Fringe Interview: Josh Lefkowitz
Twenty-four-year-old actor and writer Josh Lefkowitz is sleeping on a couch in Columbia Heights these days, but he's hardly down on his luck. After leaving D.C. last year in search of performance opportunities in New York, he's found himself in the back warm embrace of the District, this time in the form of the Capital Fringe Festival, where he is performing his first monologue, Help Wanted: A Personal Search for Meaningful Employment at the Start of the 21st Century.
The performance is overtly an homage to Lefkowitz's personal hero, Spalding Gray, where the young man recounts attempts to find his way as a struggling artist in the post-college world. We know, but it's really not as bad as it sounds. In fact, it's pretty damn funny. Lefkowitz, a la Gray, delivers his monologue sitting behind a plain desk, relying on his gift for deadpan comic delivery and charmingly astute observations about growing up. Whether he's being sucked in to "The Greatest Game Ever According to Time Magazine," or asking himself the really important questions like "What Would Geena Davis Do?", Lefkowitz demonstrates his hapless old soul-nature while winning genuine laughs. His final performance as part of the Fringe Festival is tonight at 7:45 p.m., and you can purchase tickets here.
I know from your performance that you moved to D.C. from Michigan to take a role in a play. How long did you stay, and what prompted you to stay after that first play was over?
I moved to D.C. in Fall 2003 and I stayed until about Fall 2005, so basically 2 years. The reason I stayed in D.C. beyond that intial play was because of all the acting work that was (potentially) available. It seemed to me a burdgeoning and prosperous theater scene, even if I didn't know how to spell the word 'burdgeoning', which I didn't, and still don't. It took a bit of time but eventually I got plugged in and started getting work as an actor, and work begets work, so I stayed.
Your monologue deals quite a bit with what it's like to be a young, struggling artist. How do you think that kind of lifestyle in D.C. compares with other major cities? Is it more or less difficult to make a living? What's your impression of the local artistic/theater community? Did you find it easy to connect with other people like yourself?
I think having D.C. as my first home-away-from-home as well as my first attempt-at-being-an-artist had an enormous impact on the nature of the piece, as well as the fundamental Searching that's going on throughout the piece. There is an arts scene in the district, and it's strong and plentiful and growing more so everyday, but this is still a policy-making, political town. Collars. Ties. Pants from the dry cleaners. I don't know if it's more or less difficult to make a living as an artist here than elsewhere. I think it's always challenging, and that's the fun part, except when it totally sucks and you feel lost and hopeless; that is not fun. I love the D.C. theater community, and it is very much a community. The Fringe is only intensifying it, which is a great thing. I've been bumping into all my old peeps, and I've been like, "Peeps! Wassup!" And they've been like, "please don't call us 'peeps.' My name is Kyle, and this is Mary and John." And I've been like, "Sorry." And did I find it easy to connect with other people like me when I was in D.C.? Yes. But it took time; it usually does.
How did you get hooked up with the Fringe Festival, and what's been your experience as a participating artist?
I heard about it over a year ago, via Woolly Mammoth's Howard Shalwitz, when I was still in DC. Then I moved up to New York for the primary purpose of pursuing production of this piece (alliteration, anyone?). Meanwhile, I knew I wanted to do it in D.C., as the piece is so much about and for the District. I swapped emails, or maybe it was letters, with Molly Smith, Artistic Director of Arena Stage. I asked her, "Molly, I dream of playing my show to the city about whom I wrote it. Should I wait until I get THE production, with a big budget and an eight-week run at a big theater with an opening night party that has six kinds of cheeses and a plethora of crackers for the cheeses? Or should I just do it anywhere, anyplace, anytime?" Molly wrote back and basically said, "the latter, Josh. Just share the work." So I applied for the Fringe. It's been more joyous than I'd ever hoped. [Festival directors] Julianne [Brienza] and Damian ]Sinclair] deserve some serious applause, they have really done a great job putting this thing together. It feels like the start of something big for the city. Perhaps in time the Fringe will start to impact the theaters in town, or rather, the plays they decide to produce. As far as I'm concerned, that would a very cool thing.
In Help Wanted you mention how you can be easily distracted by obsessions -- video games, mind games, trying to meet your personal heroes. Are you obsessed with anything new lately?
Poetry. Specifically, James Tate and Stephen Dobyns. And Whitman. Whitman is on my mind a lot. I have his picture on my desktop right now, it's from when he's in his late 20s or early 30s, I think. He's looking up at me with these dreamy poet eyes and his beard is just beginning to take over. He will go on to become America's Greatest Poet with America's Greatest Beard. Does he know this, at age 30? I don't know. I'm going to grow a beard in the month of August. My girlfriend is excited about this. "Oooh, a mountain man!" she coos, as we drink our mocha frappuchinos and shop for linens at Bed Bath & Beyond. By the way, why does Bed Bath & Beyond get to
have a banner stretching across 7th Street downtown? That seems tacky. And so is that big honkin' TV on the side of the MCI Center. That was not here when I left. I walked by the other day and on the screen people were playing professional poker. What, you can't wait until you get home to watch people play poker?! You have to do it downtown on a 2,000 foot TV screen?!
Are you actually making a living as an actor these days, or are you still working a "regular job"?
No, I still work a regular job - for now. I was working as a waiter up in New York. But I just quit right before the Fringe. I have 2 more days of work when I get back. Then I'm going to northern Michigan for two weeks, to write poetry and to grow a beard like Whitman's. Then it's back to New York. I don't know what to do next. I feel like I need a break from waiting tables, though it is good money and it's flexible. But I'm worried that the work is killing my compassion for the human condition. Maybe I'll work as a Temp again. Or a library; I love libraries. I used to work in a library but I got fired for sleeping in between the racks.
Most of the people you mention as influences -- Eric Bogosian, Spalding Gray, etc., have tended to have fans who are much older than you. What kind of reactions do you get from people closer to your own age? How difficult have you found it to find audiences for your monologues?
I definitely wrote it with my age group and my friends in mind. I try to write everything for this demographic, if only because I want to tell stories to and about them/us. That's not to say people in my parents' generation or my grandparents' generation cannot access the piece; they seem to like it as well, and that's good, because people in my parents' generation are the ones running big theaters, and people in my grandparents' generation are the ones going to those big theaters! Sometimes it's difficult to find audiences for the monologue, but that has more to do with the fact that I am a new, unknown performer and this is my first piece and it's a (groan) monologue. I played to three people one night in New York; another night, five. It's tough, but those are the shows where you test your chops as a performer. And it makes the thirty-five people audiences feel like a gift from God!