Courtney Seyl
Interview Highlights
Courtney is passionate about creating safe female- and queer-centered spaces.
It doesn’t matter whether the audience response is “good” or “bad.” The point is to start a conversation.
Stage managers deserve creative input.
Women, queer, and non-binary folks need to stick together to help move the industry forward.
Find Hannah Online:
Website: www.courtneyseyl.com
Courtney’s Current and Upcoming Work:
Mirrors at NY Summerfest, Theater Latea - June 7th - 8th, 11th
Little Egg, Big World at Theatre Row - June 24th, 2022
Bio
Courtney Seyl (they/them) is a director and playwright based in New York City. They graduated from the University of Puget Sound in 2017 with their B.A. in Theatre Arts and a minor in English. In the summer of 2018, they completed a 6 week training program with the Intiman Emerging Artists Program, where they focused on directing original solo work.
In February of 2020, they premiered Act 2 of their first full length play, REVOLUTION, with FEAST Performance series. In October of 2022 it premiered at The Tank Theatre and has been nominated for seven Off-Broadway Awards. It won Best Performance in an Off-Off Broadway play.
Their play Compulsion has been produced in the Shelter 'n' Play Podcast, has been filmed for the Irondale On Women Festival, and premiered at NYWinterfest in Dec. of 2022. They are currently working on expanding Compulsion to take to Edinburgh Fringe in 2023.
Currently they are set to direct the NYC Off-Broadway premiere of Little Egg, Big World by Rachel Leighson, opening June 24th at Theatre Row. They are also directing Mirrors by Kaitlin Gould, which opens at Teatro Latea on June 7th. Past directing credits include: The Pillowman, No Exit, Laughing Wild, REVOLUTION, Compulsion, and This is Our Youth.
“When women, non-binary, and queer folks group together, we are able to show that we exist. We are here making great art and you will notice us.”
Meet Courtney
Hayley: We are here with the fantastic Courtney Seyl! Courtney, please introduce yourself, share your pronouns, and tell us about what you do in the theatrical space.
Courtney: I’m Courtney Seyl. I use they/them pronouns. I am a playwright, director, and sometimes I stage manage and sometimes I sound design. Stage managing pays my bills. But I mostly focus on directing and playwriting. I’ve been fortunate enough to have a few of my plays produced in the city, and I’m currently directing a play by Rachel Leighson Off-Broadway at Theatre Row called Little Egg, Big World. It’s my first Off-Broadway credit!
Amy: Congratulations, that’s super exciting! Can you tell us about how you came to theatre?
Courtney: I went to a science and technology high school, so arts were not a thing. But we had a drama club where we would do improv games. Once a year, we would do a weird play by somebody no one had ever heard of. We didn’t do Hamlet, we did plays about mad scientists falling in love with their creations.
Amy: That’s so cool!
Courtney: Yeah! So I was in the drama club, and in my junior year I directed the play. That was the first time I really realized I liked theatre, but I didn’t think I was going to like, do it. But then I got to college, and I signed up for all theatre classes without realizing it. I thought, “Theatre is where I made friends before. It’s a fun place to make friends, I’ll do that.” I was supposed to be a psych and biology major, but theatre was way more fun than math, so I stuck with it.
I don’t feel like I experienced real theatre until college. I didn’t see many plays growing up. Everyone else in my year was like, “I’ve been doing this since I was eight years old” and I was like, “Cool, I don’t know who David Mamet is.” It was a big learning experience. Then I studied abroad in London and I was like, THIS is theatre. And now I’m here in New York, doing theatre and making my parents nervous.
Amy: (laughing) That’s relatable.
Hayley: Courtney, can you tell us about the exciting things you are working on creatively right now?
Courtney: I’m currently directing two shows. Mirrors by Kaitlin Gould is premiering at Theater Latea as part of NY Summerfest. It’s about a therapy group for people with eating disorders and how they navigate the world together. It’s an absurd dark comedy. Everyone come see it! Theater Latea, June 7th, 8th and 11th.
The other show I’m doing is Little Egg, Big World by Rachel Leighson, and it’s premiering at Theatre Row on June 24th, one night only! It’s about donor conception, being a donor kid, what it means to not have a dad or to have a dad but you don’t know who they are. It’s really cute and really deep.
Hayley: Cool!
Courtney’s Creative Mission and Influential Mentors
Hayley: Courtney, do you have a sense of what your creative mission is?
Courtney: I want to create work that makes people feel something. It doesn’t have to be a good feeling or a bad feeling, it just has to be something big. I don’t care if you liked the show or you hated it, I want you to have a response to it. Having no response means you stop talking about it. I don’t want the show to be bad, but at least if it’s bad you’re talking about it. I want to evoke a strong response from an audience. I especially love site-specific theatre because I feel like the audience is more involved.
Amy: Is there a favorite piece that you’ve done?
Courtney: One of my professors from university, Jess Smith, has a theatre company called ARTBARN. The month after I graduated, a group of us did a residency in one of the frat houses on campus. We wrote and presented a piece called The Archivists, which was about a group of women who are trying to write down all the stories of every woman in history so they can keep them forever. It was really fun, we all got to write, we all got to act, we all got to be involved in every aspect. We also spent a lot of time sitting by the ocean and talking about life.
Amy: I love that you wrote theatre in a frat house. It feels so subversive.
Hayley: I was gonna say!
Courtney: We stayed in this nasty-ass frat house, we lit so many candles, we saged it, we covered up all the photos of all of the boys. We made it a women-, nonbinary-, queer-centred space.
Amy: Love that. Courtney, can you tell us about influential mentors you’ve had?
Courtney: The first person who comes to mind is Jess, who runs ARTBARN. She was also my directing professor. In my directing class, I was doubting myself a lot. She was the first person to tell me, “You’re a great director, you’ve made great choices. Own them, don’t second guess yourself.”
It’s hard to take credit for things sometimes as a director because the actors are the ones you see doing the work. But they wouldn’t have gotten there without guidance. It’s all about owning the space you’re in. Especially being female-presenting in a space, you have to be that much more on top of it. I tend to ask questions like, “Does that make sense?” after I’ve said something, and I’m trying hard to break that habit and be confident in the room and just say, “This is what we’re doing.”
Confidence is hard sometimes. So it was nice to have somebody to say, “You can do it.” My group of queer theatre friends is so supportive as well. I wouldn’t say they’re “mentors,” but I learn a lot from them. We all collaborate, and it’s a safe space in theatre where we can do work and we can also vent about things.
Thoughts on Gender and Identity
Hayley: I’m curious about your experience with womanhood. How does it fit into your identity?
Courtney: I’ve been very fortunate in that for the most part these days I get to curate the space that I’m in. But on the odd occasion when I have to work with people outside of my circle, straight white men especially, it becomes a wakeup call about why I don’t work with those people anymore. It’s jarring how different the vibe can be when there are people in the space you don’t trust. People explicitly overtaking the room.
Other people are allowed to talk too. When I’m directing, I’m very open with everyone in the room. I’m open to anything. I’m not going to bash on someone for saying something feels uncomfortable. I want to know that so I can change it. I’ve worked with a few people recently who are like, “This is how it’s going to be, get over it and do it.” And that’s not how it should be.
Amy: Yeah, it’s supposed to be collaborative.
Courtney: But when I get to work with mostly female teams, mostly queer teams, I’m like, THIS is what theatre should be. I want to be in a room with people who are trying to create something brilliant. I don’t want people to come in with the egos that these straight white men have. I want people to come in knowing what we’re doing and hoping to excel at it.
The Benefits of Women- and Queer-Centered Spaces
Amy: Can you tell us more about how you see women- and queer-centered spaces as benefiting the theatre industry?
Courtney: I think we have more freedom in those spaces. You don’t have to defer to the main man in the room because he’s the one with the money. Theatre is an industry that is based on money, and you need money to make theatre. It’s just how it works in this country. It’s shitty, because then we all fall into this line of, “Well, we have to do this because this is how you get theatre made.” I know so many people who have made theatre outside of that. And made it much better. But because they don’t have the money to support it, they don’t get seen.
When women, non-binary, and queer folks group together, we are able to show that we exist. We are here making great art and you will notice us. We are gonna be Off-Broadway, on Broadway. I just saw A Strange Loop a couple weeks ago. I’m not a fat queer Black man, but I relate to it more than anything else in my life. I understand the struggle of being different in this world and trying to make it.
Hayley: When you choose to center people who have more to say, who are different than what we’ve seen before, more nuanced storytelling comes out of it.
Courtney: That’s why I like working on new work. With Mirrors, one of the people in the cast needs to be played by a fat woman. We need more of that. I know specifics suck in casting, but when you don’t say this character is this age and this gender, you’re only gonna get 20-year-old white women. Partially because other people don’t think they are allowed to audition for those roles. There has to be a better way of explicitly saying this role is for ANYONE.
Amy: When you have character descriptions that are non-specific, unfortunately, it often defaults to young, white, skinny, conventionally attractive — whatever that means.
Courtney: For roles in my plays, when the roles aren’t super specific, I put a note in the character breakdown that says it can be ANYONE. I don’t care who they are. Whatever serves the community they are in.
Amy: That’s cool too, because if it’s done in different communities, the show can say different things to different people. That’s the dream for theatre.
Courtney: I don’t want my plays to be just for white women just because I wrote them. It’s like, no, this play can be for fucking anybody! Cast it how you want. I don’t care if you change a couple of the words to make it sound more like you talk, do it. I’m just happy you’re doing my play.
Hayley: Speaking of your plays, do you want to tell us a little bit about Compulsion?
Courtney: Compulsion is a one-act I wrote about OCD, depression, and mental illness in general. It was inspired by “Fleabag.” It started as a 30-minute play for two people, and I’m hoping to expand it to be an hour long. I’m collecting stories from people about what their depression sounds like, feels like, and tastes like, and working those stories into the script somehow. My goal is to take it to Edinburgh Fringe next year. It’s one of the pieces I’m most proud of. It’s all about a girl alone in her room with her thoughts and how she copes with that. There is a filmed version on my website.
How to Improve the Theatre Industry
Hayley: Courtney, if you could make one change to the theatre industry, what would it be?
Courtney: I keep saying I’m going to start my own fringe festival because I’m sick of the ones in New York. They are all run by the same person who's been doing it for 20 years. I want there to be good festivals here.
Amy: What would your festival look like? How would you do it?
Courtney: It’s not one person in charge. It’s a collective of people who choose the plays, direct, produce, design, tech — a community of people in charge of the festival. From there, we get submissions from playwrights for 10- to 30-minute plays. Find a space to put them up. Fundraise. Pay the playwrights money so that they can pay their actors and directors. I want to create a space where I am paying the playwrights to be in the festival because I like their work that much. They’re not paying me to be in the festival.
Amy: Art has value, and that should be the premise, right?
Courtney: Right now, playwrights are paying $200 to some dude, and then they just let any play in the festival. You have all of these plays that aren’t necessarily good by people who are out there with money and a script. And I would exclude straight white men from my festival. Unless you can prove that you are extraordinary.
Amy: Right, like the standards that women and queer folks and people of color are held to.
Courtney: I’m part of the National Queer Theatre Artistic Collective, and I’ve learned so much from that experience about what it takes to curate queer theatre. You don’t just want the white gay man’s play, you also want the Black trans woman’s play. Identities do matter in this context, and you have to figure out a way to make it fair for everybody, or push people forward who haven’t necessarily had the chance to be pushed forward. I love storytelling, and I want to curate a space for people to tell their stories.
Hayley: I love that. Any other changes you would like to make to the industry?
Courtney: I wish we treated stage managers more like assistant directors. ADs do a lot of stage management work but don’t have the pressure of stage management. I know many stage managers who have great creative ideas but don’t feel like they’re allowed to have creative input. So I want better treatment for stage managers.
Thoughts on Work/Life Balance
Amy: Courtney, how do you balance your creative work with the rest of your life?
Courtney: (laughs) I’m bad at it. I think it’s the nature of our industry, that grind mentality. I find when I’m working on other projects, it’s hard to find time and energy to put into my own projects. I’ve been working on setting aside time for one project and then turning the brain off of that one and devoting time to either relaxing or another project. But it’s hard, because your emails are still going off.
I try my best to relax when I need to relax and not force myself to do anything. If I don’t feel the creative urge, I’m not gonna push it because I’ll end up hating what I’m doing. So I’m definitely someone that needs to feel the spark of inspiration. Which is hard because sometimes it doesn’t spark for weeks.
Hayley: Courtney, can you talk about the ways you feel your gender has limited you and the ways you feel it has benefited you?
Courtney: Compulsion was in the On Women Festival. I was able to submit to that because it was specifically for women. So there are great opportunities like that now. A lot of spaces are becoming more female- and queer-centred. I love the intersectionality of it. If something is queer, it will inherently be more “feminine.”
My pronouns change, but professionally I try to use they/them. Recently, I was in a show and the producers were two old white men, and nobody cared to use them. They also asked about why I put my pronouns in my bio in the program. I got the sense that they didn’t actually care who I was because they didn’t care to use the correct pronouns. You know it’s bad when you get into the mentality of “I just have to get through it.” It makes you question why you do theatre in the first place. I’m doing the thing I’m supposed to love doing. And experiences like that make you hate it.
I assistant directed a show in a space that was horribly misogynistic right before the pandemic. And after doing that show, I didn’t realize it, but I had theatre PTSD. When I came back to theatre in 2021, I didn’t realize I would be so nervous to be in a theatre space again. I felt like I couldn’t talk. Even though I was friends with the people. I was so shy whenever I had ideas, but it was surprising to me that they cared what I had to say. It was invigorating to find that space again.
Amy: There are enough people and enough opportunities that we don’t have to do theatre that doesn’t make us feel welcome. We have to find our people.
Courtney: I also think that especially for actors, they feel like, “This is my only opportunity.” You start to doubt your own abilities. But there will always be something new. The minute I start thinking I have nothing, I get offered two jobs.
Amy: I hear you though, it’s such a leap of faith to say “I don’t need this, something else will come along.”
Final Thoughts
Hayley: Courtney, what are you most proud of?
Courtney: Moving to New York! I had never been here before I moved. I moved two days after my 24th birthday, and I didn’t know what I was doing. I needed to get out of Seattle, and I got an internship at a theatre in New York. I decided to take it and I’m really glad I did. I’ve met the most incredible people. Wild experiences all around, but that’s just New York. I’m really proud of myself for being brave enough to do that, because I don’t think of myself as a brave person all the time.
Hayley: Courtney, thank you so much for doing this with us!
Courtney: Thanks so much, it was so fun to do this!
