As a playwright, I have had the chance to work with many talented actors. In the fall of 2012, I had the opportunity to work with Jeanette Bonner when she read several roles in my full-length play Losing Our Heads: The Guillotine Play for a Friday Night Footlights Reading at the Dramatists Guild. Jeanette was so much fun to work with! She infused life into some very wacky characters.
Jeanette Bonner.
Jeanette is currently working on filming the second season of Ghost Light: The Web Series (a must-watch for any theater person), for which she is the executive producer and writer. The series deals with the backstage antics at Nova Theater, a fictional theater located in Nowhere, USA. Last summer, Jeanette took her one-person show Love. Guts. High School to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Jeanette has an extensive resume. Learn more about her at her on her website www.jeanettebonner.com.
Jeanette, thank you so much for joining me this month on Not Even Joking. I was just watching the first season of Ghost Light: The Web Series. As a theater person, I found it highly entertaining! How did you come up with the idea and characters for this series?
First of all, as a fellow “theater person” I have an innate love for shows about making shows – Noises Off, Slings & Arrows, Waiting for Guffman come to mind. But in all of them, and especially in those three examples, there is hardly any reference made to people working backstage. People who don’t do theater have no concept of the amount of skill (and people) it takes to pull off a show. And if you’ve done a show yourself, you know that the guys that work backstage are the most lovable bunch of weirdos you’ve ever met. I thought: Why has there never been a show made about these people?? It also didn’t hurt that at the time of its concept, I was dating a theater technician. So we often talked about the antics that happen backstage and the characters he’d worked with along the way.
How do you juggle your roles as executive producer, writer and actor in the series?
It’s not easy, I’m not gonna lie! As writer, most of the work is done before production, so it’s easy to keep that role separate. And when we are in pre-production that is just me in the role of Producer. The challenge then is when we head into production, where all three of these roles meet. For Season 2, some actor conflicts meant that we had to move up production while we were simultaneously crowdfunding. I don’t know if you’ve ever crowdfunded before, but it’s like running a presidential campaign (I imagine) (ok, maybe slightly smaller) – it’s a full-time job. So trying to run that while lining up the elements needed for production and – whoops, almost forgot! – also take a look at my lines – became a little chaotic. I describe it as trying to plan a wedding that you are also in that you are also paying for. It’s a lot.
Last year you traveled to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to perform your one-person show Love. Guts. High School. I have wanted to go to Edinburgh for a long time! (My short play Bite Me is running there this year…but alas, I won’t be able to see it). What was the experience like?
OH YOU SHOULD GO!! This is what I tell everyone. You should go because it is like no other theater festival in the world. The entire city revolves around theater – THEATER!!! If you wanted to find that one place on earth where you finally met all the other weirdos just like you, that would be Edinburgh. It’s incredibly inspirational to be around so many thousands of people doing what you’re doing. And thousands who are there to SEE indie theater. It really makes you feel as if theater is definitely NOT dead at all, despite what other people say.
That being said, it is exceptionally challenging to try to convince utter strangers to see YOUR SHOW out of over 3,000 that are being offered that very day. The theater guide is the size of a phone book. What was very hard for me was the one-womanness of it all (speaking of roles!)…. to be my own director, marketing agent, coach, producer as well as actor every single day was very challenging. To get up every day and figure out how we were going to bring in audience that afternoon, all while remembering to take care of yourself as an actor who needed to perform at 100% was very, very hard. In the end I don’t know how much I succeeded so much as just simply grew.
What else gets you up in the morning? What are you passionate about? And how does this influence your creative life? (or does it?)
uhhh…. I am SO not a morning person, so there’s very little that gets me up besides the promise of coffee. But I will tell you that I am a NYC tour guide, and I am super passionate about its history and its story. I love when you can see the city’s past still existing – 19th century architecture, shops that have been here for over 100 years, old cobblestone streets. I devour historical fiction set in NYC; currently reading Paradise Alley by Kevin Baker about the Draft Riots and the creation of the police force by the Irish firemen.
I also love exploring NYC present-day, I’m especially into the locavore food scene. I write an ice cream blog about all the small-batch artisanal ice cream happening in the city: www.theicecreaming.wordpress.com
I know that you have also worked with young people. What advice would you give to a young performer who is considering a career in the biz?
I tell this to the students on my tours all the time: Take Marketing Courses. Learn Marketing. Get your undergrad degree in Marketing. More than anything else you can do for yourself in this industry, including the skills of acting itself, is learning how to market yourself, to know your brand, to know what defines you and helps you stand out in a sea of thousands. This is everything from having a website to social media presence to networking to selling tickets to shows. It’s taken me FOREVER to learn how to do these things, and in this day and age, I think it’s 80% of being a successful actor. If I could go back and do college over, I would. Screw Bertolt Brecht. I mean, not really. But seriously. He hasn’t helped me one bit.
Thank you so much for joining us today Jeanette! I am really looking forward to the second season of Ghost Light!
You can connect with Jeanette and learn more about Ghost Light: The Web Series at:
www.youtube.com/user/ghostlighttheseries
www.facebook.com/ghostlighttheseries
www.twitter.com/kellyspoolhall
Instagram: @KellysPoolHall
