Welcome to the 4th profile in our new blog & podcast series by Artistic Associate Mariah Freda! Alexandra is an actor, writer and collaborator.
I first met her on the steps of South Oxford rehearsal space in Brooklyn. We were the first to arrive at the building which was not yet open. (I am a chronic early arriver.) We were just beginning investigative rehearsals or “Labs” as we called them and Alexandra had shown up to play a bit and see how things went, and she’s been stuck with us ever since!
Name: Alexandra Kumala
Pronouns: She, Her, Hers
Sign: Aquarius (but what does it even mean??)
Signature Look: Jacquard/brocade scarves - No tights - flowy pants that don’t stick to your legs.
Road Trip Snack of Choice: Is coconut water a snack?
Alexandra came to find The Anthropologists via Artistic Director Melissa Moschitto at The Theater of Change Forum at Columbia University. I asked her what led her to that workshop and landed her in that fateful room.
“I think I was just curious about bridging artists and the people who actually work on the ground: the lawyers and the community organizers: because I feel like as an artist so far, yes, I work on things and subjects that are socio political but normally we build it ourselves sort of far removed from direct consultation of people who actually work on the ground and work on these issues. I was curious about seeing how artists can dramatize these topics that they’re working on. And it was very interesting to see that because that was essentially what that one-week course was. It was a very condensed, intensive course where we actually did get to put that to work right away.”
On the surface, making a play about US legislation and policy sound pretty boring, but the further we dive into the research we realize that it's the people, the circumstance, the stories and sometimes that scandal that ends up driving these policies. In a sense, drama and legislation have always gone hand in hand, and now we are looking to paint that story so we can all see it more clearly.
In many ways, Alexandra feels like that bridge between these two sectors, helping to keep us from floating too far away from the laws that inspired us to begin this process. So let’s learn a little about how Alexandra became so...nimble...wink wink.
“I grew up as a child ballerina. It was some rigorous ballet courses and performances as a kid so I spent a lot of my early childhood performing as a ballerina, professionally on professional stages, but we also went around to parties and weddings and all these private celebrations where they wanted ballet dancers.”
This is reminiscent of Tess putting on little shows and plays at family parties, and China’s mom catching her dance battling outside of her house. My dance career was short lived (maybe 4 months?) but 7 year old Mariah nailed Madonna choreography that my older cousins would teach me. This is all to say, follow your heart and you may end up right back to where you started and for all of us, that means: on any stage that will take us!
"Follow your heart and you may end up right back to where you started... on any stage that will take us!"
Alexandra’s journey took a wild and fascinating journey, and I won’t even call it a detour, because I think it was a necessary turn to make it to where she is now.
“I went to a Singaporean secondary school where they really brainwashed us into thinking that unless you went into business or science that you’ll never amount to anything because you will never have a stable income. By the time I had to apply to college, I thought okay, I’ll just do PreMed because I knew that I couldn’t go into corporate so I didn’t study business. I just felt like somehow if you want to make it in business there’s so many unethical practices and I didn’t have that in me so I thought, okay, I’m going to be pre med and that’s like the cleanest of the cleanest stable jobs I guess???”
Rehearsal photo: Alexandra (center) with Tess (left) and Irina (right)
First of all, I love thinking about teenager Alexandra not standing for the unethical business practices in corporate America. I think my top consideration for University was: "Get me to a city and let the city be big and loud."
But as Alexandra flies across the Pacific and lands herself at The University of Washington, her pre-med focus immediately takes on a more holistic, more socio-considerate lens.
“Seattle itself is a very global health oriented city, outside of the University of Washington. And everything that’s medicine oriented focused a lot on the social determinants of health and so that means like people’s health is very much determined by the political stability by their geography, by their zip code their income level, their socioeconomic level, by whether they have both parents or not, and what their parents jobs are. So I was really interested in these stories--the stories behind the numbers, the stories behind the data. I felt like I wanted to invest myself in that. If I am able to tell these stories behind the systems, wouldn’t it be great for people to learn about these stories beyond their bubble and beyond their little world and therefore make more empathetic decisions in their business practices and in their governments positions and in their daily lives.”
"...her storytelling needed to happen on a stage, not behind a desk or a stethoscope."
Alexandra was making these connections from a medical and health standpoint, but it wasn’t long before she found herself seated in a theater, watching a play that had transferred from NYC, crying silently in the audience and realizing that her storytelling needed to happen on a stage, not behind a desk or a stethoscope. And while this deviation may seem extreme, from where I’m standing it makes perfect sense. Alexandra set out to be a healer and along the way, she realized that her mode of healing would need to take a different shape, an artistic shape if you will. So after a self-curated curriculum with some of the best acting teachers around, Alexandra is in New York City doing the damn thing and telling those stories behind the numbers.
"Alexandra set out to be a healer and along the way, she realized that her mode of healing would need to take a different shape..."
So now we know how Alexandra found us, how she found acting and now we must know what she finds to be the most exciting part of this No Pants in Tucson exploration.
“So maybe now women are not expected to stay in the kitchen and cook pies and just like take care of a husband and two kids in a white picket fence house. Women are finally being encouraged to hold high positions in corporate offices, and yet at the same time, we see this major, global accounting firm still have all of these “suggestions” for women to carry themselves a certain way, to paint their nails, to not talk to a man face to face because it's too intimidating. To dress a certain way in the office. And it's like, oh, women still have to pander to this patriarchal system in order to succeed in their careers. So the circumstances have changed but the demands to follow the patriarchal world have not changed and I think to me that’s very fascinating to look at.”
I can’t help but have every corner of my thoughts be influenced by our current pandemic status, but this feels especially true now as we watch more and more mothers being forced out of the workplace and into the arms (and schooling) of their young children. The New York Times said it best when they said, “You can have a kid. You can have a job. You can’t have both.” And no, society is not yelling at us (women) to get back into the kitchen, but society is saying, we haven’t forgotten that you are meant to play by different rules.
Then Alexandra offered me this very important nugget of a global observation.
“I grew up all over the place. And I feel that something that is common everywhere in the world and is so strong everywhere in the world is literally patriarchy. Some countries or some cities have issues that are specific to that country or are more of an issue in that country. But the system of patriarchy is so deeply rooted everywhere in the world and I feel like honestly it lives in people’s bones and it takes work to break that mindset. Because even women have internalized that and we see that in a lot of the case studies that we’re working with.”
Who forgot to cancel the patriarchy? I thought that was on the agenda this year.
To end our good, old fashioned phone call--seriously, I suggest that you try a phone call. I am no longer interested in staring at my own face on Zoom--I ended with the same two questions as I did with our other collaborators. What do you want to ask me? ( Stay tuned for a future post!) And, What did I miss?
Alexandra’s answer ponders on what we all could be collectively missing:
“Something that was interesting to me was how, we kind of talked about this over our group chat, about how the formal documentation of women from that period both 1800s and 1900s have been focused on this Northeastern United States area and how there are a lot of communities who don’t have their history recorded formally and therefore are not able to be carried out and told in the same way. That’s a thing I've been thinking about a lot. If we’re working with source material, the kind of source material that we are able to find, we have to look at that and see the imbalance.”
Even the stories have a story and with any luck, those are the stories we will seek and tell.
LISTEN TO THE MICRO-PODCAST VERSION ON PATREON! SIGN UP FOR OUR EMAIL LIST Interviewer Mariah Freda is the Artistic Associate of The Anthropologists. Alexandra Kumala is a member of the devising ensemble for No Pants In Tucson, currently in development and slated for a World Premiere in 2021. She is also Creative Partner of Programming & Partnerships. Learn more about the project here.
More info: www.patreon.com/TheAnthropologists