TFLL: Hello, we’re Rae and Linda, and this is Theatre for Lifelong Learning. Today our artist interview is with Irina Yakubovskaya, a multidisciplinary cross-cultural artist, advocate, and educator. Irina has an interdisciplinary master’s degree in Cultures, Literatures, and Theatre from Colorado State University, and a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from Tufts University. She has taught various acting and interdisciplinary humanities courses. Her research interests include multicultural theatre, disability and performance, inclusive acting pedagogy, adaptation, and directing.
TFLL: Tell us how you got into theatre.
Irina Yakubovskaya: I grew up in Russia and lived there up until I was 23 or 24. When I was 14, I became fascinated with the local theatre company and I started going to see their shows, and became very intrigued. I couldn’t really explain it, but I wanted to be part of that.
I also had this weird ambition that I didn’t want to just be a fangirl by the stage door. At that time we had a set of very conventionally attractive young actors at the theatre. After a show, there was always a huge group of girls screaming at the stage door, very Broadway-esque. I remember telling my mother, who worked in television, “I don’t want to be one of those girls, I want to be taken seriously. I want to be a TV reporter.” Because my mother was working on TV, she was able to provide some connections for me. My first introduction to professional theatre was when I did an interview with one of those hot actors. From there, I started doing little TV shows and interviews, mostly with actors at that professional theatre company. I became friends with some of them and I’m still friends with them to this day.
When I was in college, I lived walking distance from the theatre. I would skip classes and go to the theatre to hang out with the actors. I would just show up, go through the stage door, and help out actors with whatever they needed. It was completely unofficial, but I got to see the life from behind the scenes and went to all the shows for free, so it kind of went from there.
I also went to the university library when I skipped school to read Stanislavski. I remember like it was yesterday. I remember sitting there in this beautiful old school library from the Soviet Union, very epically museum-like. And I was just sitting there reading this for the first time. I had an “Aha moment” every five seconds, just reading Stanislavski in the original Russian, obviously, not these terrible English translations. I felt like I was finally speaking to somebody who understood the processes that went on in my mind. I could communicate with that person in terms of human behavior and how I felt about living, not just performing. It was absolutely life-changing.
TFLL: How did you get into teaching older adults?
Irina Yakubovskaya: The first time I taught older adults was when I was at Tufts as a PhD student and I taught several courses within the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. The first class I did for them was about Chekhov and theatre. That was very interesting because at the same time I was teaching undergraduates and that was a drastically different experience.
I came into the classroom and I saw a bunch of older adults who were really excited to be there and they were absolutely determined to learn. They were open minded, they were curious, they were challenging, and it was fascinating. It was so humbling to see how open they were to learning more. They didn’t have to be there. They chose to be there.
TFLL: How do you think theatre can help older adults?
Irina Yakubovskaya: Just like it can help anybody. I think the biggest thing for me that I’ve learned from teaching older adults was that older adults often get separated from everybody else, like children do. And that’s not how life works. We’re all human, you know?
People often talk about teaching children or treating children in a special way, but why? They’re human beings, there is no reason to put them on this pedestal or forget that they’re people. In my opinion, there shouldn’t be any different treatment for children or older adults. I didn’t have to and didn’t want to treat them differently professionally or educationally.
In terms of theatre, what I think can be helpful is involvement in any aspect of theatre-making, whether it’s being on stage, backstage, a designing capacity, any part of the creative process, pre-production, production, or any sort of producing. They have nothing to lose in the best possible way.
TFLL: On a personal note, what is your favorite type of theatre and why?
Irina Yakubovskaya: Of course the first answer is I love good theatre. But what does that actually mean? As an audience member, my favorite type of theatre is theatre that is dedicated, layered, and done with a set of priorities that don’t include monetization and ass-kissing.
On a professional level, just like with any other performing art or any other profession, I love theatre that is done without harming others. I love theatre that does not have a director who’s abusive. I love theatre that doesn’t do a show that’s written by a person who’s abusive. I love theatre that is not done at the expense of anybody else, whether dead or alive, and that includes accessibility.
TFLL: What new skills did you develop through theatre? And what were you challenged by?
Irina Yakubovskaya: I think I integrated my existing skills and developed them further with my theatre practice. I moved to the US to go to school in Colorado. I never learned English professionally or scholarly so I was kind of picking it up. I signed up to be a backstage person for the two Shakespeare productions at the school. Going into it, I literally didn’t know what the words meant. I was just gonna learn by doing. I was the only person backstage doing quick changes, preparing props every night and stuff like that. I knew what it meant conceptually because I was familiar with the vocabulary of theatre making, but I didn’t know the words. I integrated my existing skills and used them to acquire a better, more varied vocabulary in theatre making.
A skill that I learned when I started teaching acting was to get over myself. I was so used to the framework of the Russian Post-Soviet training of theatre in which your students call you “Master.” That’s the word they use. The Russian word “Master” means something a little bit different, it doesn’t mean “I own you,” but more “You have to idolize me,” which is no better.
There’s this mindset of entering the room and everybody who’s a student is praying to you, like you’re their god or something. I didn’t expect that of my students, but I still had this initial expectation of silence in the room when we’re about to do some acting. I realized very quickly this was not going to happen. I had to let go of the expectation, but I also learned to listen, let go, and to listen for feedback, even if it wasn’t explicit.
I decided very quickly to be flexible in terms of what I teach and how I teach. I took what they felt was more useful to them or what looked more useful to them, and integrated more of that into the performance classroom.
TFLL: What do you want to get out of doing theatre?
Irina Yakubovskaya: Right now, I have to be honest with you, I’m so jaded that I don’t feel like I want to do theatre. I want to give myself a little break and allow myself to let go of this area. I don’t want to feel like “Oh, I never want to do theatre again,” because I feel like that’s unfair to me.
In an ideal world, if I could go or when I go back to Colorado where a lot of my theatre friends are, I would like to contribute my skills, my energy, and whatever else I have to offer to maintaining, creating, and developing local theatre communities. More people should be contributing their energy and talent and skill to communities where it is actually appreciated.
Going forward, that’s the kind of theatre I would like to do. I believe in quality over quantity. I believe that if one person learns something from me or from my art, that’s much more valuable than 200 people seeing something and forgetting about it the next second.
TFLL: How has working with older adults changed your perspective?
Irina Yakubovskaya: The biggest thing I learned was that older adults are very open-minded. They were so eager. A lot of them had traveled a lot in their lifetime. For example, I taught a class about Russia and it was fascinating to be teaching them about the culture that they visited as tourists, but had no idea about. They were very willing to superimpose my knowledge and my perspective on their pre-existing impression of Russia. They were willing to fuse and mix it and learn something from it.
With every class I’ve ever taught at any college, we talked about how Boston audiences are so old and only want to see badly performed, badly directed Chekhov. And 10 years ago I would have said, “Oh yeah, sure,” but now having met older adults who go to the theatre and having talked to them, we should not be treating older adults as the enemy of the theatre because they’re not.
It’s not their fault that they keep seeing what they keep seeing. It’s our fault, because we don’t give them anything else to watch. We assume and we decide what they want to see without asking them. You gotta try and give them more material to watch and more interpretations of different things. So many theatre companies are scared of taking risks, even though it’s not really a risk. Don’t treat older adults as this homogenous group with one set of interests in some old white dude’s traditionally directed performance. They go to boring theatre and then we make fun of them for falling asleep!
You just have to treat them as human beings and understand that they will appreciate alternative and interesting approaches to things and unprecedented material. You don’t have to play it safe because that’s frankly disrespectful.
This kind of thinking is very also intersectional. Replace the phrase “older adult” with anything else and the same argument goes. Why are there not many disabled actors or disabled characters? There is a bad argument theatre companies will use of “We don’t have the audience and the majority is not going to relate to those characters,” but that is absolutely not true. Treat your audiences, and older adults who make up your audiences, as receptive human audiences, who will be interested and appreciative of good theatre about good human stories.
TFLL: What is a project you’re working on currently?
Irina Yakubovskaya: I make art and work on visual art every day, since the summer. I’m devoting my time to art right now while I’m looking for other opportunities.
I’m trying to be helpful to my theatre friends in whatever it is that they need me to do. I’ve also been writing for The Theatre Times for the past three years, which is a nonprofit and global platform that provides a voice for people to write about theatre all over the world. So I can also support theatre artists through sharing their work and interviewing them for The Theatre Times.
I do want to continue helping people, and artists in particular, to uncover their potential and to persist through whatever challenges they have or may have encountered. Specifically, with my experience as a disabled person, but also an immigrant, I think that those are the areas and experiences in which I have acquired skills and tools to share with people. Going forward I am hoping to do more of that.
TFLL: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received or given about theatre?
Irina Yakubovskaya: I think the best advice I’ve given about theatre is, “No one cares.” I started saying it at the top of class each semester. I tried to make it clear to my students that people don’t usually go to the theatre to see the actor go through their personal emotions on stage. They go there to see the story about the character. When you’re on stage and you perform or when you work on your material, it’s not about you. It’s about your character. And in order to deescalate the nerves or the anxiety that comes with it or the stage fright that many, many people get, I would say, “At the end of the day, no one cares.”
Think about it. Even if you do public speaking or presenting in class, even if you’re getting great at something, think about it in the greater scheme of things. People see you. Even if you fail in the worst possible way, are they going to talk about it tomorrow? Probably not. No one cares.
We’re all stardust, you know, at the end of the day. Does anything even matter? Especially this last year. Let’s be honest. To me this past year of nonsense helped deescalate these expectations of life and career. Just get through it, just let go.
I had a friend who is a gifted artist and I asked her many years ago, “What’s your advice?” She said, “Trust your vision, not just literally.” Even though you went to school and trained as an artist, someone else cannot teach you who you are as an artist, or teach you your own self. You can learn different tools and different techniques, and I think it applies to theatre very well.
Only learning to embody some kind of technique can take away your own individuality. It’s very important for theatre artists to stay who they really are inside and honor and acknowledge what they bring to the table. Just trust yourself and who you are as an artist to realize and channel what it is that you want to do.