Sarah Jones
OK, so my boyfriend and I saw the show last week and thought you were amazing.
Thank you so much!
And he's from Venezuela, and afterwards, just kept asking, "How does she find all these characters?"
Tell him, if it were not for people like him, there would be no show. Everyone's got either an immigrant story of her or his own to share, or is married to somebody, or is one person removed from the story of what it means to come to this country from whatever country they be born from.
Where does your desire to be a solo performer come from?
I think it comes from a long history of other performers whose work I really admire--coupled with my upbringing and family, schooling and the traditions I found there. People like Lily Tomlin, Whoopi Goldberg and Tracy Ullman. These people represent the idea of e pluribus unum in ways that are the most loving tributes to that American idea of "out of many one." That one person can so perfectly represent the diversity around us. As a kid, I loved watching people change colors and accents right before my eyes. And I really mostly watched that on TV. I wasn't exposed to a whole lot of theater when I was a kid. My parents were really, really busy doctors.
Both were doctors?
Yes, my mother was busy delivering babies, and my father was busy in the emergency room. So I played a lot by myself, and with my sisters. But I did come to learn about these great talents through TV and occasionally the theater.
Did you perform in theater as a kid?
I did some theater at my wonderful public school in Washington, D.C. People always think I'm being facetious when I say that without public school, I wouldn't be here. But when we fund them properly, they're such an important democratizing agent.
Ouch.
Is that what attracts you to creating a character? His or her struggles?
You want to make them real?
Such as?
In Bridge & Tunnel you play 14 characters and use 14 accents. Theatrically, it's aural mask work. What's your relationship with accents in depicting character?
As an actor, did you always have an ear for accents?
And living in Queens, just like the characters in Bridge & Tunnel. In what neighborhood did you grow up?
Has Bridge & Tunnel changed since you've moved it uptown?
And why would you consider changing a show that's already been so successfully received?
That seems to be a thread in the show: the threat of losing one's freedom of speech.
You've had your own run-in with freedom of speech, when the FCC deemed your poem "Your Revolution" obscene. And congratulations, cause you sued them and won!
I think the level of her talent and the level of her character are matched.
But she's not involved in the producing of the Broadway production. Why is that?
And now you're here. So how does it feel?
Yeah, my mom is German-American, Irish-American mix. Her dad was a Caribbean-Dominican mix. But she's white-looking to the world. So growing up, people where always looking strangely at me, going, "Are you adopted?"
Yeah, so all these little things I picked up, even when I was very small. Like [when shopping for a new home] my mom would be shown different houses than my father. She would go look for the houses, so that we could be in the best neighborhood. My father wouldn't get to see those homes, even though he was a doctor and made more money than she did! Things like that really stuck with me, and I thought to myself, "OK, this is something I really want to talk about. I don't ever want to be made to feel that my story isn't also relevant because I know a lot of other people are going through the same thing." Or also, as a young girl I remember being told, "You can't play with the boys!" Well, why not? Why should a man's role have to be this, and a woman's role have to be that? Isn't there more acceptance of whoever we are? So, I think all of those things have been percolating for a long time. And the thing that's really resonated with me as I've gotten older is that people didn't have to look like me, or be my same gender or religious background or whatever, to be able to relate to the basic theme of what it means to have to overcome obstacles. Everybody struggles in some way.
That is a key component. But I have to admit that first and foremost I love a large, vibrant character. [Laughs.] I don't want archetypes to ever blur that line too much, where stereotype and real life meet.
Yes, because I think stereotypes--while they're an important part of our collective consciousness--are problematic. What makes them problematic are the problems in our society that they kind of reflect.
OK, like the stereotype of working class people as loud and uncouth. It's not that there's not something to that. There is a truth in that. But I think working class people should be elevated to a status far above the George Bushes and the Paris Hiltons, who literally lucked into all their money. It's ridiculous. I mean, when you think about it, who would you admire more? Them, or someone who literally works 16 hours a day trying to make ends meet, with two jobs and no health insurance? That's a hero! Yet in our society, somehow the tables have turned from a traditional American story of merit to this other kind of worship of money for money's sake. The people who work the hardest, we throw away the fastest.
I don't think there's any such thing as an intrinsically funny accent. Or a story that doesn't have integrity. Stereotypes can be so problematic because they take things that shouldn't be inherently an insult and turn them into an insult. Like an accent shouldn't make you less than. But when you're applying for a job and you are [breaks into a Pakistani accent] talking like this, it doesn't matter that you are understanding every word that I am saying, pretty much. Or [breaking into a upper-class British accent] if I talk like this, you know, my speech is quite different from an American person's. But that might be something that someone might want to hire me for. [Returning to her own voice.] So I'm interested in that. And in why and where the value judgments are being placed on, say, Black English or Latino accents, or other kinds of characteristics that we as different people bring to the table.
I wouldn't say it came naturally, but definitely being around a variety of people gave me an ear early on. It takes practice. And I think it was just a practice that I was unconsciously doing for so many years. I was immersed in all these accents both through my family and at school. I went to the United Nations school when I moved to New York [at age 10], and so from that time on I was surrounded by a hundred different countries.
Flushing. Jamaica Estate. Bayside. I was all over Queens. [Laughs.] I love Queens. It really is the most diverse county in the world. I don't ever want it to become this "Queens is the next..." you know, some uber-hipper-than-thou place. I want it to stay just as it is.
A little bit. [Director] Tony [Taccone] and I went out to his theater in California, Berkeley Rep, and experimented. And that was valuable, if for no other reason than we realized that we didn't want to tamper too much. [Laughs.]
Well, it's just that as our world has changed [since the show premiered in 2004], and people's lives continue to move forward. So I've tried to give each of the characters a little bit of that space to breathe in this current moment. And there's a lot going on. I mean, this is a wiretapping, crazy kind of moment that we're living in.
Absolutely. It was [in the text] downtown. And I felt really strongly--as I thought about it through the framework of these people's lives--that as threatened as I feel in my life as an American, imagine what it feels like to have not even been born here. To feel like, at any time, laws could change that would literally rip the roots that you've worked so hard to put down right out of the ground. And possibly send you packing back to a country you left 30 years ago! So, I thought about what does that mean for a few misguided people in government to have that kind of control over so many people's lives. It is so horrible.
Well, the FCC thing was just one of those few victories that remind us that somewhere underneath all of this madness the country is currently experiencing at the hands of a few very dastardly people that the system can still work if we get in there and salvage it.
It was so unexpected. I was working with a wonderful human rights group, Equality Now [addressing violence against women and girls all over the world] and Meryl was working with them. And so we were both at this benefit, and though I had seen her at benefits before, this time we really connected. I was hosting and doing some of my characters and stuff, and afterward, she said, "What are you up to? And how can I help you?" And I was like, "Somebody call the paramedics." [Laughs.] And I thought, someone's trying to tell me this is not the time to be a shrinking anything. So I decided that if she was going to take the step of talking to me and asking me what I needed, I was going to come right and say, "Hey, you feel like helping me get my work out there?" And she did. She's never done it with anyone before. I mean, I still can't believe it happened. But in a way, I've stopped pinching myself that it happened, because she is such a real, down-to-earth, good person.
They're matched! In order to have the kind of depth that she brings to a character, you have to be really in touch with yourself in a way that is far beyond red carpets and all that stuff. She's just this grounded, brilliant, but also very unpretentious person. And so now I know that just because you're one of the greatest talents to walk the planet--in my view and probably lots of other people's--doesn't mean you have to be some lofty, unapproachable person. In fact, it's quite the opposite.
She is our head cheerleader. [Laughs.] That's the best way to frame it. She said, "Sarah, I'm not a Broadway producer. I don't what to do, and I don't want us in this position. You should have some real producers do it." And she was right. So, to have our producers do their thing and have Meryl, you know, like, "Come to the opening party!" That's just the way I want it. Less stress for her. Less stress for me. Because the last thing I want to be doing is, like, calling Meryl with, "Ahhh... where's my check?"
Wow. [Laughs.] Well, it's just the perfect theater for the show, you know? And because I won a Helen Hayes Award when I was at the Kennedy Center, and now I'm at her theater, I feel like Helen Hayes has become my patron saint. As far as I'm concerned, she's smiling down on me.