S2, E8 - Elizabeth Munz

Elizabeth Munz is an actor based in Kitchener-Waterloo, Canada. The episode was recorded in February 2022.

Elizabeth's social media:
Insta: @eli_munz24
Twitter: @theatrenerd_e

Podcast details:
Podcast email: artiststalespodcast@gmail.com
Website: www.artiststales.net
Instagram: @artists_tales_podcast
Threads: @artists_tales_podcast

Transcript

0:01

you Welcome listeners to Artist Tales, the podcast that features and celebrates artists from different walks of life. I'm your host, Heather Martin, and in this episode, I'm chatting with Elizabeth Munz, who is an actor, writer, and singer based in Kitchener, Canada. Welcome Elizabeth. Hi Heather. So tell me a little bit about yourself and your writing, singing, and acting. I guess a little bit about me in terms of my acting is that at the moment I strictly Well, not strictly. I tend to just do more theater than anything else because I don't have an agent quite yet. So I'm working on that. But a lot of the stuff that I've been doing right now is just community theater. And a lot of the writing I do is just for my own personal escape, which I hope to venture out later in a career. And then with singing, I've been... practicing with a vocal coach for about seven years and my voice has gotten a higher range and I'm like, oh, I didn't even know I could sing that high. So I'm always marveled by how much change can happen even with like just by practice and repetition. That's basically me. I just I'm a bit of a drama queen, very sarcastic and just love being surrounded by art in whatever capacity. Drama queen. I don't know if I'd call you a drama queen. Oh well, not to my mother and any of my siblings. Yes, I am quite the drama queen. Well, not like in the stereotypical, like going, oh my God, like I create so much drama. It's more like I'm dramatic, like, oh, whoa, is me. Like the, like Shakespearean kind of dramatic, not Valley Girl kind of dramatic. And is that why you got into acting and that sort of thing? Yeah, at a very young age, I discovered that I liked to tell stories and to be a little bit eccentric. In fact, my mom told me about a story when I was two years old. Her friend's mother, I call her my nanopet, when she first met me when I was two years old, she described me as being the next Sarah Bernhardt. And people don't know who that is. That is a very famous silent movie actor. So you can imagine a two-year-old being dramatic enough to elicit that kind of compliment. So. When my mother told me that I took it, I'm like, I took it as a challenge. I'm like, okay, yes, I will. I will do that. I'm going to be this. It was crazy big actor. And I kind of fell into it also with mom because she acted in community theater in the seventies, eighties and early nineties. So she's a bit of an actor herself. And I just kind of, I guess you can say I inherited that passion from her. And that's kind of how it all started. I've never known any other passion other than the arts. Like nothing has. nothing has really gripped me like the arts. I'd like to find out a bit more how you, the experience of community theater, because it's not something I've often gone to. I mean, I'm, I'm aware of it. And I know some community theater groups are just as good, if not better as some of the professional theater group. Yeah, it depends on where you go. Like a lot of the community theater I've done in my area is bit like a small local kind of stuff. So that the actors that are involved are seen everywhere. Depending on the show, it does surprise me sometimes of the professionalism that some theater companies are able to do with the budget and the talent that they have acquired. I've been very fortunate that a lot of the stuff that I've done is at a little theater company called KW Little Theater, which is where mom started. So second generation. So it's in a little black box. And so the difference from that compared to professional stage is that most professional stages have a proscenium or thrust stage and a black box is literally just a big black box. And you set up the chairs in any regards, so you can set it up so that the audience is facing one way or in the round or in an alley kind of function, and then the shows get performed. however way the stage is presented. More often than not, it is presented traditionally in a proscenium type way, where all the audience is facing one direction. But yeah, like the black box is very, I guess you could say it opens more doors because you have, instead of having a specific stage that's a proscenium, where it's like going, oh, well, it needs to look like a traditional space, with a black box, you can be more creative and you can have... you can have more opportunity to change the perception of a play. Change the perception of a play in what way? Well, for example, I did a show, I was a props master for the show called Blood Relations. It was a story of Lizzie Borden. The director decided that instead of the traditional way that she was going to do an alley, which is basically you put chairs on both sides of the stage, and then the actors all act in the middle of the space. What that did was, it gave the actors license to try to cheat a little bit differently. So like when you have, because when you're told in a normal setting for theater, you're told not to have your back to the audience because in the back, then the audience can't see your face or can't hear you if you're speaking because you're speaking to the back wall. Whereas with an alley, you have to be a bit, you get a bit more licensing because, well, someone's going to see the back of an actor because of how it's laid out. And so if that particular show had been done traditionally, then it would have just looked like a normal living room with normal in and outs and just gone about their way. But with The Alley, it created a different perception because now you're not just looking at the actors, but you're kind of also noticing the audience and how they're perceiving the show. And then because of how the actors are placed on the stage, you have a different way of seeing how they react. to the other actors, the other characters in the show. So it's not just a flat screen, but it's more 3D in a way, if that makes sense. It does, yeah. And with the community theater, are you able to travel around a bit or to go on the road, so to speak? It often depends. I've never done that, but there is a festival here in KW called WODL. It's the Western Ontario Drama League. I'm trying to remember all their acronyms. And so... all the community theaters in Western Ontario will submit a play and then those plays will be judged and adjudicated. And if they go on to the next round, then they will be sent to whatever theater is hosting that festival at the time. So then the stage will get, so then everything will be going to that stage and will be performed there. And the wonderful thing about that is because all the other stages in the community, as far as I'm concerned or as far as I'm aware of. they have more of a Presinian outlook. And every stage is also different in terms of size. So now whatever theater is hosting, whatever show you're doing, you have to modify your set to fit that new stage. So it's always a, it's a nice, interesting challenge. I haven't been fortunate enough to be involved in a BODL production yet, but I've seen it being done. And it's very amazing how you can take something that was in your space, put into a different space. And when you said KW, that's Kitchener Waterloo? Yes, KW is Kitchener Waterloo. Yeah, no, it's just conscious that not everybody listening will know what KW is. Of course, I have to remember that, like, this is not necessarily a Canadian broadcast. Has a global reach. So did you go to drama school at all, or has it just been you've gone into community college and that's kind of where you, you know, wrote your graph? I actually did go to college, or I went to university. I went to the University of Waterloo. They have theater program there. Essentially at UW, it centers solely on theater, but not just performance, but also backstage. So you work on productions throughout the course of the years. So there's usually one main stage production in the fall term, and then a small production in their black box theater in the spring, and then later in the spring, the end of term, they usually have another big production. And their stage is a thrust stage. So it's kind of like, so the stage is outward and then the audience curves around the stage. So for those that don't know what the thrust stage is, essentially it's, and then the black box. So yes, I went to University of Waterloo where I studied drama and I also studied background tech. So I worked on shows that I did construction for. I also did sound and video. was a lot of fun because you don't get to learn that in most other places. There are some universities like in the Toronto end that are considered conservative schools, so they will be more like focused on one particular aspect of acting or theater in general. So it would be like your sole focus is acting or your sole focus is going to be tech or your sole focus is going to be writing. And I found that I was more comfortable being at University of Waterloo, mainly because it was closer to home. And I didn't have to deal with living in a dorm. That was, that was mainly my thing, but I did learn a lot in my three years there. And because I went to the university of Waterloo, I actually got, that became a part of my credit to join the Canadian Actors Union here called ACTRA. So I'm an apprentice member of ACTRA, which hopefully will open further doors for me in both the, ACTRA's- primarily film, television, and commercials, but that could lead to equity, which is more theater. And how important is it for you to have that education or that exposure to not only just the acting on stage, but also the back end stuff, the back end tech? I find that knowing anything background is essential as an actor because, well, in order to know one, you should know the other. Like I'm not saying all background people need to learn how to do acting. But I think any actor should know the fundamentals of being backstage or being behind the scenes of film and TV because you get a more appreciation for the people that help create the work that you're a part of. Like, yes, you're acting these things, but there's a lot more that goes on in theater or film or movies than the acting. And I find that sometimes it doesn't, they don't get enough credit. So knowing, having that knowledge of what's going on, the other people that have accomplished and contributed to the show. It makes it just as successful as someone acting in a show. And in your community theater, do you get involved with the background tech at all? Or is it more are you more focused on acting on stage? I guess if you're going to put percentages on it, I think it's going to be like 75 acting 25 backstage. I've done a few shows where I've been a props master. So I make and create the props. I've done shows where I've was an actor and a props person. We have this festival sometimes at KWLT, Kitchener Waterloo Literature Theater. It's called March Madness. And so what happens is every March, generic script gets written by someone and then it's handed off to a team, a directing team, and then they have to interpret their own version of what's gonna happen in the show, and then it gets performed, and all that happens in a week. Wow. Yeah, it's stressful. I did it two years as a director and in that case I was the director, I did props, I made my cast do their costumes because I'm like going I'm not going to handle that. That's not my forte. I'm not a fashionista, I don't know what would be well. I don't really do lighting either but like as a director I did all that and it was a lot of fun to put on these like little skits. So I do have fun backstage but on stage is definitely more my niche in terms of theater. In terms of... film though, I don't mind the idea of being an actor and a writer and a producer and a director if I get to those type of credits. But yeah, I think that, and this is just my opinion, but I think that every actor could definitely benefit from taking a few courses or learning a few things about what happens backstage or behind the scenes because it makes more of the difference to know all that are involved with the process. And I'm glad you picked up on the writing because I wanted to ask you about that and also, you know, pick up with you any sort of TV or film stuff you've done, if any, or what you'd like to do. But, you know, how much of the writing and singing and even sort of film or TV work have you done? In terms of singing, I have done trying to put my brain around it. I think I've done about four or five musicals at this point, and I've done five singing competitions in the seven years that I've been practicing, five various ones in the community. In terms of directing, I've done just the March Madness as of thus far. I was supposed to direct the main stage production, but then COVID happened, so I couldn't do that. In terms of writing, a lot of what I write right now is just small stuff that I let friends read. I'm still working on the courage to get it out there fully, but my hope is that I'm working on a series at the moment that I hope will get picked up and... get produced and filmed somewhere here in Canada. That would be very lovely. It's very queer centric so the more queer content out there the better in my opinion. And then in terms of film and television I have yet to do anything on that front. I did take a few on camera classes but that was a couple of years ago when I could afford it. But because I'm now part of ACTRA as an apprentice I'm actually a part of a committee called Out committee that is like a subcommittee in terms of actor and we are working towards making queer content more accessible. And I've met a whole bunch of people that are just absolutely wonderful and amazing. And I hope that by being in this committee, it kind of puts my foot in the door and I've and get more opportunities. I've met a couple of people that are willing to help me because they know how I'm. stressful and important it is to get out of the apprentice side of being a member and just be a full member. Because I yet have an agent, it's kind of hard to get film and commercial roles and stuff like that. And I wanted to ask you, I'm glad you mentioned the queer content, because I wanted to ask you how important it is for representation, because certainly, you know, when I grew up, there was very little or it's very stereotypical in terms of... of a straight view of the queer community and also very predominantly male and white male, cisgendered. And it's heartening to see a little bit more diversity in terms of queer content. So I just wanted to ask you about that and in terms of representation. Yeah. Oh Lord, it is something that's very near and dear to my heart because it hasn't had the proper exposure. Like it's getting better. I'm not saying that we're still in the dark ages of the 80s and 90s, but it is getting and it is getting more exposure, but it's still not enough because we're still getting I'm going to mention this and I'm probably you might get some backlash from it. But so Benedict Cumberbatch has been nominated for an Oscar for his role as a queer man. Benedict Cumberbatch is not queer as far as any of us know, like, because he is married to a woman. So I don't wish to say if he is or not. But the fact that He is an actor who is seen as straight playing a gay character. Gay characters should be performed by gay actors because someone that I is, that's in our community actually made a very good point about this is that straight characters are the default in film and television and in theater. And because gay content is so sparse, it's very important for us to get those kind of roles because yes, we can technically. play gay and we can play straight because like for some of us we've had to play straight before we came out. So like we know what it is to be straight because we were that before we came out. We didn't we yes we were born gay but we didn't acknowledge some of us didn't acknowledge if we were gay till later on in life. But a straight person doesn't know truly how to be gay because they're not. they didn't have to go through the struggles that a gay person would have to. They might have seen it when it is represented in screen, but the fact is that if that's their only education or if they know people that are gay, if that's their only education, then that's only one side of the education of queer culture. Because a straight person might be writing a gay character. And more often than not in some shows, queer character is... a smaller addition like oh a like a token gay character that kind of thing like there's always there's sometimes a token black character or token asian character there's sometimes a token gay character that gets like maybe five lines in a movie or something or is the best friend of the straight white leading character so that it's also misrepresented just because that is how it's viewed in this particular show does not necessarily mean that is what the actual reality is. So the importance of having the importance of having true representation is that I want a kid who is like me to see someone like me on screen or someone like the actors that are in my little community, the committee. I want people to have the proper representation because if you grow up thinking because like I grew up not even realizing I was gay until I was 18 years old. And I didn't have the exposure to it because there wasn't any. And I think that whatever exposure that gay culture is getting, it should be properly represented and not, you know, just done because they think that it needs to fill a checkbox or it needs to fill a quota. We should have the proper representation because, well, straights get proper representation, don't they? So why can't queers have proper representation? Why can't there be something out there for every person and not just what someone thinks every person should be. GERMAINE And what do you think about writers? Because I'm just conscious that when I was growing up, I remember Ellen and I remember the seminal episode of Ellen when she came out in her, at the time, her sitcom and then it got panned shortly after. And the impact that had on me and like you just not having much representation as a queer woman, but also subsequently a lot of the shows kind of still And I'm not knocking, let's say, a Will and Grace, but it kind of in some ways does feed the stereotype a little bit of gay white men. That's a part of queer culture, but it's not the whole thing. And even queer white men are not all like that either. No. But I'm just kind of wondering not only the representation of actors, but also writers as well who can write from a more authentic voice and not necessarily... feel like they have to pander to, I mean, it's also funding and everything else, but writers in the whole community not feeling like they can actually tell those stories that don't necessarily fit the mainstream cisgendered straight white, this is what the gay community or queer community is like. Yes. I think there's always that quote of write what you know. Like when people are talking about, oh, I want to write a book, people like the first one of the first devices that you get is write what you know. And I think that is also the kind of thing that should be said in the writer's room of a TV show or a movie, right? What you know, if you don't know queer culture, don't write, if a straight human wrote about a gay, like their main character was gay, then they should not be writing that story just because they want to write a queer story, but they're straight. That doesn't make sense. Like what story can you tell from a straight point of view of someone who is gay? So it's that thing like I can't presumed to write a show about black people because I am white. So I should not write about black culture. I should only write about what I know. And that is queer culture. So I think that a writer should be very cognitive of what they want to get across. And if it's not something that is a part of their life, then maybe they shouldn't touch on it at all. It's unfair. For someone to write about a queer character and the person themselves isn't queer, just to have a queer character in a show or a movie just to check off a box is not fair. These stories need to be told from the voices of those who are gay and not from those that are straight. Yeah, I'm just conscious we're seeing gay a lot, but I'm also conscious the queer communities, you know... Yes, queer like, yes, those who are in the queer community, my apologies, yes. I said that as well, but I'm just conscious that the queer community encompasses a number of different people, sexuality and genders. Yes, I fully agree to that because I am in that category. What influences or who influences you and what you do in your art? Well, my first influence was obviously my mother because she was an actor, she got me into it. But in terms of my writing, I tend to look to the people who are like myself, like the people that I've met so far in... my little committee, there are so many great stories that come from there. But a lot of the stuff that I write is actually from my own heart. Like I write what I know, like I've been mentioned before. So in terms of influences, I can't say that. There's like one or two people, like there's a whole faction of people that I like to attribute to. Like there's a writer here in Canada, her name is Emily Andress, and she's written in a few TV shows and created a TV show that's very well known called Why Noner Earp. And she's very inspirational in the terms of how she got from point A to point B. And I kind of looked to her as like, well, I know that. She fought hard for her stories to be told. So I look to that strength in my own self. There are various, you know, I can't name like off the top of my head, cause I'm trying to remember all the people that I did have in mind, but I get influenced by a lot of people, but a lot of it it's not so much people it's mainly things. So like when I hear something that's happening that distresses me, like anything that goes against my own views, if someone has. hurt me or hurt someone that I love, then I take to my writing to vent out that kind of thing. So a bunch of people, a bunch of things influence my work in various ways, and I guess I try to keep myself open to all forms of inspiration. I mean, you've touched on COVID, and I think a lot of people, and certainly in the arts, COVID has affected all of us in various ways, but particularly in arts, in many ways, it kind of... pause things quite dramatically because we couldn't go to the theater, we couldn't even go to films, or it's just a lot of things kind of stopped quite abruptly. But more broadly, like COVID and otherwise, what kind of challenges have you faced? Well, one challenge that was very hard for me was about five years ago I did a show at KWOT, it was called Legally Blonde, and it's a very big show. If you hear Legally Blonde on Broadway, it's really, really big. We managed to do it in our tiny little black box. And I'm still a marvel that it was done, but I did something very stupid. I did not listen to myself. I did not listen to my body. And because we were a shorter, because we were a smaller cast, my musical director at the time had asked. Okay, well who's like who can sing soprano who can sing alto who can sing tenor who can sing bass who can sing baritone blah blah. So like I raised my hand that I technically can reach a soprano note if I have to. I'm more mezzo alto so I stick to a middle range. So I raised my hand for alto but I also raised my hand for tenor and bass. And because there was a smaller section of male roles or male actors in the show, they needed more of that. tenor and the bass temmers. So when they noticed that I could sing it, they put me in there, which is a big no-no. There is one song, one of the major songs of the show. I had to go from alto to soprano to tenor to bass to back to alto back to soprano, which is not a good thing for your voice. So long story short, I lost my voice in the second week of the show. And so I basically didn't sing unless it was a solo or a spoken part of one of my characters. I later found out by going to get a vocal scope, which is basically a camera that goes through your nose and then and checks your vocal folds. My right vocal fold was completely swollen. So instead of it, like people can't see my hands, but like I'm showing like two hands clapping like this. It's more like a fist and a hand clapping. Like that's how it looks for your vocal folds. So I had to see a speech language pathologist And I'm now healed, which is wonderful, but I'm very, very cautious of how I use my voice now, because my voice before my healing was down here in this register, and it was not healthy, and it was very hard in the voice. But now I'm up here in the proper timbre of my voice, and like I said, I'm now healed. So that challenge, that was before COVID, though, but it was still... It still is a challenge because sometimes I wake up and I go, oh, I overuse my voice. I should keep quiet, have it rest. And then in terms of like COVID being an issue, well, you know, because there weren't any opportunities, my creativity at the beginning of COVID kind of like just slumped down and I had no motivation to do anything. Now it's getting better, especially now that I've joined the OutActra committee, like with COVID being a challenge and the fact that Kitchener, even though it's not far away from Toronto. It's only an hour or so drive. It's still difficult to get there for auditions and like to take time off to get there and to do that sort of thing. So a bonus now is that some auditions are virtual. The sad thing is that I'm still not getting them, but a challenge right now is keeping my voice healthy and keeping my creativity up because in this kind of world where everything seems to be gray, it's hard to write something that isn't gray. Like I don't mind being dramatic as I said before, I'm a drama queen, but the world needs more light and more rainbows. And you're certainly a rainbow. Oh, I'm a big fat rainbow. Well, not fat. Well, proportions. Not fat as in like, yeah, no, I just meant like I'm a, I'm a big old rainbow. So what's next do you think? Oh, what's next? Well, I'm currently, I'm currently helping out in a few committees. inside the committee without ACTRA to do, we're trying to establish a workshop for where we can talk to a casting director about like how casting can be done for like queer people. And like it's a big thing with casting directors, like they're the ones that see the humans and are the ones that like help cast and everything. So we're trying to do a workshop for like queer performers so that we can both work together to. It's kind of hard to describe because I haven't been to many of the meetings, but we're trying to create more opportunities for queer actors. And so out of the other little committees that I'm a part of, it's the same thing. We're trying to help queer actors and also actors who are of different ethnicities, making sure they also get the same love that straight cis people seem to be getting. But hopefully sometime down the road I will have more credits under my name. I will finally... direct that show that I was supposed to do. That would be a lovely thing to be able to accomplish is to direct my show and to hopefully get the show that I've been working on for the past eight years to get produced and put on film. Well, good luck with that. And hopefully I can make it over and see something that you produce or have to copy up your cousins. The audience must know we are cousins. So I like I'm well loved. Yes, definitely. Well, thank you. It's been wonderful speaking with you. Thank you Heather, thank you so much for asking me to do this. Thanks for listening to this episode with Elizabeth. I hope you enjoyed it. More information about Elizabeth, along with the podcast, can be found in the podcast notes. If you're able to, please rate and review the podcast in the podcast apps. In the next episode, I speak with Lizzie Brown, who's a photographer based in London, England. also experiments with photographic processes using her garden as a darkroom. Here's a clip of her conversation. I began to start working in projects and the first project I did in Miami was something photographing myself and the aging process, which was turning the camera on yourself, I think is quite frightening to start with, and looking at itself, I mean... The first photo I took of myself, I sort of went upstairs, put some makeup on, and then took the photo again and definitely looked better with makeup, or I thought, because it hid all the wrinkles. So I did a major project for my MA, which was on myself, how I related to my family. So looking at parts of it is quite interesting. We often say things like... Right, looking at this part of my body reminds me of my mother's hands, for instance, or, you know, I've got size, small shoes, and my father, who was a jockey, always said that to be a jockey you had to have small, small feet. He would never employ anyone in horse racing who had large feet. So, there were things like that reminded me of my family. I look forward to you joining me in the next episode with Lizzie.