Director/Designer/Play and Filmmaker, Sean Pollock is interviewed by the Goddess of Geek, Jen Bush
Holy cosplay Batman, Cowl Girl is coming to Off-Broadway! In this play by Anna Capunay, Cowl Girl wears a Batman cowl, masking herself from the outside world. Her secret identity is known only by her friends, Tabby and Jason, and the intriguing nephew of her archenemy, Alex. They band together to help release her from her shut-in life of Pee-Wee Herman, the music of the artist formerly known as Prince, a legion of 80s cartoons, and her Star Trek memorabilia. Will this valiant triumvirate be able to crack her impenetrable shell, or will Cowl Girl be condemned to a retro life of loneliness? Tune in August in downtown Manhattan … the best is yet to come!
Cowl Girl will be directed by Sean Pollock who is a NYC based director, writer, creative producer, designer, and sometimes performer for theatre, film, and TV. He will also be the production designer for this piece. Mr. Pollock is the artistic director and founding member of Unattended Baggage. Unattended Baggage is a nebulous ever-changing experimental media collective of writers, directors, producers, visual artists, theater makers, filmmakers, actors, sound designers, and everything in between. Mr. Pollock was gracious enough to take time away from his artistic duties to discuss his creative work and Cowl Girl.
Mr. Pollock was enthused to take on this project. “I love geek theatre/blending genres, and I love telling stories about outsiders/those in Fringe subcultures.”
Mr. Pollock gives us an inside look at his creative process for the multiple tasks he has taken on for Cowl Girl. “I’m a nutjob, leaning towards chaotic good. I have to take my time to marinate on certain ideas, but other things come to me instantly and once I have an idea I love, I’m hard-pressed to execute it. But if I’m ever stuck on something with my vision, I ask other people. The lousier the director, the tighter the grip. It’s important to know when you might not have the best idea in the room. For this project, as the production designer & the director, I’ve had to sort of split my time.”
“As a designer, I’m making lookbooks and designing the set and costumes. I’m working with Yessenia Rivas, our actor playing Cowl Girl, as the costume stylist/asst. costume designer and she’s been really terrific and like my right arm. We spend a lot of time talking about color and patterns and what we’re trying to communicate with their characters clothing, especially since we have a non-binary character, a type of person who definitely existed in 2004 (when the play is set), but the language for what that meant wasn’t there since it was still a fairly new concept back then–so figuring out what non binary (or what would’ve been called genderqueer then) looked like back then has been super fun. The way my brain works is that I connect people to places and points in time–so it’s been so fun to dig into the world of 2004 and really lean into that aesthetic, it’s been giving me a lot of nostalgia.”
“As a director, I try to have fun, but am also mindful of production resources that we have and how much time we have to do the show, so I try to balance a mix of cerebral, theoretical, table work/character work early on, then I try to get everyone on their feet fairly quickly. It’s not that I dislike tablework at all–I think it’s very important–but I think a lot of important discoveries come through movement and through “doing.”
Many artists learn something about themselves when they are engaged in artistic endeavors. “Directing for me is a lot like riding a bike. You never really forget, but if you take time off, it takes a second for your muscles to remember what it feels like. I always get nervous the days leading up to rehearsal, especially during table work because I have no consistency with it. I always worry I’m going to come off as inarticulate/disorganized. The last thing I directed with a full cast was a musical TV special with all children (A VERY MERRY UNAUTHORIZED CHILDREN’S SCIENTOLOGY PAGEANT – LIVE! which I also directed & designed), before that it was COWL GIRL in workshop form, before that it was a short film, and before that it had been since early 2019 with a revival of Roberto Aguirre Sacasa’s THE WEIRD. I essentially took almost three years off. So I think what I’ve learned is to be grateful for the opportunity to be in the director’s seat when I have it, because opportunity is not a lengthy visitor.”
“As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized the importance of inviting others into your process, which is so different from how I was trained. I’m also learning that this piece in particular is a marathon, not a sprint. It blends genres, so balancing the rom-com aspect with some of the darker tones in this play is a balancing act. There’s a relatively bigger set than what I’m used to working with, period costumes, a musical number, and some other tricks I don’t want to reveal just yet–I’m really pulling out all the stops with this one in a short period of time. They say you can have things two out of three ways: fast, cheap, and well-made, and we’re putting together the play in a relatively short period of time, which rules out fast as one of my two elements. So it’s a reminder to pick and choose what battles you’re willing to fight and which you aren’t.”
Mr. Pollock would like to see Cowl Girl take off like a superhero soaring through the sky. I envision a long, healthy, Off-Broadway run. An LA run. A Chicago run. Touring. A comic book adaptation. A TV show. Anything and everything.
We wondered what was next for Mr. Pollock. “That’s a great question. At present, I’m promoting A VERY MERRY UNAUTHORIZED CHILDREN’S SCIENTOLOGY PAGEANT – LIVE! as a #ChristmasinJuly special but I don’t have anything up my sleeves in the immediate. I’m a playwright too, and I just finished writing two new plays that I’ve been working on for some time, one is a dramedy satire, and one is a dramedy thriller. So, I hope I get to do some readings or workshops of either of those pieces in the future.”
Riddle me this Batman, what runs for three weeks in August and is wildly entertaining? Cowl Girl!
Cowl Girl
Opening Thursday, August 10 at 7:00 p.m. for a three-week run
at downtown’s Steve & Marie Sgouros Theatre of the Players Theatre,
115 MacDougal Street (between West 3rd & Bleecker Streets), NYC.
(A, C, E, B, D, F & M trains to West 4th. Exit at West 3rd and walk one block east to MacDougal Street. The theatre is located on the corner above Cafe Wha.)
ARTIUM: OMNI 