Makena Metz
Interview Highlights
Creating characters that represent an array of voices is really important in creating the world we want to see.
Writing offers an escape and a career path for many disabled people, because it’s something you can do from any location that allows you to process what you’re going through as well as create change.
Spaces created specifically for women’s voices can empower a multiplicity of women, not just one type of woman or one type of play.
We need more funding for new work and more educational opportunities for people to learn about a range of theatrical careers.
Find Makena Online:
Website: www.makenametz.com
TikTok: @makenametz
Twitter: @makenametz
Instagram: @makenametz
Facebook: @makenametzwrites
Bio
Makena Metz (she/her) is an LA native who writes fantasy, sci-fi, and magical realism for the page, screen, and stage. She is getting her MFA in Creative Writing and MA in English from Chapman University's dual degree program and is a proud member of ASCAP, the Dramatists Guild (DGA), the Society of Composers and Lyricists (SCL), the Children’s Media Association (CMA), Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), and Women in Animation (WIA). Makena is an alum of the Musical Theatre Writers Collective and New Musicals Inc’s CORE Curriculum for Musical Theatre Writing. Follow her on twitter, instagram, or tiktok @MakenaMetz, FB @makenametzwrites, and find her work on Coverfly or NPX!
“We must lift each other up as women and musical theatre writers in our community.”
Meet Makena
Hayley: We are here with Makena Metz! Makena, we invite you to introduce yourself and tell us about what you do in the theatrical world!
Makena: I’m Makena Metz, my pronouns are she/her, and in the theatrical world I’m a lyricist, librettist, playwright, and melodist who struggles to call herself a composer. In the non-theatre world, I’m a writer of short stories, novels, poems, screenplays, and pilots. I’m tired. Tired in a good way, in a fulfilled but exhausted way.
Amy: I love that you do all of this writing in the theatrical and non-theatrical space. I think a lot of people feel pressure to limit themselves to one genre.
Makena: I agree, I think people are boxed in by what society wants us to be as writers. I’ve found a lot of freedom by writing in various forms and mediums. Most of the way we practice storytelling is the same. It doesn’t matter if you are writing a poem or play or musical or song, you are still going through the same creative process.
Hayley: How did you come to your creative work?
Makena: I started writing in college at Columbia College Chicago. I took a playwriting class with Mickle Maher, the cofounder of Theater Oobleck, he’s a wonderful playwright and teacher. And I wrote the worst thing I’ve probably ever written in that class, and then there was a staged reading of it. Then I wrote a shorter piece and submitted it to a contest at my school, and I was one of the winners. They produced the four winning one-acts in the Classic Theatre at the school, and after that I went, “Oh shit, I guess I’m good at this.” Sometimes you just need that external validation. So that’s how I started writing!
Amy: How did you come to theatre?
Makena: I grew up being in a lot of musicals and seeing theatre whenever I could get the chance. My mom would take me to Center Theatre Group to see whatever musical was in town. I always thought musical theatre was really cool. Then I went to high school for music and I studied piano, drums, and singing, expanding my musical knowledge.
When I went to college, I started as a musical theatre performance major and learned very quickly that it was not for me because auditioning was so brutal. So I switched majors my freshman year, and I became a theatre directing major after seeing a really awesome student production of Boeing-Boeing.
I didn’t really find musical theatre again until after college. When I was in school, I wanted to stay involved in musicals, but I didn’t really know how to. I moved back to LA after I graduated, and I was interning for The Road Theatre Company in North Hollywood. I went to this internship mixer where I met this other intern who told me, “If you are interested in musical theatre, you should audition for the musical theatre writing workshop at New Musicals Inc.” So I did, and I did their first-year workshop called Core Curriculum and it changed my life. I’ve been writing musical theatre ever since.
Makena’s Creative Work
Amy: Can you tell us about the projects you are working on right now?
Makena: I’m working on so many musical theatre projects. The first one that comes to mind is a song cycle called Songs About Being Sick, which I’m writing with Angela Parrish, who is a fantastic singer/composer/lyricist/songwriter/producer. It’s about physically, mentally, chronically, dynamically, invisibly ill people who are at a support group for people dealing with mental and physical issues. We are trying to approach writing these songs from an angle that is not stereotypical and that speaks to a variety of issues. We’re hoping to have the show finished by the fall and then have a concert reading of it.
I’m also working on a holiday show called Home for the Holidays about Hanukkah and Christmas - holidays and family and tradition - with Kat Zimmerman, another wonderful composer. I’m working with an awesome team, Thomas Blakeley and Devin Weitz, on an animated movie musical called Alba and the Underworld. I’m working on a theatre for young audiences (TYA) science fiction piece about a food blogger and aliens – it’s a new show with a great composer, Zev Burrows, who I met through the SCL. I’m writing a podcast musical with Joely Zuker, who’s a fabulous composer/lyricist in the Berklee NYC Musical Theatre Writing and Design Program.
I work with a lot of amazing composers, and I work on a lot of different projects. Different things are always cooking.
Amy: Makena, you are also a melodist. Can you tell us about what that means and how it fits into what you do?
Makena: A melodist is someone who creates a melody. I’ve always heard music in my mind and been able to imagine what music might sound like. Being a melodist and working with a composer is fabulous, because you can sing a melody or plunk it out and then the composer takes the melody and turns it into a song. The skill set of melodists is that you are working with music in a way that composers don’t necessarily do. You aren’t thinking technically, you are thinking about what sounds good to the ear and what’s fun to sing. I always want my singers to love what they’re singing.
Amy: What does your day-to-day look like? How do you balance all of those things?
Makena: I’ve always been envious of vampires because they don’t need to sleep. I try to do a weekly meeting with every composer I work with. I’m also working two part-time jobs, and I’m also in grad school, and I’m also doing physical therapy twice a week, so…I don’t know how I find the time! Luckily, I go to an MFA program that makes an effort to let students have full-time or part-time jobs.
Hayley: Makena, can you tell us about your creative mission?
Makena: I’m always trying to write things that touch the issues we face in our day-to-day reality. Whether it’s a show about work/life balance, or understanding people that are differently abled or disabled, or about environmental issues – growing up in California, we are very much a center for social activism, and we also are so affected by climate change. The work I want to write is always engaging with that. Whether it’s lighter and about someone exploring their identity or darker and exploring a current or political topic, both of those things are valid and have a place on stage.
Thoughts on Womanhood, Disability, and Identity
Hayley: Can you share a little bit about your experience as an artist with a disability?
Makena: Yes, so I became chronically ill eight years ago. Being in college, being a theatre student and being really sick through college morphed my experience of going to undergrad. I didn’t have a traditional college experience because I was so ill and tired during my time there. And now, I’m going through my MFA program as a cancer survivor.
It’s interesting, because when you are chronically ill, you don’t necessarily feel like you have a right to call yourself disabled. Even though you are fatigued all the time, out of breath all the time, covered in bruises, the list goes on, you think you are not allowed to have a space in that community. When I lost my mobility and I was recovering from this ginormous knee surgery, where they removed a tumor out of my femur, that was when I was like, “Oh, I literally am disabled, I’m un-abled.” And now, I’m off of the mobility aids. I’m walking, still limping, and it’s going to be a long recovery. I’m now at the point where I identify as disabled, but it took me going through that knee surgery to feel like I could have that as a part of my identity. I wish I could go back and tell my 19-year-old self, “Let yourself be disabled. Stop trying to fight it.”
I began writing when I started dealing with all this medical trauma! Writing became an escape for me to help me process what I was going through. A lot of disabled people are writers because writing is something you can do from anywhere, you don’t have to literally go into work to be a writer. So I’ve met a lot of writers in the community. There is a great twitter thread/group called the #NEISVoid, which is the No End In Sight Void. So I found a lot of community there. The founder is Brianne Benness, and she has created this community for people who are disabled and chronically ill to find each other. Having an online community has made such a difference, especially in my mental health.
Because I’ve been writing while going through all this medical trauma, it’s highly informed my writing practice. I believe in what Michael R. Jackson has said about how white writers have a moral obligation to create worlds of color in our shows because the default is often white. If we don’t create specificity in our characters, those roles will just be filled by white people. I believe that’s true of other marginalized communities as well. If I am writing a show and I don’t have a disabled character or an autistic character or people of color or LGBTQ people, I feel like I’m doing a disservice to those communities. I think having an array of voices is really important in creating the world we want to see, on stage and off.
Amy: We’re both nodding really hard right now.
Hayley: Makena, what does being a woman mean to you?
Makena: I think it means writing scripts that aren’t sexist! Especially for men, I think it’s so important to make sure that scripts pass the Bechdel test. I think for me, it means writing complex women characters. As I mentioned, I’m working on this science fiction TYA musical about aliens and food blogging, and the main character is so complex! She’s ambitious, she’s weird, she’s rude to her parents but she’s a suck-up to her boss. We are not writing her as a reflection of a character, we are writing her as a complex real person who is going through issues that real women face every day.
I see a lot of people post on the novel writing groups I’m in, saying, “I’m a man and I don’t know how to write a woman character, do you have any advice?” And a lot of the comments I see are about how women are not believed when we’re talked to. People try to correct us. There is a lot of sexism ingrained into our culture. I think that’s something that the male perspective doesn’t necessarily recognize. It’s just not something they encounter.
Tying this back to disability, I have doctors who don’t believe my pain. I literally had an MRI of my shoulder two months ago, I was in so much pain, in agony. And the shoulder doctor told me, “No, it’s not your shoulder, it’s your spine.” Then I saw a different doctor, and he told me that I had severe shoulder inflammation that was very obvious from the MRI, and he gave me steroids and within a week the pain decreased drastically. How come the first doctor didn’t just believe me when I told him that it was my shoulder? Why did it have to take me going to a whole separate doctor to be believed?
Hayley: And in this country, there is a literal cost to not being believed.
Amy: Not to mention the cost in time, in pain –
Hayley: In emotional energy.
Amy: Yeah, being told you are not the expert on your own body. Women are told that all the time, and it’s frankly BS.
Makena: All the time! And writing characters who are engaging with those issues is really important. Not only for women, but for men who want to write women better. And you know what, good on them for doing their research, that’s what we’ve been asking for. But I get really mad when men try to mansplain about what being a woman is like. Or mansplaining how to write. I think a lot of women can be traumatized when men come in and try to commandeer the space and take it over and tell women that they are lacking in knowledge.
Hayley: Or when they have always dominated that space. Certainly in the writing space it’s like that. The bias is embedded in the language used, in feedback, in everything.
Makena: Yeah, that’s something a lot of women writers run into, the question of: When am I butting up against it, and when am I staying quiet to protect my job?
Amy: And the work we do is so personal, so it can have such a traumatic effect.
Benefits and Limitations of Womanhood
Hayley: Makena, how do you feel being a woman has benefited you as an artist and conversely, how have you felt limited by it?
Makena: Right now, especially in the playwriting community, there’s such a push for stories by women writers. There are so many more opportunities for us now. You can look on New Play Exchange, or the Playwright Binge, or NYC Playwrights and search for #WomenOpps and all of these opportunities will come up. I think it’s great that there are spaces being created specifically for women's voices. That creates avenues for voices of women of colour, gay women, activist women, not just one type of woman or one type of play. I think those opportunities are great and there should be more.
If you are at a regional theatre in parts of the country, it’s like, “Oh, we’re doing Chekhov again, or Shakespeare.” And unless it’s a feminist reimagining, I’m kind of done with seeing those “classics” done all the time. Women’s voices were not counted in the time when those lists of “classics” were created.
Amy: It’s interesting that you bring up regional theatre, because I think in that environment, there is this expectation to see things that are “comfortable.” On the one hand, I think we can have a more diverse representation of what’s comfortable. And on the other hand – with the understanding that there are financial implications – we can try to push the envelope. Changes are happening in this country in lots of ways, and theatre should be able to reflect that.
Makena: Producers will often say, “We don’t have the funds, we don’t have the resources, our audiences have expectations, we can’t produce new work.” And so you are seeing the same productions over and over again. You are seeing Oklahoma on a loop, every season, until you die. I think a problem for a lot of playwrights, librettists, and lyricists is unless you know where to look or where to go, you are kind of just gasping for air. I feel so bad for emerging writers in theatre because the colleges are failing us. I keep hearing stories of people coming out of their MFA programs, and they come out and are like, “Now what do I do?”
We live in a culture where new work is not necessarily celebrated. At least not by non-theatre people. People want to see the play that’s famous, not necessarily the new experimental work. I think that theatres need to do more to reach audiences and foster new work.
How to Improve the Theatre Industry
Hayley: If you could make one change to the industry, what would it be?
Makena: Sadly, I think it comes down to money. I wish there were more producers funding new work and new writers. There is a lack of producers in this country who know what they're doing, are established, and have connections and funding. It’s a pipeline problem when you think about it. The theatre company doesn’t have money to produce new work, so they can’t hire a literary manager or anyone to foster new works and writers. There just isn’t enough to go around.
Amy: The key is getting the country and society to invest in art.
Makena: Yeah, and I think it also comes down to creating opportunities for education. How many high school students are thinking about going to college to become a theatre producer? We have to go to our education systems and give people opportunities to get trained. When high school productions start, why don’t we have students working as producers, as agents – why don’t we have students in those roles learning about them? When I was in college, the teachers would operate as the producers, but if you let a student have that opportunity to look at budgets and try to figure out how to make it work, that would be such a valuable experience.
There’s not enough public awareness that you can have a career in theatre – as producers, dramaturgs, theatre critics – those types of jobs are desperately needed because all the old guard that was running those positions have retired, or they’ve been fired, they’ve stepped down. We need to create space for new perspectives, and that comes back to education.
Amy: I agree with you! The way those positions have been filled in the past is through an apprenticeship model. But because of the way the theatre industry operates and because you hire who you know, it often ends up being white men passing those jobs to other white men.
Makena: And training programs, internships, and apprenticeships can be really helpful for launching those types of careers. But the problem is a lot of times you aren’t getting paid a living wage in those positions!
Hayley: And then if you aren’t a person of privilege, it’s really difficult to take those opportunities.
Makena: I also get really pissed off at companies that create inaccessibility through money. It is elitist to assume that someone can move somewhere just for a workshop. It comes down to money and accessibility. What perspectives are we preventing by only including people who are wealthy enough to participate in opportunities? I think we need to look at the ways in which these barriers are making art inaccessible.
Amy: I hope that one of the gifts the pandemic has brought us is realizing how many things can be done virtually and incorporating that into our theatrical spaces to make them more accessible.
Makena: Maestra, The Dramatists Guild, and the Society of Composers and Lyricists have been doing such an amazing job with virtual content for people getting involved. For Maestra and the Guild, they were doing that before it was cool. They have always strived for accessibility so people from all over the country could participate in their programs. I think we need more of that. We need writers’ rooms and writing development programs that are virtual. Or more subsidized funding and residencies that will pay for your stay. We have these barriers in place that don't foster art or foster artists. And I’m all about fostering artists.
Final Thoughts
Amy: Makena, what are you most proud of in your life?
Makena: Not to repeat myself, but I’m really proud of how much I foster other artists. We all have different poles that hold us up as writers. For me, one is writing, one is submitting, one is taking time off, and one is fostering other artists. We need to figure out for ourselves as writers and as women, how much do we want to give back to the community? I think it’s really important as humans and as artists to be getting involved in a community in some way.
That’s why I love programs like the Maestra mentorship program and WriteGirl in LA. It’s such a good way to give back and pass the torch of success. Your success should be my success. We can lift each other up as women and as musical theatre writers and as people in a community of theatre people. If we aren’t lifting each other up as artists, what does that say about our community?
Amy: Amen to that.
Hayley: Louder for the people in the back.
