Review Fix chats with Hi, My Name is star Katherine Alice, who details the process behind the production and so much more.
About Hi, My Name Is:
Written and starring Kay White, “Hi, My Name Is….” features Ms. White engaged in a spirited “self-talk” – the kind we all have – elaborating on what it means to be truly ourselves – especially when we may not know who we really are! This schizophrenic story-telling journey allows us to meet Katherine – and Katy – who take the audience on a deeply moving ride culminating with her/them inviting the audience to VOTE on who will be in charge. As each tries to sway the audience, they unwittingly reveal the mess inside us all.
While this may seem shocking, this engrossing play shows us – on stage – what we do every day – in life.
This production is directed by Alicia Lion Januzzi
Review Fix: What was your inspiration behind this project?
Katherine Alice: Spend 5 minutes alone in a room with Katherine and you will immediately understand why this play needed to take place. The only way to finally shut her up, forever, and prove to her that I, Katy, am the one in charge here, was to write something that included testimony for an audience to decide who is the better candidate. I’m basically the Hakeem Jeffries to her Kevin McCarthy.
I read the play “Thom Pain (based on nothing)” by Will Eno and immediately thought, “Wait….people can write things like this?” Having always considered myself a writer trapped in the body of a clown, I encouraged us to write a graphic novel for our MFA thesis in 2022. I love comics and graphic novels, so if I was going to write a thesis of my life and art, it had to be done in the only way I knew we could: images.
After I submitted my thesis, my advisor told me that I needed to take my MFA and turn it something more, so I took all that craziness and turned it into a show. Mostly because Katherine would not shut up about it. I had to write it to make her leave me alone. And then I realized that I could write a whole showabout officially making her leave me alone. That sounded pretty great to me.
Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?
Alice: My process always starts at the end. Whenever I begin a project the final line, scene, or shot is so clear to me. Then, I do the really fun task of going “Okay; how the heck do we get there?”. I am a big fan of outlining and turn my room into something from Homeland”, complete with string and sticky notes all over my walls. The more my room looks like the set of a Stephen King novel the better.
I also cannot function or create work without other people and collaborators. As an artist, I can only see the space in one way: the way I see it, and in order for art to be broader and reach more than just 5’2’’ blonde White women, I bring in as many eyes and people as possible. I created BOH (stands for back-of-house in honor of my waitressing days) Team Productions to reflect that ethos: it takes an entire team, often unseen, to make a production. I have been very fortunate in finding a partner, my director and mania-wrangler Alicia Lion Januzzi, to help me refine this show to the award winner it became. I need a team of people working with me. That’s key to the way I work.
Also, a constant stream of British panel shows and “Family Guy” doesn’t hurt either.
Review Fix: What did you learn/are learning about yourself through this process/production?
Alice: I think the biggest thing I learned was that Katy is not ready to confront Katy, and Katherine is not ready to confront Katherine, and they can only do so with the other in tow. I knew I didn’t want to shy away from the abuse I experienced from both a stranger and my own father. It was crazy, I couldn’t remember the name of the man who assaulted me until I sat down to write this. It was so erased from my life, that when I started writing about it, I realized I couldn’t remember his name until it came screaming into my consciousness. I knew that if I was going to ask the audience to live through these moments and memories with me, then I needed to do it as well. I also learned that I found it difficult to be heard as Katherine. To believe as though I was real, and a person worthy of having a voice. I often feel silenced in the capacity that I function in, as Katherine, and trying to find patience with the stuff Katy has done, Katherine has done and try to forgive that pain. They say bitterness is the poison we drink, hoping the other person will die. Well, if she dies, I die, so I guess I need to stop being so bitter. Even if it feels justified.
Shakespeare wrote, “Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio.” Initially, Katherine wasn’t even in the first draft of the script! I was planning on just having the threat of her (presence?) be enough but….Katherine has a much stronger will then that. Don’t tell her I said this, but I actually discovered how broken Katherine is. There’s this huge façade she puts on about being tough and organized, but she is majorly struggling. I didn’t really know that before.
Darwin once said, “We stopped looking for monsters under our bed when we realized that they were inside us.” That is how we (humans? or Katy/Katherine) have evolved. We spent so much outward time trying to understand and relocate our pain, and the touring of this show has relieved the larger monster inside of us both, and one that can only be tackled together.
Review Fix: What are your ultimate goals for this for the future?
Alice: After November, we will perform this show again at the United Solo festival in the Spring of 2024, performing this piece once more! I suppose the “dream the impossible broke artist” dream is to bring this show to Edinburgh Fringe next August. We hope that this festival, and United Solo, will help make this goal a little less megalithic. I’m also hoping to turn this into either a film or a series of some sort, inspired by the shows “Peepshow” and “Fleabag” in which everyone has a Katherine-type trapped inside them, and how we all work to function within that chaotic paradigm. I also really hope that other artists pick this work up and produce it for themselves. Even though this is based on my life, I believe in the universality of this piece and I hope one day to walk into a performance of “Hi, My Name Is….” and see what interpretations and impact another voice creates.
Review Fix: What’s next?
Alice: I have just finished the first play in the “Suicide Trilogy” BOH Team Productions is planning on mounting as our next series of plays. The hope is that these will be the first full-length pieces we will produce.
When I need to take a break from pretending to be Edward Albee, I like to pretend I’m Neil Gaiman, and work on the graphic novel trilogy, which is now in the illustrator searching phase, which is a whole other wonderful and terrible beast to tackle!
My friend in Chicago wants to write a short film from a queer person’s perspective, which as a queer person, I am very excited to do.
I have a film I’m wiring set in WW1 and WW2. I’m half-British so a deep love and knowledge of WW1/2 are sort of a requirement in my family.
And mostly ignoring my laundry. I think that’s actually at the top of my “what’s next list”
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