June Schreiner and Stephee Bonifacio. Photo by Matt Street.

In Conversation: The Women of Adult Film

One of the powerhouses behind off-off Broadway is Adult Film, a theatre company and training lab operating mostly out of a townhouse in Brooklyn. Following their multi-week and well-reviewed run of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, Adult Film company members Hannah Hale, Stephee Bonifacio, Madeline Bernhard, Megan Metrikin, Celeste Matteo, Raina Soman, Ariana Afradi, AJ Molder, Evan Simone Frazier, June Schreiner, and Addie Guidry sat down in their unassuming Bushwick basement to discuss AF’s latest works, artistic process, dominating the male canon, friendship, and what’s up next.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

Grayce: So, I went to Woyzeck, which just kept getting extended as hell.
I think the run was like, 30 shows or something? How many was it?

Hannah: 29, yeah. 


Grayce: Damn, that's really special. It’s so interesting, you do so much work on a play: you do months of work, and then usually you only have like three shows. And then you're like, “Okay, where's all that work going to go afterwards?”
How did the conversation of wanting to do a production of Woyzeck go in the first place?

Madeline: Seth [Bockley], the director of the show, and Ryan [Czerwonko], Artistic Director of this company, they wanted to work together on something. And so, it just came out of the ether, also because we've been working with John Christopher Jones's translations for a while. The two of them approached me about joining the project.
It was very organic. Then little by little, because it is so fractured, we started adding people to the project; Stephee came on, who was an incredible Katie but also arranged all of the music. We had been building the music for months, and it was just inspired by reading the play out loud, and then little by little, we started adding these very femme, riot grrrl, punk, P.J. Harvey, Fiona Apple, Hole, things like that, adding that to the mix.

Grayce: Stephee, you arranged the music? That's a really crazy undertaking. How did you make that happen?

Stephee: I think the scoring is what mostly came about in the improvisation. We kinda do the show like a radio play and workshops, so everybody would have objects and instruments, and we would just play with this. We didn't think any of that would really end up in the final product, and  because the play was unfinished, it reads almost as vignettes. We used that to weave them all together and make it a little more cohesive. Madeline compiled a document of a bunch of research about Büchner and his other works and timely poetry. So then I took some of Büchner's words from another play and put it over “Down By The Water” by P.J. Harvey. I also just broadened “Heads Will Roll,” because that was a lyric I said in the first scene. And then that started the trend, because when I came onto the show, I was like, “I'm gonna be so for real:
I don't really care about Woyzeck. Yeah. Like I really don't,” but I was very interested in Marie. I was like, if we can kind of play with the idea of me and AJ being almost, like, the Fates, but for me at least in the crafting of it, I felt like we were more the voice of Marie. I felt very connected with things in the whole show. And then AJ: I love her, and she is so funny. She was my saving grace.

Grayce: I'm curious how y’all found Adult Film.

Celeste:
So, I love Maria Dizzia, the actress, and I've always been super drawn to her. I was stalking her on Instagram one day and saw that she was teaching in a basement in Bushwick, and I was like, “Oh my God!” I hadn't taken an acting class for years. I hadn't done anything creative in years. I signed up for the email list to get a notification when she was teaching class next, and a couple months later, she was teaching. I took that and then it really was just taking classes with her for the better part of a year at Adult Film. Then I discovered that there was this wider picture. There was a company, there were productions, there were other classes, and I just remember going up to Ryan and being like, “How do I get more involved here?” and he was just like, “Take more classes, that's in your hands, get more involved.” So I just took every single class. So: Maria Dizzia.

Madeline: I moved here from Chicago. I had a very clear vision of what I was looking for, which was a community of artists. I just literally Googled “theaters in Brooklyn.” I found the AF website, which aesthetically was very in line with what I wanted. I tried to sign up for class and it was full, so I was waitlisted. And I was like, “Okay, well, fuck this place.” Then, I think someone dropped out, and it was the extensive company class from January to May. I’ve done extended training before, and I love months-long processes.
So I got off of the waitlist and never freaking looked back. The thing about the basement that keeps me coming back, and this is strange, is it reminds me a lot of my basement where I grew up in Michigan. 
The floor was like this. We have poles like that. Spiritually, I feel like I've been here for a long time. It is like a portal when you come through here. And I'm always looking to transcend, so... that's what got me here. I'm kind of into the mystic, you know?

Ariana: My urge in looking for something was sort of similar. I left Los Angeles, moved here, and really wanted a community of artists. I had a friend suggest I look at Adult Film, and I was like, “These people are way too cool for me.” I signed up for a class, and then I saw that they were doing a show that June assistant directed. 
And it was here, and it was the first time I was ever in this basement. It was like nothing I'd ever seen in live theater or from actors before, and I was so enamored by it. I started class, and things were never the same. 


AJ Molder. Photo by Matt Street.

Hannah: I was taking a break from New York at the time, had sort of been through it, and so I moved to Jersey, where I'm from for a year and a half, two years. I had just been auditioning for grad schools, and I was like, okay, I'm gonna need something to focus on when this doesn't work out.  I showed up in Ryan's class and just found that we spoke a very similar language. Everyone in the room was treated like an adult who can speak up for themselves. 
There wasn't this precious sensitivity, which I'm really allergic to. Then there was something about the alchemy of that class in particular. A lot of us became company members very quickly. It was a rapid succession after that of becoming more and more involved. Eventually, I became the Associate Artistic Director. The basement really is the center of all of it. 
It's sort of the core; it’s like the root chakra. A lot of our work specifically is driven from that place. So I think it's no mistake that the center of the universe is the basement, you know?

June: A few years ago, I was in a movie, and I was cast opposite a man named David Garelik. We became pals. I went through a big loss. I fully stepped away from acting, and six months later, he was like, “Hey, I'm teaching this weird class in the bottom of Love Story, called Dramatic Improv.” I was like, “I'll go to support.” Also, I was curious about his process because I thought he was so talented. I went to this class, and I told them, “I am a retired actor, but here to just have fun.” Then we did our improv and I was like, “This is amazing.” And I joined his class.
I was in the very first dramatic improv cohort and I was there for a year, and then he asked me to assist him directing Where We're Born, which we did here in the basement, and that was such an amazing, amazing experience.

Grayce: So after you take class there, what was your intro into actually doing work there?

AJ: The first thing I ever did there was the play called Savage Love. I don't know if you came to that, but it was so crazy, Grayce, because we did this devised version of Sam Shepard's Savage Love. It was me, Raina, Addie, and then our friends, Hunter and Taylor. And we devised this crazy version of the play where we did all the monologues recorded and made this plot that we were all in a band and we played music and did this whole video element that would play throughout the Adult Film house. We would each be in a room and then we would have our projections of these videos playing in the room. And then we would all start improving the monologues from the script and then go into each others’ rooms and interact, and we'd be making out, then fighting and slapping each other. It was so fucking insane. Every night it was different. It was improv and we were just running throughout the house like maniacs. It was like me and like my four amazing friends, and we were all just giving ourselves over to maybe being humiliated, but also maybe making people feel something, whether it was discomfort or shock or sorrow from a breakup or hope for a new relationship. That was the first time I did a play with them and it was such a great experience.

Grayce: I've been thinking a lot about how theatre is humiliating and the idea of theatre as humiliation. Theatre is humiliating, falling in love is humiliating.

AJ: Yes, anything vulnerable.

Grayce: I would love to know a little insider info, so I can tell the public.

Madeline: Yes, well, we have The Maids, which is based on Jean Genet's play.

Grayce: And just so I know: are you taking an adaptation or have you made your own?

Madeline: Heavily inspired by. 


Grayce: Okay, so you're developing it in real time right now.

Madeline: Correct. And then there's three projects coming up there under the umbrella of AF Studio Darlings.
It is an in-process series. And so The Maids is the first one, and then there's American Spirits.

Grayce: What's American Spirits? 


Madeline: Well, I guess you'll find out. We're calling it American Spirits because we can't say the title of the play, but it’ll be  a surprise when you come. It's an all-female version of a very traditional male classic.

Raina: In December we have what's called Deranged Durang, which is two Christopher Durang one-acts at Torn Page in Chelsea, and it's gonna be awesome. Essentially, a scene from For Whom The Southern Belle Tolls was done in our company class last year, and it was so amazing. Megan was in it, a few other company members, and Celeste was in it, too. It was so insane to watch, and it really felt like, “This is Adult Film.” It's insane and honest. You'll never see anything like it anywhere else. 
AJ is producing it with me.

Addie Guidry. Photo by Matt Street.

Grayce: It's all work that's been found by a kind of accident, right? Like, it's not work that someone's like, “I think I'm ready to be Masha now,” but more so just a happy accident because you're continually doing the work, continuing investigating. 


Megan: Yeah, I think also because in class, we are forced to be so completely bareboned and naked with each other, emotionally, that it really does create incredibly honest and powerful female relationships. I think that's why we are able to be so deeply connected with each other, because there's nothing to hide, because we kind of forced ourselves to be so... vulnerable and naked all the time. 


Grayce: Maybe this is an incorrect assumption on my part, but Adult Film is majority women and femmes, is that right?

Megan: Oh, yeah. absolutely. 


Grayce: It’s interesting: you're talking about Durang, Genet, and then this mystery American Spirits piece, which I'm very curious about, and I wish I could know more. It seems like all of these playwrights are men.
Am I incorrect in that?

[Everyone laughs.]

Hannah: Damn it. We really like to dominate these men. 
Yeah. I really like to take them over. Take them over, spin them on their head. Walk that dog, you know?

Grayce: I do think [male] playwrights get a sick twist out of that: they like being dominated by actresses. Theatre is sexual in nature; it's in our form.

Raina: You're in the right place.

Hannah: Root chakra, baby.

Madeline: But, you know, Genet said, “Let the actresses act. Excessively.”

Grayce: “Excessively.” Yeah, he wanted that. He wanted that bad.

Evan: That's a great question. I have many feelings about this, and what I'm going to say, some people might take it as provocative, but I do think it has a lot to do with it. I'm Black. If I had an all-Black company, I probably wouldn't be doing them [classical and American canon plays written by men], I'm just not going to be doing it. I'm all for gender-bending and changing things, but it does come down to taste at the end of the day. For example, I'm about to start working on Streetcar with a group of people, and we're probably going to be working on it for a year or two before anything happens. And I'm gonna do it just the way Tennessee [Williams] wanted it to be done. That's just my taste. I'm going to keep “negro woman” in the script. I'm not going to cut it out. Because I think that that's part of the integrity of the work. That could just be because a part of my spirit lives in 1920. I don't necessarily like to touch older work and change it according to what's happening. I'll just write a new play. But I think what pulls those works in is literally taste, what people like, and the writing's fantastic. Like it's undeniable that the writing in these plays is beautiful. If you're a writer, and you enjoy good writing, I think you could read those plays and say, okay, this is a masterful writer, even if you don't necessarily like the play. I think you can like stuff or not like stuff, and still acknowledge that it's really fucking good.

Grayce: Evan, they’ve told me you have a play percolating for next year.

Evan: Oh yes. So the play that they're talking about, it's called Kids in a Backyard Living Inside the Mind of Kanye West. Honestly, the title is one of my greatest accomplishments. I've been workshopping it for like, Jesus, I think it's been two and a half years now. It's very specific. One person described it to me as a time capsule; like when you see an August Wilson play, it's very clear that it's taking place in this time in Pittsburgh. And that's pretty much what it is. It's Long Island in 2013. It's specifically in Roosevelt, Long Island. It's a pretty small town. In Nassau County, no one knows about it. It's where I grew up. It's where my entire identity was established, and I guess it naturally became an ode to old Kanye, too. Because I have this really crazy relationship with Kanye because of how he helped shape my brain as a youth, and then to grow up with him in a way and see him transform and change, and that actually reveals things about himself more. So there's all these crazy feelings I have about him being combined with my childhood and saying goodbye to my youth while also acknowledging it and being grateful for what was. It's a crazy, crazy play, but it's actually much more simple than the title makes it. It really is just about these kids in a backyard. But with the Yeezus album coming out. Yes, and it takes place specifically on the day that the Sway and Kanye interview came out. Do you remember that interview?

Grayce: Yeah. Oh my god. I remember this now.

Evan: Yeah, and all these kids, they're just talking about the interview while dealing with love and sex and different things that youths have to learn and maneuver.

Grayce: What do y’all see this place being this time next year?

Megan: Well, I think it's going to explode, my friend. There's a lot of great, fantastic, and exciting plays. I think it's gonna explode with creativity and joy and pain. It's going in lots of different directions, and there's a lot of exploration with new works and classics.

Stephee: This isn't really an answer for the company, but more for me personally. I very much put myself in a box in the industry where you're just like, “I really think I'm pretty nice, and my biggest professional jobs had just been sex scenes,” and then coming here, June and I played male roles, and that's what we're doing in American Spirits, and what we'd never get to do. And, in Cowboy Mouth, it's all these gritty characters that are so far from myself, and then watching everybody do that work and stretch themselves so far, and then make their own work, so more of that. It’s inspired me to make my own things and not feel like I have to put myself in a box to be able to work, and not have to be small to be able to work; I can be something totally different for myself. Yeah, it's so much more fulfilling.

Addie: I don't know. I've definitely been buzzing. This is a better place to figure out what that means, most likely.

Raina: Can we ask you what you want to see for Adult Film?

Grayce: It's this continuation that theatre worth seeing is not on 42nd Street or anywhere near Broadway; Broadway isn't theatre that's made for people like me. I am always so renewed every time I leave an Adult Film production. It's always just, “How can we make this something that people give a shit about?” I always give a shit when I see something here. I'm looking forward to giving a shit.

Raina Soman. Photo by Matt Street.