Interview by: Liz Bazzoli, Associate Editor
This is the third installment of our Spring Lab Interview Series. We will be interviewing the directors of all four labs this spring quarter to celebrate their work and learn about their artistic processes. Stay tuned for more coming soon!
Liv Garcia (they/she) is a director, dramaturg, facilitator and feminist scholar. Selected credits at The Theatre School include Dance Nation, Come Back, Little Sheba, and numerous new plays produced as a part of the Wrights of Spring festival. They also serve as the co-editor-in-chief of The Grappler. Liv makes feminist-informed theatre rooted in an ensemble practice of care and coalition. When they aren’t doing that, you can probably find them thinking about early 2000s emo music or how to make it rain blood onstage.
Liz Bazzoli [LB]: So, do you want to tell me about your project?
Liv Garcia [LG] My lab is called Lady M.'s Suicide Note. It is both a text analysis project and a gender studies project. We're exploring the play, Macbeth, through the lens of the character of Lady Macbeth, both what she means to each of us in the room and what she means to culture as a whole. There is a Judith Butler-style performativity, and also exploring how actors of different gender identities embody womanhood and what womanhood means to them.
LB: That's awesome.
LG: Yeah, I know! It's really fun. I LOVE Judith Butler!
LB: So, what brought you specifically to Lady Mac?
LG: Short answer is that I've been obsessed with her forever. Long answer is that at the very beginning of COVID, I found an essay that I had written in my junior year of high school which was about Lady Macbeth as a “masculine woman.” At that point, I had just recently come out as non-binary and was like, really thinking about my own identity and thinking about, “Well, am I a masculine woman?” And what does that even mean? That sparked me going on this research rabbit hole of thinking about what people say about Lady Macbeth.
LB: Part of Lady Mac and the cultural discussion around her is one surrounding mental illness and historically the depiction of mental illness with women has been fraught. Is that something you're exploring with the work?
LG: It's something we're trying to explore. I think that is an area I don't have a lot of expertise on. That's a place where I did a lot of research just to make sure that I wasn't having this discussion about this character in an ableist way. We only see her “madness”–and I'm using madness like the way that it is used in the text–we only see it in one scene. As we're depicting her, as we're devising based off of that scene we're trying to be really honest and stay in the text and not veer into an ableist description of what we think a “mad woman” is. Instead, we go back to the text and question what is actually happening and what she is actually saying.
LB: It's a systemic trapping in a way, caught in the system that prevents you from having a means to validate your feelings because you are treated as secondary.
LG: You know, she has power, but she does not have as much power as I had initially assumed going into this process. She can only get as far as Macbeth gets. Part of the reason she has to constantly be exerting power onto him is that that's one of the only things that she can do. You see her exert power, you see her get punished for it. Those moments when she exerts power on him in a more public way, are not treated kindly in the text or in most interpretations. She still is a woman under patriarchy–“woman” with heavy quotation marks–someone who people perceive as a woman, even when she really does not want to be.
LB: Since you're talking about both power structures and systemic violence, how do you as a director navigate those heavily charged topics in a rehearsal and devising space?
LG: What I've been trying really hard to do in this particular process is bring some of the tools of feminist community building that I've learned as a WGS student into the rehearsal space. I'm writing my big WGS final paper right now, which is about how to be an intersectional, feminist director. I have tried to bring respect to everything, and have tried really, really hard to honor what my actors need and honor what my team needs and not say “We have to do this because this is the way that we've always done this,” or “I have to have this rehearsal in this specific way, because that's the only way I've seen it done.”
LB: What brings you to specifically devising, if you have a reason?
LG: I'll answer it in a research way and then a personal way. The research way is that it's the type of theater that has the most potential to be feminist because it's the type of theater where you can let the people you're working with be a part of the decision-making. If I was just going to direct Macbeth, and I wanted to do it in a “feminist way,” I would be working against the text a lot of the time. In devising, I get to bring in the text that I think is useful. When I was doing this project, it felt like in order to practice this new way of administrating that I'm trying to create, it had to be devised. Personally, I have found that traditional directing is really harmful to me and to people I love. You are so focused on “This is my world, and I have to put it on the stage. Otherwise, it's a failure.” With devising, it’s more so “Let's co-create this world, and this can be our world.”
LB: I definitely agree. How do you see your work on this show influencing your further artistic practice outside of TTS?
LG: There are so many characters that I would like to do a version of the show about. I love evil women. We've talked a lot about evil women in this process. I love the fact that we've spent so much time on this one person that we've really gotten to know and that she has become a fully-formed human being, and I would love to do that with other characters.
LB: I love that. My final question is what are you excited for people to take away from it? What do you hope people get out of it?
LG: I hope that people feel safe when they see it, which is challenging for a play that's “so and so's suicide note.” The thing that I am very proud of about this process is that we have built a room that feels safe and respectful. I want to continue to extend that to the audience. I also hope that they think about themselves a little bit differently. Maybe. I don't want to say crack anyone's egg, but in her first monologue, she's like, "unsex me!" and I'm asking what does it mean to be unsexed? What would it mean for you as an audience member to be unsexed?
LB: Very cool. Thank you, Liv, for talking to me.
LG: Thanks for letting me talk to you.
Lady M.’s Suicide Note, a new devised piece directed by Liv Garcia, will have performances 05/27 - 05/28 at 7:30 PM and 05/29 at 2:00 PM in Room 403. To reserve a ticket, visit or email the Box Office at theatreboxoffice@depaul.edu.
Cast includes Saskia Bakker, Sam Mullaney, and Athena Nickole. Lighting design by Maday Favela, set design by Saskia Bakker.
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