Zehra Fazal

Q Briefly describe your background/training.
A Zehra FazalI grew up in West Lafayette, Indiana. My parents were Pakistani immigrants who had settled in the US for work opportunities. My parents were medical doctors, but each had a love for the arts, which they cultivated in their children. Through middle and high school, I did a lot of speech and debate competitions — the categories I rocked regularly were prose, dramatic interpretation, original oratory, policy and Lincoln Douglas debate.

I went to Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where I majored in Japanese Language and Literature. My thesis specifically focused on gender construction in the contemporary musical theatre of Japan. I spent ten months in Japan where I was exposed to highly-stylized theatrical conventions. In summer of 2004, I earned a grant from Stanford University to study with the Takarazuka Revue, Japan's renowned all-female musical theatre company. My work with Takarazuka resulted in me translating and directing the English-language premiere of The Rose of Versailles, a famous musical from the Takarazuka repertoire.

As an actor, my training has been in the "doing" — I performed in many productions at Wellesley and Wellesley Summer Theatre, the college’s professional company. After college, I moved to Washington, DC, where I have had the privilege of acting with several theatres in the area — The Kennedy Center, Adventure, Journeymen, The Bay Theatre, Rorschach, Open Circle, Scena, and Synetic, to name a few.
Q How old were you when you knew you wanted to be an artist?
A Art, in all its forms, has always been a part of my life. Playtime for my family always meant “creative expression” time. I was 9 when I first picked up a pencil and tried to draw the cartoons I saw on television. As for theatre, I think when I played Lady Macbeth in our 4th grade abridged production of Macbeth, I was converted for life.
Q Who is your greatest professional inspiration and why?
A Yu Todoroki of the Takarazuka Revue of Japan. She’s been a performer with the company for over 24 years, and who I had the brief pleasure of being in the presence of when I worked with them. The discipline with which she approaches her roles and her craft is really inspiring. She’s also an accomplished oil painter. I find artists who are able to cultivate their work in various media inspiring.
Q How do you manage wearing different 'hats' as a self-producing artist? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses?
A It’s a difficult dance, and one I am far from mastering! I just love wearing all the hats — from developing the concept and the pitch, furiously writing and editing the script, creating materials for promotion, and then producing and performing it. It’s an exciting ride, and I find that I teach myself many things along the way. Last year I managed my own Fringe tour of My Friend Hitler, a solo-piece I adapted and performed at CapFringe in 2007. I took it Indianapolis and San Francisco. It was a huge undertaking to arrange, but I learned how to really trust myself as a working and traveling artist.

This strength of passion is also my weakness — I am unabashedly a perfectionist, and I tend to want to control every element of the process — I know that I need to learn how to delegate and seek out creative partners to collaborate with.
Q As a self-producing artist, what qualities make for a good show idea in your opinion, and what is typically your first step in realizing your artistic vision?
A As far as solo shows go, it’s all about making your own opportunities to showcase your strengths. I like to make opportunities that would not necessarily exist for myself in the commercial world of theatre. The business of theatre and film is all about what your “type” is. The opportunity to be a true chameleon is rare. So, I guess the first step is finding a spark of a story or an idea that only I would be able to tell, and that might go against the type I would be considered for in a mainstream theatre production.
Q How much material do you prepare for a show, and what percentage of it typically makes it into the final performance?
A There’s no formula …it’s all about editing and work-shopping and re-editing until the piece is a cohesive whole. When it comes to adaptations, it gets tricky — what to cut, what to rearrange, what to include. When I adapted My Friend Hitler, a show that was originally four characters into a solo-performance, I ended up leaving my favorite passages on the cutting room floor. Difficult choices to make when you get so intimately involved in another author’s language, but ultimately if its not serving the arc of the piece as a whole, it has to go.
Q Speaking as a spectator, what do you look for in performance?
A Honesty is riveting. Of course, being a fan of highly stylized theatre, I am charmed by beautifully constructed visuals and atmospheric spectacle. But ultimately, underneath the spectacle, there needs to exist the bright burning flame of honesty. Mike Daisey’s solo show at Woolly (How Theatre Failed America) blew me away. It was stripped of “theatricality” — it featured Daisey sitting at a desk, simply lit and speaking explicitly and intimately about his personal experiences — it was thrilling to watch.
Q What makes your work unique?
A I do adaptations of work that is not known widely outside of its country of origin. I like to make that which is foreign and seemingly inaccessible more accessible. I aim to shift the way the West views art and broaden our interpretations of theatre to include visual and stylistic vocabulary from other cultures. It is these areas of fusion that I like to explore, and where I think amazing new things may be discovered.

As for the original material I generate, admittedly, I like to pick at things that most people don’t want to touch. If it’s for the sake of dispelling fear and stereotypes, I like to push buttons and push people out of their comfort zones. I also think I have unique point of view, as a Muslim woman, a voice that’s not heard in the arts very often.
Q What does 'success' mean to you?
A The idealist in me believes success is finding your own voice, and helping others to do so in the process.

Speaking more practically (and perhaps in the voices of my South Asian parents,) success is the marriage of doing what you’re passionate about and being able to financially sustain yourself from it. By my own definition, I’m not quite “successful” yet.
Q Why are you doing the Capital Fringe Festival?
A A fringe festival is always a grand adventure. I love to feel connected to a larger community of artists and exchange perspectives. I learn so much from watching other work. And celebrating and sharing the DC theatre community, a community that has nurtured me over the past four years, with artists from across the country and world — that’s something I’m really looking forward to.

My new solo-show is a love-letter of sorts to the experience of growing up Muslim in America, so it veers into some very personal territory. I look forward to sharing my stories with you.