According to working director, performance artist and current UCLA student Patrick Kennelly, the key to success is: Do what you want. Kennelly has done just that and reaped the benefits. Previously an undergraduate at Cal Arts, and now a graduate student in the Theater Department’s directing program, Kennelly received the prestigious 2008 Princess Grace Award in October for his directing, design, curation and performance work. The Princess Grace Award recognizes emerging talent in theater, dance and film through grants and scholarships.
He has directed various plays such as playwright Sarah Kane’s controversial “Cleansed,” which was performed last spring at the Freud Playhouse with great success, and is currently working on John Whiting’s “The Devils,” set in 17th century France. Aside from directing, he has also written original works and designed performance installations and image-based theater productions.
Kennelly took a moment from his busy life of school and theater to share with the Daily Bruin’s Paige Parker a little bit about life through the eyes of an up-and-coming director, and discussed everything from what gives him the confidence to direct controversial plays to why he believes theater-goers hunger for performances that are “outside the box.”
Daily Bruin: Could you describe the kind of theater performances you direct and design for to people who haven’t seen your work?
Patrick Kennelly: It’s about telling the text through images, through figures, or the performers and space. A lot of the performance work that I’ve done in the past focuses on the body. … And it’s not high-tech or (full of) visual eye-candy, but that it’s very much influenced by visual art.
The most important (show) for me was the show we did last year called “Cleansed.” I’m the last person to toot my own horn, but it’s been called sort of a monumental thing for the school in terms of what it accomplished performance-wise and design-wise.
DB: “˜Cleansed’ is based on Sarah Kane’s very dark and controversial play. What gives you the confidence to take risks like this?
PK: At this point I don’t really see it as a risk. I think it’s much more of a risk for others. I think that I’ve got the confidence of those around me ““ both the students and the faculty ““ to allow me to explore these (themes). “˜Cleansed’ was and still is controversial. There is a lot of nudity, violence and risky material for the younger students to undertake emotional and psychologically.
So for me the risk comes in the sense of leading a group of people down a journey of exploring these stories which are generally on the dark side of humanity … I understand completely my point of view and what I want, so it’s a matter of communicating that and making a safe, trusting environment for all the other collaborators.
DB: And you have had a lot of success by doing what you want. What advice would you give students who have dreams of breaking into the theater world the way you have?
PK: I think it’s just having a very individual point of view ““ something that does not break. Because I think in theater, and all the realms of directing, there is a tendency to give way, to do work that pleases the audience, that is going to satisfy people or changing one’s vision to certain requirements. But for me, I always really stick to my vision … For any successful director that’s the most important thing: to not back down, to be clear about what you want and to make it happen.
DB: Do you think you’ve learned to have that confidence or have you always had it as an inherent quality?
PK: I’ve always had that quality. What UCLA has helped with is giving a bigger picture: I went to an art school. I could just go off and do whatever I wanted and that was important and good for me, just to explore my process and my work and make that very clear and so once I came to UCLA, then I could see how that could work in a more structured environment. And I had had no experience with that for theater before. It’s been difficult, not smooth sailing, but if you’re doing this kind of work it’s always for the best.
DB: Have you felt limited at all in the Master’s program?
PK: No, not at all. The work that I do is radically different from everyone else’s in the program. I’ve probably had more freedom to do this type of work than I have anywhere else before. So that’s been a great surprise.
DB: What does receiving the Princess Grace Award mean for your career?
PK: I guess it was a bit of a surprise in a way because a lot of the other works that the award has (recognized) has not been anything like the type of work that I do. But that might have been the thing that sort of compelled them to choose me.
DB: What are your goals for the future?
PK: I already don’t think that far in advance. I’m just very process-orientated so I’m only thinking about what is happening right now. I really would like to do the work that I’ve been doing but bring it to a much larger audience. Because I think there is sort of a craving, or a hunger, for work that exists outside the box within the general mainstream audience. Based on the response from the last show, I really started to feel that this type of work doesn’t need to exist in a specialized elite environment. It can sort of grow.