Zoë Lillis

Interview by Kayla Herrera-Daya

Ahead of her spring directorial debut with Offstage, we hear from Zoë Lillis, a Gallatin junior who acts as artistic curator and vice president of Tisch New Theatre. We meet over Zoom, an Embodied first and hopefully an Embodied last, to discuss the importance of collaboration and being grounded in one’s creative process. Together, we explore the idea of making art that serves artists in a world where injustice seems to metastasize, and finding hope and healing in one’s craft.  

Where are you from and what brought you to Gallatin? 

I’m from Boston. I also spent a lot of time in Arizona, I’ve worked out there a few summers. And I’m in Gallatin studying Directing and Dramatizing History. I came here wanting to do directing and music, and then I found a passion for historical narratives. 

How did you get involved with New Theatre and how does it specifically relate to your concentration at Gallatin? 

I got involved with Tisch New Theatre sophomore year when I was brought on to assistant direct Legally Blonde. I really liked working with them. There’s a very professional mindset with TNT which I really appreciate. We really operate like a professional theatre company. So I just kept bugging them to let me work with them again next year. I remember Matthew [Lewis], who’s our president and producer, I at one point literally stopped him on the street. I was like “Hey Matt, so you know? Next year?” He brought me on last spring and essentially he was like, “Figure out what we’re doing.”

In terms of how it relates to my concentration, directing is a big part of what I do. It’s what I want to do when I graduate. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about whenever I put on a show, “What does the world need right now? What can we learn from it?” When I was asked to think about this year, I really was like, we have to do something that’s important. 

Classifying narratives and building them into the framework of the time that we’re living in is always super important, so that’s really cool. It also helps to pester people into getting them to let you do something that you want to do, that always gets you places. 

I watched Offstage in the fall when it previewed, how did it all come together?

This goes back to last May. After I had pestered Matt for a while, he brought me on as our vice president and artistic curator. This was when he was like, “Zoe, figure out what we’re doing next year!” That’s a really big question! I say that, but he and I spent a lot of time talking about it together. At that point, we were really looking at doing a pre-existing show and trying to livestream it, while still embodying the part of TNT that’s very professional and does things to the best of our ability in every way. And then, the Black Lives Matter movement came back to light, thank goodness. It became very clear very quickly that those [pre-existing shows] weren’t the stories that needed to be told, at this point.

Because I had been looking at all these shows trying to figure out what pre-existing one we could do, I had all these cast recordings floating around in my head and simultaneously the world was on fire. On June 5th, 2020, I was really in this state. I went for a walk, left my phone at home, was just— I was also getting really irritated with social media. You could tell how much of it was really performative. I wanted to wrestle with what can I do that really means something that actually does good for people that isn’t just, “Let me tell you how good I am.” While I was on that walk, you know your mind wanders, and I had all these shows floating around in my head, and I had been listening to this one song, called “Boston.” It’s about a girl from Boston who goes off and lives her life, and we all have those songs where we go, “Oh my gosh they must have written it about me!” But because I also had all those other shows in my head I was thinking about how not everyone has that song that they can say this one’s for me, this one’s about me. To get into my role as a theatre-maker with everything, that’s a place to start. I started thinking about the “I want” song in every musical, and the songs that are saying, this is me. I remember I got home from that walk and immediately called Matt who was in the middle of doing something. I called him back later, and I was like “I have this idea,” and I word-vomited at him: “We’re going to do this show, it’s going to be all about identity, we’re going to let people come together and write music about who they are, whatever they want to share with the world.” The example I was using for a long time was whether it was about the dog you had when you were five, or coming out to your parents, as long as it was something these people felt was wholeheartedly them and they wanted to share with the world, that’s what we were looking for.

And Matt told me, “This sounds great, flesh it out a little bit, see if you can think of a lineup.” And I’m like, I don’t know how to come up with a lineup when we don’t have songs. That is how it started. A few weeks later, Matt asks if I can talk. Matt does work in live events, so he spent the summer producing Black Lives Matter protests. He talked about one he had just done, with live performances, and he goes, “It makes me think this idea could actually be something really important.” From there, he had me pitch it to a few people, we hit the ground running and now it has been about eleven months, and we have a show. 

There was definitely a clear distinction in social media use last year in terms of people who were really only being performative, and how many were using it as a true extension of the self. So it’s a really interesting quality about Offstage that it’s a response to the times we live in, and it’s giving the performers space to actually perform. This need to perform, that isn’t superficial in an attention-seeking way, but it’s mitigating the idea that we can’t have live performances but this is what we can do, and this is what can accomplish while we’re doing it. 

I was talking to Julia [Moser], who does marketing. She asked me how TNT is different this year from last year. And to be honest, every five days we get a new problem. 

I was going to ask! Did you have any challenges? Was there anything that came up? 

There were production challenges, but also challenges with the world. Every five days there’s a new problem, but every five days you figure out how to fix it. Nine times out of ten that solution is something better than what we had before. But oh my God, we did have challenges! From how we couldn’t have people singing live, to how many people could actually be there for production, and it’s a crazy world we’re living in right now. It was also always adapting and making sure— I think what’s so great about this concept is that it’s something that always has been an issue and something that always will be an issue, for the most part. When things would happen, we were like, “Yeah. This is the show that we had to be doing.” There were hard moments in rehearsals. We have one song that’s very much about the Black Lives Matter movement, but this performer, she’s also half Asian. We had a rehearsal leading up to our performances, right after the Asian hate crimes in Georgia. And I remember, she was just tired. I’m also half Asian, and I was just tired. I always start rehearsals by checking in, especially before a show like this. And she’s like, “Honestly everything is a lot.” I remember that rehearsal acknowledging, “Yeah this is a lot. And this song is a lot. And this show is a lot.” It’s important to know that just is. I was telling Gia [Ray], I know this feels shitty, but that rehearsal was the best she’d ever performed the song, and it’s because she was willing to say how awful she felt. Taking that awfulness and claiming the power out of that was really impactful and made the song and the show and all of us who were there better. 

Putting all of your emotions into a performance absolutely makes it more raw and real. I was thinking about the relationship that performers have with the audience, and in Offstage, you’re sort of anticipating what the audience is going to get out of it because it’s pre-recorded. But because it’s such a visceral response to what’s going on in the world, it made it abundantly more genuine. Part of the reason why the world feels so exhausting on a larger scale is because so much of what we do is process the news. 

That’s incorporated itself into the process. In the fall, we filmed the week after Biden won. For “Foolish,” that manifests itself one way in the idea that our work’s not done. What’s been cool is that usually TNT does their shows in one semester, but this year we made it a whole year project so we could workshop songs in the fall. Even though the material didn’t change, the way we felt about the songs did. “Foolish” was definitely one, but then also “Training Wheels.” I was actually just going over the table work for that and had in all caps, “BIDEN.” When I went over this with Emerson [Steele] she was saying how there’s one lyric, “I felt so alive,” that if she were to pinpoint this, it would be how she felt that Saturday and like things are going to be good. When we were filming, the weeks leading up to [the election] were so anxiety-inducing for everyone. Then we were able to film the week after, and all of us were masked and distanced, but we were able to be together and still make art in this world where maybe things will start to get better. It was such volatile work. 

Could you speak a little bit more on the relationship that the composers had with the performers, and your role in facilitating those relationships? 

Way back when we thought of Offstage, at one point one of our music directors suggested that our actors and composers work together. I can thank him every day for that, that informed so much of the show.

We interviewed composers first, and asked a ton of questions, but most important, amidst all the musical experience, everything in their portfolios, are people going to feel comfortable sharing their stories with this person? When we were casting actors, before we gave the final sign-off to anyone, we gave them three composers they could work with. We didn’t ever want to be making the decision before they had a say in it.

The thought process started with big ensemble rehearsals. Some directors will tell you don’t start with a big inspirational speech because it gets old and annoying. I guess that’s true but it’s important to unite everyone around a cause, especially for a show like this. That’s one of the big successes overall. We all knew we’re doing this for a very good reason.

At the first rehearsal, we talked with the cast and composers about what identity is and what it means to them. We also asked in those first rehearsals, “If you were the one watching the show, what is the song you need to hear?” A big part of the show is giving people songs that they need to hear.

From there, I had the actors and composers do speed-dating. We paired people up until they had all met each other. Because we had done all those pre-rehearsals, we knew what musical styles they liked and we knew what everyone would be good at. I sent people into those rooms, like “See who you vibe with, I don’t really care what you ask each other,” but I really wanted them to see who they liked. Honestly, I should have never worried about that, they all really like each other.

I had one-on-one meetings with every single actor. With the composers, we each had a meeting with one of our music directors. My goal with those was to keep them super small. I think the biggest thing we lose with Zoom is all those in-between moments, and a big part of this was getting to know them as people. We paired them together and basically figured out what they were going to write about, how they wanted [the performance] to look, sound, and what the first steps in the process were going to be. We didn’t want to be sending anyone off cold. And then, keeping in mind as they were writing, why were they the only two people in the world who could write this? It’s like that Martin Scorsese quote, the most personal is the most creative. We really were shepherding those conversations and steering them in a way that they were going to be confident in. We gave them a couple of weeks to write, and then our songs existed. 

It’s a lot of work, and you really do miss those nuances when you’re doing everything over Zoom. It’s fantastic that you put so much time and effort into deciding who all was the best to work with who. 

Going forward about those in-between moments, we made sure the cast and composers got to know us really well, but we also wanted to make sure that they knew each other. We had [a rehearsal], once all the songs were written, where the whole cast performed their songs for each other, and it was one of the most amazing moments of my life. It was great watching them perform, it was even better watching everyone watch them. Our chat was always blowing up with how supportive they were for each other, even though [the entire cast] has never met each other in person. It was so beautiful. There were benchmarks along the way, where we thought, “This is going to work.” And that was one of them because we were seeing how much they all resonate with each other’s songs. 

This past year has presented a lot of loss, but I think one of the better things that has come out of it, is that we’re much more perceptive to good and keen to acknowledge when something goes right. 

I also wanted to know whether you work on any art of your own and in any way does that inform your work at TNT or Gallatin? 

Yes. Generally though, when I start something, I have a really hard time finishing it, it’s usually because I get very busy with shows. Last year, I worked on this completely reimagined Little Mermaid. That was really fun, and at some point I’m going to get someone to let me produce it! People get so hung up on the idea that she gave up her voice for a guy. Which is valid, it’s very valid! I instead focused on this idea of how it’s much more about a girl finding her voice than losing it, and where you could see her finding her voice in different ways. She expressed herself a lot through movement. I wanted to spend time with the script and figure out how to manipulate it. It was a really cool exploration of how the story you’re looking for is really always there, you just have to find it. That was so much fun. I started that for class and then I presented it, and had a lot of people actually really interested in it. I was working on that while I was doing this, and I think that really informed Offstage. I had Ben [Heintz], who was one of our music directors, he was my music director for [The Little Mermaid], so he and I really learned how to work well together and got to learn how to run rehearsals over Zoom.

I’m also writing my own play right now, that I’ve been working on since freshman year. Actually, that play might be why I’m studying dramatizing history. I do my own stuff, and I think it informs what I want to go further with. 

Where do you find your inspiration? 

I find a lot of inspiration in other artists, in their work, but it’s more in their process. I’m obsessed with quotes, they’re all over my desk, I have two on my laptop, and they get me through the day in some senses. I’ll throw out a Howard Ashman quote in the middle of rehearsal. It’s bad because they’re word-for-word too!

Sometimes, as a director it ends up being a lot more about the process than you think. Obviously there’s the big overarching vision for the show, and how things should look and how things should feel, but it can really only come from you. The bigness can really only come from you.

There are shows where you can tell that the team just likes each other, and you can tell when they don't. The process ends up being a really big part of it And the reason I think I end up looking to other artists for that is because sometimes it’s hard. Seeing people who’ve done it and the art that’s come out of it— the Howard Ashman quote that I always say is from when he was making The Little Mermaid. He was really forging the worlds of animation and the Broadway musical, and brought this idea to Disney; sat everyone in Disney animation down, and walked them through a history of Disney and a history of the Broadway musical. He talked about why these things should have always been married. “What a difficult thing to do, but what a great thing to try to do.” That’s what I’ve kept in mind throughout this entire process. Even though it’s hard, it’s so worth it.