Interview with Carly DW Bones

I sat down with Carly DW Bones (they/she) the inaugural recipient of our new Director Driven Production Grant. We discuss Carly’s process, the creation of The Aaron Play, and how they create a space of care and joy for their collaborators.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Katie Lindsay (she/her): Carly! Thank you so much for joining me.

Carly DW Bones (they/she): Thank you! I am so thrilled and honored to be the first recipient of this grant.

Katie: Tell us a bit about yourself.

Carly: I am a theater director and intimacy director and coordinator. I also work at the intersections of arts and trauma sensitivity: supporting mental health for artists, sex education, community facilitation and performance and ritual and magic and witchcraft. So all of those pieces inform how I show up as an artist. In regards to this grant, I am the director of The Aaron Play, which is written by my husband and partner in life, art and crime, Zachary Bones. The play has been conceived and developed by the two of us together over the last seven years.

Katie: Tell us about the initial conception of The Aaron play.

Carly : Zach and I actually fell in love and began our partnership working on Shakespeare. So it's a really full circle moment for us. Another tragedy. Not the most auspicious place to begin a romance, but here we are over a decade later. Worked out great.

This is the first thing that we have like truly created from scratch together. We've been calling this play our first child, or our “playby:” our play baby. He wrote the actual dialogue. So I like to say that he birthed this play, you know, in his artistic womb, but I am the daddy and the midwife. So that's kind of how we've collaborated.

I've just always loved Shakespeare and just the poetry and the incredible characters and epic stories. I really believe that Shakespeare shouldn't be treated with preciousness of like, we're preserving this old thing, but rather as incredible source material that is so rich and we can keep coming back to and asking how does it land in the world today.

We saw a production of Titus Andronicus I think it was 2018, that the independent Shakespeare company did. Zach is a big horror nerd and loves the medium of horror to explore things that are happening in our world, in our society. And Titus is the closest thing  Shakespeare has to a horror play. It's his bloodiest play. It's full of violence and mutilation and blood and people being baked into pies. It's absolutely bananas.

The story got stuck in our brains and we couldn't stop talking about it and thinking about it. The villain character, Aaron the Moor, who is the first canonically black Shakespearean character, is this absolute mustache twirling villain. He's the archetype for villains in later Shakespeare plays who are like, I am the mastermind puppeteer and I direct address to the audience and you love it and I tell you all these things I'm gonna do and then you're gonna see me do them. So he's just this great character. But the really interesting dichotomy, and we were like, what was Shakespeare actually doing? Titus is really a play about parents getting revenge for their dead children, but at the cost of their living children. Which is why it's such a tragedy. But the one character who doesn't do that is the villain of the peace is Aaron. He actually sacrifices himself to save his infant child. And he confesses and takes the blame for everything. And then his sentence is, we don't actually see him die, but he's sentenced to be buried up to his chest in the earth and to a death by starvation, and it's a very specific, very extreme, horrific death sentence.And so we were like, there's something to that.

The other weird thing is that Aaron's greatest weapon is his words, his mind and his voice. He just puppeteers people. So we are like, okay, that's wild. This master manipulator that they caught, they're sentencing him in a way that they're actually leaving him with access to his greatest weapon: his mind and his voice.

We came up with this whole story together in 2020 and 2021 while were quarantined together in our living room. Then Zach sat down and started and actually wrote the dialogue that brought it to life. So everything that's been happening in our country and the world since then has been deeply influential on the play. Titus takes place in ancient Rome, but for Shakespeare, ancient Rome is a metaphor to explore Elizabeth in England. And so we're adding one more layer: it's actually contemporary America. It's a play about a torture and an execution. And it's a play about the nameless guards who just by doing their job and showing up to work without questioning what they're doing, who are complicit in a larger system of violence.

Katie: There are so many intense, really heavy subjects in the play that we are actively living through, and the people who are in your piece are directly affected by a lot of these oppressive. Can you talk about the joy and levity that is also contained within the piece? How does that live alongside the brutality and violence?

Carly: There is so much comedy in this horrific play about an execution. There's a lot of scenes where the guards are having a very different experience than Aaron is having. And then as the audience, when we're kind of an extension of the guards and we're laughing and we're caught up in it, when do we realize this is happening while a man is being tortured and executed? That's just so much to the credit of Zach and how he wrote the dialogue.

To speak to finding joy and laughter and release while telling a really heavy story: it's something we've talked a lot about as, as a cast and as an ensemble. There is a necessary release valve when you are embodying and telling a story that is so heavy. There has to be joy and a playfulness in the process. And our cast is so absolutely exquisite in both their level of talent and dedication, but also their level of care for each other. And I think because of that, there’s a lot of room to play. You couldn't tell the story with your body night after night if there was not a lot of love and joy within the process.

And that's a really big part of my ethos as a director and somebody who has a background in intimacy choreography and trauma sensitivity. 97% of theater is like, hello actors. Will you reenact trauma with your body to an extent that your body doesn't necessarily know when it's real or not?! And do that for four nights a week, for five weeks, please, plus rehearsal. How do we actually make that sustainable?

Katie: It’s kind of wild.

Carly: It is! A really big practice for me is building a container. I really see directing as stewardship of story and artists. My job is to build a container in which people are cared for, which people feel like they have a sense of belonging. Their human dignity is always intact. There's enough support for them they are able to really go there because they know they are supported and because they have rituals of how to get out of there.

I really believe that rehearsal is a sacred space. I think that it's a very intimate space, and I think at its best it's, it's an opportunity for every artist who steps in to get to show up as the best version of themselves. And I think having a threshold where you enter and leave rehearsal and creating a ritual that threshold, even if it's very casual, is incredibly powerful. We always have a kind of check-in circle where we stretch together and we just check in about how everyone's doing and see what people's boundaries are for the day.

At the end we always practice something called “de-roll,” which is something that comes from drama therapy, and a lot of intimacy professionals use it. It’s creating am embodied somatic ritual to release your character's trauma from your body. Actors are so well equipped with all their own paths to get into characters, but at the end of the work, it's just like, okay, have fun with that, bye! Sometimes, it's literally two minutes and we just have everyone ground and breathe. I love to guide a visualization of breathing a mist out of your body, brushing or shaking it off because different things get activated in folks on different days and you never know. Sometimes you don't even know till you'll, you de-roll and you're like, whoa, that was really heavy. And now I feel it leaving my body. Part of the commitment to care and sustainability is that you don’t need to be suffering your character's trauma outside of the rehearsal room.

Pictured Above: Carly leads a warm-up during rehearsal.

Katie: Can you talk about what it means to create a safe space inside a rehearsal room?

Carly: I've learned that safety is relative, and it feels and looks different to every person in the room. It’s also something that we can't literally control or guarantee. Foolish mortals! instead I can commit to holding rehearsal as a brave space, which to me means a space where there's enough support, respect, belonging, human dignity, and care that folks can say a brave yes. To me that means: this is something that's outside of my comfort zone or costs me more, but I want to try.

No art at the cost of anybody's humanity. Otherwise, what are we actually doing? Especially when we're telling a story like this. Sometimes in certain productions there can be this huge disconnect between this is the message and the story that we're telling, but if that is not reflected in the values in the practice of the process, then it kind of negates the power of that.

Katie: Tell me about your directing philosophy.  

Carly: I call myself a thespomancer. A thespian necromancer. I think that the director's job is to resurrect the play from the page and bring it to life. A play is a spell. It's a ritual that humans do with their bodies and voices and hearts over and over. And they speak these words and they do these actions in front of a live audience, and it has this direct impact on people in front of you. Choosing what spell you cast and also the process of how you cast that spell has an impact on what the audience receives.

Katie: it's clear so much of your vision and approaches about the space you create, both for your actors and for your audience. That's such a beautiful thing and, and something I've learned so much from you. Because I've definitely borrowed many, many practices that I've learned from you in my process. So How do you care for yourself in holding space for everybody else?

Carly : Yes. Oh my gosh. You know, I think that a lot of us practice the medicine that we need. That can be why we're good at it. It's a lot harder for me to do that for myself than for other people.

But for me, mean, directing a play in the theater: there's nowhere in the world that I would rather be. It's one of the most nourishing things to me. Particularly , this play in this process because it is so personal.

When things are particularly stressful and heavy, d-roll for the self after is really helpful. A hot shower and a visualization of what you're washing off. There's stressful things just on the practicality of how do we make theater happen. But the artistic process is something that I found deeply nourishing, and especially just the energy and commitment and love of the other artists in the room. I feel like what I'm pouring out is being poured back into me in this process which is such an absolute gift.

Katie: What has receiving this grant meant to you?

Carly: you know, it’s a funny story. I was having a moment after an early rehearsal where I was just like having an imposter syndrome moment and I was like, it's been a while. Am I doing this right? And the very next day is when you reached out to me about this grant. It was the most incredible and affirming moment where I felt vulnerable and was questioning to the universe and got this unbelievable blessing in response to that.  

Katie: Aw, that’s beautiful. It's just thrilling to me as somebody who admires you and your work that you’re having this opportunity, and I am so glad we can support you. How do you think directing the Aaron Play is challenging you to expand your creative practice?

Carly: Stepping into direct to play can be a brave yes. Bringing to life something that has been so theoretical for so long, you know, can be nerve wracking. Like, whoa, my partner and I have worked on this for seven years and now the ball is in my court to bring it to life. Incorporating. design and movement and weaving all the pieces together is pushing me to grow. This is really an incredible chance for me to kind of expand the container to all the designers as collaborators and bringing this world to life. Especially with the resources to make that happen, it's really incredible. Like I work in enhancing movement and storytelling for other directors, and this is the first time that I get to have somebody that for me in this play.

The set is such a puzzle, because it's a man buried up to his chest in the earth. TSo getting to collaborate with our amazing scenic designer, Colin, on that has been a pleasure and a challenge. How do I support and encourage and leave room for collaboration and creativity while also focusing in the container for a unified world and vision is definitely an very exciting growth edge.

There's some wild stuff to stage, you know, in this play where it's like, how do you actually do that? We are performing this on a raked stage, which was a big part of the scenic puzzle. I've never got to direct on a raked sage. There’s things in the script that are outside of naturalism and reality, where we go into surreality and magic and nightmare. There is literally a nightmare ballet in the script. And that's one of my favorite things as a director. I love when I read a script and I'm like, wow, cool. I understand the narrative and emotional impact of that. How do we actually do that? that's a puzzle that is sometimes intimidating, but always really inspiring and really exciting to solve.

I think through the strength of the writing, the incredible talents of the actors and their performances, in getting to collaborate with designers, we pull the all the threads of how that’s going to come together.

Katie:  What are your creative practices that open that imaginative space up for you?

Carly: I love to work in like sound and visual to like get in.  Something that I always do is I create a playlist --not like these are the songs that will be used in the play, bcause that’s the sound designer’s job. Something I do with everything I direct, including new play workshops and staged readings, I create a playlist that is the mood, the vibe, what I feel like is  the emotional resonance and narrative of this story isand it's kind of like an audio collage or an audio mood board. And I share that with designers to be like, here's the tone, here's the feeling. It's not literally this, but this is my sonic collage.

I also create like a visual board for different parts of like the world and the characters and archetypes. Something I part of my practice is, I’m a witch, and I'm a tarot reader. I'm really interested in archetypes from the tarot. For this play, I was really interested in Aaron as the Hanged Man, which is one of the major arcana cards. And it is usually a man who's hung by his foot from a tree and is upside down. You think the card is upside down when it's actually right side up. In the order of the tarot, the card comes after justice and before death. It's really a card about surrender and sacrifice in changing your perspective.

Having this spiritual archetype is a way in which that's helped my brain and heart puzzle together this play. Zach Bones is actually also an incredible visual artist, and for our staged reading he designed a tarot card!  And I was like, yes, that's what the play is.

Pictured above: Tarot Card by Zachary Bones.

Katie: What an amazing image!

Carly: And then I also am a research nerd. When I direct, I love to go down a research rabbit hole. And I love to create different resources to share with actors and designers as a jumping off point. Throughout this process I've done a lot of dramaturgy. It's more for me than anyone else, but I have a 40 page dramaturgy packet, that I share with collaborators if it’s helpful, like, here's a bunch of things that were part of my process of contributing tto conceiving the story and in how I'm approaching directing.

And there's actually two of my absolute bangers of books that were highly influential to me. One is There Must Be Happy Endings: On a Theater of Optimism and Honesty by director Megan Sandberg Zakian. When I first read this book years ago, I was like, are you my soulmate? I have never felt more seen, very specifically and personally, by anything that I've read.

Katie: Wow.

Carly: It’s about what is the balance that we seek to find as storytellers, as theater makers, as directors specifically, when we need to reflect the honest state of the world as it is, but also want to be able to foster imagination and hope for what the world could be. That felt so related to the air of play. And especially the ending, “there must be happy endings.” Originally, when Zach and I were fleshing out the story, we were like, oh, it's, it's an echo of Titus. It's an utter tragedy. Everyone is demolished, nobody survives. Then we were like, it needs to hit that way, but there has to be a glimmer of hope. And so it was a really, really specific needle to thread that was honestly very influenced by this book.

Katie: Amazing. What was the other book?

Carly: There's this podcast that's the Folger Shakespeare Library podcast, such a niche nerdy podcast. We found this episode about, it's called, Titus Andronicus and Black Lives Matter. It was about Aaron. We found it a couple of years into working on the play. And it was so deeply affirming that we were like, yes, that is in the text! And then we listened to a bunch of other interviews, like one with Farrah Kareem Cooper who wrote this book called The Great White Bard: How To Love Shakespeare While Talking About  Race. It looks at the historical context and production history of all of the racialized and non-white characters in Shakespeare. The first specific character chapter is on Aaron because he is the first canonically black Shakespeare character. I read this book after the drafts of the script had been written. It was so affirming to be like, oh, this incredible Shakespeare scholar is like, yes, all of these things you found in threads that you've pulled are so aligned. It was just such an incredible synchronicity.

Katie: I just love hearing about your process. As directors, I feel like it's such a holistic practice. You're borrowing from everything, every sense, right? Every, every experience. Emotional visual, like spiritual, experience. I think it can be hard to talk about what makes us unique as directors, but being a director is such an expression of who we are.

Carly: It’s very invisible work, what directors do.

Katie: Mm-hmm.

Right: Carly takes notes during rehearsal.

Carly : It’s another reason I just so appreciate this grant and what it's created to do, to uplift. Directors are so influential or can be, you know, if you let them. I love working on new work. I love playwrights. When I first was starting directing, I was like, I love actors. oh my God, what they do is incredible. I trip out about it all the time.

But especially in getting to work on a lot of new play development over the last number of years, I've just discovered this deep love for playwrights and for getting to collaborate with a writer as a director.

I love stories. I think that that's just always been how I've been able to process the world and connect to people. And so having influence on the generating of stories and using whatever parts of my mind, heart, and spirit I can to shed light or share different ideas is so exciting to me

.

Katie: I feel like that's a perfect segue to my last question, which is what part or piece of you do you feel is coming forth in this play? As the co-conceiver/ co-generator? What piece of you maybe feels the most vulnerable and exciting to share through this piece?

Carly: It’s an intersection of art, storytelling, and social justice. For me, I found the most impactful way to engage with this is through a story. The news can be so either completely overwhelming or desensitizing, especially with social media and the. internet and the way that news and information is flooded into our nervous systems. But then also, we have a responsibility to engage. My favorite quote from the Talmud is you are not obligated to finish the work, but neither can you walk away from it. I'm paraphrasing it.

That's what I feel like art can be at its best and what I hope to be able to do with art.

And so through a story where it’s very close enough to reality without completely spoonfeeding you, just the right amount a layer of removal, allows us to emotionally access something in ourselves and then be able to intellectually connect it.

I think I'm experiencing a phenomenon which is very common for artists, especially artists who care about justice and the impact of stories beyond entertainment. is that sometimes when there's so much happening in the world, you ask, why am I doing this? Is this really the best use of my time and energy?

Katie: I really relate to that.

Carly: Yeah! But over and over and through this play, more than maybe anything, I am reminded this is worthy of time and energy and resources. Story is an access point to empathy. Through the specificity, we find the universal.

It feels very personal to me to challenge the complicity of the everyday person. How we show up to work without asking questions, even when that is not a direct act of what we might superficially consider violence. How is that actually violent behavior? How is passivity and acceptance of the status quo, and just thinking well, all I can do to get by is show up and do my job and get my paycheck, and that's gotta be enough—how is that actually violent?

Also, this is a very masculine and male character-dominated play, and for somebody for whom feminism and gender expansiveness is such a huge part of my just identity and artistic ethos, that was something we interrogated. We're like, all the women in this play are dead. What does that mean? The two female characters are both ghosts in this play. So playing with Lavinia, who is the most victimized and violated character in Titus Andronicus, we were like, what do we do with her? So she first appears in the Nightmare Ballet in her mutilated, horrific state. But then when she actually appears in the final scene of the play, she's whole. In Death, those things were not taken from her.

An actor gets to have the mask of the character, but their, their body and voice is there, but the director is kind of behind everything. When people see something I direct, it is so vulnerable and so personal because so much of myself poured into this. And so as somebody who also helped conceive this story, and it was written in the literal voice of my partner, it's such a personal and vulnerable thing to share. But it's also like, this is what I asked the actors to do. This is what I'm asking the playwright to do. If I'm asking for, for vulnerability from everybody else, I need to give the same.

Katie: So beautiful, so beautifully said. Thank you so much for this amazing conversation. Any final words?

Carly: I’m so just deeply honored and. Grateful and thrilled by this grant. It's just such a blessing on this production and I, and, and even larger than that, like opening the conversation to honor the work of directors and the vulnerability and the of that, and to just uplift like. Recognizing directors as generators of, of stories, and of theater. I think that can really shift the way that we collaborate, especially in like the LA theater landscape. And I'm just really excited to see what and collaborations come from this.

Katie: Me too!