Zainab Jah and Jayme Lawson on the Vulnerability of Theater Acting
Monday, May 11, 2020 at 2:16PM 
Lupita Nyong'o and Zainab Jah in "Eclipsed"
We continue the conversation between Zainab Jah and Jayme Lawson from the Sundance 2020 film Farewell Amor, that we started yesterday. Both actresses have worked on stage and in film and today they're speaking to what diffrentiates the experiences. Jah also tells us about the time she co-starred on Broadway in 2016 with Lupita Nyong’o in Danai Gurira’s play Eclipsed, about five Liberian women and their tale of survival near the end of the Second Liberian Civil War in the early 2000s.
The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity...
JAYME LAWSON: We did Farewell Amor last summer and then I went to do For Colored Girls in the fall and I realized I need both equally. There's a rigor in theater in the way that I've been trained. I just need the full body experience that happens in theater. I crave that. But there's an intimacy on film that I equally value that you just can't quite get on stage. The nuance in behavior you can try to get it, but it's just not the same.
Zainab Jah & Jayme Lawson
ZAINAB JAH: I feel the same. I need both. I need the physicality, the immediacy of theater, it's a conversation as you say, the audience reacts to you immediately. You can sense it. You can feel it even if you don't say a word -immediate response and reaction. So you feed off each other psychically in the theater. Whereas with film, like you said, you do get to have that intimacy. You get the closeups, you get to be able to telegraph what you're thinking without having to say anything. You can read it in the eyes. So I love the idea of both. I can't function with one without the other and I'm a really physical actor because I have a dance background. I find if I'm in a place where I'm just doing nothing but TV or film, I start getting really antsy. I need to break a sweat, I need to feel that thing in the back of my neck, that muscle, that breath, that tension you feel in your body when you're on stage. I thrive on that. I'm actually in a place where I'm really missing theater right now.
Jayme Lawson with Sasha Allen in For Colored Girls at The Public Theater
ZAINAB: I think with stage, especially for me it's, it's the one place where it's a complete synergy of all of those things. You're physically involved and you're mentally and emotionally involved, it's all happening at the same time. With film, there could be moments where you have to hold your body still for a certain close up. The audience doesn't see what your little finger is doing or if you're tapping your foot. Whereas on stage it's a full body experience. They can see you from head to toe, even your breath, they can hear it in the way your voice is coming out. With film you can do so much great work, but at the end of the day you have to give it up to the editor and the director.
JAYME: Yep.
ZAINAB: You're more vulnerable on stage because everything is right there, happening at the same time. There's no time to edit or change or cut and start again. Whatever's happening right there, is happening. That's so scary. That's why not a lot of people do it. I have friends who've done a lot of TV and film and when they have to go and do a play or do something on stage. They're like, I can’t , this is terrifying. They've become so vulnerable.
JAYME: For example, you hear a lot of film actors say that the intimacy they can produce in film is hard to translate in theater because theater is a full body experience. Just the technical level of breadth support, carrying the language and the use of language like that is something that you don't know about with film. Whereas theater is all about the facility of language and use of language and body at the same time.
ZAINAB: As the actor you have to conquer whatever may be happening to you physically. You have to show a side of yourself you don't really want anyone to see. You have to for the sake of the character and the storytelling. And it's so challenging. But we thrive on that, don't we?
Did you ever see that play Jerusalem with Mark Rylance? That's one of those moments I mean when I talk about the perfect synergy between the audience and the performers. I remembered when I saw that play, when the show ended, it's like every single one of us at that Broadway theater exhaled at the same time. Like none of us had been breathing for two hours.
The conversation shifts to Jah's experience working with Lupita Nyong'o and Danai Gurira on Eclipsed...
ZAINAB: Oh God, that was so much fun to work with. Well I don't know if I could call it fun but it resulted in a friendship that we have to this day still. We literally had been texting each other this week. I had met Lupita when we did Eclipsed the first time when she was at Yale. She was a new student and the first year students understudied the show. She literally had just arrived from Kenya the day before. She understudied the role that Adepero (Oduye) was playing at the time, The Girl [The character name].
And Danai I met when I read with her for the part. I remember at the audition, I asked her if my character was based on Black Diamond? I have been reading about her, and she said,you know her? And I said she's from the village literally a 20 minute walk from my dad's village in Sierra Leone and the war was going on at the same time. And there's pictures of her. It looks like we could be cousins, she looks like my dad's people.
JAYME: Wow.
ZAINAB: And so that was interesting working with them, doing it. So it was really great when Lupita came out of school and she got the Oscar and she was asked what she wanted to do. She said, I want to do that play that I understudied at Yale. Even though she prayed that she never had to go on because she was terrified (laughing).
And also what was really funny is I remember when we all met her, we all looked at her, we looked at each other. We were like that one's going to be famous in like 10 minutes. And then when she came out of school, of course the first thing she did was so successful [Nyong'o won the Oscar for her debut, 12 Years A Slave]. I was like, okay, you didn't have to do it that fast.
JAYME: Right, right [Laughing].
ZAINAB: She said I wish you guys had warned me that was going to happen. Why didn't anyone tell me? She was very sweet about it. They are fun people to work with. They're very intense people, so driven.
In the 3rd and final dispatch of the conversation, Jah and Lawson will talk about taking their film Farewell Amor to Sundance.
Reader Comments (2)
What a lovely interview. Excited to see Farewell Amor and how these two translate their training to film. How I wish I could’ve seen Eclipsed during its run.
thanks MJ. I loved listening to Zainab talking about how she and others immediately recognized the promise of Nyong'o even when she was just starting drama school.
I think the same will happen to Lawson who's great in Farewell Amor. As is Jah who takes the breath away with a very complex character.