New York City
Annie Baker’s drama has changed the lives of these four actors — and lowered their tolerance for “lame-ass sh*t.”
When audiences walk into the Barrow Street Theatre, they're transported into a world unlike any other they've seen onstage. The setting of Annie Baker's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, The Flick, isn't a multistory home in the country, or a fancy penthouse on the Upper West Side. Rather, it's a run-down movie theater in Vermont, around 2012, where four youngsters are stuck in dead-end jobs sweeping up popcorn and praying that the place — and its prized 35mm projector — isn't sold.
The Flick premiered in 2013 at Playwrights Horizons and quickly struck a chord with adventurous audience members who saw something unique in Baker's text and Sam Gold's production. Yet it was not without controversy. The idea of walkouts during the play's three-hour-plus duration prompted its artistic director to write a letter to subscribers defending his decision to produce it.
But The Flick won raves and a Pulitzer, and now, two years later, it's back in New York for a commercial run at the Barrow Street, intact with its four original cast members: Alex Hanna, Louisa Krause, Matthew Maher, and Aaron Clifton Moten. As the show's return engagement began previews, the foursome shared their insight into life as a movie-theater usher and described how Baker's work has so viscerally affected them to the point that they think twice about other projects.
What was it like to walk back onto this dusty old movie theater set?
Louisa Krause: I missed the first day of rehearsal because I was shooting a film, and I came in the second day and it was like, "Oh, welcome back to the summer of 2012 again." All of our stuff was in storage. So it was great to pull out my shoes again, and I still have the same little pen star that I drew on the toe. It was like, "F**k yeah, I'm back!" I was surprised by the smallness of the space. It's that much more real…You just get to live it.
Aaron Clifton Moten: I think the environment [of the Barrow Street Theatre] does complement [the show].
Have any of you ever actually worked in a movie theater?
Aaron: I applied for a movie theater job when I graduated college. They never called me.
Louisa: Which one?
Aaron: The really cute one by Lincoln Center. I applied there because I thought I'd get to see all these really sick movies and sweep up popcorn. No dice.
Does performing this play give you empathy for movie-theater ushers?
Matthew Maher: Sad, but no. I wish I had more empathy. I went to a movie yesterday and it didn't occur to me once.
Aaron: I kind of have a visceral response when I see people on the street and on the subway using the dustbin and broom. My back hurts all of a sudden.
Matthew: We had an usher come in, an actual movie usher, his name is Nick Feitel and he's an usher for the Angelika Theater [and artistic director of Treehouse Theater in Chelsea]. He showed us his sweeping techniques and he talked to us about the gestalt of the job, which is very much about — he used the phrase we use now — "douchebagging around." It's work, but you spend a lot of time…chatting about nothing.
Aaron: It was amazing. It was one of my favorite days.
Are there movies that made you want to be actors?
Louisa: I really don't have any. I feel like I wanted to be an actor when I came out of my mom. [laughs] I love watching movies, I appreciate all film. But there really aren't any that are like, "I wanted to be an actor because of that movie," unfortunately. Or fortunately. I don't know.
Matthew: I feel like it was mid-career Martin Scorsese movies, like Raging Bull and Goodfellas, or seventies Pacino movies, where the acting is sexy and romantic and tough and they look like weirdos. They have feelings and they're really big and the cameras are all up in their grill. That, when I was younger, and later on, Wes Anderson movies. Movies that are their own genre. It's so much fun to watch a Wes Anderson movie, or the Coen brothers. They look like they're having so much fun.
Alex Hanna: I think it was The Usual Suspects.
Aaron: Nice.
Alex: Just a great, solid company of f**kin' good-ass actors.
Matthew: That movie was all about the flash of the acting.
Alex: Yeah, but also, like, a very good film.
Aaron: I definitely have to say two films, Cool Hand Luke and All About Eve. All About Eve was my first venture into the world of being an actor, and the interesting story of wanting to help someone and realizing that they didn't ever really need your help and they worked their way into getting everything they've ever wanted through you. And Cool Hand Luke is brilliant from the get-go…I really obviously love good storytellers, but I love seeing actors make a great story happen.
That's the beauty of this play and production, to say the least: great actors making a great story happen in a scarily real way.
Matthew: A really great play, like this one, doesn't take things for granted. There's not a single thought or idea that's unconsciously borrowed from another play. Everything is thought through. You go see other plays or movies that are supposedly good and that people like and you're like, "Yeah, but this is cheesy and you don't even know it." This play is also about that, how people are corny. How people are unconsciously borrowing ideas to keep living. And any borrowing it does is on the surface.
Louisa: Whatever project I'm on is the end-all-be-all, but even in my real life, this play has affected me more than any other project. I don't know how to describe it. It has gone into my soul, this play.
Aaron: I feel super strongly that this play has helped me hate other things. This play has really made it difficult for me to do other things. Sometimes I can't even bring myself to audition for something when I have the sense that I'm going to have to really "perform" or do something—
Matthew: I agree. It's hurt my tolerance for lame-ass sh*t. Now, if I'm going to be in a play, I'd rather get paid, like, no money, and have it be really weird. The falsehoods and pretentions of most things bother you when you work on something that is remarkably free of falsehood.