S2E5: Thalia Ranjbar
In this episode, Hayley and Amy speak with theatre writer, director, and choreographer Thalia Ranjbar about using art to challenge cultural conventions, elevating underrepresented perspectives, and building cultural specificity and diversity into the DNA of theatrical works. As a bonus, we celebrate Women’s History Month by spotlighting influential Cuban American playwright, director, and educator María Irene Fornés. Scroll down for episode notes and transcript!
Episode Notes
Guest: Thalia Ranjbar
Hosts: Hayley Goldenberg and Amy Andrews
Music: Chloe Geller
Episode Resources:
Women’s History Month Spotlight: María Irene Fornés
Emerging Artists - New Works Series
Sanaz Toossi - English and Wish You Were Here
Marjan Kamali - The Stationery Shop
Johnny Mercer Foundation Songwriters Project
Guest Bio
Thalia Ranjbar (she/her) is a Persian-Salvadoran-Canadian multidisciplinary artist presently based in New York City. With her focus being in theatre and film, Thalia is a screenwriter, librettist, director, and choreographer with a passion for elevating and developing stories that include voices of queer and BIPOC communities. She is a recent graduate of New York University where she earned the distinction of Master of Fine Art from the "Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program.” Immediately after, Thalia was 1 of 12 international participants selected for the “Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project,” where she received mentorship from Crag Carnelia, Andrew Lippa, Lindy Robbins, and Autumn Rowe. Thalia’s theatrical writing has been developed and presented by Feinstein’s 54 Below, Rattlestick Playwright’s Theatre, Lincoln Centre, and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her recent directing/choreography credits include The Talk at New York Theater Festival (nominated for Best Short), Unlikely Friends At Bloor St Station and Inevitable Transitions at the Emerging Artists Festival, and Then She ran at the New Studio on Broadway.
Find Thalia Online:
Website: http://thaliaranjbar.com
Instagram: @tranjbar15
LinkedIn: Thalia Ranjbar
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Episode Transcript
(Music)
Hayley: Hello, beautiful people, and welcome to the Women & Theatre Podcast! We're your hosts, Hayley Goldenberg…
Amy: …and Amy Andrews. Grab a cup of coffee and join us as we talk to people in the theatre industry about their experiences with womanhood.
Hayley: On the pod, we interview people with different gender identities, from different backgrounds, with varying levels of industry experience and professional roles.
Amy: Our goal is to build community and pool our collective wisdom to break down the barriers we continue to face.
(Music)
Hayley: It’s Women’s History Month! Each week this month, we’re spotlighting a woman in theatre history that you should know about.
Amy: This week, let’s talk about María Irene Fornés. María Irene Fornés was a Cuban American playwright, theatre director, and teacher who wrote and directed more than fifty works for the stage. Fornes' plays feature powerful female characters, culturally diverse narratives, and experimental theatrical approaches, and they have been described as feminist, Latinx, lesbian, and avant garde in tone. She was closely involved with production processes, to the point of withdrawing her script from a Broadway production because she did not agree with the production approach. Fornes was awarded nine Obies for her plays, direction, and sustained achievement, and she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1990 for her play And What of the Night? In addition to her writing, Fornes taught enormously influential playwriting workshops. She founded the Hispanic Playwrights in Residence Lab, through which she mentored a generation of Latinx playwrights in the 1980s and 1990s.
(Music)
Hayley: On today's episode, we sit down with Persian-Salvadoran-Canadian multidisciplinary artist Thalia Ranjbar. Thalia is a screenwriter, librettist, director, and choreographer with a passion for elevating and developing stories that include voices of queer and BIPOC communities. She is a recent graduate of NYU, where she earned her MFA from the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. Immediately after, Thalia was one of 12 international participants selected for the Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project, where she received mentorship from Crag Carnelia, Andrew Lippa, Lindy Robbins, and Autumn Rowe. Thalia’s theatrical writing has been developed and presented by Feinstein’s/54 Below, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, Lincoln Centre, and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her recent directing/choreography credits include The Talk at New York Theater Festival (nominated for Best Short), Unlikely Friends At Bloor St Station, and Inevitable Transitions at the Emerging Artists Festival, and also Then She Ran at the New Studio on Broadway.
Amy: Hello, hello. We are here with multidisciplinary artist Thalia Ranjbar. Thalia, could you please introduce yourself, share your pronouns, and tell us a little bit about what you do in theatre?
Thalia: Yeah, hi, thank you for having me. I'm Thalia. My pronouns are she/ her. I was born in Toronto. I lived in New Market, that's kind of where I grew up. Went to undergrad at Western University in London, Ontario. And then I did my master’s at the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at NYU. We started online. But then I moved for the second year, which was awesome, here to New York. So I've been here for like, 19 months now officially. So I'm a theatre writer, librettist, playwright, director and choreographer.
Hayley: Can you tell us a little bit about how you came to theatre?
Thalia: Yeah, I loved theatre for as long as I can remember. My mom used to play Broadway soundtracks a lot, we would watch movie musicals... but I was actually a really serious athlete for a lot of my life. And then you know, I had a really bad knee injury that kind of ended my basketball career, but I had already kind of involved myself in community theatre. But then once basketball ended, I just kind of like, zoomed, like focused in, and I started training in dance. That injury, you know, it was sad, but it refocused my life in a really awesome way. So I've always loved it, but it wasn't until I was 17 where I really dove in.
Amy: How did you get started with writing?
Thalia: So I did science in my undergrad – my undergrad was in kinesiology. The first time I really was engaged in a class was in English 1000. I just took it ‘cause I needed to. But I was like, "Damn." I just loved the way he approached literature and the stuff we were studying. And then I changed from a BSc to a BA so I could take more classes like that. So I took some theatre studies classes. I took young adult literature. And yeah, those classes started shooting things off in my brain.
And then my good friends and I decided to do a performance fundraiser called Stage a Breakthrough back home in New Market, Ontario. And we wanted to raise money for youth mental health services. So I wrote the book for that performance fundraiser and really liked it. And I got to direct that. And then after that I was like, "Whoa, I love writing for theatre." And then eventually we added some original music. So it became Where Do We Begin? instead of Stage a Breakthrough, which is my first musical. I found a composer named Jake Schindler, who's super awesome. Jake really taught me so much about songwriting. I had never written a lyric before. And he really pushed me. Instead of just handing him poetry, and being like, “Make a song,” he was like, “No, let's talk about song form and lyric craft.”
Amy: Can you tell us about what you're working on creatively right now? I hear it's been quite a year.
Thalia: It has been. So I have some things that I'm writing and developing right now. And then I've been lucky enough to be asked by a lot of my peers to direct their staged readings and developmental workshops for new musicals, which is my happy place. I love working on new stuff, ‘cause it's just such a collaborative, exploratory time. My thesis from NYU is called Nima and the Jen, and my collaborator is Kat Cartusciello. And we're trying to advance past the first draft and we're trying to get into some type of writing residency or like writing...
Hayley: Development opportunity?
Thalia: Yeah. And I'm really excited about that project. It's about an Iranian American girl named Nima. It's about her pursuit to connect with her family history and culture. And her grandmother dies at the top of the show, but then comes back to her in the form of a Jen, which is the Farsi word for genie. They travel back in time to Iran– Tehran, 1968. She learns where she comes from and it's about her self actualization and culture and family drama and stuff. I really love it. I'm really excited to be working on it. And then working on some of my peers' musicals. A musical called Echo, a musical called Maka, and a musical called Sathi. Some of them are in the Emerging Artists New Works Series. And then Sathi is kind of doing an independent industry reading type of thing.
Hayley: That's so exciting. I would love to know, with all of the amazing work that you're doing, is there a creative mission that guides your process or guides what you're writing about?
Thalia: Wow, that's a great question. I love writing about my own culture. I'm also half Salvadoran. Exploring what I know about the culture and doing some research behind that. Also like, challenging things in the culture that maybe I don't necessarily agree with or understand. I try to work on things that challenge conventions that exist. Sometimes you find a new perspective. Sometimes it's like, “Oh, I misjudged this.” And like…stories that center women as well. A lot of my friends now identify as nonbinary. That's not my experience, but… Including those perspectives in processes when we're talking about character or stories in a room when I'm directing, writing those characters into pieces because I want things that I write to reflect the world that we live in as genuinely as I can. I try to be in really diverse spaces. I write things from my own experience, as we all do. But I also wanna elevate voices that haven't always had the spotlight.
Amy: Yeah, I think Hayley and I feel the same way about a lot of our work. So you're in really good company.
(Music)
Amy: I'd love to shift gears for a sec and talk about what womanhood means to you in your life and in your work, and how it fits in with the rest of your identity as a person.
Thalia: I've considered myself a really proud woman. I think women are incredible and like… strong. I love stories that center women. I mean like thinking about what women went through before our time and how different it was in the 60s and then like the 40s, but also then like what is still happening –
Hayley: Literally happening now.
Thalia: We've always had to fight for something, whether it's the mic to like, say something, get a word in to like, have autonomy over our bodies, there's just this inherent resilience that women have. I'm so inspired by it and I'm inspired by the women around me. I think that's why my protagonists are often women, like we write ourselves into a lot of things. I love studying and engaging in conversations about intersectionality where we have women of color, queer women, queer women of color, trans women. While the "woman experience" has so much universality, there's also so much nuance.
Hayley: Yeah. And like, diversity amongst experiences too.
Thalia: Exactly. And I feel like that's definitely not to be ignored. And I love seeing that in characters that are being written on stage. We don't wanna see women portrayed as a victim all the time or like, as the nurturer. There's just so many nuances and so many unique things that make us up as women.
Amy: That's what's beautiful to me about women is that women can be so many things. And it's not always been represented on stage in that way, but we're moving toward it. Like the three of us in this Zoom room, we are actively working to make that happen.
Hayley: Yes.
Amy: So that makes me really excited.
Thalia: I'll speak, you know, obviously from my own experiences, but like, when it is an all-female team, it's just different. This summer, I was working on a short film. On set, it was almost entirely women and nonbinary people. And I just was like, floating. There are certain things that are just understood. You don't have to like, explain yourself in certain ways, there's a respect that’s refreshing and empowering.
Hayley: Tell me more about how your gender has impacted you as an artist. What are some ways that you feel it has benefited you, and what are some ways that you feel that it has limited you? And also recognizing the intersectionality of this too.
Thalia: Yeah. I feel like it's benefited me in lots of ways because a lot of the time I am creating with other women. It's challenging as an Iranian woman. There's people who are paving the road ahead of me that make it easier. But because I love writing specifically about Iranian culture and history and stuff like that, it comes with a bit of apprehension because of the way that Iranians have been perceived for a long time. How have they been portrayed in the media? And brown people in general… If we're thinking about the US specifically, in the past 22 years, like, how did their experience change? So thinking about putting those stories out there… it can be hard to believe that people will receive it. Maybe that comes from, you know, holding me back and maybe it also comes from people not asking me to speak about that experience or like, not ...
Hayley: Opening up space for that?
Thalia: Exactly. On Broadway, up until very recently, there's been one portrayal of the Middle East in a fictional place. It's not specific. We are moving away from that and things are becoming more culturally specific. I feel that progress, but it's hard. Even in grad school, I couldn't find an Iranian composer. There was one actually, which I discovered late in the game. None of the faculty really came from my experience. And I mean, it is important to think about how this can appeal to people beyond the culture. But there's also something so refreshing about working with people who have your shared experience. It just…yeah, it's just different.
Amy: Thalia, you mentioned that there have been some amazing Iranian women who have been role models for you in this industry. Would you like to speak about any of those experiences?
Thalia: Yeah, I mean, the first one that comes to my head immediately is Sanaz Toossi. She is a playwright. She had two off-Broadway plays last season, one of them was called English and one of them was called Wish You Were Here. She just writes pieces that are super unapologetically Iranian and like, about Iranian women and their experiences. And for Wish You Were Here specifically, how are these Iranian women affected by the revolution? Which, you know, is extremely poignant and topical right now because of what's going on in Iran. She writes about these things with such passion and nuance and it's so real. Seeing her plays get put up is really invigorating because it's like, “Oh man, so…so we can do this.” People will receive it. People are excited about it. We can get an all-Iranian cast, you know, it is possible with the support, we can make things happen.
There's also an author called Marjan Kamali, and she wrote something called The Stationery Shop. She's writing Iranian stories, and she's a really selfless person. These women, they just, they haven't given up. Marjan got on a Zoom call with me and was telling me, she got a lot of no’s, but she said it was exciting for her to talk to me and see someone who's younger than her trying to do the same thing. And see that, you know, the ball is rolling, I guess. Those two women stand out to me.
Hayley: That's really cool. Amazing. Thalia, if you could make one change to the theatre industry, what would it be?
Thalia: Jeez. I think for me…the biggest thing is I would like to see “representation” to be like… not the only goal. It's great when we have BIPOC characters on stage and queer characters, a trans actor. But I think we need to build on that. Avoid tokenism, avoid performative action. To move towards – Who is in the DNA of these pieces? Who's producing them? Who's directing them? Is there diversity beyond what we're just seeing on stage? Is it in the makeup of the piece, like from the ground up? How far can we push the discourse around a piece – like, why are we doing this piece? I just think the more diversity there is amongst the people having those conversations, the better the theatre's gonna be.
Hayley: Yeah. Like the more points of view you can have, the better.
Amy: If we're trying to represent the world, get the world in on the conversation.
Thalia: Yes, totally. And also, I'd love to see more female writers on Broadway. Queer women. Queer women of color. Women's writers teams. Broadway is a machine, like, it is a business, and there's so much that goes into what's on stage and when. And I won't claim to understand all of that, but how about some more original shows up there?
Hayley: Come on, Thalia. You said it.
Thalia: Jukebox musicals can be super awesome and I think they have their place, but I think they're taking up a lot of space.
Hayley: They are. They really are.
Amy: Yeah, those are some excellent changes.
(Music)
Amy: Thalia, like Hayley and I, you do a million things. You write, you direct, you choreograph. How do you think about balancing all of those different hats - plus the hats of actual life as a person?
Thalia: It's crazy. I love to learn. I'm a student of life. If I could be in class every day, I would be. Coming outta grad school, those first six months out is like really trying to find your footing and juggle all of those hats and survive. It can be a bit challenging, and like sometimes, you sacrifice a couple hats in pursuit of refining your skills for another one. And I think that's okay. Life hands you certain things at one point and then it could shift, it could change. Sometimes you can feel like you're failing at one of them because you're focusing on one. But I think we just have to be kind to ourselves and trust that we're doing our best at what we can in the moment. And when it's time to put on the other hat, you know, you dust off the rust a little bit if necessary, and you get back at it, you know?
Hayley: Totally. I have another question. What is a topic that you feel like is not being talked about enough in theatrical spaces right now?
Thalia: Oh, that's such a good question. One thing I think - and it might be because of the recent situation with Roe v. Wade, so it's very on my mind. There's been a lot of discourse about women's bodies. And I think that is something that I would like to see. Talking about female body autonomy is important to me, and it's important to discuss. It's important to destigmatize, it's important for people to have empathy on the topic and understanding, and I think putting that into theatrical spaces and creating conversations around it, creating art around it, would serve us really well. I don't want it to be hidden behind a curtain. If we're gonna talk about it, like, let's dive into it in the piece. It's been on my mind as I'm sure it has yours for months and months, even more than it was before. It's really scary.
Also, you know, I'd like to see cultural specificity in pieces. Something that is nuanced and intentional. Just thinking about stories that center culture - how can we have them be more specific to that culture and that character's experience?
Amy: A lot of that comes, as we've been talking about, from having people with that cultural experience in the room. And not just the writers and actors, but the producers and directors - that's how we get that cultural specificity in pieces.
Thalia: Exactly.
Hayley: Absolutely. Yeah.
Amy: Thalia, I want to celebrate that you were selected for the Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project. Congratulations! Can you tell us about that, please?
Thalia: Yeah, it was a really awesome experience. I got to go with one of my collaborators, Ben Ginsburg. It's like, write and share and learn and get critiques, and then go write some more. The thing that they told us when we got there was, “When you're tired, write another song.” They cast a wide net. People with all different sounds. I learned so much because there were so many different people within different genres in the room. We got to work with Andrew Lippa, Craig Cornelia, Lindy Robbins and Autumn Rowe. They were the leaders, the masterclass teachers of the week. Ben and I worked a bit on developing songs for our musical, which is called Ramin. And then we also took a shot at writing some pop, which is really its own beast, and I learned about that, which was a really valuable lesson.
Hayley: Yeah. Thalia, what are you most proud of in your life and in your work?
Thalia: Whoa. I'm very determined. I'm really persistent. And hungry. And I think that quality in myself has gotten me to where I am. I work really hard. That thing about myself is one of the things I think I value most. It doesn't feel like hustling, like hustle culture…that feels very separate to what I mean. If I have 10 minutes, or if I have a morning, I go dance because I love it so much and I really wanna be the best that I can. I have this drive that really pushes me.
The spaces that I work in reflect my values. I really make a very conscious effort to put my money where my mouth is. And I'm proud of the spaces that I've been in. I can feel the diversity in the DNA of the pieces, like I was saying before. I try to be equitable and fair and kind.
Hayley: You are amazing.
Thalia: Thank you!
Hayley: Tell our listeners where they can find you on the internet, please.
Thalia: Yeah. ThaliaRanjbar.com. My Instagram is @TRanjbar15. You can find me on LinkedIn at Thalia Ranjbar. My website, my Instagram, and Linkedin are probably good places to start if you wanna find me.
Amy: Well, thank you so much for being with us, Thalia. It's been such a pleasure.
Hayley: Thank you so much for your time. We really, really appreciate it.
Thalia: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I really love this podcast and what you're about. It's a really valuable and awesome community you’re fostering, so thanks for letting me be part of it.
(Music)
Hayley: Thank you for listening to the Women & Theatre Podcast. We’re your hosts, Hayley Goldenberg…
Amy: And Amy Andrews. If you like what you heard, subscribe and give us a 5-star review wherever you listen.
Hayley: You can also follow us on social @womenandtheatreproject to make sure you never miss an episode.
Amy: The music for this show is written by talented Women & Theatre community member Chloe Geller.
Hayley: Thanks for listening, everyone. See you next time!
Amy: Bye!
