spotlight on author annabelle Gurwitch

An interview with Author and Actor Annabelle Gurwitch
by Sue Staats

​

---

register for annabelle gurwitch

​Why did I want to interview Annabelle Gurwitch?

Because she co-hosts an incredibly cool podcast, “Tiny Victories?” Because one of the things we have in common is discovering the true state of our aging necks on Zoom? (learn about this when Kelley Ogden reads “In a Muted Room No One Can Hear You Scream” at our May 27 Stories on Stage event).

Because she appeared on one of my all-time favorite TV shows, “Better Things?” As a rabbi?
Because she’s had an amazing career as an actor AND a writer?
 
Well, yes. Partly.
 
But the main reason I wanted to talk to her is this: Hers is a life strewn with disasters, both personal and professional, and she turns all that pain into gold. Who finds the funny—well, maybe not always the “funny,” but the wry and poignant— in her own divorce? Her own cancer? Annabelle Gurwitch, that's who. 
 
But time and distance and overstuffed schedules prevented our Zoom chat, so I sent her a small stack of questions via e-mail.  
 
Sue: I love how you find the funny in disaster. How, and why, do you turn disaster into comedy? And when did you first discover you could do this?
 
Annabelle: I grew up in a family that was chaotic—one day my dad was driving a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud in Mobile, Alabama, where I was born, and in what seemed to be an overnight reversal we lost our home, were packing up everything we owned and driving north in my mother's old wood paneled station wagon to live with my aunt and uncle in Wilmington, Delaware. My parents were so strapped for cash that my sister and I didn't even have winter coats. Rinse and repeat, several times in my childhood.

So, as a kid I can't say I was able to cope with humor, but somehow this kind of living made me very resilient—I guess it was sink or swim. I sometimes say that I use humor as a coping mechanism, but it's also, and perhaps because of, this childhood, that I see things from a point of view that is just a bit skewed toward catastrophe.

I tend to focus not on what's brightly lit but what’s lurking in the shadows, and I think that adds up to comedy. 

Here's an example—in writing memoir I am always thinking about how I perceive the world and how the world perceives me, and inevitably my expectations are different than I imagine. So in the chapter of my essay collection (You're Leaving When?: Adventures in Downward Mobility ) where I write about entering the dating world after the demise of a two-decade marriage, and going to have the "Mona Lisa" laser,  I discover when I show up that it's been scheduled to take place in a fertility clinic, and I check in and see that clients of the fertility clinic are seated in an area brightly lit, the sun is streaming in through the windows, there are long sofas where entire families are sprawled out, and the area has orchids the size of baby's heads. I'm shuttled off to a dimly lit cubicle that has wing back chairs and black and white photographs of sand dunes. That's the kind of scene I have to write about. It's not like I'm looking for humor, but the hilarious indignity of it all, I couldn't make it up!  
 
Here's another example from the book, from the chapter “Spirited Away” that illustrates one of the book’s themes: “there are times in our lives when the story we tell ourselves about who we are no longer matches up to the story we are actually living."  
 
I have booked what was termed an  "empty leg"  discounted  plane ticket  from Los Angeles to San Francisco - and I expect to be on some sort of medical transport flight where I  will be accompanying a kidney in a cooler- but it turns out to be a seat on a semi private flight and I discover that despite the fact that as an ardent environmentalist who has railed against private flying -  how quickly I'm seduced by the luxury and how I may not be the person I thought I was.
Sinking down into my plush leather padded stand-alone seat was like easing into a La-Z-Boy recliner. In 2019, Forbes published a study by a microbiologist showing 265 bacteria colonies on an airplane bathroom flush button, while 2,155 colonies were found on a tray table. Not this one. It was made of polished wood, blond with a swirling Mondrianesque grain, and squeaky-clean. I considered lopping it off and slipping it into my carry-on, like a serial killer’s souvenir. I inhaled deeply: my seat smelled like leather and people who’ve paid off their college loans. 
 
Sue: One of your recent projects is the podcast “Tiny Victories.” Tell me how you came up with the concept.
 
Annabelle: The pandemic highlighted the kind of thinking I've been working on cultivating through my meditation practice, an appreciation of small mercies and minor accomplishments. Like many folks in Los Angeles, we went through several lockdowns, and in that Groundhog Day-ing of life, things like bird song, hot coffee, clean linens—all of these things took on a greater importance and seemed marvelous.

Just getting up in the morning and getting dressed seemed like a "tiny victory," and I wanted to affirm this kind of thing and provide a space where tiny victories would be celebrated along with the practice of tuning into the small details of everyday living. 

What's been so rewarding about doing this podcast is that listeners have taken the cue and called into our Tiny Victory Hotline—323 285-1675. We've had Hotline calls from Australia and South Africa and the calls range from traffic related tiny victories to parenting, dentist office and customer service kindnesses. It's been super inspiring and also often hilarious. It's a tiny podcast. Our episodes are only fifteen minutes long, and can be found wherever you listen to podcasts.
 
(And right here: Tiny Victories Podcast check it out, call in your tiny victory. It’s really fun!)

Sue: You're an actor. Have you ever heard your written work performed by another actor? Are you looking forward to it? Or do you have some trepidations about hearing another interpretation?
 
Annabelle: My ex-husband Jeff Kahn and I co-wrote a book together "You Say Tomato I Say Shut Up". We turned that book into a play, and it's had  over nine national tours, so it's been startling to see versions of us crop up all over the country. It's also extremely satisfying to see that the material is durable enough that it can be performed by others. I've only seen one version of the tour and I loved it. I thought the Annabelle was a much better version of me and I wish I was as winning as she was!  

Also, as I spent the majority of my life working in the theater as an actress, and I have a wide community of performers in my life. I've been fortunate enough to recruit actresses to launch my books. Over the years, I’ve launched my books with readings that have featured performers including Marisa Tomei, Gina Gershon and Tony Award winner Tonya Pinkens, Saundra Santiago, Charlayne Woodard, and Broadway leading lady Jessica Hecht. What's so incredibly satisfying is that when others read the work, they always surprise me. I can't wait to hear what Kelley Ogden will do with "In a Muted Zoom, No One can Hear You Scream." (No pressure, Kelley!)
 
Sue: Which do you consider yourself, primarily—actor or writer? 
 
Annabelle: I'm a very social person and theater will always be my happy place, I'm also an OCD person and so repeating the same dialogue and entering a world where I get to act out the same scenes every night of a run is so satisfying for my brain. Also, I love an artistic collaboration. I think I will always see the world through an actor's eye, but writing affords me the kind of contemplation of life that most fits what interests me about life. 

And, while sitting down and writing is always a struggle, I love the editing process, as it means going over text, over and over again. I also love teaching writing for the same reason. Some people peak after several reads—I enjoy reading multiple drafts of essays.
 
As to what interests me about life: I know that no one reading my work ever stops and says, it's interesting how Annabelle is inspired by Virgina Woolf, but I keep a copy of Mrs. Dalloway on my desk and when I'm writing, I will read passages and it helps tune my brain to the details and deeply considered moments she illuminates. In my own prosaic way, I am attempting, I would never suggest I am successful at it, but I am attempting to approach this question that Woolf wrote in To The Lighthouse:  
 
What is the meaning of life? That was all—a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.
 
Sue: Thank you, Annabelle. Virginia Woolf is one of my go-to writers for inspiration, too. Glad we have something in common beside aging necks! 

###
 
To the reader:  congratulations on getting this far! Hope you’ll come to the event and meet Annabelle in person and, of course, purchase a book from Capital Books!

There were a couple of questions left over. Maybe you would like to ask them at the event, during the author chat after Kelley Ogden performs Annabelle's wonderful essay:
“Annabelle, how is your life opening up, now that Covid restrictions have relaxed. Is there anything you miss about the isolation, and communicating through Zoom?”
“Annabelle, what are you working on now?”
“Annabelle, how’s the ukulele playing going?”
And lastly, to save you the trouble of looking it up on your own, here’s what a Mona Lisa Laser treatment is https://sacwomenshealth.com/monalisa-touch/

---

Sue Staats is a Sacramento writer. She directed Stories on Stage Sacramento for six years, from 2013 to 2019, and now contributes interviews and blog posts to the website, and cookies to the events (when they aren't virtual).  She’s currently looking for a home for her short story collection and getting her feet wet in a couple of other projects,  with the hope that eventually one of them will draw her into deeper waters.

Sue's fiction and poetry have been published in The Los Angeles Review, Graze Magazine, Tulip Tree Review, Farallon Review, Tule Review, Late ​Peaches: Poems by Sacramento Poets, Sacramento Voices, and others. She earned an MFA from Pacific University, and was a finalist for the Gulf Coast Prize in Fiction and the Nisqually Prize in Fiction. Her stories have been performed at Stories on Stage Sacramento and Stories on Stage Davis, and at the SF Bay-area reading series “Why There Are Words.”