When we first met June Carryl, some years ago, she was an actor in addition to being an accomplished writer. She is, in this issue, the author of the short story titled “Girl Bites Dog.” Her career has included working at the Los Angeles Museum of Modern Art as a Curatorial Administrator.
“I feel this is an amazing field, dealing with beauty, and beautiful things but I found out that the people who make some of these things are sometimes very challenging. I remember working on the final details of a David Hockney exhibit but having to leave to get to my commercial acting class. I had everything all set, but as I’m leaving, I will never forget that the person I was working with had the most mystified look on her face. She was ‘wondering how could I leave?’ It was like her whole being was shaken!”
When Carryl left the museum she transitioned to teaching in South Los Angeles to artists and to kids who were under-represented. These were kids who didn’t know they were capable. She was teaching them that they have voices that matter. She explained it was also during this time she was figuring out what she knew and what she didn’t know.
“While I was teaching I found I liked getting to see how the week’s worth of building a story, figuring out how to put that story on its feet and then preparing that story for the kids to be able to show their parents. Sometimes there would be that one kid acting up all the time wondering can we just give him something to do and you’d see he’d suddenly take something and run with it.”
Carryl spoke enthusiastically with us about an invitation she received to take part in an event which happened recently here in Los Angeles at the Kirk Douglas Theater at the Mark Taper.
“Out of the blue, last year, Director Luis Alfaro reached out inviting me to be part of Center Theatre Group's L.A.Writer's Workshop out of the blue. There were ten of us, all women and primarily women of color. He was very intentional about that. I'd gotten to work with him as an actor ages ago on a play called SLIDE/ GLIDE THE SLIPPERY SLOPE (or which he served as producer) at the Taper. We had connected at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2013, but I didn’t think he knew me as a writer. I was so stunned and so grateful, and the experience was more magical and uplifting than I could have dreamed. He really is a mentor and so very generous; always encouraging process rather than product and so you just feel empowered to explore your voice. It was deeply transformative."
Notably she is the recipient of IAMA’S Shonda Rhimes ‘Unsung Voices’ award.
“The folks at IAMA were kind enough to read a couple of my plays over the past couple of years. It's an incredible honor just to be read. I’m still pretty flabbergasted. Right now the play I’m writing is called THE WRONGED PARTY. It’s about a party at the end of the world. It’s a little like Mask of the Red Death. It’s about people running off the cliff. It’s a combination of the Designated Mourner and the Masque of Red Death in that we are watching a fascism, an ugly mutation. There’s a faction taking over the country as one by one people at this party come to realize the destruction that has been wrought And, she concludes by informing us “It’s a Comedy!”
During our interview with Carryl we discussed the Alito ruling in the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe For her, this decision goes way further than the present conservative panic about the changing of America.
“To take such a personal, spiritual, moral, ethical, biological choice out of the hands of the people who will live in those bodies, is just so dehumanizing. They are the ones dealing with what happens next, they are the individuals who will be changed physically, emotionally, mentally; who will bear the pain, the danger, the fear, and or/ the joy, and wonder of bearing a child. Certainly, there is also the determination to protect male privilege and access to female bodies, It is almost primal. This Court just told over half the population of the United States that they are not human; that they are not worthy of the exercise of free will….the choice regarding what and who my body is for was taken from me by my abusers. As a young woman today, I have now had the choice of what happens to me and to my body for the rest of my life taken from me. I'm more than angry. I'm more than angry, I’m shaken.”
My personal observation here had to do with the individuals who see an unwanted pregnancy as an appropriate punishment or sexual indulgence. Their discourse doesn’t, of course, include any reference to pregnancies caused by the outrage of rape.
According to Carryl: “These people have elected themselves as the arbiters of the fates of others, as if electing themselves God. Alito says abortion isn’t in the Constitution. Neither are voting rights or women’s rights.”
She continued: “Advice to women on the internet includes telling us to “just keep our legs crossed. Nobody’s telling men to stop having sex. That one little sperm is determined to get into that egg; if it takes, suddenly, there is something metastasizing inside you not of your own will. This is an invasion. It is as if my body is being stolen all over again. And this court has completely nullified my experience; it has voided me.”
Carryl grew up in Denver and studied Political Science and English Literature at Brown University. She is a member of Center Theater Group’s Playwriting Workshop and she is developing a play for Playwrights Arena and UCLA’s Golden Tongues Project.
We look forward to discovering whatever the next phase of Carryl’s creative life is going to be and most certainly to seeing that very play when it is produced.
June Carryl's theatre credits include roles in Julius Caesar, All My Sons, and Romeo and Juliet at A Noise Within, in King Lear at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and many other roles at venues like Berkeley Rep, ACT, and Mark Taper. Her recent television credits include being a series regular on Hellstrom, as a recurring guest on Y: The Last Man and Mindhunter. Some of her other work includes significant roles on SWAT, on Shameless, 911 Lonestar, Station 19, NCIS and many others. She is represented by O'Neill Talent Group, and managed by Nova Talent Group.
Creative Credits
- Written by
- Elaine Madsen
- Senior Editor
- Jessica Catignani
- Photography
- Johnny Buzzerio
