Interview: Anisa George and HOLDEN at New Ohio Theatre

New Ohio Theatre will present a remounting of George & Co.'s Holden, directed by Anisa George and written by Anisa George in collaboration with the ensemble. Originally developed at the 2015 Ice Factory Festival, Holden will be performed from January 5th to January 14th.

Holden is a tragicomic piece, plumbing a darker dimension of J.D. Salinger's famous novel, "The Catcher in the Rye." A few obsessive super-fans have taken up residence in Salinger's private writing bunker. Unbeknownst to the reclusive author himself, their mission to get Salinger to publish once more spirals into a larger excavation of violence in America and the male imagination. Broadwayworld.com had the pleasure of interviewing Anisa George about her career and Holden.

George grew up performing with her parents' theater company, Touchstone Theater. In 2008 she was granted the Jack Kent Cook Fellowship to pursue an MFA at the London International School of Performing Arts. Upon graduating, she founded George & Co. She was a 2014 TCG - Global Connections grant recipient and has worked as a writer and director with such organizations as Pig Iron, Opera Philadelphia, Swarthmore College, The Bearded Ladies, Lightening Rod Special, and Red40 & The Last Groovement.

Tell us about a few of your roles that you enjoyed performing in Touchstone as a youth.

My first major gig with Touchstone was doing the summer street theater tour with my mom, dad, and brother. It was a play called "Rootabaga Stories", based on Carl Sandburg's writings, and I played, Ask Me No Questions, along with a host of other whimsically named characters. We performed almost everyday for an entire summer, and sometimes three times a day in blistering heat. I remember my father used to make us perform facing directly into the sun to maximize the comfort of the audience. "Steelbound" was one of the last projects I was a part of, a massive adaptation of "Prometheus Bound" set in the former iron foundry of Bethlehem Steel and directed by Bill Rausch with music by Ysaye Barnwell from Sweet Honey in the Rock. There was an amazing group of former steel workers performing in that project, and the project really galvanized the community after the tragedy of losing its industrial heart. Even as a teenager I knew being a part of it was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and that I might never see community theater at such a phenomenal level again.

When did you realize your penchant for writing?

Well, I always wrote as a young person; poems, journals, short stories - but it wasn't a major part of my identity. I remember bartering with a college professor to hand in 10 poems rather than an essay, but I sort of fell backwards into writing in a more serious way. My first paid gig was for the Iranian Director Amir Naderi when I was still a sophomore in college. I was originally supposed to be his still photographer, and then he started taking me to locations he was scouting and telling me the story of the film he was trying to make, and eventually he asked whether I could try writing some of them into a treatment. The treatment got longer and longer until it became a full blown screenplay. One day he sort of grabbed me by the shoulders, shook me, and said "MY WRITER!" I think only someone as insane as Naderi could have baptized me in that way at that moment in my life, but it stuck. From that point on I had enough cojones to call myself a writer, and in the devised-theater world, I often slip into the role without anyone officially designating me as such. It's just my way of thinking things through.

Who have been some of your important mentors?

I think it's important to say that I work collaboratively. I almost never sit down and write anything from beginning to end on my own. I haven't had many mentors, but I've had some utterly brilliant collaborators, and I think everyone in the cast of Holden is in that category. In the beginning I was bringing all the momentum and ideas into the space, but they've gotten so good at working on the play with me, that there are days when I feel I could leave the room and no one would notice.

Why do you feel "Holden" is an important piece of theatre for the current times?

Well, it's a lot about the malevolent impulses of destructive American men, and unfortunately that feels very omnipresent at the moment. The ending monologue of the play, which is in part about our country's rampant individualism, feels especially potent given the inevitability of a Trump inauguration. We unleash a monster, and even though I wrote this monologue almost two years ago, this moment feels more current than ever.

Tell us about some of your future plans.

I'm directing and creating two musicals, which I've never done before in my life, ever. And I'm working on writing a play without a script, which is a big challenge. I'm trying to move away from writing text-to-be-memorized and towards improvising structures. But not improv comedy! That's something else entirely.

New Ohio Theatre is located at 154 Christopher Street. Tickets for Holden are $25 and can be purchased by calling 212.352.3101 or at http://newohiotheatre.org/ and visit the show's web site at http://georgeandco.org/. The running time is 90 minutes. Follow New Ohio Theatre on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Anisa George