Hailing from the City That Never Sleeps, Julia VanderVeen debuts at the Edinburgh Fringe with her physical comedy show, My Grandmother’s Eyepatch. Here she talks to Katerina Partolina Schwartz about clown, memorial services, the march of time and an Englishman named Nigel.
I try to really cultivate a community and an atmosphere where people feel that they do know each other
How would you summarise your show?
So, it is a memorial service for my long dead grandmother, and I always say it’s a clown show. The premise is that I’ve gathered all these people here - everyone in the audience knows my grandmother - and we’re having this memorial service because I wasn’t able to be at her service 20 years ago. And then it’s like a thinly veiled excuse to remind my nearest and dearest and whoever, whatever agents or industry people what an incredible actor I am. So, we do some of the highlight reel of my acting career starting in high school. And it’s very physical, there’s a lot of games with the audience, very playful and dumb.
What do you hope audiences will take away from this show?
This is maybe “duh,” but I really hope people have a great time. I do a lot of again dumb things, silly things with my body and I hope they feel an escape from whatever is going on in their lives, that they’re able to laugh and really be present in this moment. And then there’s also the memorial service part of it. Another way I play is very big and very with some gravitas; I love Shakespeare and I love Greek theatre and there are parts of that in the show where I’m dead serious and I’m really playing these huge emotions. And I think what’s beautiful about the show depends on where people are in their lives. I mean, I’ve had people come up to me and say, “I’ve just lost someone,” or ‘I’ve had a really hard day and that was actually really cathartic for me.” That’s the ideal is that it achieves two levels; you have a real belly laugh and you leave thinking, “Oh that was surprisingly touching,” or “I’m going to think about something that happened in the show later on.” I don’t think everyone will get maybe both of those things, but it’s great when I get that different feedback in one show and I’m like, “Oh wow, that really spoke to people differently,” which I think is cool.
One thing I’ve heard and it’s something I try to cultivate in my show that I really like. Because it’s a clown show, I’m playing with the audience and through the audience and also because it’s this premise that we’re all here for this memorial service, I try to really cultivate a community and an atmosphere where people feel that they do know each other. I ask people to share things about my grandmother and what’s been incredible is that sometimes people share things about their loved ones that had passed. They’ll give me really specific things that happened and it’s under the premise that it’s for my grandmother, but I’ve spoken to them after the show and they’re like, “Oh that was something my grandmother did.” And it’s not something that I expected to happen, it was more of a game to be, “Oh does anybody have anything they want to share about my grandmother?” to kind of put people on the spot, but it’s this really bene cool how this show has evolved to have people feel comfortable enough to bring up memories of their family members that they loved, I think that’s really beautiful. And again, that’s something that’s been surprising to me, it wasn’t necessarily the purpose, but it's been a really nice thing that’s come out of it.
What would you say is the central theme or overarching narrative of this show?
The overarching theme is that we’re only here for a short time. My grandmother was a poet, but she wasn’t able to do that as much as she would’ve liked to do, because she was involved in child-rearing, she had three children, she was a bishop’s wife; she had a lot of obligations that she had to fulfil. And then later in her life, she was 80 years old, and she was making poetry compilation books, some of her work and other stuff that she had loved. For me, also I’m in my late 30s trying to decide if I want to be a mom and I’m like, it’s kind of this imagined life of what would have happened had she not gone down this path. That’s the central theme of the show is that we have only a finite amount of time on this earth and what are we going to do with it? And it relates to the actual performing of the show because it’s asking the audience to be super present, and I think laughter is the best or one of the best ways for people to be super present.
What inspired you to write this show?
I knew I wanted a solo show, and my mentor and clown teacher, Aitor Basauri, encouraged me to write it about a family member, a female family member and it was obvious to me for it to be my grandmother. I had tons of ideas at first. I started working on the show in 2019 and then it’s been a lot of stripping away to figure out what I was really trying to say. But I did have a moment as a child with my grandmother, we were on a trip, and she turned on the TV. I was 7 and I said, “Maimee we have such little time together,” so this idea of the limited time was something I thought about even as a child. And I think something that is so present for me but present for women in general right now is what do we want to do with our lives? We have lots of options, but what’s the choice that we want to make? Again, I’m feeling that pressure a lot as the age I am.
How did you come to the realisation that physical comedy was the right genre for you?
I studied musical theatre, so I was always really in my body with dance. The singing part of musical theatre was the part that I felt less connected to. Whenever we’d be in acting class and it was like, “Choose an animal that matches your character,” I always really latched onto that because I think so much of acting is like, “What’s my objective?” like even charting what happens in a scene really put me in my head, and there’s so much information and so much play in your body, so when I was able to really embody things I’d found so much more freedom. Even as children that’s how we play, we’re not like, “Oh would my character say this?” we’re just in ourselves. So, I think it was a little bit of a natural lean from already exploring my physicality with dance and the musical theatre side, and then finding a way to really be funny in my body. Because I always leaned towards more funny characters anyway in school, and then it just freed me up to be able to be funny in my body because you don’t have to be so, “Oh what’s the joke tell,” it’s more present, more exploratory for me in my body.
Do you have a specific pre-show ritual to get into character?
I think the amazing thing about Fringe shows is that it’s sort of like you’re doing the show under every circumstance, like you’re doing the show when you left something where you were staying, you had to run and get it or the show before you ran over 5 minutes. So, it’s such great musculature for a performer, cause you’re like, “No matter what I have to do the show.” I like to do something really physical to get that play either dance or just run a little bit backstage. I tend to squat down and do some deep breathing because the top of the show, I’m entering as myself but as the character I’m playing who is myself, inviting people into the memorial service and it’s one of the most serious parts of the show. The beginning is so important, so I have to have that huge gravitas and commitment to the pain of the moment, I get myself really up and then I really drop myself down so I’m able to serve that part of it.
What’s your favourite clown character that you have created?
I have this English man called Nigel who has buck teeth, and he has a helmet and he rides a horse, and he’s very heartbroken over Desiree that he knew years and years ago. He’s really fun. And I play my grandmother. She’s not like my grandmother as in life, I gave myself permission to play and not have to stick exactly to what happened. She’s like this really earthy, weird, horny, irreverent like foul-mouthed Southern lady, which is also like so fun cause I think it’s fun to play on the like Southern women are very put together and proper, and she’s a bishop’s wife, so to then, when she comes back to life in the show and she’s just like this gross creature, it’s so fun for me. I love it.
What’s a moment in the show that you really enjoy reaching?
I think the two I mentioned. When I play Nigel, I hide my horse in the audience, and I have to go through the audience and find the horse. It’s this rubber head horse on a cane and I’m feeding it carrots just in its mouth, so they do lots of different things, sometimes they fall out, and then I dance with it later so the best is when I’m hitting myself with the head with the horse and the carrots are just spewing out of the horse’s mouth. That’s the best.
What is like to be a performer in New York?
I mean, New York is massive. I performed a little bit in the South before moving here, I lived in Texas for a few years. I think in smaller cities, it’s just a little more straight forward, cause I was also doing more traditional theatre then, more scripted plays, so it’s like, “Oh you audition here and you audition here and you do the plays,” and in New York, it’s such a gigantic industry that you can be a specific and as niche as you care to be about what you specifically want to do and what you specifically want to see. I think that is difficult a little bit as a performer and sometimes as an audience member. I’ve never done dating apps in New York but to me it feels like a similar thing where it’s like if someone’s not exactly something you’re like, “Oh there’s’ millions of other people.” And it feels that way a little bit performing as well, it’s like any night of the week you can see something truly incredible so it’s easy to be like, “Egh it’s alright.” You know what I mean? As opposed to, I perform in Philly sometimes because it’s pretty close to us, about an hour and a half away, and in Philly it feels like people have a little more ownership about the things they’re going to see. Like, “this is our comedy show that we love,’ or ‘this is our venue that we love’.
What are you looking forward to the most at the Edinburgh Fringe?
I’ve heard so much about it, this is my first time going so I’m, gosh there’s a lot of things. I’m really excited to see other shows, I’m really excited to meet artists, some that I know about, that I’m hoping to meet and some that I haven’t met before. I’ve done some Fringe festivals in the US and in Canada, and the community is just so incredible and so I’m looking forward to meeting other artists.
