Anne Kauffman took our call– a shakily-connected GoogleMeet meeting– from a car on her way back to her home in New York. Throughout our conversation, I, at times, wasn’t sure if she herself was driving or she was in the backseat. While I wouldn’t put the ability to be interviewed while driving past her, she was in fact not driving. When she arrived home, while on the call, her dog greeted her with the utmost joy. The ease with which Kaufman spoke to me, in the midst of her daily life, and her willingness to invite me into her world, confirmed what I already suspected about the Tony-nominated director: there might not be such a difference between Kaufman the person and Kaufman the director. It takes someone whose observation and attention extend beyond the rehearsal room, and a specific production, to create the kind of work she does.
Kauffman’s productions are like receiving a warm hug while catching a glimpse of yourself in a mirror unexpectedly. I first experienced this with The Sign In Sidney Brustein’s Window Kauffman’s 2023 off-Broadway production at BAM, which I reviewed for my second ever piece for CULTUREBOT. The play, Lorraine Hansberry’s second and last ever staged mere days after her death, is clunky: references to race, religion, class, political activism, and the early flurries of feminism thrash against each other in an attempt to portray The Greenwich Village of the 1960s.
The play’s protagonist, Sidney Brustein played here by Oscar Isaac, easily fits into the contemporary archetype of performative male: a type of person believing themself to float above material reality, never truly accountable for their choices. Isaac portrayed this by quirkily picking up his banjo whenever he saw fit. Some productions of this play could’ve failed to find the humanity in this infuriating creature, but instead, Kauffman’s Sidney was offset by his probing, searching, and wanting counterpart: his wife Iris portrayed by Rachel Brosnahan. Brosnahan presented this character–perhaps inspired by the nascence of the Second Wave–with a quiet firmness, forcing her husband to see her and consider a world larger than his own desires. Here, the tension between these two characters became so rife, and Brosnahan’s determination so strong, that their marriage transformed into its own character. It takes someone sensitive to the intricacies of a dyadic relationship to produce such a delicate show.
Kauffman’s approach has been affirmed in every subsequent production of hers I’ve seen, including Clare Barron’s You Got Older, a revival twelve years after the play’s premier, playing The Cherry Lane Theater until April 26th.
During our call earlier this month, Kauffman and I spoke about her experience returning to this play: how twelve years of life alters a directorial approach, how to enact emotions, and the specific insight a director has into a play, often catching what a playwright doesn’t realize they’ve written.
This interview has been edited for both length and clarity.
Eve Bromberg: I wanted to start by telling you how much Sidney Brustein means to me. Your production was one of the first pieces of theatre I ever reviewed.
Anne Kauffman: I’m so happy to hear that. I’d been trying to get that thing on for ages. I just, you know, I just love it so much. That’s a great way to start off.
EB: I know it’s sort of a clunky, irreducible play, but you embraced the irreducibility and made the marriage [between Sidney and Iris] its own character. It was a brilliant production.
AK: It’s really close to my heart.
EB: You can really tell. So, to start off… you did this play, You Got Older, 12 years ago. How did this production at The Cherry Lane come about logistically and artistically?
AK: This is my joke because it can’t possibly be true, but, during the last few years I’ve employed a get rich quick scheme where I revive shows that I did off Broadway either on Broadway or commercially. There’s a handful of plays this has happened for. Marjorie Prime is one of them. A couple of years ago, we got the original cast of the play together to do a fundraiser for Page 73 Productions, and Matt Ross, who is the commercial producer on this production along with Cherry Lane, was at the reading and expressed interest in producing it. We then got approached by Cherry Lane, after A24 took over, and they wanted to do it. Ours is the first full play at Cherry Lane, so there were some growing pains. We’re all figuring out how this was going to happen, and then it happened, and it’s been great working with those guys. They’ve got amazing taste and it’s been really fun. I mean, it’s such a great play. It came together through a whirlwind of desire and elbow grease.
EB: Cherry Lane, from what I understand, is trying to highlight new productions and contemporary work. How does it feel to be the first show? Do you feel like you’re setting the tone of what that theater is and could be?
AK: They have a very strong cache of plays that they want to do. I feel we’re all learning together what it is to open the space for the first time. I actually did the same thing for LCT Three, the space on top of The Vivian Beaumont. I opened the space with a play [Greg Pierce’s Slowgirl] I directed. It was amazing to have that experience, but also very scary, but in this case, we know this play. We know how it functions. I think it was good to have that knowledge even without knowing how the space was going to work. As much as redoing a play is a known entity, I felt confident. It was nice to have some knowns. It left me with space to see how things were going to flow.
EB: What was the experience of working with Clare in 2014, and what is it like now? Were there any changes made to the script?
AK: If there were changes, they were infinitesimal. The first time I worked with Clare, 12 years ago, she was 27. It was a big deal because it was only her second play. It was interesting to watch her navigate this, because the subject matter is so autobiographical. At the time, she was living through this experience with her dad and going through a breakup. Meanwhile, my mother had just died, and I didn’t want to do anything, and then I was sent the script, and I felt I had to do this play. It felt like something that would allow me to work through my grief. Clare and I have stayed friends, and I love her, but now, 12 years later, we’re re-meeting as colleagues. We’ve both grown so much. There’s a lot less anguish, and that distance from the subject matter, we were so incredibly close to it, has allowed for an increased perspective on what’s actually happening in the play. I love working with her. I loved working with her 12 years ago and I love working with her this time. I love how her brain works. I love how out of the box her thinking is. We’re working on another play, a new play of hers, and I’m excited to be able to work with her again soon. Look out for that project.
EB: What has changed about your perspective, not just to the play, but to directing in general?
AK: Oh my God! I happen to just be coming off of Marjorie Prime [written by Jordan Harrison], which I first directed ten years ago, so this is doubly-relevant. I definitely feel more relaxed. I feel more confident in who I cast. Because I feel like I can step back just a little bit more organic. Shit happens. I can really play to their strengths and have their contributions [to the production] be bigger. You know what I mean? But really, I’m still learning how to be a director, like, it’s just, it’s just crazy how I’m continuing to learn. So I definitely feel I trust my instincts more. I’m also doing other things in my life so I don’t feel quite as myopic about theater, which I think is really helpful. I feel more full as a person. I have started to draw from other elements of my life. I’m working in the music world a bit more. I’m also training to be a mediator in Civil Court. You know how they say you shouldn’t study theatre in undergrad, you should study everything else?
Clare remembers so much more about what happened in the rehearsal room 12 years ago than I do. Whenever she brings anything up, it’s a reminder of what I thought or said about the play then. One day during rehearsal, we were working on the first scene of the play, where Mae gets off the plane, looks around, and leaves. I suggested to Clare that perhaps we should add the sound of an airplane landing, in addition to seeing her with her suitcase. I was joking because I thought that seemed so heavy handed, and she told me that I had suggested that the first time as well. I had no recollection of that and I remember thinking Wow, who was that person who was paying such close attention? Not that I’m not paying attention now, it’s just a moment where I felt I was re-meeting myself and was sort of amazed by my competence. It’s been really interesting to be able to reevaluate past decisions. I kept feeling like I was meeting myself as a younger director.
EB: In that vein, did you feel like in doing this new production, that you were creating something new?
AK: I definitely did because the cast is so different. Every single character brings a completely different energy. They’re times when returning to a play feels like doing a revival with a new cast– you’re looking for the same energy that you did the first time based on who you think the characters were– but we ended up with a cast that just feels completely different from the actors 12 years ago, in a great way. I mean this cast is out of this world. They’re just incredible actors. They’re really funny in different ways, and they’re obsessed with different things, and so the relationships are totally new. The family dynamic is different. It really is a play about a family, so you get different people in there, you’re obviously going to get different dynamics in the family. This time around, I think I understand the cowboy scenes better. I feel Clare and I have crafted something that we didn’t quite land on the first time. I understand escape more now, and what escape looks like when you can’t escape. Clare definitely understands the play better now as well. When she was writing, she was discovering the material herself. When you’re working with a writer working on a new play, they know about 75% of the material and the other 25% is unconscious. I think one of my jobs as a new play director is to show a playwright what they’ve unconsciously written. It’s so fascinating to watch Clare go through this process. I’m watching Clare identify certain things that she hadn’t realized she was saying 12 years ago when she was so much closer to the event. It’s nice to be able to measure the distance between who you were then and who you are now.
EB: Could you speak a bit about what your process is like when you are handed a play? Are you reading for something in particular? What are those early conversations with the playwright like?
AK: I’m attracted to plays that have something to do with questions I had in my own life, or something I’m trying to work through. There was a time before my mom died and a time after, and afterwards, I got more selfish about what projects no small part because of doing this show. My experience doing this play was healing. I have a big family as does Clare and it felt great to be on the inside of a family and be inside that world.
EB: Peter Friedman’s performance was so gut wrenching. I think he’s such a tremendous actor. I read Declan Donnellan’s book The Actor and The Target for the one directing class I took, which left me with the impression that you should never direct emotion explicitly. Do you adhere to that approach? How did you approach the emotional stakes of this play?
AK: I was always terrified to read books on directing, because I always felt like, Oh, God, I’m doing it wrong. I think this process was really about storytelling. You know, this is about Clare’s dad, so she has a real attachment to who and how that dad is and then I, of course, project my dad onto the role. Clare and I both have so many stories and points of references for our own dads and we were speaking about our dads and the first weeks of rehearsal we totally confused him with stories about our dads, and then he of course started talking about his father, so it became a matter of having to get on the same page and create an understanding beyond our own parents. But, honestly, Peter is such an amazing actor and he and I have worked together before so after we established circumstances and dug into the environment and determined what the character meant to him, I can direct in like teaspoons and cups to calibrate whatever was his impulse.
EB: I hadn’t looked at the script before seeing the production and was so shocked to see that the play calls for that specific Regina Spektor song [Firewood] to be used as the father’s treatment song because it felt like such a particular directorial moment. Considering so much of this play is determined in the script, how and where were you able to put yourself into it?
AK: What I would say is I exist in the parts of the play that the playwrights don’t know or understand. I show them parts of their own work. The first time we did this play, the Regina Spektor wasn’t in the play, and we did a lot of searching around, also with the composer Dan Kluger, for all these songs, for the ending too. And then, at some point, Clare told us that Firewood was her father’s cancer song and the song she was listening to while writing the show. So we were sort of on this wild goose chase and then Clare came to us to tell us this was it. So the song was chosen but then there’s the response to the song and the relationship Mae and her dad are having while listening to the song and the relationship to the cowboy while listening to that song, and all of those things, those dynamics, that’s my purview. So even with things that are set, the relationship to those set pieces are my domain.
EB: Of course you have a designer, but the set was so extraordinary in its contrast: the painted brick back wall next to this somewhat suburban house and layout. Can you speak to the design choices?
AK: I think this play depends on a real porousness to the world. The play, more and more kind, melts from one scene into another. Like the scene where the dad walks in on Mae masturbating, that’s really an acknowledgement of these two distinct coexisting worlds, and it feels as if we’re constantly piercing them. It felt really important to me to have the ability to walk into another scene without having to alter much. For this particularly process, we started with the largest scene with the most people in it, which is the scene in the hospital, and then we deconstructed the rest of the play from that scene so that the play works itself up to that moment. There’s everything before the hospital and everything after. In a way, we built the crux of the play first and everything else to follow.
EB: What do you think is particular about your direction?
AK: I really like asking other people that question. Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you. I think I really like the porousness of plays and I really like detail. I really like doing close ups of characters, I think, and I think I’m pretty good at marrying that kind of specificity with a kind of theatricality, but making sure that theatricality always remains truthful
EB: I was going to say precision.
AK: There’s a precision. I think that’s right.
Tickets for You Got Older can be purchased here.
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