Interview: Rhett Martinez And Cindy Wang of COLLECTIVE RAGE: A PLAY IN FIVE BETTIES at Mildred's Umbrella

MILDRED'S UMBRELLA is celebrating twenty-five years on the Houston theater scene with a production of Jen Silverman's COLLECTIVE RAGE: A PLAY IN FIVE BETTIES. The show will open September 3rd and run through the 19th upstairs at the Spring Street Galleries near the Heights. It's a play about five women and their unified anger and frustration at being women in this modern age. BROADWAY WORLD'S Brett Cullum sat down with director Rhett Martinez and actress Cindy Wang to talk all things COLLECTIVE RAGE.  

Brett Cullum: Mildred's Umbrella. Let's talk about that first. Tell me about the company. What is the vision of Mildred's Umbrella?

Rhett Martinez: So, this is the 25th season. Jennifer Decker, our artistic director, created this company with a few other people 25 years ago to represent women in the theater, and their mission is to center women in the space, and that usually means a woman playwright, but not always, and it usually means a mostly female, or in this case, an all-female cast, or at least a central female storyline. The whole idea is to just center women in every way possible.

And that's just been the mission forever. The name Mildred's Umbrella actually comes from a Gertrude Stein quote. You have to talk to Ms. Decker about that one. I forgot the actual origin of it. But it's a poetic reference to the struggles that women have had throughout, you know, history.

And I guess it's… let's, like, it's the year 2026, so back to 2020… 2001, excuse me. You know, things were a little different back in 2001. The Houston theater scene was quite different, as I recall. Back in 2001, there just weren't that many companies around, and now there are a lot more companies. I love the scene now. The scene is great now.

But even now, 25 years later, there's a lot of great women out there working on the stage, a lot of great women directors and writers, but I still think we are the only one that centers women. That sounds kind of funny, coming from a man.

But they still have male roles in some of the plays, and Jen and I work very well together, but it is definitely a women's company, and I'm just there to support the mission.

Brett Cullum: So, how do you describe this play?

Rhett Martinez: I think… I think Jen Silverman has said quite a few things. We read something in the… in the rehearsal that put it in her words. I can look it up and try to summarize it as best I can. But it began with her feeling like she wasn't safe in certain spaces, and with that rage women get when they walk down the street and are catcalled, and their voices are minimized. And so she sort of took that. And tried to find, I guess, the most concentrated industrial strength version of that. The other thing the play is about is its universality. In fact, one of the things we talked about in our dramaturgy was that Jen Silverman wrote an essay about this play and what it's about. And… and I specifically love that because I am not a woman, and I am not gay, and yet I feel like this play is for me. And it's not…Only for me, of course, but I feel like I'm welcome to the party. That's really what it is, isn't it?

I'd love to hear what Cindy thinks, but I think it's, in my head, it's a party that we're all invited to, and it happens to be that the five people at this party are women, and it happens to be that the driving force of some of their narrative is queer-centered struggles, queer-centered identity. But like all great works of art, it is universal, and you don't need to be those things to get something from this, to actually glean something from the story. And, that's what gay women have been forced to do forever by looking at stories like Death of a Salesman, which doesn't represent them. But yet, they're expected to find the universal in that. However, when it comes time for a play that's all women cast and a woman playwright, suddenly, somehow, it's not for everyone. And this play really challenges that idea, and I think it does it brilliantly. It breaks my heart and makes me laugh every single day, and I don't feel excluded at all. I feel very much included.

Brett Cullum: Well, Cindy?

Cindy Wang: Yeah, so, speaking about the collective rage, there is so much rage in being a woman; our bodies literally attack us every month. We have to have babies. If anyone's gonna have babies, we have to have babies. And something that kind of resonated me, with me as well, about what Rhett was talking about was just this, this experience I actually kind of had recently, and that I have regularly, which is, oftenly, male workers will come to my house to work on my garden, or on the AC unit, or something in the house, and I'm from Chinatown, so if I look at them, and I'm like, I could take them, it's fine. Every once in a while, if the guy looks real big and, like, I might not be able to overpower him, I turn on a YouTube video in my office and tell him that my husband is upstairs working. That's the, like, reality of the world that we live in. And as a bisexual woman, it is also a world that we live in, where sometimes when you, like, talk about that with males, it's really sexy. It's really cool. That's cool. So, do you make out with girls? There are a lot of things to be angry about, and there are a lot of ways in this world that, as someone who presents or identifies as female or any type of queer, we have to make ourselves smaller and take up less space. That's what this show is about. And it's true, it's not just about women, but it's about feeling like you don't deserve to take up space. No matter who you are, no matter how confident you are, no matter how charismatic you are, no matter how straight or gay you are, it's feeling like you aren't… You don't have a right to that space for some reason, because it's dominated by so many other things.

And the way I see it is this show is about five very, very different people, but also, they're the same person. And they are all coming on this journey, both separately and together, to accept themselves as they are and to know that they are enough, even if they don't all get the outcomes they want. They still come away from it, and from this experience, which is really, really crazy, and whimsical, and nonsensical, and graphic, and some of these characters are like, I'm here for it, and some of these characters are like, " What the f--- is happening? But at the end of it all, everyone reaches a certain place where it's like…If I were down with it, that's okay. If I wasn't down with it, that doesn't make me an a--h---. Like, I'm enough, as I am, and I just need to speak my truth and be who I am, and as long as I check the honesty box on myself. then… I have the power to do anything.

Brett Cullum: Well, I was curious, Jen Silverman, would I know any of her other works?

Rhett Martinez: Oh, yes. The most famous thing, probably recent, was The Roommate, which was on Broadway with Patti LuPone and Mia Farrow. Strangely enough, those two women, of course, wonderful actresses, and I imagine it was a fabulous show. They're a little older than the part is actually… the parts are written in that play, because… I know this because I think it's Stages that's doing that play this year in their season. They're going to cast it a little closer to the two characters' ages. They're supposed to have children… I think they're supposed to be in their 50s or something, and Patti LuPone and Ms. Farrow are certainly not in their 50s anymore. But who cares? I would love to see them. I'd watch them read the phone book. They would be wonderful together. But that is, pardon the pun, a bit of a straight play, in that it is much more contemporary modern realism.I don't remember a single surrealist or absurdist or farcical element in that play. But it's brilliantly crafted, as opposed to another play of hers you might know, The Moors, which Mildred's Umbrella did years ago. And that is wacky, zany, over-the-top, big, theatrical, but it's always grounded in reality.

Jennifer Decker and I read a lot of plays. And you get to the point after you've read so many. That you can really start to see plays that are even very good and have had good productions and good production histories. Sometimes, on the second or third try, you can start to see the seams a little bit where the connections are made. I wouldn't say flaws, but a little bit of the, like, inner workings are kind of showing through when they shouldn't be. And what I… I have never found that to be the case with Ms. Silverman. I find her plays to be… I don't want to name other playwrights, but I would say she can pretty much do no wrong. I think she can do no wrong in my book.

Brett Cullum: Yes, yeah, Stages is doing it this year, but last season, Theater Suburbia did it, which is crazy. Yeah, they were beating them to the punch, so Jen Silverman everywhere. She is dominating our local scene right now. So, why does this kind of feel new for Mildred's umbrella in a weird way?

Rhett Martinez: I feel like Mildred's umbrella has always championed the outside the box. I wanna… when I started coming to the theater in Houston, and I didn't know everybody, I gravitated towards Mildred's because Jennifer Decker always chooses the most amazing material, and it's not material you're gonna see anywhere else. I could say similarly that Jason Nodler at Catastrophic Theatre picks material that you're not going to see anywhere else in Houston. But that is a different, more of an avant-garde, experimental theater that Catastrophic does brilliantly, and nobody else is doing it what they do the way they do it. And I really think, even if Jennifer hadn't made it her mission to have a theater company that was women-centered, if she just had a theater company that was less specific than that in its mission statement, she would still have always picked plays that, in my humble opinion, were under the radar. They were not off-Broadway last season with a movie star in them, so we have to do them in regional theaters this year. Nothing wrong with those plays. But you're not gonna find these for sale at Barnes & Noble. It's not gonna happen. But they're there, and they are brilliant, and they are known within the theater world, but they're not as well known. Their names don't ring out as much, and yet they resonate and stay with you forever. And she's just always had the most uncanny ability to find those… that material.

So, I don't know that this particular script feels very different than the Mildred's experience. This season might be the first season ever that Mildred's has had women actors on the stage exclusively. There will be no male actors on the stage at Mildred's this season. Exclusively women playwrights. There are only two women… and in both plays, Anthropology and Collective Rage center queer characters.

And that wasn't necessarily what we set out to do; it just sort of happened, and yet it's somehow perfect. So in that way, I guess it is new for Mildred's.

Brett Cullum: Cindy, how did you end up in this mix? I know this is your first production with Mildred's?

Cindy Wang: With Mildred's, yes.

Brett Cullum: What have you been doing since… before?

Cindy Wang: Before? Well, I recently just finished directing Phenomenally at Meow Wolf. And it's been very interesting, because there's been an overlap with my time here at Mildred's. And, like, Phenomenally is about a cosmic animal migration. It's, like, really crazy, kind of Sleep No More, but family-friendly, where there's different scenes unfolding in different rooms, and there's, like, a lot of whimsies, and the costumes are larger than life. And, they are… they were actually, I think, originally created by the costumer for Lady Gaga's last tour. But it's interesting coming in from that to this, because it's kind of the same thing. Except, like, instead of a, like, cosmic animal migration, it's the journey of a p---y.

So it's been interesting, especially, like, sitting in a director's seat for another show and, like, doling out, like, all of these resources to, like, force people to get up on their feet and, like, drop all conventions, that, like, immediately, I now have to test those skills on myself. And prior to that, I'm an actor, I'm a director, I've done some production work. I'm originally from and raised here in Houston, Chinatown, went to college in Minnesota, and did some time abroad, where I studied and worked in Ireland and England for a while. And then I decided all of it was too white. Too white. Too many white people. Too many white people specifically call me Ching Chong. And I was like, man, I gotta go. And I ended up going to Washington, D.C, and finished my degree there. And some of the material that we did got into some, like, really, cool stuff in my, like, early 20s, and then I came back to Houston.

Coming back to Houston, I actually heard about Mildred's Umbrella theater pretty quickly, as soon as I came back to Houston, and I heard of it as the theater company that produced all-female written plays. And had… was, like, female-centered, and I've always been interested, and actually, since 2019, since I came back to Houston, I've auditioned almost every year. And I am, like, really, really psyched to get into this specific show this year, because, like I said, my entire journey up to this point, and then coming from the stuff that I'm doing at Meow Wolf, it just kind of feels like kismet.

Brett Cullum: Perhaps it is that! COLLECTIVE RAGE is gonna be at the Spring Street Studio, running September 3rd through the 19th. Tickets are available at the Mildred's Umbrella website. 

Rhett Martinez: Yep, that's right. Upstairs, Spring Street, upstairs in the black box, not downstairs in the Fourth Wwall space.

Brett Cullum: Okay, that's good to know. Go up those stairs.

Rhett Martinez: Studio 233 upstairs at Spring Street.

Brett Cullum: Yes. And there are usually signs, usually people point to you in the rainbows. We won't get lost. We're gonna take care of it. And the cool thing… the cool thing is, on the second floor of Spring Street, you get to see all the art.

Rhett Martinez: Absolutely.

Brett Cullum: It's like a bonus. You get… Collective Rage and some art.

Rhett Martinez: Yes.

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