Latest / The BSB Podcast / Exclusive Interview: Leah Louis-Ferdinand of Birmingham Village Players' 'Steel Magnolias'

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Exclusive Interview: Leah Louis-Ferdinand of Birmingham Village Players' 'Steel Magnolias' · The BSB Podcast

• 0:00
  Thank you so much for joining me today, Leah.
• 0:02
  How are you doing?
• 0:03
  I'm doing well, how are you?
• 0:06
  We're doing okay.
• 0:08
  How has the rehearsal process for Steel Magnolias has been so far?
• 0:12
  It's been really good.
• 0:13
  We just started tech week on Sunday.
• 0:15
  So this is like our last big week of rehearsals and getting everything put together.
• 0:19
  But it's been super, super cool going from, we started in December with like our first read throughs and getting to know each other and then spent all of January and February
• 0:30
  just putting the show together and building the show.
• 0:33
  So this is the first week where you kind of see like the effect of everything getting put together.
• 0:38
  and are getting to see the final product.
• 0:40
  So it's really cool.
• 0:41
  It's paying off really well.
• 0:43
  How is that when it finally comes together?
• 0:46
  It has to be pretty exciting.
• 0:48
  my gosh, it's so exciting, especially with a show like Still Magnolias where so much of the show is built on the relationships between these women and something that Michael, our
• 0:58
  director, really emphasized was how important our relationships were with each other.
• 1:02
  Getting to see it just kind of like happen without even realizing it, how close we've all become and how those relationships are really strong and how they build into the
• 1:11
  characters and your instincts on stage.
• 1:13
  It's just like the coolest thing ever.
• 1:16
  So I'm not familiar with Steel Magnolias, which is kind of crazy seeing that the movie came out, you know, back in the 90s.
• 1:23
  So what's kind of the story of Steel Magnolias and then how does your character factor into that narrative?
• 1:28
  Yeah, so actually I can't fault you.
• 1:31
  I had never seen the film before I auditioned, so the story was new to me.
• 1:35
  But Steel Magnolias takes place in a hair salon in Louisiana in the 1980s, and it follows this group of women who sort of get to know each other as time goes on.
• 1:46
  So the character that I play, Annelle, actually the first scene is her first day on the job.
• 1:51
  So she's kind of an outsider to this community of women.
• 1:54
  And...
• 1:54
  When doing research for the show, we listened to these tapes that were put together where somebody had gone down and interviewed women from the town in Louisiana that this is
• 2:04
  loosely based on.
• 2:06
  And the story centers around this woman, Shelby, who is based on the sister of Robert Harling, who wrote the play, and how she connects with these women.
• 2:15
  And what they say in the interviews is that in the South, especially in this time period, hair salons were such an important place for women to be able to
• 2:24
  kick off their shoes and get to know each other and be silly and be themselves and to like really bond with one another.
• 2:30
  So through that experience, like weekly of these women coming into this salon, you learn about their lives and what they're experiencing and you learn about Shelby, who is again,
• 2:40
  the sister of the author, her experience dealing with diabetes and kind of trying to build a life for herself while also dealing with this weight on herself.
• 2:51
  And all of these women have something that they're going through and that they
• 2:54
  kind of face and grow with and against as they go through the show.
• 2:58
  So it's a really cool slice of life, but what makes it so cool to me is that their relationships are kind of what propel them through the story and that are what allow them
• 3:09
  to get through the story that has a lot of room for tragedy, but is also very joyful.
• 3:14
  It's kind of awesome that this is like a dramatization of a real life story and real life people because that does ground it a little bit more.
• 3:23
  my gosh, yeah.
• 3:24
  That was something Michael really emphasized during the audition process and then as we were building the characters was that these women are very real people, which can be
• 3:34
  challenging to like, you have to work to understand them throughout the rehearsal process and as you're building the character.
• 3:39
  But yeah, it does ground you so much and makes the story so real and so fulfilling.
• 3:45
  And I think that's what makes a lot of people connect to it is that
• 3:48
  I, the amount of times I hear, mean, just from the aesthetics alone of like, my gosh, I had that exact same hairstyle in the eighties or I have that exact same, like my garage
• 3:56
  looked the same or my aunt had a salon and it looked the same to people really like seeing themselves in these stories and these women.
• 4:03
  It's really cool.
• 4:04
  It makes it such a, I think that's what has made it so culturally significant over time.
• 4:09
  Because it's about like that found family aspect of any culture, any minority that we have in the world right now.
• 4:16
  Yeah, totally.
• 4:17
  I mean, it's as a queer person, like knowing the importance of found family, it's so, so real.
• 4:22
  And I mean, I think for me, that's what motivated a lot of my interest in Annelle is that she kind of comes into the story with completely untethered from anybody.
• 4:31
  At the beginning of story, she's very lost.
• 4:34
  And I mean, that's something that everybody's experienced, right?
• 4:37
  Feeling completely unconnected from...
• 4:41
  other people, especially in a post-COVID world and in the way that isolation is so prevalent in our country.
• 4:46
  I think everybody has felt that feeling of being alone and hopefully everybody's also felt how restorative and powerful it is to find your people and to find community with them.
• 4:56
  And I think that's what draws me so much to the character.
• 5:01
  You had mentioned that she's kind of this outsider and that everyone kind of has something going on.
• 5:07
  What is her thing that's kind of going on that propels her personal narrative throughout the story?
• 5:11
  Yeah, so Annelle is somebody who we don't hear a lot about what her life was like before she comes into the story, but we know that she's married and she's kind of for the whole
• 5:23
  first scene keeping this secret that is like building and building and building where she's trying to like hide this thing about herself, but two things I've learned about her
• 5:32
  is that she's not like a smooth person and she's not ever like funny on purpose, so she tries to cover it up with like
• 5:38
  you know, just changing the conversation or being humorous, but she's not good at those things.
• 5:42
  And so eventually it kind of comes out that she, the person that she married has left and she's completely on her own.
• 5:49
  She's supposed to be 18 or 19.
• 5:51
  She's living alone in this town that she just moved to.
• 5:54
  She doesn't have any family back home.
• 5:56
  And so you see her transform throughout the show from somebody who feels like terribly about herself because she has nobody and who feels very alone and rejected.
• 6:08
  to, I mean, she's a completely different person by the end of the show.
• 6:11
  And part of that is the people that she meets, but also she like internally discovers the value that she has throughout.
• 6:19
  It's such a beautiful story and one that so many people, especially at that young age of 18 or 19, feel and experience, you know?
• 6:26
  mean, even as a 30-year-old gay man, I Steel feel that, so.
• 6:32
  All the time, I mean all the time.
• 6:33
  It's like she made me feel, she made me remember what it was like to be 16 and in high school and feeling like I didn't have anybody.
• 6:41
  like whenever I think about her, I think about the community that I met when I was in high school through the youth group I was a part of and how, like even to this day, I Steel
• 6:50
  feel really connected to them because they made me feel important and helped me see like the value and the talent that I had to being an adult in like a post-grad world, right?
• 6:59
  And trying to find community and trying to find people.
• 7:01
  I think yeah, her story is so, universal.
• 7:06
  So what drew you to this project?
• 7:07
  Because I know you said that you didn't really, you weren't familiar with this project beforehand.
• 7:11
  So what drew you to it?
• 7:13
  So I, this is my first time doing a community theater show since I was in high school.
• 7:19
  So I had been thinking about auditioning and looking around for shows.
• 7:23
  And I loved that Steel Magnolias was led by women and like driven by women.
• 7:29
  It's rare, it's hard in a lot of theater spaces to find shows that really center women's voices and women's stories.
• 7:36
  And so I loved that about the show.
• 7:39
  And I loved reading the audition cuts.
• 7:41
  I was struck by how funny it is and how like the humor really holds up over time.
• 7:47
  Those two things really made me like want to be involved in the show and learn more about the show.
• 7:51
  And then going through the audition process and actually getting to like be on stage and see, I mean, being in a room with that many women who like were also passionate about this
• 8:00
  story, it just really cemented for me like how much I wanted to be a
• 8:05
  You know, it's really interesting you mentioned how the comedy holds up because, I mean, you don't always see shows from like the 70s and the 80s that Steel feel like they're
• 8:14
  relevant comedy wise.
• 8:16
  You're listening to them, like, ooh, that's a little cringy, you know?
• 8:19
  Yeah, totally.
• 8:20
  Yeah.
• 8:21
  Yeah, it's hard, I think, for things to not even culturally, like comedically age well, like you were saying, for things that were funny to us, even in like the 2000s, to be
• 8:32
  funny now.
• 8:33
  I'm a teacher and my students, like the shows that I watched when I was their age, I thought were so funny.
• 8:40
  They like don't care about it at all now and don't think that they're funny at all.
• 8:44
  And yet I think Steel Magnolias, I mean, I think
• 8:47
  Robert Harling's writing is really great.
• 8:49
  But I also just think that there's like an authenticity to it.
• 8:53
  Like how much the characters are real people, that the conversations and the jokes like feel like things that you could hear anybody say.
• 9:01
  It feels almost like like listening to your aunts and like your grandma talk or like listening to your friends talk.
• 9:09
  It's kind of, I think the humor is very real, which kind of helps it to hold up over time.
• 9:16
  You know, again, not knowing the project, it reminds me kind of of like that Gilmore Girls effect where like it is a real, real people and you're like, I've heard this conversation
• 9:24
  before.
• 9:24
  I know these people, I've seen these people.
• 9:27
  And so you can appreciate that.
• 9:28
  Yeah, I mean, that's even like, you'll talk to Bridget and Bridget and Andrea play Shelby and then her mom, M'Lynn.
• 9:35
  And their dynamic is so classic, because I mean, we talked about it the entire rehearsal process, Of like, every single one of us has had a conversation of the same tone with our
• 9:46
  moms, right?
• 9:48
  Of like, you know, they bicker, they in the first scene, they're like, disagreeing about the wedding and what the colors should be and how it should be decorated.
• 9:56
  And you know, my mom and I do that kind of stuff all the time.
• 9:59
  It's like, I don't know if you've ever seen Lady Bird, the Greta Gerwig film.
• 10:01
  It's one of my favorites of all time.
• 10:03
  The conversations that she has with her mother are, I think that's what makes the film so appealing is it's so universal.
• 10:09
  And it's the same, right?
• 10:10
  Like everybody sees, I think a lot of people can identify really strongly with the relationships between those women, which is also part of what makes it funny is everybody
• 10:19
  knows how it feels to disagree with your mom about something that seems so stupid, right?
• 10:24
  Like the colors for the wedding.
• 10:25
  what you're like, this is, know, or they're disagreeing about putting flowers in her hair, but that is like the thing, the hill you're willing to die on, right?
• 10:32
  Cause it's your mom and you want to bicker.
• 10:35
  So I think that is, yeah, part of what makes it so like resonant is, is the dynamics are so relatable.
• 10:41
  You know, and as a, I'm a counselor, a psychologist.
• 10:45
  And so we see this all the time where it's never the flowers, it's never the color of the flowers, it's never if they're in your hair, but it's always what does it represent in
• 10:53
  that relationship and that struggle?
• 10:55
  And so again, that realism that's being brought into these characters.
• 10:59
  my gosh, that's such a cool point too, because I mean, if you think about part of one of the biggest conflicts in the show, is that Shelby really wants to have a child.
• 11:06
  She gets pregnant, which is not advisable with her medical condition.
• 11:12
  it's the same kind of, her and M'Lynn have the same argument all the time, right?
• 11:16
  But it's foreshadowed so well in that first scene of, you know, arguing about, should she put baby's breath in her hair?
• 11:23
  Should she put it up and down to then arguing about, you know?
• 11:26
  is this the right thing to do for you and your family?
• 11:28
  And her arguing about, there's the scene between Andrea and Bridget where they're kind of having this conversation is so beautiful and so well done because you're right.
• 11:38
  It's about those underlying things that I talk about this all the time as a teacher, like kids always say things without actually saying them, which I'm sure you experience all the
• 11:46
  time.
• 11:47
  And that's the same thing with, I think that's so brilliant about Robert Harling's writing is that he's able to
• 11:54
  so clearly communicate what these characters are feeling without them having to like explicitly say it.
• 11:59
  And then when they do explicitly say it, it's so powerful too.
• 12:02
  absolutely.
• 12:04
  So how has this role challenged you as an actor?
• 12:07
  Oh my gosh, so much.
• 12:08
  mean, like what I said, Annelle is never trying to be funny.
• 12:12
  She's very earnest in a way that, so when I was in college, I did mock trial all four years and I played character witnesses.
• 12:19
  I, my intention was always to be funny and always entertain or always to, you know, if it was like a defense witness to like be evasive in some way.
• 12:29
  And Annelle is so, so earnest and so not trying to be a certain person.
• 12:37
  that that was definitely hard for me to learn.
• 12:39
  Like, she's so different than I am.
• 12:41
  And I think that her relationship throughout the play too, develops with like her spirituality and she gets really into religion and taking something that is so internal
• 12:50
  and like your relationship with the church and your relationship with religion and then trying to figure out a way to externalize that and to like show people how that transforms
• 13:00
  her on the inside and what her faith means to her.
• 13:03
  was super challenging.
• 13:04
  It was really rewarding because it was, I think I grew a lot from it, but yeah, it was hard to do.
• 13:09
  because you have to find who she is and then how do you portray that?
• 13:14
  Yeah, totally.
• 13:14
  That's what it's something that I didn't ever think about really when I was in high school and I was doing theater was how much comes out between the lines that are written, right?
• 13:24
  I mean, I've read the script so many times, but I felt like that's when I felt the biggest change in bringing her to life was when I started to present her or say things or do
• 13:34
  things in a way that I felt like was was communicating the subtext that was written, which is where you really get to like who she is as a person, which is cool.
• 13:43
  that I love that is there anything you have to do to get into the mindset of her
• 13:48
  Yeah, definitely.
• 13:50
  And it's different every scene.
• 13:51
  That's what's so challenging about her is that she's kind of different every time.
• 13:55
  But the first scene definitely trying to, I mean, putting myself in the mindset of that kind of anxiety, right, is I like to think about the context of what she's been
• 14:06
  experiencing before.
• 14:07
  mean, Rachel and I, Rachel plays Truvy This show starts with her in like the middle of this interview where she's been doing her hair.
• 14:13
  And, you know, we start on stage together and we're looking at each other, but
• 14:17
  In that moment, I'm trying to think about what has she been experiencing for the past two hours that she's been doing her hair.
• 14:23
  I always think about that feeling of when you're with somebody and there's awkward silence and it's literally physically painful.
• 14:30
  I kind of think is what she's feeling at that moment.
• 14:34
  Whereas if I'm going into the second scene, I always watch Rachel because in the second scene, she transforms so much and so much of what changes her is her relationship with
• 14:44
  Truvy.
• 14:45
  And she comes out almost as like this mini-Truvy, right?
• 14:47
  Where she, you know, her wig is different, her makeup's different, she looks so different, she's transformed.
• 14:53
  And so I watch Rachel and I try and get in kind of her mindset.
• 14:57
  So it's different for every scene.
• 14:58
  I would say overall, I have listened and watched a lot of sermons from Baptist churches that I felt like were from the South to kind of get into her mindset, especially going
• 15:10
  into Act Two, because that was one that was most challenging to really get into her head.
• 15:14
  And so I will try to, before a show, especially before these dress rehearsals, go back to that and have that in my head.
• 15:23
  Because I'm thinking about what would be in her head.
• 15:25
  And as somebody who's so religious, that's kind of where I think where she starts her week and probably where she's starting a lot of her days and interactions.
• 15:33
  love how every person has like a different way of kind of developing their character because like that makes sense like that makes sense like if religion is such an important
• 15:42
  part of everywhere you go you have to go back specifically from the south the religious is very important back in like you know back in the day
• 15:51
  my gosh, I mean, it's so, and it's very different from the way that like we practice religion now and like contemporary churches practice.
• 15:58
  So yeah, that was a big thing was like familiarizing myself with the Louisiana Baptist like doctrine specifically and how they would do things and what her viewpoints would be
• 16:08
  and watching like live streams of services or old sermons to kind of get a sense of.
• 16:14
  how she practices, because little things from how she might react to the gossip that's happening in the scene, right?
• 16:18
  It's a hair salon, they're gossiping, to there's moments where she goes off on stage to pray, right?
• 16:24
  And it's visible and other people see it, so kind of figuring out what that would look like for her.
• 16:30
  Yeah, it definitely required a lot of actually engaging with the Louisiana Baptist practices.
• 16:37
  Now when comes to interpreting your character, how do you find a balance between making it your own but also being true to what's on the page?
• 16:44
  Is there a way to kind of strike that balance?
• 16:47
  I think for me, it's making sure that what I'm doing is supported by the text.
• 16:52
  Because there have been, I mean, that was, again, the biggest thing with like trying to balance the humor with also her, right?
• 17:00
  I have my own motivations where I'm in a show and obviously I know the script is funny and I want it to be funny.
• 17:05
  But then going back to the text and, you know, like there are lines where I would have read it as sarcastic, but then I would go back and cross-reference it with what was
• 17:14
  written and...
• 17:16
  I just don't think that she is really trying to be sarcastic, right?
• 17:19
  I think that she's so earnest and so literal and so like sincere.
• 17:25
  And so that was the biggest way for me to kind of like navigate that tension was continuously going back to the script and then also using feedback from Michael and using
• 17:34
  feedback from like what the other actors were doing too to kind of make sure that our interpretations were lining up.
• 17:42
  And what themes of Steel Magnolia do you feel like resonate the most with you?
• 17:47
  That's a really good question.
• 17:49
  I think the idea of family and of belonging, I mean, it just, even like doing the show, right?
• 17:58
  I had never done a show at Village Players before.
• 18:01
  This was my first time.
• 18:04
  And the way that I feel so connected to the team and to the people in this show has just like...
• 18:11
  It's funny because I remember being anxious at the beginning of the process of like, are we all going to really bond?
• 18:16
  Is it going to read on stage that we like like each other and that we connect with each other?
• 18:21
  And, you know, I'm sure Annelle experience those similar kind of emotions at the beginning of the show, right?
• 18:25
  Like, am I going to fit in here?
• 18:26
  Are these people going to like me?
• 18:27
  Is this going to work out?
• 18:29
  And it's funny because it just happened without me having to do anything.
• 18:32
  Like, I'm a control freak and I want to control everything.
• 18:34
  And that's just something that happens, right?
• 18:36
  When you spend time with people and when you open up to them.
• 18:40
  And so.
• 18:41
  That has just been, I think it resonates so much with me because I've seen it happen while doing the show with the people I'm doing it with.
• 18:48
  And I think, I don't know, think that's why people love the show so much.
• 18:51
  when I tell people I'm doing Steel Magnolias, right, a lot of people have seen the movie, a lot of people know it and love it.
• 18:56
  And I think it's because of how real the people are and how real they're, kind of the group of women, the way that they form this kind of family on screen that people really
• 19:06
  relate to.
• 19:08
  And final question for you is just what do you hope audiences walk away from this show with?
• 19:13
  my gosh, I hope they really love it.
• 19:15
  I hope, I don't know, I hope that they feel...
• 19:18
  It's one of those shows that kind of makes you think about life in, I think, a really grateful way where, again, doesn't...
• 19:31
  The show does not shy away from tragedy.
• 19:33
  The show does not shy away from pain because those are real parts of life.
• 19:36
  But it also does not shy away from joy and family and community and so...
• 19:42
  I think I hope that people walk away with that appreciation for life that the show has given me.
• 19:48
  That it's so many things and it's so complex and can be so difficult and painful, but there's just so much beauty in it.
• 19:55
  love that and I hope that everybody gets to experience that when they go see Steel Magnolias.
• 20:00
  So so thank you so much for being here today, Leah.
• 20:03
  I greatly appreciate your time.
• 20:05
  Yeah, of course.
• 20:06
  Thanks for talking to us about the show.
• 20:08
  Steel Magnolia arrives at the Village Players of Birmingham on March 14th and runs through March 30th, so get your tickets now and we'll see you there.