You may have heard about this little musical called Fun Home. After winning over hearts and minds, the show (based on Alison Bechdel‘s graphic memoir of the same name) also recently took home the Tony Award for Best Musical. If you have been considering “Changing Your Major to Joan,” it’s not hard to see why: out actress Roberta Colindrez plays the Joan in question, Alison’s first girlfriend and confidant.
Wonderfully laid-back and funny, Roberta first grabbed our attention when she played played Adam’s best friend Tako (“with a K”) on Girls. We chatted with Roberta about her experiences in Fun Home, if she might appear on Girls in the future and her hidden talent for carpentry.
AfterEllen: The bar scene with Hanna and Tako in Girls is one of my favorites. My teeth still hurt from watching you try to open that bottle. What was your experience on the Girls set, because I hear it’s a pretty fantastic place to be.
Roberta Colindrez: The rumors are true: Lena [Dunham] is amazing. Lena is like the dream director you never had when you were discovering who you were as an actor. She’s incredible. She’s not precious. You know, a lot of times when you work with writer/directors they are kind of precious about the material that they’ve written, and Lena has like this policy-I don’t know if it’s intentional or not-but I think she works on this subconscious or maybe totally purposeful policy of hiring actors who she trusts. I mean she’s really, really kind and liberal with what people need to do with her writing. If you have a question, she’ll answer it. If you have an idea, she’ll absolutely go with it. Like, “Let’s try it.” She’s open and very cool.
AE: Do you think you might show up on Girls again because we’d love to know more about Tako. I feel like I’ve dated a few Takos in my life.
RC: Yeah, I think we’ve all dated a few Takos in our life. I hope that I’m on the show again, I had a really fun time. I don’t know, I play Adam’s best friend so whatever that leads to in the writing then, I’ll be there. I mean, if they called me in tomorrow I’d be there.
AE: I always research people I’m interviewing, and you have managed to keep yourself very mysterious.
RC: Yeah, that’s my thing.
AE: Did you study acting or were you just a natural?
RC: I did study acting. I studied acting in university in Texas for the full four years. I got my BFA in acting. I started doing theatre when I was in seventh grade and I just kind of stuck to it. I didn’t really know that I wanted to do it, and all of a sudden, I did. My brother and I wanted to be in the same class, because we were best friends, and the only thing that was available for us to take together was theatre.
AE: I love that!
RC: Ironically, the shop class was the only one that we were interested in and that was full, so we had to do theatre.
AE: [laughs] Typical lesbian story. Shop class is filled.
You play Joan in the Tony Award-winning Fun Home. In the musical, your character Joan is Alison’s first lesbian experience, and her muse. I love your character because her she’s calm and laid-back which is a perfect juxtaposition against Alison’s awkward, neurotic tendencies. What do you love about playing Joan?
RC: I love that she’s supportive. She’s not going to, like, Perez Hilton you out of the closet. She’s not going to expose all your shit everywhere. She’ll calmly walk you through the fact that you’re blatantly gay even if you’re the only person who’s not aware. She’s patient and understanding, and I think that she’s just really supportive and the ideal first girlfriend for someone to have. Someone who will take care of you and make you nervous at the same time.
AE: I think that’s exactly true. Joan is kind of the perfect first girlfriend.
RC: I do get-a lot of times after the show, older women will say, “I wish I had a Joan, that my first girlfriend was a Joan.”
AE: I know that the show has been growing and evolving for some time and you were in both the off-Broadway and now Broadway productions. How did you get involved with Fun Home to begin with?
RC: Actually this is the first musical I’ve ever done. I didn’t audition for it. I actually have no idea how they found me to this day. I’ve been avoiding even asking because I think that I would run out of luck if I knew. Basically my manager called me into see casting director, Meg Simon, who casts for Sundance and Warner Bros. She called me into her office and said, “What are you doing in July?” I was like, “Nothing.” I’d just gotten fired from my last day job. [laughs] She she was like, “Well, here’s two scripts. These are two plays we want you to do at Sundance.” One of them was a really great play by a dear friend of mine, Tanya Saracho, who is a really great playwright and she’s writing a bunch for TV now. The other one was Fun Home.
So I read it and I was like, “Oh shit, this is a musical!” I called my manager and said, “I can’t do this-it’s a musical. I don’t feel comfortable singing in front of people.” She was like, “Call the casting director back.” I called Meg and said, “Hey, I’m not comfortable doing this. I don’t do musicals, I don’t sing in front of people. I can’t do it.” And she was like, “Well, just try it out. Call the composer, Jeanine Tesori.” I was like, “I don’t know this woman-are you kidding me? She’s like a Tony-nominated composer!” So I called Jeanie and she was instantly so cool and I also have such a crush on her. She was like, “Just come over and I’ll play the piano and you can just sing. We can just play around, it will be fine.” So I go over to her apartment with my guitar and I sing a song for her, and because Jeanine is so amazing, I really did feel comfortable singing for her for some reason. We got done and she was like, “Listen, you’re great. This is going to be great.” And that’s how I got cast at Sundance.
AE: I agree-I thought you were great! I hope you have shucked those nervous feelings. You must have because you are singing every night to people on the Broadway stage.
RC: It’s still there. It’s still totally there. It’s a never ending thing. Now I just have fun with it instead of using my nerves to freak out.
AE: As a queer woman yourself, what does being a part of this groundbreaking musical mean to you?
RC: I kind of went in thinking, this is great. I used to respond to this question during talk backs and stuff with that it gave the elimination for the potential L Word: The Musical…
AE: [laughs very hard]
RC: Which is a good thing. But also, The L Word was incredible for its time. It did a huge service and Ilene Chaiken and Elizabeth Ziff-they did a great thing. They really, truly put lesbians on the map in a cool, attractive way. But the thing is that kind of show, and if there wasn’t Fun Home, there might eventually have to be an L Word: The Musical, and that would guarantee that we would continue to be seen as sexual creatures. Or only seen as lesbianism being just your sexuality. And it is obviously just that, but I went in thinking this is a chance for the world to see that lesbians don’t wake up every single day thinking, “I’m a lesbian, I’m a lesbian.” That’s what I must do-I must do lesbian things. We’re people.
AE: You don’t?
RC: [laughs] Right? Straight people don’t wake up everyday and think, “I’m a straight person.” If it’s who you are, it’s who you are. I’m just speaking for myself, but it’s just as equal and important to me that I’m right handed, or that I’m an artist, or a woman or that I that I prefer my windows open when I sleep. Those are all things that are of equal measure to me. I thought that Fun Home was going to be a really great, powerful way of saying, “Hey, we are just like everyone else, and the important thing is that we just communicate and talk to each other.” People who are other and people who are “normal.”
Really, what the biggest take away is-I just thought it was this exposé on otherism. Really, the coolest thing about it is afterwards at the show, when we are signing autographs, the amount of women who have come and said, “Thank you, because this is the first time I’ve seen someone like myself up onstage.” That’s really a powerful thing, that people can actually relate to someone. Instead of trying to understand other people, it’s really about relating to someone and that’s really the power of the show.
AE: If you weren’t on Broadway right now, what do you think you’d be doing? What are your passions besides performing?
RC: I’m a writer as well as an actor, so I’d be writing, which I am constantly anyway. Aside from that, I really like carpentry, so I’d probably be doing some carpentry.
AE: What sort of things do you write?
RC: I’m in a theatre company, I’ve been in this theatre company for the last five years and I’ve written short plays with them. But I’ve also written some feature length screenplays and I wrote a pilot last year, which I was pitching to Sundance. I’m really enthused to get cracking on some feature ideas that I have, as well as some TV shows.
Fun Home is playing on Broadway now at Circle in the Square Theater in NYC.
