 Yeah, Community Matters. Let's meet Julia Ogulvy, actor and comedian. She's gonna tell jokes for us here. I'm Jay Fiedel. This is Think Tech. It's the one o'clock block on a given Wednesday. We are celebrating a day before Thanksgiving and she is joining us for that purpose to talk about her career as an actor and a comedian and in the performing arts for a long time with great schools and a great CV. And we'll weave that into this discussion, I promise. What's Yale like if you're gonna be an actress? What do they teach you there that you wouldn't learn in the streets of Brooklyn, Julia? Well, I actually went to Juilliard. So I can't speak to Yale, although I've been on their campus and seen shows there and it's a beautiful place. Okay, Juilliard then. Yeah, very intense. Robin Williams called it an insane asylum with cellos. And I would kind of agree. I mean, a very supportive environment, a wonderful faculty and administration and the fellow students, they're incredible, amazing human beings as well as actors. And it's such a small school because there's only 18 of us per class. So there's a less than a hundred actors for all four years in this department. So it's very intense, 14 hours a day, five days a week for four years and on Saturday. So it was a lot, but I was so grateful. I had a scholarship, I wouldn't have been able to go there otherwise. And it really, the training still has my back in ways that I couldn't have anticipated in other areas besides like classical theater. You know what I mean? Like in other performance forms, like stand-up comedy and voiceover work for commercials and music comedy, sketch comedy. Like I'm just so grateful I went there because yes, it prepared me to do like Shakespeare regionally or internationally or whatever, you know? And I'm very grateful for that. But it's just been surprising, the training and how it stuck with me over the years. Well, you know, I saw Oklahoma the other day. It was the most recent version. It's only 20 years old, the original was older. And it reminded me of one of my favorite plays ever in the world, it reminded me that the Cowboys and the ranchers are not necessarily friends. And so I say to you, the actresses and the comedians are not necessarily friends. It's on a different side of the world, isn't it? How can you do both? That's so interesting. Well, it rhymes with each other, you know, in the sense that they're cousins, they're both a performance form. I think the main thing, though, is actors are used to the fourth wall and comedians are used to having that interactive in the moment element with the audience because in stand-up, there's immediate auditory calibration of success that no one can deny. As an actor, you don't know if you're bombing or not because it's a tragedy, you're in King Lear, you're like, ugh, and you don't know if someone's crying in the dark house or like going to their car afterwards, being like, wow, that moment, he like did that, it was like, it was like really good. Like you don't know, you know, but with comedy, you immediately know if it's going well or not. You know, so being an actor helps me in stand-up, but also it is very different because it's about coming from your point of view and your truth and sharing that in a comedic way with an audience versus doing a play at people. Which is harder, I suspect that comedy may be harder. I would say both are very difficult in different ways. Well, okay, let's, if you don't mind, I'd like to unpack that. I mean, do you follow, for example, the Kaminsky method? Is that an important method? Actually, I've heard of it, but I actually haven't seen it. I'm joking, what method do you follow? I mean, there are great actors who do master's classes and all that and they try to teach you their style and whatever that is. What kind of style rubbed off on you? What do you aspire to when you're on stage or on a movie set? Sure, well, I was very lucky at 18 because I was born and raised in Hawaii and then I moved to New York City at 18 to get training and to go to college. And so while I was at Hunter College, I was studying... Excellent school, excellent school. Yeah, and I was training with Maggie Flanagan at the Maggie Flanagan studio in New York City while also going to Hunter. And it was a two-year intensive Meisner-based training program. And that changed my life because at that age at 19, you're such a sponge. And Meisner focuses on emotional truth, really listening and responding and being in the moment spontaneously with everyone on stage. And it's really inside out. It starts with the emotion and the truth of the emotion and then builds from there. And then I went to Juilliard, which is the opposite, right? Which is like, it's like, it's walking and talking, how to walk and talk in a beautiful, elegant, economical way to handle a big house with no mic, you know what I mean? And so that was very outside in. And so they were these two very contradictory approaches. But in my work and with teaching, I've brought them together, like in, just as an example, well, two things. First is like with Meisner, they say, don't play the music, play the moment. But with Juilliard, they would say, of course you play the music, that's what's on the page. Do you know, so it's that difference. And also like in a fellow, the moment that Desdemona says to a fellow, I understand your theory, but not your words. She's saying, I understand you're really upset, but I don't understand what you're saying. And so for me, it's like the theory is the emotional life which an audience really responds to, but we also wanna understand the words people are saying. So we get the story, but we need both. Like if you're crystal clear, when you're speaking on stage, but not emotionally full, the audience is bored. But if you're so emotional and we can't understand what you're saying, like what's the point, right? So for me as an actor and as a teacher, it's like how to get my students and myself for the audience to experience the fury and get the words. So with Meisner and Juilliard, it was internal and external training that I like tried to bring together. So you're a hybrid. Totally, totally. You know, well, when I did radio, Michael Titterton who was then Hawaii Public Radio Director, he said, you have to imagine who's listening. You have to get in that person's head. You have to see yourself through the eyes of that person. And I think that's true in video and television. Well, it's true everywhere. But the question is, the person through the eyes of which you're evaluating your own image or sound is changing. You know, there's one thing constant and it's change. So if you've been doing this for 20 years or whatever, how many, I think it's more, I'm sorry. Then the people out there are changing and their expectations, their resonance to your emotional messages are changing. So you have to study them, do you? Well, yes, because as actors, we have to create behavior to tell a story. So in order to do that, observing people all the time, you know, currently is imperative because you want to create truthful behavior so that the story in an exciting way can be told. So actors are always observing people, behavior. And also, as you say, being conscious of how an audience takes in a story. For instance, because of TikTok and Instagram and Facebook, our attention spans are much smaller. So for instance, when I do like a sketch comedy video, I used to do it in one take and it would be five minutes. Now I do eight million quick cuts and make it 60 seconds. And that's because of my awareness of how content is taken in as things evolve. Wow, that is pretty demanding, but also that is a true fact of the change in our society. And it's a little scary because if you don't do that, you're gonna marginalize yourself. If you don't do that, you will be boring. It is, it's sad. I even experience it when I'm sitting in a play, seeing a play, I go, oh, I can't scroll down. I'm stuck here for two hours, you know what I mean? No, and then I catch myself. I'm like, oh, this is so depressing. Well, speaking of that, I mean, you alluded to the notion of getting to the truths. And I think we're all, although over the past few years with Trump, we have maybe lost or changed our relationship with truth and how we respond to things that we know are not true. But if I go to the theater, if I watch a movie, I'm actually, I don't know if this is your experience, but certainly is mine. I'm looking to learn. I wanna know, you know, for example, the movie about Spain, okay? Spanish movies, a lot of that now. I wanna know about Spain. I wanna know about the culture. I wanna know how people engage with each other. I wanna make this sort of almost subconscious comparison of life in Madrid versus life in Honolulu or wherever in the U.S. Okay, so I'm looking to be educated. I'm looking to learn. And maybe that's just my way, but I think it's really, a lot of people feel that way. So the search for truth, is it important? How important is it in delivering a product, if you will, that people will want to have? It's imperative because when something's truthful, it's magnetic. When an actor is being truthful, the audience leans forward and wants to know what's gonna happen next. And we, as humans, we can smell it. We can intuitively get whether someone is being false or being truthful and earnest in the moment. And I mean, there's content which you were speaking to about wanting to really learn about a subject or a place and the truth in that regard. And then I'm also speaking about performance element of truth in a performance. And it's just imperative because I think that's also how we grow in terms of depth and breadth of knowledge is truth. And even in something like a Marvel movie or something where actually people aren't, maybe not there to learn, but there to escape and to get lost in this other world, when the actors are really truthfully alive emotionally in that moment, whether it be anger in the middle of a fight, whether it be a sad scene, what have you, when they're truthful, it's so much more dynamic even if you're in an escapist piece. Yeah, so somehow you have to go off that way. I mean, it's in a conscious effort. Well, it's not about coming off that way. It's about using your instrument to just be open to the truth of the moment. So it's you. Exactly. It's the essential you. You have to live a life of truth. Yes, and I think a key with stand up to go there for a sec is really writing from your vulnerable truth. The more truthful and vulnerable you are about your life and how you feel about things, the more you connect with an audience and can grow your audience and the more dynamic you are. If you're kind of surface level and affectating or having affectation, the audience smells it, you know what I mean? And they're not as engaged. Yeah, right. It's a sincerity. It's a kind of harmony involved in that. But I wanna just give you an old thought that I always thought had to be true. And that is that in all of comedy, somebody said this in all of comedy, there is tragedy. There is always a sad story that you wanna deliver and people laugh as a kind of Shakespearean comic relief. They laugh because it's comic relief from a tragic truth. Am I right? Yes, because it's cathartic. Absolutely. And a lot of comedians delve into their pain to mine for material. And then people connect with that, you know? And I just finished submitting to festivals and it's been doing pretty well a short film that is about depression and the depths of depression, but it's a musical comedy. Oh no, really? Yeah, so it's really exploring because I've had struggles, I inherited chemical depression and I'm doing great now, it's been a long journey but I've been doing amazing. So I wrote a film about it and got it done. And it's exploring all the way down to the deep end of the struggle while finding light amongst the darkness. Cause at the end of the day, I think why people love comedy so much is we struggle with darkness, but we want to find the light. So comedians that truthfully delve into the darkness and find comedy from it, that catharsis is so desired by everybody, especially now during these times, you know? You write your own jokes? Oh yeah. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. You know, I'm reminded, I'm sure you had contact with this when you lived here. I guess you live here now. COVID, yeah, I was doing a play in DC when the pandemic shut it down. I came home, thought I'd be here for two weeks and I haven't lived. Okay, well, that's a good idea. There's a lot here. I'll go into that with you, but I remember Frank Dalima back in the day and Andy Bumatai, those come to mind. Then those guys got big laughs out of local audiences by making racial cultural jokes. Okay, and somewhere along the line, somebody said to both of them, you're not gonna, you can't do that anymore. You've gotta stop. I could repeat some of those jokes here except I think it's probably smarter for me not to do that. I... But I, and I thought they were hysterical and it was such a draw and I would crack up because why? Because Hawaii has such an interesting history and people did suffer and they worked hard to achieve, you know, a middle-class life and there were trouble patches along the way. And so if you make fun of that, you're given that comedic relief. So how do you feel about that? Should we, you know, should we ignore abandoned those kinds of little tragedies that are so dear to us historically because it's not politically correct? That's such an amazing question and ties into the idea of cancel culture and the debate about that. I think it's very generational and I respect how culture progresses and I think it's for the better, hands down. But I also observe this tension between an older generation of comedians. Judy Gold, a wonderful comedian, wrote this book called Yes, I Can Say That and runs through the history of, you know, being hindered and censorship in comedy. The whole history of it. She follows the whole line, gives examples and her whole thesis is like, no, we need to be able to laugh about dark things and even racial things because it's a way of just being able to have dialogue and to laugh at certain things. But my generation and the younger generation, it's much more sensitive. And I really see both sides, but I also think we're evolving in a very positive way. But I see the tension, you know, between the generations and it is a tricky thing, it is. But I think if a marginalized group says this is disrespectful, I think that has the validity because it's not for the majority to choose whether it's disrespectful or not. That's not their call. It's the people that it's, you know what I mean? In comedy, we call it, you don't wanna punch down, you wanna punch up. You know what I mean? In terms of go after the high peep, don't go after like homeless people or something. Don't hit anybody who's down, yeah. Yeah. So I think it's nuanced and I think it's case by case. I don't think you can make a blanket statement about, well, it's good, cancel holder's good or bad. It's really dependent on the situation, you know? Yeah. So much of comedy, at least in the history of comedy over the past 100 years has come from the Borsch circuit, the Catskill Mountains from Stik. And I wanted to ask you about a certain joke that a friend of mine who actually went into comedy in the Borsch circuit, always told and always got a reaction to and why it's funny or not, okay? This is slightly edgy, but I'm gonna tell you the joke. Okay. It would be a blue haired lady at the table in the front row just below the stage and in the middle of his stick, she would stand up and start walking to the back of the room. And he would say, don't go, madam, maybe it's only gas. Meaning, wait, I don't get it. She was heading off to the bathroom and he would say. Oh, I see, I see. And the crowd would go wild every time. He included that in every routine he ever did. And, you know, I mean, it's funny in a kind of, but it's funny in a kind of Catskill's kind of way. Yeah, it's very like, hey, everybody, how's it going? You know, how are you doing tonight, ladies and gentlemen? Exactly. And the people laughed because this poor lady, you know, he was making fun of her. And so there's a, what do you call it, a Schadenfreude in all of that? It's that in all of humor, there is tragedy. Well, in all of humor, there's the possibility of humor through Schadenfreude. You know, just giving some misfortune of others. Exactly, exactly. Well, I think also what might have made that joke work in the room is that he's acknowledging the truth of the moment that she is leaving. Everyone sees her leaving. So he's being responsive to the undeniable. And I think in comedy, you have to be very present in the space and acknowledge what's going on. If you lie to an audience and try to pretend it's going well when it's not, they hate you. You have to be truthful and like acknowledge, like, wow, this is really not going well. And I'm really sad right now, like this is my dream. You know what I mean? Sometimes I'll just say that. I'll just be like, well, I've lived a good life. You know what I mean? It's okay to make fun of yourself. Oh, 100%, yeah. So I wanna pick up on a conversation you and I had before we started the show. And that's this, you know, we live in a time of divisiveness, of racial strife and hatred, if you will. We live in a time of uncertainty, of fear. We live in a time of governmental overreach and underreach. We live in a time where we cannot be confident of the continuation of our middle-class lives or the lives of our children. And I have not seen, and maybe it's because Broadway has not been active for most of 2020, it's just getting active now, really. The movies are pumping things out, but they don't, none of that seems to be covering. It seems to be almost abandoned, almost ignoring the problems that we live in. And I'm kind of waiting for the arts to pick up on these huge issues, social issues, political issues, geopolitical issues that we have all swirling all around us. It's not happening. And in the past, I always felt good when a given piece of art did that, but I don't see it happening. What are your thoughts? Yeah, so two things. One is the arts haven't been able to be created for about a year. And also in terms of audiences taking in, we wanna escapism right now. We don't wanna investigate the truth of the pain of COVID right now, because we're still in it. We wanna go to the Eternals, the Marvel movie. We wanna go, we wanna beach novel. We wanna forget, we wanna forget right now. So, and I think the industry is cognizant of that. And also we're still in it. Often when you go to write something, you need perspective to look back on it and go, ah, there we are, that's the story I wanna tell. So give it a year or two. We're gonna have some awesome movies about COVID, but nobody wants it right now. Well, will you be in those movies, plays, what have you? I mean, what has your, I wanna use the word role, maybe that's the wrong word, but what has your role in the arts been? What are your favorite things to do? What are your most successful roles, so to speak? And where do you see that evolving in your career going forward? I know that's a big question. We only have a few minutes, but why don't you try and answer me? Yeah, well, I'm a bit of an odd duck. I'm very eclectic. Because of Juilliard, I worked regionally in classical plays, also in China, like internationally, but then found music comedy in LA, then sketch comedy in New York, then sketch characters, solo sketch characters, and then more Shakespeare, like Off-Broadway and in DC, and then now standup. So I'm a bit of a weirdo, and then I've done a little bit of everything. And for me, standup artistically is what I'm experiencing the most enthusiasm about right now. Because as a writer and performer, it's the most immediate turnaround. I experienced something in my life that's either painful or I find hilarious. I immediately write it, get on stage and get feedback. And that loop is really what I'm passionate about right now and the written word, getting something as tight as possible to land a laugh, you know? And I see a direct benefit of laughter that I'm passionate about because it is a form of service. Like my fiance's grandmother just turned 90. We went to Montana to celebrate last week and I made her laugh a lot. And I was like, this is what it is, relationships, bringing joy, catharsis as we talked about earlier. And that's what I'm the most passionate about right now, artistically. Well, that's very altruistic actually. You're driven by giving gifts to people, by communicating things that will make them happy. This is a good life. I feel grateful, yeah. I wanted to talk about Hawaii a little. If I look at you and talk to you for 20-some odd minutes, I don't see a lot of Hawaii, but I know it's in you somewhere. And I want to know how Hawaii affects you, how it feeds into that hybrid thing we talked about. Where it imposes its cultural benefit for you. And yeah, tell me about your Hawaii-ness. Yeah, so I was born and raised here and then I left at 18 for college, was in New York for 15 years and just came back. So I am definitely from here. I realize I look like I'm from Nebraska. You know what I mean? I do not tan. I just freckled and burned. I wrote a whole solo play about that. And I'm so grateful I'm from here because it gives me such a unique perspective. I mean, you were speaking earlier about how Hawaii culture, like we used to be more accepting of racial humor because there's no racial majority. It's Ohana vibe, you know what I mean? So it was more culturally acceptable than it is in other places. That's because of the unique makeup, racially and culturally of this patchwork quilt that is incredible and there's no other place like it on earth, right? And because I was a part of that growing up, I have a very unique point of view. Also here there's racial tension, understandably being howly I would get crap, you know? And that's completely understandable. There was an illegal overthrow of the monarchy. Like, you know what I mean, like it's fair. It's tricky because I had nothing to do with it and I can't help I was born here, but the resentment and that is totally understandable. But I have perspective and humility because as a howly person, I'm in the minority. So I felt like guilty and other and gross and weird. And then I go to the mainland and I see so many more white people and I'm like, why are you acting so white? I'm like, you're gonna get your ass kicked. Like, what are you doing? But I really like, I value that point of view because a lot of white people are used to being in the majority on the mainland. And that's changing, by the way. Give it another generation or so and howly people are gonna be the minority and it's changing in a beautiful way. Yeah, so I totally agree. Yeah, yeah, but I grew up always wishing that I was something else, you know? You know, when you bring Hawaii with you, it's like, I don't know if this directly relates. When I go to the mainland, I miss the local faces. I miss them. I want them to be more. I scan the crowd for an Asian face. I scan the crowd for a Hawaiian face. I want that and I don't get it. And so I'm oppressed by the lack of that when I travel on the mainland. And I feel that if I was an actor, I would feel the same way. I'm looking out into that sea of faces, for example, in comedy. And where are the resonating local faces? They're not there. So it's, you know, the target's different. The culture points are different. How does that affect you when you, A, you know, develop your material and B, when you're out there, you know, in the crunch, in the Jerry Seinfeld moment of trying to connect and make them respond to you? I'll tell you what's fascinating is I performed Stand Up at the Blue Note in Waikiki and it's a mix of local audience and tourists. And so I'll notice which jokes hit more with local people and mainland, you know what I mean? And like, I'll do a joke that's just, you know, more about like zip code here and Hawaiian chants and stuff like that. Manapua, Malasata, like you name it, like more local kind stuff. And yeah, it resonates more with local people and they know what I'm talking about. And then other times they have like very mainland New Yorkie references that wouldn't hit necessarily here. And so I think it's just like knowing who's knowing your audience, you know what I mean? And Hawaii is a huge part of my culture. So a lot of my material involves that. Let me talk to you about the future of the arts in Hawaii. And then I warn you now, I'm gonna ask you about the future of the arts globally after that. But looking at Hawaii. It's a heads up. Right, it's a heads up, yeah. I mean, where are we going here? I mean, we have a few theaters, we don't have as much performing arts as I would like to see, my favorite one to admit to you is the opera. And I cry at every opera day right now. I'm a sucker for an emotional bitch. And I wanna know what you think about the future of this place, is it fertile ground for the development of the increase of the arts? Or is it gonna go flat on us or are we gonna watch movies and do little else? I think it's a fervent place in time. And I can only say that about the future by looking back, I left in 05 and I came back about all these years later. So when I was here in high school and middle school, like I grew up at Diamond Hill Theater and Minoa Valley Theater and when I come back, like suddenly there's an incredible slam poetry spoken word community. There's a wonderful improv community and alternative comedy community. The stand-up community has expanded. There's more actor groups doing work, you know, UH Theater Department. They've got a lot going on and it's really exciting to see. And also I'm teaching for Minoa Valley Theater right now. I'm the education coordinator and also teaching classes. And my students just have a hunger to learn and wanna tell stories and wanna learn how to do it. You know what I mean? So I think I have a lot of hope and I think it's gonna keep moving forward in a great way. Can we send our culture to the mainland? And I'm thinking specifically of a play called Allegiance that opened on Broadway a couple of years ago. It was about the internment camps during the war. It was a serious play made into a movie, Selanga. And it was very good. I saw it here and I saw it there. But six months later, it closed. And you know, the big opening because everybody from Hawaii went to see it a few months later, not gonna happen. So my question to you is can we sell our goods on the main? Can we sell our history, our culture through performing arts, you know, the storyteller with the Hawaii story? Is that ever gonna be worthwhile? Or is that gonna be buried in other materials? I think we'll always have the mainland. I have found people on the mainland are super hungry for stories about Hawaii because it's such a mystery. You know, in New York City, they're like, you're from Hawaii. They look at me like I'm a unicorn. They know nothing about it. You know what I mean? And a specific example of the hunger and curiosity that is there is I'm not sure if I'm allowed to give specifics on this but there is a huge composer, Broadway composer who is collaborating with a very famous, I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about a Hawaiian, like one of the most famous Hawaiian musicians right now and they're collaborating to create a Hawaiian musical that will be workshopped and potentially could go to Broadway. And I've listened to some of the music and it is mind blowing because it has Hawaiian, it's Hawaiian myths, Hawaiian chants but also combined with the genre of musical theater but in a respectful way, not like a five, six, seven, eight. You know what I mean? Like it's not, you know, it's so beautiful. I've never heard anything like it and it's really incredible. So I don't think that so much is like selling it to mainland people. I think there's just a curiosity for them to learn. I think, I can't speak to that play you mentioned. I actually haven't seen it and Broadway is just, there's so many variables at play about whether something runs or not. You know what I mean? Oh, it's a tough business and I followed it. Brutal. Brutal, brutal. So my last question or area that I would like to cover with you, Julia, is this, you know, Broadway was down for a good part of last year. It's coming back and how strong that recovery is, we'll see because it's a function of how people react to the spikes in COVID. And I mean, it was wonderful to see it come back. Wonderful, but it's different and it will be different. And so my question to you is, what is the future of Broadway and the performing arts as you see it? It's a three-part question. I'm sorry. What's the future of Broadway and the performing arts? The second is, what is the global future of the arts? Because we live not in a flat world anymore but a completely interdependent world. And what happens in Kiev means a lot to what happens here. All those stories are worthy stories everywhere. And I wonder what you think about the, I don't wanna say conflation, but the interdependence of these stories and this art as it is performed hither and yon, not only on stage but in movies, which seem to be more international all the time given, stay at home COVID. And finally, the third part of my question, I love asking three-part question, but I know you can handle this. What's your role in all of that going forward? So I don't think of it internationally as interdependence. I think of it as interconnectivity. Okay. So there's this very positive thing of like because of social media, because now Zoom during the pandemic has really connected us and because of the internet, like there's a beautiful exchange that's happening much more quickly in sort of that post-modern way of combining cultures and forms of art to create multimedia pieces. And so I think of it that interactivity that's been accelerated is a really positive thing for the arts moving forward. In terms of New York, it's interesting. I've been home in Hawaii for over a year and a half. And just the other day, I went to the arts section of the New York Times to catch up on reviews, you know? And I really went, wow, it's the backlog of shows that closed now being produced, right? When, you know what I mean? That had closed because of the pandemic or it was so sad, I knew actors that had been rehearsing and then opening night was about to happen and everything got shut down. Well, now those productions are being done. So right now it's kind of a time of catch-up, but I think I imagined and I think right now we need escapism, which I think is totally fair. And I would imagine as we spoke to earlier, I think down the line, we'll have really interesting plays reflecting on this time, you know? And then in regards to my role in this, I think I can only contribute from the truth of my experience. So whatever like this short film called Everybody's Got Something that I made, it was about the truth of my experience with my years of struggle with depression but exploring it in a comedic and musical way. As I move forward, whatever I experienced in my life, I think it's my job and all I can do is truthfully share my point of view and my experience in an entertaining way. So I think that's my role in all of that. I think I got to all three. Did I got to all three? You did, you got to all three. Not everybody can do that. Julia Ogilvy can answer a three-part question. She's an actress and she's a comedian and I have really enjoyed this discussion and I'm gonna work hard and try to get her to come on the show again and again. Thank you so much, Julia. Oh, thank you. It's been such a pleasure. Aloha.