A Conversation With Director Michael Yavnieli, "Phoenix", Broadwater Blackbox, by James Scarborough

Michael Yavnieli’s directorial approach to Scott Organ’s “Phoenix” promises a nuanced exploration of human connection and personal growth. The play’s premise, centered on a chance encounter between Bruce and Sue, serves as a canvas for Yavnieli to paint a complex portrait of modern relationships. His background in both acting and directing suggests a keen understanding of character dynamics, which could translate into performances that resonate with authenticity.

Yavnieli’s choice to stage this intimate two-hander at the Broadwater Blackbox is intriguing. The confined space may amplify the tension between the characters, mirroring their internal struggles. His previous directorial work with character-driven pieces like “Cock” and “I Am My Own Wife,” indicates a penchant for psychological depth that could elevate “Phoenix” beyond its surface narrative.

The director’s involvement with diverse theatrical productions hints at a versatile approach that might infuse “Phoenix” with unexpected layers. Yavnieli’s experience across different theatrical forms could result in innovative staging or interpretive choices that challenge our expectations. As he guides actors Emanuela Boisbouvier and Gus Schlanbusch through this “dramatic comedy,” it will be interesting to see how Yavnieli balances the play’s lighter moments with its underlying themes of courage and personal transformation.

JS: How does your acting background inform your directorial approach to character development in “Phoenix”?

MY: My job as a director is to reach a result. The only thing I have to do with character development and acting process is if an actor comes to me with a problem and doesn't know how to fill the pathway to the result that we both agree we need to get to. That’s where my job comes in. If the actor has that problem, the acting background helps by my having walked that mile, I’ve been in those shoes. So I may have some ideas about how to tackle it. Where it gets complicated is that I read plays like an actor – and you want to start acting the play in your mind. I have to be very careful to not tell the actor how the performance should be, because it can go in many different ways. As a director, I can’t tell the actors how I see it, but I need to listen and watch what they do, and then create something based on that, otherwise it’s not theirs and the performance won’t be what it can be. And I know this because I have an acting background, and because I’ve worked with directors who have done both.

JS: How do you plan to utilize the intimate space of the Broadwater Blackbox to enhance the psychological tension between Bruce and Sue?

MY: I like doing plays in black boxes because it can be anything and anywhere and any way you choose. So with an empty and open space, especially with the minimalist aesthetic I’ve developed in the last few years, you can use the space to heighten the relationship through proximity to the audience and the physical proximity to each other. The way it’s blocked, there are certain spatial or physical cues you give to the audience to clue them in on what’s going on and where the characters are in their relationship and in their life. And that’s easy to do in a black box because it is intimate, and you don’t have to “be anywhere”; they can be wherever they want to be and the audience fills in the rest for you. 

JS: Considering your experience with varied theatrical forms, how might you incorporate elements of these into this staging?

MY: The way that Phoenix is staged is a little less abstract than my previous work like Cock, but I think it stays fluid and it doesn’t exist in any reality that’s physical. It exists on its own plane which I think is what you should do with theater. I don’t think theater should compete with film in its sense of realism. Theater should take advantage of the minimalist, spare, abstractness that you have, especially with small theater. The way it’s staged lends itself to the audience personalizing it. There’s a scene in this play that’s a walk and talk, and the characters walk back and forth, they walk in X’s to simulate that they’re walking down a road or walking in a mall, and they come close to the audience physically speaking, they are right in the audience’s lap, and that makes the audience start associating their own experiences with what they’re watching. It reminds them of something. That’s why people keep going to see plays like Romeo and Juliet, because it reminds them of when they fell in love for the first time when they were fifteen years old. That’s why people keep coming back to plays like this. And I think that you can use these kinds of stagings to encourage an audience to do that, so that they feel empathy not sympathy with you, and then they’re involved, as opposed to watching from a distance.

JS: How do you balance the comic and dramatic aspects of the play to maintain its thematic integrity?

MY: Life is both funny and not funny. Things in life are funny until they aren’t. People don’t want to talk about painful things, people want to have a good time and an easy way through. This play strikes me as being about the fragility of relationships, especially in a world like we live in today where there are so many expectations and people have lists they check off; you’re looking at someone’s profile and swiping left or right before you’ve even spoken to them. What we explored with this, and the actors really did this and I sort of built on it, is how easy it is to mess everything up in a modern relationship. You get right to that moment, and if you say one thing differently, it can go a completely different way. Like a butterfly effect. That’s the fragility of these things, and how easy it is to mess them up and how lucky we are when that doesn’t happen. I think that’s how we use both comedic and dramatic elements.

JS: Discuss your collaborative process with the actors in exploring the characters’ motivations and inner conflicts.

MY: In this instance, Gus and Emanuela workshopped the play and brought it to me. So I saw the play before I read it, which is very interesting. They worked on it over a period of many months in a class setting, and we talked about who these characters were, but 90% of the character development was already done by them and I think that’s the case with most work. As a director I can’t tell my actors that what they think is wrong, because that means I have the wrong actors. A director is an editor and a cheerleader. My job is to encourage them in their impulses and build on what they’ve already given me. The collaborative process is that the actors show you an idea and it’s your job as a director to help them flesh it out.  

JS: What particular challenges does Organ’s script present from a directorial standpoint? How are you addressing them?

MY: The biggest challenge for me with this script is to make this relationship nonlinear - in a way people don’t expect. I think that that’s important in what we want to illustrate with relationships in the modern world. Nothing is linear, nothing is simple. There are always twists and turns, and this script provides a lot of them, and the biggest challenge with this play is honoring those, and going down the rabbit hole that Scott Organ (the author) built for us. This script has a beautiful messiness and the biggest challenge is not glossing that over and not being afraid to break it a little. 

JS: How do you see this production fitting into the broader context of contemporary American theater?

MY: I think that work like this, in small theaters like this, is the future of theater and in a lot of ways because of what’s going on in the film and TV industry with the mad rush towards AI and CGI. I think the real future of acting is work like this – that’s where acting goes from here and stays alive, and we’ve been doing this since we were painting on cave walls, and we’re going to keep doing this no matter where the industry goes. This will always be here. So it fits into modern contemporary theater because it’s a play about relationships, a play about two people who are trying to find something and one another and find a resurrection or a rebirth - it’s called Phoenix for a reason - they’re trying to build something new out of something that’s burned down. And I think that’s what theater needs to look at in a creative and abstract way, in a way that challenges the audience, in a way that’s going to give the audience what they’ve been looking for since the ancient Greeks, which is a catharsis.

JS: In what ways does your interpretation of “Phoenix” differ from or align with your previous directorial work?

MY: I’ve always been most interested in telling stories about relationships. And not the “Hollywood relationships” or people’s formulaic ideas about relationships or romance or marriage. I’ve always been interested as a director in examining the real aspects of those things, the good and the bad, the not fun parts as well as the fun parts. And the little granular details of it all. This play fits in perfectly with that. It also fits in with the way its staged, as I’ve previously mentioned, there’s a minimalism and a spareness to set design and tech that’s very important – it doesn’t distract the audience. In 2014/2015 I saw The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime on Broadway and it changed the way I thought about theater forever. I realized that we don’t need any of the spectacle aspect of theater for the audience to have a profound experience. We need to give the audience more credit than we do. They don’t need to be spoon-fed, they need to be challenged. If you invite them to come with you they will. We’re using projections and very few set pieces and very few props. The audience is going to do a better job designing the set than you ever could – because the audience will build that set and environment out of their personal experience.

JS: How do you approach the task of making a two-character play dynamic and engaging for a modern audience?

MY: I had a teacher who made the analogy, “There’s a guy who works in a butcher shop and his wife dragged him to the theater and he doesn’t want to be there. If you don’t show him something he recognizes from his life in the first ten minutes of the show, he’s going to be snoring in the second row.” You make it dynamic by giving it the messiness and rough edges and the grotesqueness (to quote Tennessee Williams) and the  ridiculousness of life, that people know from themselves but think they’re the only ones that do, because all they see from others is cleaned up curated versions of themselves. You give them things that they recognize and things they know from life. That’s how it’s dynamic. If you show people things that they’ve experienced themselves, you grab them and bring them in.

JS: Elaborate on your vision for the visual and auditory elements of the production? How will they support the narrative?

MY: Regarding the visual elements of the productions I’ve done, I like using abstract elements to suggest a location. The only real tangible things are a couple of props. The auditory elements are what’s important for me. Someone younger recently joked that Gen Xers have music for everything. And I have to say, we do. There are so many songs that have associations for me, that put me back in a certain time of my life. And the soundtrack of this show is all kind of a piece, and of an era as well – not necessarily when the play is set. It’s all dealing with the same energy and emotion. I believe that auditory elements are so important because they put the audience in a place. Music has tremendous power and is maybe the most emotionally suggestive thing you can do. If you watch a film scene without music, it just doesn’t hit the same way. And if you choose the right music it can snap you right into that place. The other thing to mention with visual and tech elements, is that if they work on you a certain way, they will work on everyone. If they have an effect on you, we’re 99% the same genetically, so most of the effect on others will probably be the same.

Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 7pm, from October 4th to October 20th, 2024. Tickets are $25. The Broadwater Blackbox is located at 6322 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90038. For more information, click here.

Michael Yavnieli (Director)

Gus Schlanbusch & Emanuela Boisbouvier