Wherefore art thou, Allison Ciuci?

Wherefore art thou,

Allison Ciuci?

Eating our Linden…

Do you want a bite of this pickle?

Uh huh, wait a second…I’ll eat it now.

Here, you get a whole spear.

Eh, I don’t really like pickles.

Just have a bite.

(I take a bite.)

It’s from Linden, you know it’s good, ya know?

Like this is the best pickle I would be eating,  if I was forced to eat a pickle. I don’t hate it...

A little phallic.

Uh, huh, but it’s cut.

State your name.

Allison Ciuci.

Where are you from?

I am originally from Fairfield, Connecticut, but I  live in Manhattan now, though technically homeless. Huh, sucks.

Where did you go to school?

Um, I graduated from NYU, Tisch School of the Arts.

With me.

With you! Even though we never met.

Oops.

No one gets it, no one gets the NYU thing, that it’s completely normal that we haven’t met. But that’s okay, we met now.

And you graduated in May…

I graduated in December, actually.

Oh, that’s right.

Savin’ that dough. Been auditioning. Going to those EPAs. I did a couple of short films. One involved a meat puppet.

Yikes. Experimental.

I should show you that sometime. It was really funny actually.

Um. Being done with school, what attracted you to this program?

Well, my friend Andrew Dahreddine…

HEY DRAMADDINE!

Dramaddine shout out! He knew I was going to NETC and he said, “Oh, while you’re there you should audition for Twelfth Night and meet Steven. I was an Apprentice there, and he’s really great.” So I said “sure” and I made this whole one woman trek to audition for both. And at NETC I met Adam and talked about the program um, and I realized how much I, you know, I missed being at that very athletic level with my voice and my body, which like, you really need when you’re doing outdoor Shakespeare. So I thought getting back to that and worrying a little bit less about making money and marketability, um, would help me feel like an artist instead of lost in the audition world. 

As I chomp my pickle.

I know, I’m chomping too. Um, so, at Stella Adler, you did a lot of Shakespeare? What have you worked on in the past?

Like scene wise, or…

Yup, at Stella.

Let me see…what are some of my favorite scenes…well my first scene was Amelia and Desdemona from Othello…

Pickles get weird after a while…

I’m sorry, this is my interview. Just kidding. Sometimes the vinegar gets uneven. My grandpa makes pickles.

What? How?

It’s easy, he grows cucumbers and then, you know, you pickle them. You pickle things. 

Okay, so Amelia Desdemona, um, I was Amelia and she talks about husbands being terrible. So that’s about the basis of my Shakespeare. Um, some highlights, uh, Isabella and Angelo, the sort of like, threatening to rape her scene. Uh, and one of my favorite roles was when we did Midsummer and I was Helena. I could relate.

I’m Helena.

We’re both Helena. I mean, I just relate, because one of my favorite compliments from that show was saying that like, someone was like, “Wow, I rarely like Helena.” Either people really like, miss the mark or are just very hard to like because when people are so self-loathing (BURP) Excuse me. It’s really hard to like, like them and I just, that was like, nice, cause it’s like a sort of hard quality to like, for people to get, but I guess, it was fun, it worked.

What characters have you been working on here?

I’ve been working a lot on Portia. Um, just because she’s fiercely intelligent um, and also more status, which is what I’ve been trying to work on as an actor. Um, and I’ve been trying to work more towards darker characters too. I’m hoping in our combat scene I get to work on someone who’s very strong and dark and sort of murderous.

Like I’d love to do Lady M at some point, just to grow and stretch.

That’s the dream too, Lady M.

Yeah.

I feel like that’s just, I keep waiting for it.

Uh huh.

The appropriate time, cause you know it’s there.

Yeah.

It’s just like, am I ready? And I know I’m not…yet.

And, I know, it’s like so crazy, we always think of these characters as like the goal, but they’re all so like, young. Like I was in the script for Twelfth Night today, Viola’s fourteen. She’s fourteen years old. And Lady M’s only like 23, I’m 22, it’s just sort of crazy.

They’re just like us.
Yeah.

Basic. Um, so what’s your favorite Shakespeare play?

Well, I think as an actor, I loved being in Midsummer, like it’s so fun and just, the magic’s really fun to play with, but I think in a sort of wider scope, um I really like his problem plays, tackle…these bigger issues. Like Hamlet’s an amazing play. Um, it’s sort of hard for to like connect with plays where they’re isn’t a role for me, I guess, cause if I was in Hamlet, I’d want to be Hamlet, you know? Maybe I will one day, but, um, I also really love Isabella from Measure for Measure, you know, and that’s uh a really odd play, but some of those scenes are just so great, I’d just really love to see someone do something crazy with it.

That’s really what I want you know, it’s like someone just taking it and like really revamping it…like the all female Julius Caesar that they did. Things like that really interest me, not necessarily like the plays as we think of them and like holding them up on a pedestal, if that makes any sense.

So what’s your dream character to play?

I think, I’d love to do Lady M, you know, there are just so many bamfs, like Queen Margaret in the whole Henry series is awesome. She’s just French, she doesn’t give a shit, she has an affair, I think her lover dies… I don’t know the histories that well. She like leads an army, she’s fuckin’ badass. Then she comes back when she’s old and she’s like venomous and just spews all of this hate truth on the obnoxious royalty. That I think is, she is one of the most interesting female characters. Um, but,

I also really like Rosalind. I really love characters who are so smart. I love that Shakespeare just gave so much of his genius to his female characters, which is why I like him as a playwright.

Do you have a favorite experience here so far? People have been giving me these broad overstatements and I’m like no, personal. Specific. I want the details.

Hey, if you’re an actor, specificity…duh.

I think, part of what I was saying before, I was talking about this with our voice teacher, Paul, (sees a group of high schoolers) UH OH, there’s a crowd.

Scared. I feel scared.

Scared.

I was saying to him that the sort of fear of not getting work and the need to meet people and be likeable is really effecting my acting. Like when I graduated early. And here it was so, you know, it wasn't necessarily low stakes, but it wasn't like a job a risk, it wasn't like I had big industry people in the room, I just had fellow actors and artists, and it really, I really allowed myself to like, drink a tall glass of "fuck it."

So, I mean, I did this monologue in voice, that like, I've been working on for forever, it's just sort of like almost sort of placed to see where I am in my acting and what else I could bring to it. Um, and I just went off, you know, I mean the point was just to sort of let my voice go on this emotional roller coaster with me and it did. And I just didn't care that like I was not like physically ugly but emotionally ugly and like raw and I didn't care if like my character was likable, I didn't care if I was likable and that was really freeing.

And when I was done, I felt like, amazing, cause I like, actually let emotions leave me instead of hanging onto them, which is a very Linklater experience but it also made me think, wow, why do I need to care, you know? Why do I need to care if I'm likable? No one wants to see an actor who wants to be liked, they want to see an actor who does their job.

Do you have a monologue you want to share?

Well, are we sharing already?

Yeah, it's time to share.

I'll share a mono. Um, I'll uh, I'll do some Portia, from Merchant of Venice.

Am I taking off my shades? No.

ACTING.

That was a lot of chair acting. I'm into it though.

So, have you ever received a piece of advice that has moved you?

Well, one of my voice teachers from Adler, if anyone reads this from Adler, they're gonna die. Elethia, Elethia is a Greek goddess of voice. Um, I guess it's not really advice but, um, her sort of mantra, she's Greek, it's just like..it's not really like fuck it, it's like, like, I'm it...I am what I am. And then what she says, before you go onstage, I'm gonna fuck this up, I'm gonna try not to...you breathe, something...what is it? It's four things. I know three of them. Breathe. Why am I forgetting what it is? Uh, she's gonna be mad. Breathe. Something. Trust. Fuck it. What is number two? I'm gonna have to think about it. Really just fuck it you know? Saying fuck it is so helpful. I just love it, I'm addicted to saying fuck it. Like fuck Shakespeare. Fuck the audience. Fuck everything. I mean you love the audience, you love Shakespeare...but when it's the moment, it's just you and that's all you got.