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Welcome to One Hale of a Conversation where your host, James Hale, talks with Artists, Actors, and Creatives, trying to understand both where they come from, and how they tick. Join Us!
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Maddi Albregts
*Light jazz music playing*
This podcast is brought to you by MAD Company, a nonprofit theater company based out of New York City.
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James Hale
Hello, everyone, and welcome to One Hale of a Conversation, a MAD Company production. My name is James Hale. I am the executive director of MAD Company and your host for this podcast. With me in the studio today is the wonderful Helena Mueller, an actor extraordinaire, a burgeoning fight director and choreographer, and one of the vice presidents of MAD Company.
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James Hale
Welcome, Helena.
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Helena Mueller
Thanks. I'm going to make you redo it and say, Helena Mueller ("pronounced Miller").
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James Hale
I actually- I'm not going to redo it because my very first question is how do you pronounce your name?
Helena Mueller
Helena Mueller
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*Intro Jazz music playing under various voices*
Helena Mueller
I'm going to make you redo it.
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James Hale
I might record another one...
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Lauren Zbylski
It's terrifying...
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Helena Mueller
And then left. Left it behind, retired...
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James Hale
And we're back for that exciting interruption... what next season will hold... My name is James Hale.
*Jazzy Music finishes playing and sound effect of flickering lightbulb playing over*
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James Hale
Okay. Why Mueller? It's spelled with an u e.
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Helena Mueller
Yeah. I don't know. It's a midwest thing. If you go around Wisconsin specifically, but maybe Minnesota, too. There's a whole bunch of us- what should be German like.. Mueller full on umlauts, make it German- that go by Mueller (pronounced "Miller").
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James Hale
So it is officially, "Mueller". Ok.
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Helena Mueller
It is Mueller. But if you ever ask me to spell it and ah, I have to go somewhere where I have to spell it, I will say Mueller. So I will just throw people off.
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James Hale
Professionally and correctly.
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Helena Mueller
Helena Mueller. Yep.
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James Hale
Beautiful. Okay, well, I might record another one and we might just not do that bit, but maybe not! But to start- Can you just sort of chart your journey from the University of Minnesota, the Twin Cities, to vice president of what some people have called the most exciting young theater company in the world.
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Helena Mueller
In the world? Wow. We're doing so well. Yeah. So I went to the University of Minnesota for undergrad, studied English and theater, predominantly focusing on a lot of devised and original work within that B.A. program. Because of that, it was great whilst writing, because I got to write a whole bunch of my own stuff and be in a whole lot of new work. But I felt like I was sort of lacking a bit of structure and rigor when it came to the actual acting training side of things. I got a taste of it with some classes, but during my junior… summer after my junior year at the University of Minnesota, I did a short course over in London doing LAMDA's Shakespeare Summer Intensive, loved it, loved the long like 8-12 hour days and the teachers that were there. And that sort of set me on the path of deciding I at least wanted to get a masters, made some connections while over there, and then started auditioning that following winter of my senior year to sort of throw my hat into the ring. I auditioned for a couple of programs and got into LAMDA's, and I knew, I knew I loved them. So yeah, headed over there, met all of the other crazy folks of MAD Company. And when I was leaving LAMDA, it was sort of like, stay in London, move to New York or move to L.A. And staying in London seemed tough. And I've never been a big fan of L.A., so yeah. Ended up in New York. Yeah. How did I become vice president and co-chair? What? Co-Vice president of the board? Yeah. Once we all got to New York we wanted to start making work again. So we made MAD company, and it happened.
00;03;38;24 - 00;03;48;03
James Hale
Co-vice president, obviously, with Maddi Albregts.
Helena Muller
Yeah.
James Hale
What does that entail? How, what, what does your role require of you as vice president of the board?
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Helena Mueller
We… between Maddi and I, we do some of the logistics when it comes to performance reviews. So we've come up with a system where we can review you, James Hale.
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James Hale
Right, you're my boss.
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Helena Mueller
And artistic director Lauren Zbylski. In addition to that, I feel like we end up sort of being the sounding board for both you and Lauren, sometimes. Being a bit of a, like, second set of ears/the -I never know- what would the word be- sort of people within the stopgap to make sure things don't go completely awry. It's basically our role.
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James Hale
Yeah, I feel like whenever I talk about the board, there are certain board roles and duties that we have to fill. And then also I just kind of generally feel like this is the brain trust. Yeah, You know, a group of us who are most closely involved in the work. So you are from... sometimes you say Milwaukee, sometimes you say Heartland, Wisconsin. I assume you just give yourself the largest area that people will recognize.
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Helena Mueller
Yeah.
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James Hale
So why did you go to Minnesota?
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Helena Mueller
I really wanted to get out of my immediate area. My mom has joked before that I was like, ready to leave since I was 12. Not necessarily lovingly and at 12 years old I probably thought that I could, but I was going to be paying for my education myself. And so Wisconsin and Minnesota have reciprocity in which I can go to Minnesota for in-state tuition. So the Twin Cities seemed like the farthest away larger city than I could go without going massively in debt.
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James Hale
Well, yeah, I mean, that's definitely an important consideration. So you mentioned I'm interested in this. I don't have this in my notes, but you went to a four year university to study drama and English, and it sounds like you were, sort of through that process, became much more interested in like a conservatory style acting training, which is really interesting to me because I do feel like there's often a disconnect between academic drama studies and basically we did at LAMDA, which is intensive acting curriculum.
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James Hale
And I'm wondering though, if with your focus on devised work and original work, how did that affect your studies versus like a traditional “studying drama” at a four year university? What, what does that look like?
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Helena Mueller
It looks like a lot of weird specialized classes.
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James Hale
Okay.
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Helena Mueller
But essentially, well, at 18, I even I had no concept that you could go. I didn't know what a drama program would look like.
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James Hale
Right, never heard of conservatory.
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Helena Mueller
I didn't realize that you could audition. All I knew about, was like, seeing fame and hearing about Juilliard. And I knew, like NYU and Juilliard existed, but that you went into, like, six figures worth of debt. And so I just wrote it off, not realizing that those schools also existed elsewhere, including the University of Minnesota, that I just never auditioned for their program.
James Hale
Interesting, Ok.
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Helena Mueller
Yeah, I also, English was my, my safety major. Okay. Yeah. I get a lot more work as an English major, of course, than a Theater major. But yeah, so it ended up looking like doing clown classes and puppet classes with incredible people. A good core of people, the instructors that I worked with, two of them that I loved working with, came from a theater company that they had started called Theater de la jen Lune in Minneapolis, and they studied under Jacques Lecoq.
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Helena Mueller
And so having a lot of their guidance and mentorship, it was finding, like, the physicality of different worlds and stories, working with masks and finding stories within that.
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James Hale
All the cool classes, it sounds like.
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Helena Mueller
All the cool classes. But also because Minnesota, the Research University, a lot of the teachers that were teaching us had to have some type of research project. And so every semester different instructors were doing their own projects that they had to involve students into, which were generally original works within their theater companies or within their own personal lives.
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Helena Mueller
So, yeah, kind of just a funky mix of weird projects.
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James Hale
Just everything. So with that sort of collegiate background, are you, do you feel like you're still involved in or pursuing any work in that sort of original, devised sphere?
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Helena Mueller
I think so. I still really love writing and have been, had like, at least two ideas that are rattling around in my brain for a couple of years. I think I've stepped back more from just the straight up devised, experimental work. I think there's a big value to art being able to, like, reach a very wide audience and sometimes it can be really difficult to take one person's brainchild and work with like ten other people and keep that work in a bubble and then expect it to reach a lot of people.
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Helena Mueller
And it might have a great impact on a handful. But when I think back to, like, the artsy, weird, like let me explore the difference between light and dark and being a child of light or child of darkness. Weird. Let me take a quote and just, like, riff on that for 30 minutes. I'm like, that might feel really good for me as an artist and maybe the other arts involved in the process, but does not necessarily read well to the people who are watching it.
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James Hale
Interesting. Yeah. Do you, do you feel that true art, or not necessarily true art, but, like, some, some part of the art is dependent upon the audience?
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Helena Mueller
Oh yeah, 100%. I think you can create art solely for yourself, which is great. But at the end of the day, you're trying to find themes, stories and characters that resonate with humans. And I, I think art as healing or art as journaling or art as self-reflection definitely has a space. But in terms of thinking of art within the career vocation sense, you're… you should always be thinking about your audience, right?
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James Hale
Art as communication versus art as introspective.
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Helena Mueller
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
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James Hale
Two different times you went to LAMDA, for the short course right before your senior year. And then obviously you came and got the big boy, the Master of Arts. So with your history, your undergraduate history and like, devise original work, were you a fan of classics and the Shakespeare before sort of being thrown in and immersed in them, or was that something that grew out of You did it every day, so you grew to love it?
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Helena Mueller
No, definitely. That was sort of my first love of theater or Shakespeare when I was… God like 14. I did my first play. I did one when I was like six, and then less left it behind, retired the stage, but at 14 did like a high school production of Alice in Wonderland and loved it and played a violet and a playing card.
00;10;37;00 - 00;10;59;19
Helena Mueller
But my Uncle Paul heard about it, heard that I was doing theater, and he gifted me for that following summer, the gift of going to a theater camp in central Wisconsin at this place called the American Players Theater.That does just like studying Shakespeare. And so that first summer we did Julius Caesar, and I'm like, This is the coolest thing ever.
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Helena Mueller
And it was a whole bunch of like 13 to 17 year olds doing Julius Caesar.
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James Hale
That’s kind of an intense show for…
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Helena Mueller
Yeah, yeah. But that was incredible because I was like, Oh my God, this text is amazing. And while going to different workshops and classes throughout the day, then we also just saw like five different shows at APT which is known for being incredible when it comes to the classics and I saw Hamlet and I was like. Did I just understand this entire play? That was amazing. This is incredible. Like, and it just blew my mind. And I was like, Yeah, I just want to do that. With English being something that I've always been passionate about. I'd like read Shakespeare and enjoyed Shakespeare in a literary sense, but hadn't really dove into what it looked like when it was performed, especially performed well. And so. Yeah.
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James Hale
I talk to so many people about this, how Shakespeare is so much clearer when it's performed, because that's how it was originally written. Yeah, you know, we most of our experiences with Shakespeare is through, in high school or whatever, we have to read Macbeth or A Midsummer Night's Dream, and it's so convoluted and it's so difficult. And it really, I think, turns people off of Shakespeare when in fact it should be this fun.
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James Hale
Let me watch people do this. And if I don't understand every word, it doesn't matter. Yeah, because I have their actions, I have their intention. I'm watching them go through this.
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Helena Mueller
Like larger than life. Just massive epic stories.
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James Hale
Exactly. Yeah. And they're really beautiful. Versus being trapped on the page. Yeah.
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Helena Mueller
When did you first jump into the role of Shakespeare?
00;12;26;24 - 00;12;51;01
James Hale
Pretty much. LAMDA Honestly, I, at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, as a drama minor, I did one very small, like, cut of Hamlet, where I was Claudius. We were like, we did it in like an alleyway in between two of the buildings on campus. Student director, it was great. And that was my first really, like, being in Shakespeare.
00;12;51;01 - 00;12;55;21
James Hale
And then I happened to go to LAMDA where almost all we did was Shakespeare.
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Helena Mueller
Yeah.
00;12;56;24 - 00;13;30;19
James Hale
And probably, probably Margaret of Anjou. Honestly, like Shakespeare was cool. I enjoyed reading the plays. Thought it was interesting. Yeah. But being in Margaret of Anjou, which for everyone listening, was a cut of some of Shakespeare's history, plays that Rodney Courtier at LAMDA put together being in that and like feeling how real that could be in talking with Rodney about these moments that are just sort of beyond like the everyday lives of most characters that you see in… in drama and non-Shakespeare.
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James Hale
That was eye opening to me. Yeah, it was intense. Yeah. But yeah, I, I didn't really enjoy Shakespeare until I got a master's degree and…
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Helena Mueller
Hey, there you go.
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James Hale
So your background is mostly as an actor, obviously written some things, original devised work. You've moved from that into a lot of voiceover work here in the city, and you're also very excitingly moving into like fight direction, fight choreography. You were the fight director for Romeo and Juliet. That MAD Company put up. Are there other hats that you feel like you need to inform the public about?
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James Hale
You're also a burgeoning juggler or whatever.
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Helena Mueller
A birdwatcher. I can juggle.
00;14;12;03 - 00;14;12;16
James Hale
Of course you can.
00;14;15;09 - 00;14;20;05
Helena Mueller
God, no. I can barely keep on those hats. No, those are really the focuses right now.
00;14;20;07 - 00;14;22;23
James Hale
How and why did you move into those spheres?
00;14;22;29 - 00;14;48;08
Helena Mueller
Voiceover is one of those things where I've sort of sounded like this since I was 13, and I've been told since I was quite young that I should do radio, do something, do whatever. And when COVID hit, those voices sort of started resonating again, just in the fact that we couldn't leave, we couldn't audition, we couldn't do our jobs.
00;14;48;18 - 00;15;06;15
Helena Mueller
And so I had like a real crappy USB plug-in snowball microphone and garage band and built a blanket fort and made my own reel. And then slowly, as I got work and I feel so bad for anyone that actually got that work within the first few months was able to get better equipment, learn more, teach myself how to actually do some basic audio editing. So things didn't sound terrible and I was able to sort of just muscle my way into doing it as sort of a full time job. And so, yeah, voiceover has just sort of been one of the only happy happenstances of COVID.
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James Hale
Silver lining. We'll take it.
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Helena Mueller
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It gave me the time to do it. Otherwise I think I would have just kept doing the audition grind and doing projects and not carving out the time that was actually needed to get it off the ground. Fight direction. The more I'm realizing as a kid, we in my family always had to play a lot of sports and I liked any sports where you could be aggressive on defense.
00;15;56;24 - 00;16;21;10
Helena Mueller
And I only played defense, really. And so I'm realizing I was like, wow if I had just gone into like martial arts or boxing sooner, that's all I really wanted to be doing. Starting fights? No, but a little bit maybe. I loved doing stage combat at Minnesota. I had done an intensive here and there at Minnesota. Wait. I done an intensive here and there at Minnesota.
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Helena Mueller
Loved doing it at LAMDA, having our certification sort of cut off because of COVID at LAMDA was a bummer. And when I came to New York, I really wanted to find a way to sort of keep doing that stage combat type feeling of work. Found an incredible boxing gym in East Harlem called Women's World of Boxing, which is, I believe, still the only like all female boxing gym in New York that is just run by an incredible coach and has such a great community.
00;16;48;08 - 00;17;23;20
Helena Mueller
And I really fell in love with sort of like the physical effort of learning how to box and teaching myself that sport, but also just like a defense skill. When Romeo and Juliet was coming up and being talked about, I… and given like the world that we were creating with it - the idea of sort of street boxing and boxing in general as a form of violence within this world felt really natural and like a fun take on what can oftentimes just be people with swords fighting each other, which we…Yeah, exactly. Which we don't see a lot of today. Or we go to West Side Story like knives and just plot switchblades all the time. And I wanted to make sure that I was entering into that process safely. And so I found this great group called Neutral Chaos here in New York, where I could get certified for unarmed combat leading into the production and now sort of building my toolbox of random, random skills.
00;17;49;19 - 00;17;59;26
Helena Mueller
Yeah, I just started studying Shaolin staff as of, like a week ago. So we'll add Shaolin staff, and hopefully we'll get certified in that within the next few months.
00;17;59;27 - 00;18;00;20
James Hale
Ok, we’ll see what shows we can do it.
00;18;02;11 - 00;18;04;06
Helena Mueller
Yeah, that’ll be a bit more tough to work in. But…
00;18;05;08 - 00;18;06;20
James Hale
That might just be for for you.
00;18;06;20 - 00;18;08;18
Helena Mueller
And I might just be for fun. Yeah. All right.
00;18;09;07 - 00;18;29;08
James Hale
So I have your resume here in front of us. Very impressive. Lots of lots of classics, obviously, from LAMDA, some Minnesota credits, some film credits. There's an item down here under special skill. That's interesting to me. How is it that you speak Mandarin?
00;18;29;15 - 00;18;54;16
Helena Mueller
Yeah, it's great that I'm also now also starting Shaolin Staff and I speak Mandarin. I'm really setting myself up for something in the future. Who knows what it is? I… Spanish was offered throughout grade school and I hated it. With a burning passion. I could not understand it. I was absolutely terrible. When I got to high school, we had more language options and one was Mandarin and I was like, that seems like the most opposite from Spanish.
00;18;54;17 - 00;19;15;18
Helena Mueller
I should give that one a try. And I really enjoyed it. Mandarin clicked a lot more for me than Spanish ever did, and I kept up with it throughout high school. Was going to minor in it in college, but then had to take a mandarin literature course. And as an English major, it really was not enjoyable to sit through a literature course when no one wanted to talk about literature when…so it felt like when I was passionate about these stories and these discussions, sitting in a classroom that was just dead and people were like, “This is a plot point”, made me want to rip my hair out of my skull. And so after like three weeks I dropped that class, I would have needed to have taken like two or three to do the minor.
00;19;38;02 - 00;19;41;22
Helena Mueller
And so I was like, No, screw this. I can't can't suffer.
00;19;41;22 - 00;19;43;13
James Hale
Referring to literature as a language.
00;19;43;17 - 00;19;44;01
Helena Mueller
Yeah.
00;19;44;04 - 00;19;46;15
James Hale
Discussion and not a literary discussion.
00;19;46;15 - 00;19;56;01
Helena Mueller
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And so I yeah, sort of stopped studying for a while and now recently, over the past year have picked it back up again. Oh, it has been fun.
00;19;56;01 - 00;19;57;00
James Hale
Good for you.
Helena Mueller
Yeah, thanks.
00;19;57;00 - 00;20;29;13
James Hale
That's cool. I've never met anyone who speaks intermediate anything just because they studied in school. So impressive. Looking at your credits here, there are several sort of pants roles, gender bent roles. Um, throughout Shakespeare. You just played Tybalt to great acclaim in Romeo and Juliet by MAD Company. I'm wondering when you approach a role, and especially one of these knowing that it is either pants role, gender bent, sort of nontraditional, is there a different approach than approaching, say, a classic straight female role?
00;20;29;24 - 00;21;15;01
Helena Mueller
Not for me. I think most people, if you talk to me for longer than a couple hours or get to know me, I'm so passionate about strong women throughout history and have devoted a lot of my time to studying them and learning their stories that when I'm handed a role like Tybalt or like Macduff in Macbeth, I'm it doesn't feel like I'm portraying a man or a woman portraying a man, but it's more so just I am portraying one of these women that had the same amount of emotional reactivity to their given environments in order to be violent or be angry in that way, which is generally the issue that people have with like women
00;21;15;01 - 00;21;39;16
Helena Mueller
playing male roles is the I think people phrase it in a lot of different ways, but just like the strength behind those roles, which I think is is awesome about Shakespeare, is because he does write a lot of women into those roles of strength. Thinking about Margaret of Anjou, who is just fucking brutal. But simultaneously, the vast majority of the canon is about men.
00;21;39;16 - 00;21;53;21
Helena Mueller
And so having the opportunity to play those roles that are fully fleshed out and strong is a great gift, but doesn't feel like I'm approaching it any differently than I would say Ophelia or Juliet or any of those guys.
00;21;53;28 - 00;22;02;27
James Hale
Interesting. What do you feel like you have a method of getting into character? What is your… how… What is your approach to any character.
00;22;05;15 - 00;22;07;18
James Hale
I guess high level.
00;22;07;18 - 00;22;47;17
Helena Mueller
Yeah, I think it definitely depends on the character I really like. After combing through the text and figuring out the basics of just what are the facts that we know about this person, then sort of writing about that, journaling about it and being a bit heady about it. So finding out within my own, like, first person writing of how I think that they would think about their given circumstances, whether that's journaling about what's happening before the play or before the first scene that they're in, and then expanding them out to different circumstances, journaling about how they felt about a different character in a different circumstance.
00;22;47;17 - 00;23;13;22
Helena Mueller
And I'm creating in my mind and sort of allowing a lot of like free flowing writing. And then when it comes to sort of the further actual, like physical characterization, I think I always start with their walk and that's just like going through life and figuring out how that person walks. It's great with characters like Tybalt or Macduff who are both, have military training because that has such an informative physical attribute to it.
00;23;14;20 - 00;23;20;21
Helena Mueller
And it's really fun walking down the street and being like, How does Tybalt walk me? Wow, this feels baddass.
00;23;22;12 - 00;23;44;13
Helena Mueller
I should walk like this more often. In that vein, I always make playlists for characters, and so as I'm figuring out how they walk, I'm also listening to it. I think they would enjoy sometimes, generally, that's within like the modern day, even if it's a period piece, because, like, some great, like baroque music just won't hit the same for me.
00;23;44;13 - 00;23;47;07
Helena Mueller
Sadly, that it might have…
James Hale
I don’t know, there’s a lot of good baroque music out there…
00;23;48;01 - 00;23;50;05
Helena Mueller
Yeah, there is. There is.
00;23;50;05 - 00;23;59;19
Helena Mueller
But might not get the same emotional reaction out of me and those are sort of the touchstones. Yeah, sort of writing and then everyday physicality.
00;24;00;08 - 00;24;01;10
James Hale
Bringing that into the body.
00;24;01;15 - 00;24;02;03
Helena Mueller
Yeah.
00;24;02;19 - 00;24;18;24
James Hale
Yeah. Speaking specifically about Tybalt, were there any, I have two words here, discoveries and difficulties, were there any shocking discoveries about the character as you went through getting into this character? And then what were maybe the difficulties in approaching specifically Tybalt?
00;24;18;24 - 00;24;48;11
Helena Mueller
A really fun discovery that I had sort of after the first like week of table-read and work. Is that in a play where people are very poetic and have a lot to say and love metaphors and love chewing on language, Tybalt doesn't - and in our production Tybalt was a she so I’ll use she/her pronouns for her - But I think you could fit all of at least in our cut but in the play in general, because I really don't think we cut much for Tybalth, she says.
00;24;48;11 - 00;25;15;07
Helena Mueller
Like maybe two pages of text. Now she is the impetus for a lot of action. And as at like the core of why these - spoiler alert - these two people end up dying. Sorry, when Mercutio would come at her with these like long insults, Tybalt is like, okay, cut the shit. Like, Yeah, you villain, I'm just going to like tell you to go screw yourself and that's it.
00;25;15;07 - 00;25;30;05
Helena Mueller
And we're not going to talk about it. And you can fight me. If we're, if we're going to, like, have this out, then we're going to fight and not going to talk about it, which is a really interesting discovery because I've always loved the role of Tybalt, and I think Tybalt has always been like this force in my mind.
00;25;30;22 - 00;25;38;02
Helena Mueller
And then when breaking down the text like you do with any Shakespeare production, I'm like, Oh my gosh, Wow.
00;25;38;15 - 00;25;42;25
Helena Mueller
Just goes for. Great. Awesome.
James Hale
Let's not a lot of subtlety.
00;25;43;00 - 00;25;59;19
Helena Mueller
Let's not a lot of subtlety. And no long speeches, nothing grand, which is fun because that in and of itself is so informative. Difficulties. I mean, there’s a lot of fights. That was sort of a difficulty of the process and I'm so glad that we did. But…
00;25;59;19 - 00;26;19;03
James Hale
That actually can tie into my next question is just thinking about you as fight choreographer like how do you go about choreographing a single sequence, let alone how many pieces? Eight pieces of violence we had in the show. How do you make those specific to the moment while also a part of the show at large while also like telling that particular story?
00;26;19;08 - 00;26;20;26
James Hale
What is, what is that like.
00;26;21;12 - 00;26;45;19
Helena Mueller
That was breaking down who all has to fight first and foremost? Who is fighting and then figuring out what is the training that they would have had prior to this fight. Find some background. Yeah. And so in discussion with our director, Hannah, it was deciding who had possibly had military training, who had been fighting since they were young.
00;26;45;19 - 00;27;09;11
Helena Mueller
There was sort of a decision early on that fighting and sort of these underground like boxing matches were pretty commonplace in our version of Verona, where on like a Saturday night, if a Capulet walked into a Montague bar, fists might get thrown. They might go have a little, like, fight club moment back in the parking lot. Who knows?
00;27;09;22 - 00;27;50;25
Helena Mueller
But everyone sort of was well versed in fighting, had been hit and had hit someone before, which is a really fun place to start as a fight director, but really tough when you have a four week rehearsal because you have to now make a whole bunch of people that are not regularly getting in fights, thank goodness, look like they regularly get in fights, which I'm very thankful that I was cast as Tybalt because with a boxing background it at least made the job of Tybalt myself easier as being the person that is the most well versed in sort of fighting and that world because of what is said of Tybalt is, just that she's great
00;27;50;25 - 00;28;17;09
Helena Mueller
at fighting people said. Said often. And so then it was deciding the characters. You have this intro fight where you have four people that are sort of like mid-tier grunts in these sort of like mob dueling families, they get to have these bigger, messier fights because maybe they haven't…they're not going to like a boxing coach every week and or getting any real training.
00;28;17;09 - 00;28;42;02
Helena Mueller
But they've learned a lot on the streets and they're scrappy. And so they're pulling hair and twisting ears and kneeing each other in the stomach and sort of breaking the rules. And then you have characters like Benvolio, who is all about peace and is very by the book. And fought a lot in the past, but maybe doesn't anymore, but has that muscle memory and being able to create like a really well-crafted fight sequence was a lot of fun.
00;28;42;12 - 00;28;46;02
Helena Mueller
And then we get to involve knives and a weapon.
00;28;46;24 - 00;29;12;23
Helena Mueller
All of a sudden, getting to like, the stakes of that moment and picking weapons that feel honest to the character. So you have Mercutio that we had decided most likely had military experience and had been to war and therefore had a trench knife on her for most scenes. And it was sort of a holdover from what she learned to fight with when she was in actual military training.
00;29;12;23 - 00;29;25;10
Helena Mueller
And then Tybalt just had like a brutal hunting knife because she just wants to show people that she means business. And then I think Prince had the same knife as Tybalt.
00;29;26;00 - 00;29;26;18
James Hale
Paris.
00;29;26;18 - 00;29;45;14
Helena Mueller
Paris had, yeah. So but Romeo had just like a standard dagger, Like it was clearly something that was most likely gifted to him, is not used often, is very well maintained. And so then figuring out how to fight, how to fight with those knives and who's comfortable holding a knife. Paris was not as comfortable holding a knife as like…
00;29;47;22 - 00;29;48;15
James Hale
He was a gentle boy.
00;29;48;15 - 00;29;50;21
Helena Mueller
Yeah. Yeah, he probably might.
00;29;51;12 - 00;30;00;24
Helena Mueller
He had pulled it before to learn how to use it and then probably never had before. And so sadly, yeah, died pretty quickly once swords gotten. Once knives got involved. Yeah.
00;30;00;27 - 00;30;23;08
James Hale
That's fascinating. That's a lot. I guess from the receiving end of, like, the choreography, you don't think about how much goes into it. We were told by you this is how you move. And maybe a little bit of like, why, either for staging or for background. But not nearly to the depth of like, who had what training, who was comfortable doing what.
00;30;23;14 - 00;30;36;15
James Hale
That's fascinating. Yeah, very cool. In our last few minutes here, I've got a few questions that I wonder if you could just off the top of your head blurt out some answers. What are some stage roles that you're most interested in pursuing?
00;30;36;21 - 00;30;55;25
Helena Mueller
I would love, in terms of, Shakespeare, I'd love to play Richard II, which I think would be very different from what I normally play, but I think it's some of the most beautiful language in the canon. I want to play Queen Margaret again and make her a badass. I'd also love to play Boudica in Tristan Bernay’s play ‘Boudica’.
00;30;56;23 - 00;31;04;07
Helena Mueller
It's contemporary, but about a badass lady that did exist. Yeah. Top of the list.
00;31;04;08 - 00;31;07;06
James Hale
Excellent. What are your favorite roles that you have played?
00;31;08;00 - 00;31;25;02
Helena Mueller
Tybalt’s now up there. Macduff is up there, shockingly. Two rolls of just… and Queen Margaret. I think those are probably my top three. Queen Margaret is the most brutal and vicious out of those, which is. It's a lot of fun playing someone that just is hardcore.
00;31;25;20 - 00;31;36;24
James Hale
So MAD Company is beginning some workshops, some education. You're starting a movement class, you have other classes planned or that you would like to take for MAD Company or offer for MAD Company?
00;31;37;14 - 00;32;05;06
Helena Mueller
Oh, let's see. I think at some point a stage combat intensive, or workshop would be a lot of fun. I think it's really pivotal for every actor to at least have some level of being comfortable fighting, whether that's just doing a nice slap on stage or a gut punch, something. Because when you're telling stories, a lot of times things get heated and I think the movement classes will be really great.
00;32;05;06 - 00;32;25;21
Helena Mueller
It'll be awesome to sort of turn to this community that we've created through the process of Romeo and Juliet, whether that's with different artists that saw our work or that we've reached out to over the past year that we've been a company and create a space for us to all move together and be in a space together, creating work that doesn't need to see the light of day and can just…
James Hale
Continuing practice.
00;32;25;21 - 00;32;26;28
Helena Mueller
Yeah, exactly.
00;32;27;10 - 00;32;39;21
James Hale
I'm very excited for it. And then finally, I've, I've asked this to everyone who's been on the show so far, which has been one person. If you weren’t an actor/artist/creative, what would you be?
00;32;40;09 - 00;33;01;29
Helena Mueller
Ah, I hate this question because as a, as a kid, I wanted to be everything like literally just changed the career path that I wanted all the time, from like teacher to marine to professional ice skater to randomly just anything. And then I was like, Oh, as an actor, you could do it all. And that was what blew my mind when I was a kid.
00;33;02;05 - 00;33;04;26
Helena Mueller
So what would I be… I don’t know man…
00;33;04;26 - 00;33;06;17
James Hale
And I'm not letting you off the hook.
00;33;06;18 - 00;33;15;02
Helena Mueller
No, I know I'll think of something. I love the physicality of stage combat, but would never want to be aProfessional boxer or going down that go down there. That would be terrible. And so I would to be I think a part of me would like, love outdoor education and I love camping and hiking and that sort of physicality of just pushing your body to different extremes and taking care of yourself outside. It'd be fun to teach other people also how to do that, but I also am too ambitious for that.
00;33;48;01 - 00;33;56;07
Helena Mueller
Like I would also then be like and I'd write a book about it. And so people with a figure out my thoughts because I clearly.
00;33;56;07 - 00;33;56;27
James Hale
Come back to being a creative somehow, somehow..
00;33;59;27 - 00;34;08;20
James Hale
Fair enough. Well Helena Mueller as we now know, thank you so much for joining us today. This was one Hale of a conversation.
00;34;10;15 - 00;34;10;27
Helena Mueller.
I love that. That’s great.
00;34;11;15 - 00;34;21;15
James Hale
Working title, but we’ll probably stick with it. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. My name is James Hale. This has been Helena Mueller and have a wonderful rest of your day.
00;34;42;07 - 00;34;50;07
Maddi Albregts
Thanks for listening. To learn more about any of the creatives who spoke in this episode, check out their social media links in the episode Description.