I had the great honor of being able to interview The Shakespeare Center of LA’s leading lady, Katherine Banos, who recently played Lady Macbeth in their immersive production of The Tragedie of Macbeth, which I also got to be a part of! This woman is an incredible talent and person. She sat down with me for what was supposed to be a 10 minute interview, and we were having so much fun talking that it turned into a 30 minute interview! So you get 3 parts full of her stories and wisdom.
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…I think I’ve been much more willing to care less about recreating moments… and just allowing the moments to be what they’re going to be.
-Katherine Banos
Jessica Bell: So! You play Lady Macbeth, which is awesome! So cool! How have you found that? What makes her so playable for you? You just play her so well.
Katherine Banos: Oh, thanks! I think what’s been interesting is having done this part last year, I was excited to come back to it because all of us, to an extent, are all playing roles that are not necessarily our age to begin with, and she’s—especially with the way it’s written—it’s intended to be very far off from my age. Even though I don’t think at the time period women in their 50’s may have been living but nowadays women in their 50’s could play Lady Macbeth. So I think what I enjoy about her is I kind of see her as a grown up version of some of Shakespeare’s lovers’ characters. So a lot of those women who are young and naïve, it’s not that they’re stupid- or silly-naïve but it’s the idea that life hasn’t happened to them yet, so when you think about life experiences and trauma and real things, I think it then produces someone like Lady Macbeth. And I just enjoy that she’s so aware of how stupid and trivial men can be when they’re so wrapped up in things that don’t necessarily matter. So I just think she’s very smart and that’s what’s fun to play—how quickly she thinks and how quickly she responds and how quickly she has plans and there’s just some kind of maturity to that that I think is really fun to play at this kind of age.
J: You’ve kind of already answered three of my questions, which is awesome!
K: Oh that’s so funny!
J: Cuz I was going to ask what’s different this year playing Lady M than last year?
K: Yeah, I also think too, I was really aware of certain—cuz it always happens in shows—that there’s certain moments that you feel like you’ve marinated on and tried to understand and think about but then you feel like maybe you didn’t quite capture it by the end of the show, so that’s what’s such a gift about this kind of process is that I can return to this and kind of get a second stab at it and see if there’s anything in my life that has caused me to think about something differently. So that’s what’s been different, is I think I’ve been much more willing to care less about recreating moments to a “T” and just allowing the moments to be what they’re going to be. Of course, you still stay committed to the exact same intentions and the exact same things you’re supposed to play and specific blocking but I think when you’re doing so many shows it’s better to just let go of [if] you might have felt something a certain way one performance that may have worked great, but if you lead with trying to recreate that, you’ll never recreate that, you know?
J: Definitely. Yeah, I have to remind myself that every single time we do the show. So then, what made you say yes to the second [run]?
K: Oh, I was so excited to come back. Cuz this experience in general is so unique to begin with, but then I think it’s also incredibly unique to Los Angeles because coming from New York where I thought I was moving because I maybe wanted to take a break from theater, I then found I’m actually grateful I thought that, because being away from all this theater that’s constantly happening made me realize how important it is in my life and understanding that it’s not absent in LA. So to be able to work with somebody like Kenn [Sabberton, director], who—I’m huge on training and class and getting better and I feel like doing a production like this, it’s like a master class every rehearsal with him where I feel like I’m just getting better. So between that and doing a show like Macbeth that I think even though people do it a lot, you don’t necessarily—you’re not guaranteed to have the opportunity to do this kind of show and then to do it at a space like this where you’re then doing it immersive and you’re working with someone like Ben [Donenberg, founder of SCLA] who’s just so passionate and there’s so much history to this theater, I was just so excited to come back, because it’s probably my favorite thing I’ve done since I’ve moved.
I became obsessed with Lin Manual Miranda and I looked everything up about him, and I was like, wow, you can write things for yourself!
-Katherine Banos
J: It’s just a really passionate experience. Very unique, passionate experience. Full of love. When did you start acting?
K: So, I started in 4th and 5th grade, I did our elementary school shows and it was in 5th grade that I realized I really liked it. And I always grew up playing sports, mainly playing basketball, so I always thought—especially cuz I had an older sister [who played basketball]—I thought I was going to go to college for basketball at some point. So, in middle school I was still doing the middle school shows for fun and I remember in 8th grade—it mainly first happened in 7th grade but then it kind of blew up in 8th grade—where a lot of the girls I went to school with were really annoyed by the fact that I played sports and did the shows because if you auditioned for the shows you were guaranteed to get in, but if you tried out for the sports teams you weren’t guaranteed to get on the teams. So I think to an extent, there were girls that were pissed off that I got on some of these teams where they didn’t, but they were also in the shows and I think they didn’t want me to do both. So it caused a lot of unnecessary drama that I shouldn’t have been dealing with at that kind of a young age, and my musical theater director in middle school really resented me for it, so in 8th grade—which I’ll always remember this—in 8th grade we did The Pajama Game, and every single role—which he never usually did [this], this was the first year, I don’t know why he did—every single role in the show was double cast except the lead role and I know that was done deliberately because I was the only 8th grader in the ensemble and I was called back—I don’t even remember the name of the lead role in The Pajama Game anymore, what a dumb musical—but I was called back for that lead role and that was his way of being like, because you play volleyball, I’m not going to give you the lead. So I remember I came home—this is such a long story, but it’s so specific—I came home and I was just a wreck about it; I was really upset, I was crying, I decided I was going to quit the show, and my mom felt really badly, because she didn’t understand that I liked theater as much as I did. So she hopped on the computer and just started Googling stuff and that’s when she found a community theater nearby me in the area and she found a sleep away summer camp for theater specifically. It was French Woods in upstate New York, it’s near Stagedoor Manor. But, so what was funny was I ended up doing those things and at this community theater I ended up doing so many different musicals and fell really in love with it and then fell even more in love with it going to this sleep away camp and then through this sleep away camp—because it’s one of those camps where a lot of celebrities’ kids go who want to act—I got my first manager through that. And then my first audition with that manager booked a voiceover gig—and that was going into high school—and that’s when I started realizing like, oh I can do this for real! So, my freshman year of high school I was on the varsity basketball team and doing the school musical and neither one knew I was doing the other cuz it was playoffs and stuff—it was very High School Musical for sure—
J: I love that!
K: It was! And then my tech week was the same week as the Long Island Championships and I had to tell my musical theater director like, I have to go to this game. And he was actually super understanding. But it was in that moment that I realized—I was like—I don’t want to be playing basketball anyway, cuz I wasn’t really playing much regardless. I mean, it was nice that I was on the team, cuz my sister was a senior at the time so we were on the team together.
J: Aw, that’s sweet.
K: But it was in that moment that I quit and—I just remembered—I saw In The Heights that year and I became obsessed with Lin Manual Miranda and I looked everything up about him, and I was like, wow, you can write things for yourself! And it was very, like, out of body experience. So it was the hobby that accidentally turned into something that I actually just wanted to do for the rest of my life and it’s all because people told me no. Which is what’s funny about it. That’s why I’m so glad I didn’t get the lead role in 8th grade cuz I don’t know if I would’ve been acting if I got cast as the lead. I probably would’ve gone to college for basketball.
So it was the hobby that accidentally turned into something that I actually just wanted to do for the rest of my life and it’s all because people told me no.
-Katherine Banos
J: Yeah! Honestly!
K: You know? Because I wouldn’t’ve understood how much I wanted it until I felt hurt.
J: Yeah, because most people—I don’t know about everybody else, but when I went to high school and was doing all of these shows and everything, I wasn’t even aware of what community theater was. And nobody talked about community theater, so it makes me think that maybe a lot of people did not even consider community theater, so I didn’t do community theater until 2 years after—no, I definitely did a community theater thing in like, senior year. So, it just took me a while to get to community theater. And [community theater] is really like—it feels like—a stepping stone place.
K: Yeah, a thousand percent.
J: To get you there. It’s like a gateway drug.
K: Yeah, cuz even though community theaters sometimes have their own drama and problems and nepotism and whatnot, and you look back and some of those productions are not the greatest scene in the world, it gets you to understand what it’s like to work as a team, work as a cast, get to know people, understand what it’s like to work with the director, you’re reading other plays or musicals—I mean, most community theaters I feel like they just do musicals anyway, mine just did musicals—but it’s like you’re familiarizing yourself more with, you know, composers and book writers and history, so yeah, for those reasons, it’s just so great. It just widens your horizon, perspective, a lot.
J: Yeah. Definitely. Mm! This one is so important to me, because I just had an epiphany the other day. Is there anything that you wish you could’ve told yourself at the beginning of your career?
To be continued…
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