond the one-night stand that leaves artists isolated from their audiences, and audiences feeling a little hollow after investments of time and money that pay off only in one-time experiences, no matter how mind blowing. I want to eliminate the distance that has grown between the art maker and the consumer, and artists from their peers. I want to eliminate competition and encourage communion. I want artists and audiences to think of this theatre as a friend’s home with an open-door policy, where plays are not the only reason to drop in, but where spending time with other like-minded folk becomes the primary attraction, and where you are valued simply for coming through the door and where calling the box-office manager feels like making plans with friends. I want artists and audiences to make food and break bread together. And I want conversations, dialogue, confessions shared long after the curtain has come down and beyond the day the art was experienced. I want going to the theatre to feel like going to the can’t-miss party in town—not the overcrowded kind, where you can hardly have a conversation with your date, but a relaxed, casual, homey party where you can expect to spend time with the friends you came with, make new friends with the other exciting people who have come, and encounter vital, passionate artists in the heat of the creative furnace.

GJD: That sounds like a bigger version of EPBB.

ESI: Exactly.

GJD: What was it that motivated you to establish EPBB in the first place?

ESI: I wanted to create a place where theatre artists—myself included—could create a consistency of practice for themselves, and could create an audience relationship that fully activates the liveness of the shared experience. Ballet has its barre, athletics its track, but we’re somehow expected to produce the goods despite long periods of inactivity and an industry mindset that cultivates the ability to do one particular thing well. It’s the responsibility of any artist to take charge of our own development and to extend the limits of our potential.

GJD: So, really a place to practice craft. To fail, or even better, succeed.

ESI: We do very ambitious things at EPBB. Things we probably couldn’t do without EPBB. And I should say, EPBB’s not just mine. EPBB is a community of collaborators.

GJD: For you, what makes a great collaboration?

ESI: Great collaborations are great romances.

GJD: How are we doing so far?

ESI: I have no complaints! You want someone to understand you, communicate with you, and inspire you, but you also want someone who challenges you, tells you when you’re wrong, and comes up with things you wouldn’t possibly think of. And you want to know that that person is in it for the sake of building a relationship that will mutually nurture, provoke, and last. As theatre artisans, ninety-five percent of our shared experiences are in great terror of pre-production and the rehearsal room. If we can’t turn to each other for support, affirmation, and growth, nothing good can possibly come out of our time together. And long after the play is over, I want the comfort of knowing that I’ve conducted myself honorably and well, that I’ve treated my fellow journeyers with the respect and trust that I want for myself.

If we can’t turn to each other for support, affirmation, and growth, nothing good can possibly come out of our time together.

GJD: What advice would you give to young artists who have New York dreams?

ESI: Oh god. What advice would you give?

GJD: Befriend directors.

ESI: That’s probably good advice.

GJD: It’s working for me.

ESI: Werq. Seriously, I guess I would say get to know the scene and the community you want to become a part of. I first came to New York in 2007 and I saw a play a day for six full months. I was astonished that at the end of that period, I was still going to venues I’d never been to, encountering theatres I’d never heard of, and watching actors, playwrights, and designers who I was unaware of. Information is currency in the industry, and no currency is more powerful than personal experience of the work of the colleagues and collaborators you are hoping to work with. We’re inherently reactive creatures, watching work instills a sense of response and responsibility toward your own preferences, impulses, and aesthetic senses. It’s really our duty to understand firsthand the cultural zeitgeist that we are striving to shape.

When we got off the Vermonter at Penn Station, Iskandar and I ran a few blocks to catch an alumni preview of Sam Shepard’s Heartless at the Signature Theatre. At the post-show reception, I witnessed Iskandar werqing a room. While I consider myself above average at social interaction, when I feel the pressure to be “on,” I can become a bit of a blunderbuss. Thus, my fascination with Iskandar’s knack for the hustle stems from awe and, admittedly, envy. But watching him at the Signature, I understood that Iskandar is never calculating when he werqs. It’s obvious that over time, he has simply become extraordinary at being himself—a natural. He’s an artist in tune with his moment and with the people at the table.

Werq. Breathe. Yes. Live in the story as you write it.

 

 

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I love and agree with his dream. I think the same thing could be applied to fine arts. Galleries and museums, although informatively and artistically interactive nowadays, there are still so many barriers between the works, curators, critics and viewers. I would love to see everyone in the art world bonding at a dinner table, sans auction price tags and politics, even if there are, they ought to be discussed in an openly manner. That would be a peculiar sight, but is there any harm in trying?