Helen Deborah Lewis is Assistant Professor of Theater at The Boston Conservatory at Berklee in Boston, MA. Lewis is a scholar and dramaturg whose research interests include queer theater and performance, drag performance, theater historiography, American musical theater, and popular entertainment. Lewis holds a Ph.D from Tufts University.
TFLL: Tell us how you got into theater.
Helen Lewis: When I was about seven years old, I attended the local JCC (Jewish Community Center) day camp. Each kid could sign up for three “elective” activities outside of the regular camp stuff. Because I was so short, I didn’t want to sign up for anything athletic. I couldn’t run fast and I was smaller than everybody. There was a drama elective and I chose that one because I liked being up in front of people and playing pretend.
The camp was doing a production of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. I don’t think they gave us an audition. They just wanted to make sure kids could read the lines and wouldn’t start crying up on stage.
I got the role of the Red Queen. I remember being up on stage in the amphitheater and thinking, “This makes sense!” Throughout my childhood, anytime I was involved in theater, the people tended to be friendly, accepting, kind, and just as weird and overly sensitive as I was. I always felt a sense of belonging in those communities, especially since I was a pretty unusual and anxious kid. It was this intuitive sense that it was the right thing for me. And the theater kids didn’t bully me. That was a nice change.
TFLL: How is theater a lifelong practice for you?
Helen Lewis: I made the insane decision to make it a lifelong practice, professionally. And my social life has always been somehow connected to the theater. I think theater can be a lifelong practice in any way you want it to be. If you’re a theater spectator, you can make the theater part of your life by attending performance and being inspired and excited by whatever you happen to see.
If you’re a working artist, it can be a lifelong pursuit, in that you either do it and get paid for it, or do it because you love it and you’re not getting paid for it.
TFLL: What inspired you to go into teaching theater?
Helen Lewis: I fell in love with my college theater classes, particularly the ones focused in history, theory, and dramaturgy. I love doing research. One of my first college papers was a 20-page production history for John Bush Jones’s class. Next to my grade, he wrote on the back, “Have you ever thought about becoming a theater historian?” So that certainly was inspiration.
When I studied acting at a conservatory in London, the classes that really resonated with me were dramaturgy and playwriting. The playwriting teacher Nigel Gearing (which might be the most British name of all time) had faith in me, for some reason, and encouraged me to pursue dramaturgy or teaching.
TFLL: What is your favorite type of theater to be involved in?
Helen Lewis: The more wacky, bizarre, and campy, the better. Camp is probably my favorite genre of theater or film. What camp gets is the ridiculousness and absurdity of everything.
I love work that’s super abstract and experimental: Rolling around on the floor, screaming. There’s a giant Conestoga wagon in the middle of the room and lizards are crawling out of it. Amazing. I also value work that’s about human relationships and the need for connection. Theater allows us to explore messy human relationships in a safe atmosphere.
TFLL: What type of theater courses are you teaching this semester?
Helen Lewis: A fun class I’m teaching this semester is 20th-Century American Theater. I try to teach it as a socio-political history of the United States through the lens of theater, and vice versa.
Recently, we looked at the Little Foxes, and Lillian Hellman’s letter to the House Un-American Activities Committee. We examined what a terrifying, paranoid, polarized time that must have been. Students seemed to really connect with that time period and find connections to current events.
In my Queer Theatre and Performance Class, we just discussed the AIDS Crisis. We watched the extraordinary documentary How to Survive a Plague (2012). One of the figures who comes up –because it’s about AIDS activism in the late 80s –is Anthony Fauci [who] at the time was the director of AIDS research at the National Institute of Health. So you’re seeing these ACT UP protestors burning Fauci in effigy because they felt so angry with the NIH. These are the moments in my teaching when the content feels frighteningly connected to where we are today, even if the contexts differ.
TFLL: How do you think theater courses and or theater helps older adults?
Helen Lewis: How could it not?! From my experience teaching acting and improv to non-majors, [theater can help anyone]. Engaging in Viola Spolin’s theater games, Augusto Boal theater exercises for social justice, or even just doing silly improv activities or working on a show. It’s about collaboration and coming together to achieve a goal, even if that goal is low-stakes. It’s about communicating with other human beings and being vulnerable with them in a safe space. It’s about storytelling and playing, which is really what theater is at its core: humans love telling stories and sometimes we like them acted out in front of us.
TFLL: How have you applied the skills you developed in theater into other parts of your life?
Helen Lewis: I wish I could be the person that my students think I am because when I’m teaching, I’m at my best: patient, welcoming, forgiving, calm. I try to make it as equitable a space as possible, one that doesn’t engage in dualistic or absolutist thinking.
But then I leave the classroom and get into my car and I’m screaming at cars on Storrow Drive and calling people assholes. I’m a human being. I’m incredibly flawed, but when I’m in the classroom I’m a much better version of myself. I’m always looking to be more of the professor-version of me, and not the neurotic, impatient me who exists outside the classroom.
[Another way theater has helped me is] in social situations. Theater training taught me how to really listen and engage with other humans.
TFLL: What’s your most memorable theater moment?
Helen Lewis: In grad school, I was in a French sex farce directed and translated by my dissertation advisor. It was a really funny show, with a great team of performers, both grads and undergrads. I got to wear this Victorian dress with massive shoulder pads. There was a lot of [slapstick comedy] plus, slamming doors, yelling, etc.
There were moments when everyone on stage was trying so hard not to laugh. We’d have to bite our tongues. I think I gave myself a canker sore in that show just trying to keep a straight face.
What was really nice about that show was getting to see a different side of my dissertation advisor who in my head is this accomplished theater scholar. I got to see him be silly which really humanized him for me.
TFLL: What’s the best piece of advice you have ever received or given about theater?
Helen Lewis: Don’t tell anyone you’re talented. Let them figure it out for themselves. If you’re a good performer, a good director, a good teacher, a good choreographer, a good comedian–don’t tell people. Show them through your work.
TFLL: What would you tell someone who’s never been involved in theater before?
Helen Lewis: RUN! No, I wouldn’t say that. I would ask them when they think of theater, what comes to mind?
In our culture, we discount live entertainment. We treat it as this extraneous activity or a diversion that isn’t really necessary for survival. Meanwhile, in the middle of the pandemic, all of us were incredibly dependent on all media content that kept us entertained, gave us pleasure.
I’m curious about the many ways people define theater, especially if they’ve seen very little of it. The only theater most Americans attend is at high schools and middle schools. Is that theater for them? Is it Ariana Grande in a poodle skirt? Is it Shakespeare in a textbook?
I would ask somebody “What does it mean to you?” It carries different meanings within our culture, and globally. The best way to preserve theater is to allow for the multitude of interpretations and valuations of live performance and how it makes meaning. There’s room for all of it.
Photo Credit: Helen Deborah Lewis, 2017