Interview: Jordan Friend of OLD SOUL at 4615 Theatre Company

As the pandemic approaches a year in length, theater companies have become more creative with the virtual presentations they've subbed in, maybe none more so than the 4615 Theatre Company, currently performing two solo works in virtual repertory.

While one is literally a one-on-one piece -Britt A. Willis' It's for You is a personal phone call to an individual audience members (and hence sold out of the 20 total tickets for its 20 performances) - Jordan Friend's Old Soul allows more of an audience in into its virtual, Zoom call run. Unlike most virtual theater productions, though, this one allows all its audience members to be seen, and interact with the songs and stories from Friend.

We talked to him about the piece.

How would you describe Old Soul?

It's a collection of original songs connected by a story. The story itself is a mix of storytelling, monologue and even a little bit of standup, and it's punctuated by songs that are grounded in their relevance to the story, but aren't really musical theatre songs, insofar I'm not a character who is breaking out of a moment into a song. I'm very much framing it as a concert, where I often am explaining where I was when I wrote a particular song.

And what the story is, is basically a headspace trip through years of my life, which I call my missing years - two years I just got out out of. I'm 27 now and this is when I was of 25 and 26 and I went through a quarter life crisis from hell that compounded by my own mental health battle. The result was a period I have very foggy, mixed memories of, and I started reconstructing and came to understand through songwriting- initially not with a goal of writing a show, but for my own self preservation and self-understanding. A lot of the songs were written just before the pandemic hit, and then a few more were over the summer, when we all went underground, and some more were written over the past two years, which I had to dig up and resuscitate, and became these historical artifacts through which I could understand just what I've been through.

That turned into what was just going to be a concert, and then a monologue started evolving from there, and I started working with the great director and dramaturg Otis Ramsey- Zöe, and what we have now is basically a a 65-minute piece, which is 10 songs, and a monologue connecting all of them, that I'm performing via video calls interactively, so that 20 people or so are listening and I can see them, and they can see me, ask me questions in the chat.

And if they laugh I can see them laugh even if their audio is turned off, so it kind of has the feeling of a backroom concert, or an intimate blackbox show, Eventually it will be an in-person piece that I'll do in physical spaces. But for right now this is a great way to workshop the material further but also tell a story that brings people into a huddled space again. And it also gives me a chance to knock down some stigma about mental health. One of my goals is to make it easy, and funny to talk about.

Does the ability to see the audience reaction in real time change your performance?

Absolutely. Over the summer, I did livestream concerts on Facebook and I just found them hellacious, because you're performing into a void. And you can see the counter in the corner checking how many people are watching at a time, and you see it going up and down. Eventually, I just started pasting Post-It notes on my monitor so that I couldn't see it, it was so awful.

Sometimes people engage in the chat, sometimes they don't. But this is actually connecting with people, so it's way closer to an in-person performance than anything else I've done [in the pandemic}. I think the biggest change is the level of care that is required of the audience, because they're being vulnerable. They're exposing their space, their private home space, to other audience members. And a lot of us are spending a lot of time on Zoom calls anyway, so there's also Zoom fatigue.

So in addition to putting on a good show, I have a big responsibility in taking care of everybody on the call. And a lot of that starts with openly acknowledging how strange and foreign it all seems to me. And as soon as they understand that this is weird for me too, then we can all be on the same page and accept the strangeness and discomfort of it and enjoy the benefits of it.

But it means I have to work extra hard to keep tabs on individual people; it means I have to watch the Gallery View very closely as I perform, I have to keep an eye on the chat. So there's a lot of different things to juggle. If we were all in the same space together, it would be a very different thing. So that's probably the biggest difference. The other thing I have to do is to keep the pace going like a crazy person. In a live show you might be able to lose people for a minute and get them back; if I lose people in this space, it's very hard to re-engage someone once you've broken that flow. So keeping the pace chugging, keeping the space at a tight 65 minutes is very important for the virtual medium.

How will it change when it becomes a live performance piece?

It will be longer. It will be more like an 80 minutes show. There will be songs that will go back in, and new material that will need to be written. But in a lot of ways it will be a same; the chat will just be replaced by me asking someone a question out in the crowd. Doing the normal crowd work of a standup show will take the place of a chat.

What's the reaction been from the audience?

It's really fun. One of the most affirming things is, because i talk candidly about having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in the show, and a lot of people have OCD and don't talk about it, suddenly I've been having people reach out and say, "I have all the same symptoms, thank you for saying this, I relate to it so much." For people who have everyday mental illnesses, the things that you don't think of when you hear the term "mental illness," but nonetheless impact our day to day lives and are impedances that we have to work around, it's really fun to hear people feel recognized and affirmed and recognized and feel that they're able to laugh at what they recognize.

And for a lot of other people, even if they don't have OCD or anxiety, by virtue of existing in the 21st century, they have flavors of it. Because the age of the internet has made us all a little OCD, so I still see people laughing and recognizing themselves when I talk about the thought processes that I have and the things that I do.

In terms of audience reaction to the show, I think the most gratifying part is is the arc that happens. I watch people learn how to watch the show over the course of the hour. At the beginning, there tends to be a little bit of trepidation: "Oh my god, what the hell am I doing here? I'm on a Zoom call with this guy and he's singing and there's a piano, what?"

That's why there's a lot of banter early on to try and put everybody at ease, and subliminally teach them how to watch it, and then watch people settle into a rhythm not just with me but with each other. In real theaters there's a miraculous behavioral thing that happens in an audience when they all laugh at the same thing, that actually happens on the calls - if one audience member starts using the chat, everyone starts using the chat, so I have shows that are giant chatfests, and then I have shows that are very engaged but are using all of their engagement on their cameras, and not using the chat.. But they all learn to applaud. Some shows everyone bangs their hands together, some shows everyone waves. And it's lovely to see that same, unifying, synchronizing process happening in a virtual space that I feel we've all been deprived of. And I've had people reach out to me saying, "I don't just feel closer to you, I feel closer to other audience members and I've been missing that" - that joy that you get of watching something in company. So that has been the most gratifying thing.

There are obviously always going to be some people who completely understandably want to leave their cameras off and experience it in their own space, and that's totally fine too. Then there are people for whom they try it out and it's not their thing. This is weird and different. I've been able to experience the full spectrum of that. Just like a real show is never for everyone. So, in a way, the variety and span of audience reaction has felt very warm and familiar to me.

Do you think there will be a place for virtual interactive performances like this once the pandemic is over?

I do. I think where it will become useful if, say, a foundation in Los Angeles wants their whole team to see the show and they want to commission a performance of it, I can crack out the virtual version. We know it's there.

So in a way, it's going to break down some barriers, and people who might not be otherwise be able to experience shows can experience them -- people who have disabilities of various kinds, or someone for some reason is impeded from commuting or getting to a space, this is a new way for them to experience live performance. So I think it would be a good thing if it in some capacity sticks around.

I also want in-person to come back, because I treasure in-person more than anything. But I think they can absolutely coexist and compliment one another down the road.

Old Soul plays Thursdays through Sunday at 8 p.m. through March 7. Tickets are available online.