Interview: Kendal Hartse Refuses to Be Commodified in UH OH! at The Gym At Judson

New York’s new interdisciplinary performance group, co-founded by artistic director Austin Regan and resident artist Kendal Hartse – will present their inaugural production UH OH! Exclamation Point Kendal Hartse Question Mark Live and In Concert Question Mark for two performances at The Gym at Judson (243 Thompson Street, NYC) on Saturday, June 14 and Sunday, June 15 at 7 pm. UH OH!, written by and starring Kendal Hartse and directed by Austin Regan, is a performance art cabaret as public radio pledge drive. Regan and Hartse are veterans of major Broadway productions and national tours from American Idiot to A Beautiful Noise and from Cabaret to The Band’s Visit. UH OH! features Mike Cefalo as The Pianist and Alexander Sage Oyen on guitar, drums, and electronics. For tickets, visit Eventbrite HERE.

UH OH! – featuring songs from Jeff Buckley’s seminal album Grace, the 1968 Broadway cult classic Golden Rainbow, Puccini’s Tosca, and beyond – is a wild journey through the sacred soul of the artist in a capitalist world that demands she be commodified. The Actor and The Pianist sing, dance, clown, and beg you to call now and support live art.

Read a conversation with Kendal about the show.

What draws you to performance art?

Growing up in Spokane, Washington, most of the theater I was exposed to was fairly traditional and straightforward. I’ve always been interested in multiple facets of performance (dance, acting, singing, playing instruments) and in my early career, musical theater was the modality that combined all of that for me. I was far from New York City and more experimental approaches. It wasn’t until I moved to New York after drama school and started to see more devised theater and performance art that I came to an understanding of how powerful an unconventional medium can be. Seeing performances by Kneehigh, the Wooster Group, ERS – all of this massively inspired me and took me out of the formal box that more traditional theatrical experiences demand. The recent Joan Jonas retrospective at MoMA catapulted my imagination into an exciting place that made me think, “hey! I could do something like this!” I love the freedom that it allows in terms of creativity and rule breaking. It gives me the permission to have ideas and explore them without as much self-editing or worry about reception.

The show pulls from such eclectic musical sources – Jeff Buckley, Golden Rainbow, Puccini. Where did the inspiration come from behind the song selection?

In creating the show, I first thematically categorized the moments where I would be singing, and then selected about three songs I loved that fit the criteria. As the script took shape, I figured out which specific song would fit the best, and it was also important to me to sing in a variety of styles. During my conservatory training I studied classical voice and so rarely get an opportunity to use that part of my instrument and I am really thrilled to get to dive back into that technique. Shortly after I moved to NYC, I made a big shift from singing in a more “legit” style and started to learn how to use my voice for more rock and pop singing, so that I could sing the music I was actually listening to, not just being asked for! At the end of the day, I wanted songs that I love that speak to the story I am trying to tell, and that I sound good singing (haha)! 

How would you describe your own musical taste? 

My own musical taste is incredibly eclectic. My dad was a high school band and orchestra teacher, so I grew up listening to a lot of classical music and jazz. I fell in love with Charles Mingus and Bill Evans as a teen, and I even had a Miles Davis poster in my college dorm. But I also had a cool older brother who listened to a ton of alternative rock, so I rotated a lot of Jeff Buckley, Rilo Kiley, Ben Folds, things like that. And, in a dedicated musical theater conservatory, I lived and breathed Sondheim and Rodgers and Hammerstein. This was the heyday of the mix CD, so I was always trading new music with people and discovering artists across all genres. Lately, I’ve been getting into more pop artists than ever before, which is exciting. I’ve even put an arrangement of an Ariana Grande song into the show!

Can you give us an example of your struggles with balancing your art with needing to promote yourself? 

I would much rather sit in a rehearsal studio than send an email blast. It’s very challenging to make the time to both CREATE and promote. I think the act of creation is paramount, so that will always be my focus, but I often find myself frustrated with the idea that I have to promote myself at all. Most artists just want the work to speak for itself, but unfortunately that can’t happen if no one KNOWS about the work. In creating this show, I have had the hardest time getting up the guts to ask people to come, but I have to remind myself that I love to see new work and so others will too. I also think that staying authentic to yourself in the way you promote your work is essential. I’m not someone who is ever going to be comfortable with hashtags or gimmicks or trends, so leaning in there doesn’t work for me. I do know my strengths and I prefer to network with colleagues and acquaintances in person and find ways to occasionally showcase my work on social media in ways I find authentic. For me, the weirder the better. I like a little mystery and intrigue when it comes to promotion. Maybe that’s a strange poster, or a piece of visual art I’ve created, or a photo series of my dancing. Whatever it is the important thing is that I like it. 

This is an issue that plagues a lot of artists – I’m thinking of Isabel Hagen’s recent Substack article about social media, for example. What advice would you give fellow artists who are struggling with the question of how much attention to give self- promotion?

That article really resonated with me. I would love advice from other artists struggling with self-promotion myself! As someone who has worked extensively in commercial theater, the idea that I have to have a certain kind of social media following or post specific content to attract work is daunting. In my heart, I wish that the art was all that mattered. But! If you don’t promote yourself no one will know about you! Which seems a little silly, but it’s true. There are times when I sit and think “why can’t I just Lana Turner this and have someone ‘discover’ me?” At the end of the day, no one else but you knows what you are capable of, so no one else but you knows how best to promote you! As I mentioned, the most important thing is that YOU like what you are doing. That it feels authentic to you. I think it’s an 80/20 split for me. 80% art, 20% promotion. It should probably be higher on the promotion side, but that’s what I can do and still feel like I am dedicated to thing that matters the most: making good work.

How does it feel to be performing in something you wrote yourself? Is it any easier or harder for you than acting in someone else’s work?

It’s really exhilarating and also a little scary to perform in something I wrote. Even though it’s a stylized performance and I’m not exactly playing myself, my name is in the title of the show! In many ways it’s easier than acting in someone else’s work as I know exactly the intention behind the text and how I think it should be done. I don’t really have to answer to anyone else (except for my collaborator, director, and life partner Austin Regan). That being said, something I wrote is inevitably more personal and revealing. It is no small feat to unzip your chest and show an audience your heart even when you have someone else’s words as a filter. When it’s something you’ve created, that barrier is gone, and what you are revealing is pure YOU. That is certainly not easy, but it is incredibly rewarding.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Please come to the show! This is our first endeavor as our new performance group, Harlow Radical, and we are all so incredibly excited about how it’s going. The band sounds amazing and the rehearsal room has been a really exciting place to be. The show is straddling the world between a cabaret and a theatrical performance and it’s going to be weird and wonderful and a window into the soul of the artist under capitalism. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat about it!