ELYSIAN 2020 Creator's Issue

ELYSIAN Inspiring Women. Graceful Living.

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STANLEY KORSHAK

SYLVA & CIE

WWW.STANLEYKORSHAK.COM

CHANEL MOUTH II CHROMOGENIC PRINT ON KODAK ENDURA LUSTER PAPER

BY TYLER SHIELDS

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Portraits in Precious Stone

From marketing to jewelry-making, this designer can do it all.

by Ulrike Lemmin-Woolfrey

ELYSIAN Volume 6 • Issue 3 • l’édition du créateur

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The Aria’s Prima donna Maria Callas’ life was more dramatic than any opera.

BY LAURIE BOGART WILES

reDesigning Society

FEATURES

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Muse

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The French-American architect, Anne Fougeron, is changing the world one building at a time.

BY PAIGE FARRELL

Becoming Judy Chicago

World renowned artist and feminist Judy Chicago will not be stopped.

BY RACHEL GOULD

Inspiring Women Debra Austin page 110 Lola Debney page 116 Siri Garber page 122 Diane Warren page 128 INTERVIEWED BY KAREN FLOYD

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travel

Stranded during Covid-19. BY LUCIE GRACE

mind&body

DEPARTMENTS

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Mental wellbeing equals total wellbeing. BY MARTHA WIEDEMANN

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Obstacles to peace. BY MARY ROGERS McMASTER

fashion

Theatre is a spiritual home. BY JEAN LI SPENCER

shopping change creator

Bring Paris into your home. BY ABBY COTÉ

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Nathalie Joacim: From Juilliard to the Grammys.

BY KAREN FRAGALA SMITH

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154 philanthropy art&culture

Supporting women one star at a time. BY KATIE JENSEN & CLAIRE KUWANA

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Helping victims reclaim safety: ELYSIAN Impact & Silent Tears. BY JEAN LI SPENCER

back story / the cover

Haley Hudson photographed on location at Maggie Macdonald Art Studio & Gallery in Spartanburg, S.C. by photographer Heather Smith of Pressley Smith Photography.

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food&dining

The Supper Club.

BY HILLARY RICHARD

E publisher

Karen Floyd executive editor

Abby Deering

managing editor

Hannah Shepard

c r e at i v e d i r e c t o r

Ryan Stalvey

media director

Rob Springer

d i g i ta l e d i t o r

e ly s i a n i m pa c t d i r e c t o r o f p h i l a n t h r o p y

Kelly Nichols

inspiring women

Karen Floyd

graceful living

Rhonda Fischer l i t e r at u r e e d i t o r

Kathie Bennett

wellness editor

Martha Wiedemann h e a lt h e d i t o r

Dr. Katherine Birchenough

columnists

Mary Rogers McMaster senior writer

Laurie Bogart Wiles contributing writers

Paige Farrell, Karen Fragala-Smith, Rachel Gould, Lucie Grace, Katie Jensen, Claire Kuwana, Ulrike Lemmin-Woolfrey, Hillary Richard, Jean Li Spencer copy editors

Diane High, Hadley Inabinet, Baker Maultsby, Phil Randall director of web design

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development

Elliot Derhay

d i g i ta l m a r k e t i n g m a n a g e r

Nika Wolf

d i g i ta l s a l e s d i r e c t o r

Don Bailey

p r o j e c t c o o r d i n at o r

Sophia Tan

post-production supervisor

Elise Rimmer

comptroller

Anna Christian interns

Rachel Castellani, Haley Hudson

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ELYSIAN Magazine is published four times per year by Palladian Publications LLC, 113 W. Main St., Spartanburg, SC 29306.

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Fresh off the streets of New York City, Haley Hudson is always ready for a close up. During her cover model shoot, she speaks with ELYSIAN’s Publisher, Karen Floyd, about her experience as a design student at Parsons School of Design, while Media Director, Rob Springer, captures the moment. PHOTOGRAPH BY HEATHER SMITH OF PRESSLEY SMITH PHOTOGRAPHY

Abby Coté

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2020

The year became synonymous with “visual acuity” (20/20 numerator referring to distance and denominator to size). As long as I can remember, 2020 represented the “year of vision” a time where there was clarity of purpose. It was a milestone year, grounding and impermeable. So much so that at the close of 2019 while toasting our amazing creative team, I referenced 2020 as the “metaphor” for ELYSIAN’s clear vision and focus.

Covid-19 has reshaped our lives with an uncertainty and impact that is still unknown. How ironic that I once used the term 2020 in the context of representing “normal” (eyesight) when nothing could have adequately prepared us for the aberrance of 2020 and beyond. ELYSIAN has re-evaluated and re-tooled to meet these changing times. Critical self-evaluation, which to a large extent prescribes creativity, also defines the human spirit. It has given us the opportunity to rebuild our own legacy.

Perhaps for women most of all, creativity has been a means to challenge the status quo and pursue self-realization. Within the souls of creative women has always been the strength to push through the impenetrable.

It is to this very strength that we dedicate the Creators Issue. To the women who write the songs that make our hearts sing, perform where none before have ever danced, design the spaces in which we raise our families, entertain us with their breadth of character portrayals, or even craft the beautiful gems around necks that we so admire, we recognize you.

Inspiring women. (Anecdotal stories)

Each edition of ELYSIAN breaks new ground with its inspiring stories about exceptional women. Our Inspiring Women for this Creators Issue include Grammy award-winning Diane Warren, groundbreaking ballet dancer Debra Austin, Platform CEO Siri Garber and film score coordinator Lola Debney.

Every year it is also my privilege to select one Non-Pareil among the many women interviewed, someone whose body of work represents matchlesss excellence. Grammy award-winning songwriter, musician and record producer Diane Warren transcends influence and impacts the creative world exponentially, oftentimes lauded as the most successful songwriter of our time. Composing for Lady Gaga, Celine Dion, Aerosmith, and Beyoncé, to name a few, her relentless creativity makes her an icon to be recognized and celebrated. Diane’s anecdotal stories reflect wisdom and encourage everlasting perseverance.

Likewise, the life story of American ballet dancer Debra Austin, first African American female dancer at the New York City Ballet, first African American female principal dancer at a major American ballet company (Pennsylvania Ballet) and soloist at Zurich Ballet (Switzerland), inspires us all with her abounding talent, passion and dedication.

With no experience but supreme confidence and determination, Siri Garber created Platform PR. Her personalized attention to her clients has garnered her success in a world dominated by men. Although trained as a nurse, Lola Debney found her niche behind the scenes, managing family, home and the career of her husband, award-winning composer John Debney. Her “esprit de corp” touches us all through her words and actions.

Graceful living. (Deliberate, spirited and bold)

A beautiful composite of the life and career of American-born Greek soprano, Maria Callas, is our Retrospective. Maria personifies the qualities “deliberate, spirited and bold.” One of the most renowned and influential opera singers of the 20th century, Callas was praised for her bel canto technique, wideranging voice and dramatic interpretations.

This issue also features the story of artist Judy Chicago whose life’s work has expanded boundaries for women in both art communities and the world as a whole for over five decades.

World-renowned designer Édéenne also appears in this issue, showcasing her brilliant pieces of jewelry as a marketer-turned-artisan.

Finally, gracing our cover is Parsons School of Design student and aspiring interior designer Haley Hudson. Haley’s quiet elegance completes the ELYSIAN circle.

Philanthropy (Impact giving, creating legacy)

In the season of reflection and change, we encourage purposeful giving. Nationally, one in four women has been a victim of some act of violence, but the numbers are incalculable amidst the global pandemic. It is timely to refocus on ELYSIAN IMPACT’s vision to eradicate violence against women and children. In that spirit, we ask that you support your local Domestic Violence and Children Advocacy centers. Now more than ever, some of the few outlets survivors of abuse have for respite are being taken away.

In closing

As ELYSIAN Creators we are tasked with mobilizing our individual passion and strength to persevere. We seek to inspire our readers through our pages with both words and robust visuals. Thank you for sharing in life’s journey we walk together.

To 2021 and beyond, wishing you everything inspiring, creative and beautiful. Stay safe and well.

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With much love,

Karen Floyd Publisher

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travel

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Stranded During Covid-19

BY LUCIE GRACE

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In June

2019

I had a near-death experience that left me hospitalized for two days in my hometown of London. Laid up in the hospital with an extreme allergic reaction and anaphylactic shock, I decided that life was too short to keep pushing through a backbreaking Ph.D. having never traveled the world. All I could think about was seeing the pyramids and hiking to Machu Picchu, and I resolved to take a sabbatical year to work my way around the globe.

I’d dreamed of long-haul backpacking several times before but never acted on it. In a high school classroom, a college dorm room and even a restaurant on my 30th birthday, I’d hatched plans and routes that never emerged. It was only in that hospital bed last year that priorities snapped into focus. So while I can’t call my move to travel throughout 2020 a sudden notion, it only took me five short months of selling, saving and working seven days a week, hustling hard and fast, to gather enough funds for a year on the road.

“Won’t you get lonely?” my colleague Amani asked when I told her my plan. I assured her I’d be fine. I’m a pretty seasoned solo traveler, never being away for longer than a few weeks at a time but enough to know how to navigate new places. I’d learned a few things about myself over the years of travel— like how to enjoy my own company and spend time alone, but also to respect the need to socialize and meet new people. Both are valid while exploring by yourself. The first trick is to stay in places where you’ll have opportunities to meet people. The second is to travel as lightly as possible, so nothing is holding you back from heading off on an adventure. I’d come to love solo traveling, the freedom it brings and the self-confidence it grows.

I finally left the U.K. on the first day of February, with a tightly booked itinerary that would take me from Egypt to Machu Picchu in Peru, via India, Nepal, Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and the United States. It all started marvelously: I had a wonderful weeklong tour of Egypt’s great sights, including my coveted pyramids, before taking a week in Alexandria to pen an article. The travel writing plan was off with a bang, and I had pitches accepted by some of my favorite publications throughout February. The dream was happening.

However, as February unfolded, the global ramifications of Covid-19—weeks earlier just an abstract health scare in distant Wuhan—were becoming apparent around the globe.

China closed its borders, my much-anticipated trip to Tibet was curtailed, and I headed straight to India. There, things would only become more surreal.

I flew into Mumbai in February, full of excitement. Hostels are the best way to meet other travelers in this vast country, so I checked into Horn Ok Please Hostel, a brilliant spot where I spent a week writing two articles I’d had commissioned. I got to

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Grace overlooks the Hawa Mahal or “The Palace of the Winds” in Jaipur, affectionately nicknamed the “Pink City.” Constructed in 1799 from red and pink sandstone, the iconic palace is a must-see in the Rajasthan area, where Grace spent the bulk of her time in India. Previous pages: Grace visiting Amer Fort located in Amer, Rajasthan, India. Amer Fort was originally built by the Meenas and is known for its artistic style elements made of red sandstone and marble.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRIAR JONES

know the hostel management team well—they mentioned they had a sister branch in Jaipur, and I said I’d visit on my travels (this turned out to be more than fortuitous).

I spent a wonderful month in India, heading down to Goa for some yoga, then to Chennai to write a couple of stories, before flying up to Rajasthan for a few weeks that would become four months. In mid-March, I was writing in Udaipur when the news broke that the world was officially in a pandemic and that both India and the U.S. were to close their international borders. It became apparent that I would have to make some quick decisions.

I had two possible options: fly back to the U.K. via Mumbai and Dubai, potentially endangering my 70-year-old dad and 90-year-old grandmother, or find a safe place to stay and potentially lockdown in India. I had no desire to spread illness to my family or to give up on my dream, and India seemed a safe plan—so I set out for Horn Ok Please in Jaipur, which was kindly hosting stranded travelers. Hysteria rose and “foreigners” were being heckled and blamed for spreading the virus, so I opted against public transport and booked a taxi for the sevenhour drive from Udaipur. On arriving in Jaipur, I decided to

WHILE THIS GLOBAL PANDEMIC IS THE SADDEST AND MOST FRUSTRATING SITUATION I’VE LIVED THROUGH IN MY LIFETIME, I’VE NOT ONCE FELT TRAPPED BY MY DECISION. I’M ‘STUCK’ IN INDIA . . . TO SEE THIS PANDEMIC THROUGH ALONE AND THERE’S EMPOWERMENT IN THAT.”

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Standing in the barren courtyard of Nahargarh Fort, Grace admires the medieval structure against the stone ground.

One of three forts built to defend the city, Nahargarh never came under attack and remains a captivating tourist site offering stunning views of Jaipur below.

PHOTOGRAPH BY BRIAR JONES

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MY PRIVATE MEASURE OF SUCCESS IS DAILY. IF THIS WERE TO BE THE LAST DAY OF MY LIFE WOULD I BE CONTENT WITH IT? TO LIVE IN A HARMONIOUS BALANCE OF COMMITMENTS AND PLEASURES IS WHAT I STRIVE FOR.” —JANE RULE

AMERICAN NOVELIST, CRITIC

immediately self-isolate and prepare for the rumored lockdown, so I ended up in a building for six weeks, having never seen the city outside. A very strange feeling, but I was safe.

While this global pandemic is the saddest and most frustrating situation I’ve lived through in my lifetime, I’ve not once felt trapped by my decision. I’m “stuck” in India—but I’m constrained to a situation of my own making. I chose to wait it out in Jaipur, to see this pandemic through alone, and there’s empowerment in that. During lockdown, I owned my decision and kept a positive state of mind, developing a tight routine to make the days pass faster, full of things that make me cheerful, from reading fiction to treating myself to daily watermelon salads. I soon stopped feeling imprisoned and decided to see this time as a pause that perhaps I needed.

Numerous people suggested going home, but I knew that capitulating to that powerlessness would be worse for my mental and physical health. Of course, I’m lucky that I had wonderful hosts at Horn Ok Please, who let eight guests stay for lockdown despite pressures to close and have us leave. I’m so grateful for that nest we took refuge in.

India’s lockdown was one of the strictest in the world, with stringent laws against going outside. A quick dash to the shops was permitted but no walks or daily exercise. Thankfully, we were well looked after: A local doctor came to visit us regularly to check on our health, and all our groceries were collected by the hostel’s

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receptionist, the long-suffering and ever-patient Anish.

As my friends back home in the U.K. struggled with the isolation, I found I had too much company in what was essentially a large apartment. But the payoff was immense, as we watched Jaipur reawaken throughout May and then outright blossom in June, as palaces and cultural sites reopened. Having these sites to ourselves to explore was a privilege I’ll never forget. Jaipur is a wonderful city, and we found it full of friendly, optimistic folks who were happy to be slowly getting back to business.

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fter four months in Rajasthan, I decided to make a break for it and head north to cooler climes.

The summer heat was stifling, with temperatures regularly hitting 110F, and we were held hostage by it, dependent on the air conditioning to keep us comfortable.

Movement between states was slowly becoming possible in India, provided you were willing to quarantine on arrival (as individual states have different entry policies and rules, which takes some canny navigation).

My gut instinct said it was time to make the move to a new place to call home for a while. I made for Rishikesh as I had a couple of friends living there, and after months locked down in a city, I was desperate for wide-open skies, walks in nature and to see the River Ganges for the first time.

It was absolutely the right move—not least as there’s a vast community of stranded travelers in Rishikesh who’ve created a haven of learning for themselves, exchanging their skills in workshops and classes in cooking, crafts, dance, massage, yoga or just about any pastime you can imagine. The thrumming hub of creativity is a really inspiring outcome of a global catastrophe, and I’ve enjoyed it all—particularly the women’s circles and art exhibitions. Being witness to Rishikesh evolving in this uncertain time has been humbling and just the reminder I needed that human positivity can save the day.

The main things I enjoy about Rishikesh, though, are the quietest and most solitary: the fresh, fragrant wafts of pine, cedar and eucalyptus; the sounds of birds; the restorative din of a rushing river. It’s a big town but maintains a village feel; shopkeepers and dhaba owners greet you twice daily. You even come to recognize the local dogs. This pandemic may have put the brakes on my travel plans, but I’m so grateful to be exactly where I am, for however long that may be. I’m still not exactly sure if it’s possible to sit out a pandemic, but I’m giving it my best shot. ■

Grace stands underneath Patrika Gate, a site in Jaipur that is famous for its beautiful architecture and artwork. The picturesque gate guards the entrance to Jawahar Circle, a park that sits within a highway traffic circle. The rainbow walkway beneath the gate has become famous due to its bright and cheerful aesthetic.

PHOTOGRAPH BY BRIAR JONES

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Grace visiting an ancient temple in Jaipur known for its intricate carvings and colossal elephant statues.

PHOTOGRAPH BY BRIAR JONES

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mind & body

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MENTAL WELLBEING equals TOTAL WELLBEING

BY MARTHA WIEDEMANN

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our state of mind can weaken your immune system, making you vulnerable to diseases, viruses, bacteria and pathogens.

We are powerful, creative beings with the ability to materialize what we say, feel and believe to be true. Guided by our sense organs, we observe and try to understand the world we live in, influencing our environment while being influenced by it.

As emotional beings, we become critical of our experiences. It is usually our most difficult experiences that mark us the most. We are not always aware of our tendency to create a future based on painful past experiences. Unresolved emotional scars can create a void within us that does not always serve us well.

The biggest void often comes from feeling deprived of love, especially at an early age. This can condition the mind in the way it perceives experiences, affecting one’s emotional, mental and physical status for years to follow. What we should know as children is that all creation comes from love, that we are lovable regardless of how we get to experience love from others. In most cases,

we developed our sense of self-worth through how loved we felt as a child, and unfortunately, many of us have learned that love is limited and that we will receive it only when certain conditions are in play. In other words, we grew to believe that we receive love only when we act, do or look a certain way.

The truth is that we already possess the power of love within us and can feel strengthened and secure through sharing love regardless of changing circumstances or conditions. This builds the foundation to good mental, emotional, physical and spiritual wellbeing Love moves the soul to expand itself and explore its purpose. One does not need to seek to experience love in some degree or variety because it is not separate from us. It is who we are, universal and limitless.

Although humans have developed and evolved dramatically to create efficient ways to live in this physical world, we have not fully explored the powers within. We need to understand that we are whole and complete in our creation. Love is within us rather than something we need to seek from the outer world to complete us. Love is a shared emotional energy, which enriches one another. It has the power to heal. Numerous studies and experiments have shown that when we unite and meditate using the power of love, we can transmit healing energy to our environment and those in need.

Simultaneously, each of us possesses the power to heal ourselves.

THE PROCESS OF SELF-HEALING

Healing commences with self-love, recognizing, accepting and embracing your creation. The next step is to become aware and conscious of how and where you use your energy. You may misuse or even use your energy destructively through negative thinking, passing judgment on others, being jealous, harboring feelings of guilt, hate, regret or even engaging in selfloathing emotions. Refrain from hating or regretting the disease but rather see that it has the potential to awaken something profound in you. Direct your energy towards what you want to create for yourself. Make the shift and tap into the energy of love within you. Start by expressing what you are grateful for, focus on the beauty of nature, the potential that life presents, the joy in sharing a smile and holding a vision for a better tomorrow. Make it a point to reconnect with your vision, your desire and the feeling of being well again.

Finally, it is time to meditate with the healing power of love through breath.

Start by taking a few breaths to clear the passageways. Keep your focus on the love you have for yourself and your love for life as you breathe in slowly and deeply, connecting to universal love, taking in vitality, harmony and bliss to each cell and throughout your system. Pause a few seconds and then exhale slowly and deeply, releasing all the tension, toxins, painful memories, and anything that does not serve you well. Pause a few seconds and inhale slowly and deeply, connecting to universal love, taking in vitality, harmony and bliss to each cell and throughout your system. Repeat the process a few more times and allow your mind, body and spirit to come to a restful state.

Connect to the power of love within you, visualize and start feeling the presence of your new life. Know that you are using the power within you to heal and create. Try to remain conscious, observe your thoughts and actions.

Use meditation as a tool to reprogram your mind so that you direct your energy into creating total well-being while staying connected to the vision and feeling of a better tomorrow. ■

ABOUT MARTHA WIEDEMANN Martha Wiedemann is the Principal and Wellness Advisor of Badrutt’s Palace Hotel in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Martha was the leader of the multimillion-dollar expansion of Badrutt’s Palace Wellness Center to incorporate Ayurveda and Feng Shui. She is a world-renowned wellness and Ayurveda expert, nutritionist and has opened wellness centres in various five-star hotels and medical centres around the world. She is responsible for the concept, design and functions of Badrutt’s Palace Wellness Spa, as well as introducing the practice of Ayurveda to Switzerland.

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wellness

Obstacles to Peace

BY MARY ROGERS McMASTER

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CLUTTER IS NOTHING MORE THAN POSTPONED DECISIONS.”

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—BARBARA HEMPHILL SIMPLEWORKS ORGANIZING

ack in early spring, our homes were the places where we slept, ate and hosted.

The four walls we lovingly call our house were our protectors from the elements and our structure in the storm.

For many of us, our homes have served as the landing spot in between adventures, not the place where all phases of life happen. The front door used to be the marker of us leaving to go be an active member of society, while our couch was our soft spot to land after a long day out in the world.

Now, the lines have all been blurred. Living rooms are classrooms, and bathrooms are for conferences. Backyards are for dinner with friends, and maybe that wall needs to be moved back 3 feet or so. We are in our homes in an entirely new way, noticing things we’ve never seen before, and while learning a new normal comes with its frustrations, I find this new home appreciation to be very exciting. Why? Because the way you have designed your home is the way you have designed your life, and you can’t run away from that mirror anymore.

Look around your home. Where are the places you like to relax?

Where can you be at ease?

Where is the place of the most productivity?

As a wellness coach and space creator, my work goes beyond the emotional self. Sometimes it is best for clients to work from the outside in, and the home draws a perfect map to whatever is going on with you.

Open your refrigerator. What is it saying to you? Glance in your closet and see if that unorganized mess is the reason for the voice

screaming in your head. Piles of books, receipts, plastic bags, all clutter send a message of stress to you every time you see it. “You made it through the day, but you still fell short here,” says the stack of cardboard boxes in your entryway. Gone are the days of throwing the mess into the hallway closet; now that space serves as the shelf for your DIY light rig; after all, those zoom meetings aren’t going to light themselves.

We have been forced into a much-needed reckoning that our homes have so much untapped potential, and in turn, so do we.

What messages are you (accidentally) sending to yourself day in and day out?

By keeping a pile of unread books by your bedside, you are reminding yourself that you never make time to read. By having your shoes all over the house, you are advertising that you can’t be bothered to be organized. It’s no wonder you’re exhausted by noon; not only is your house now the center of all life for everyone in your family, but you also have emotional landmines scattered everywhere, and you’re spending precious energy avoiding them. Are you willing to face them instead and untangle the chaos? Can you imagine how much more of a positive impact you could have on the world if you weren’t giving stress free rent?

It’s time to evict.

Chances are you are an intelligent, successful person working to make your positive mark on the world, and you are. You are full of promise and light, and you have a very specific purpose for being here.

However, if you’re carrying your own torch while meandering through piles of clothes and a doorway that’s constricted by furniture that you don’t even like, your light can’t possibly shine to its full potential.

Eliminate the messages of stress by dedicating time each week to untangling the chaos areas.

Think of this project as a chance to re-meet your house. You aren’t the only one going through major changes. The windows and the floorboards had a real thing going until you started staying home all the time. Now, they have to sneak around like the plants do, when everyone is asleep.

Once again, look around your home. Where are the places you like to relax, and what obstacles stand in the way? Where can you be at ease, and what might you need to build on that?

Where is the place of the most productivity, and what do you need to feel more focused?

Give yourself a reprieve, and rediscover your surroundings. With gentle eyes, take time to untangle the chaos areas. You deserve a home that supports your state of mind, and that process requires willingness and her best friend, patience.

Who knows, as you sift through the old and notice the new, you may even start to see the measure of your personal growth throughout this year. Undoubtedly, you’ve been challenged, and with all challenge comes growth. How might you reflect the new you in the place where it all happens?

Renew your perspective, reclaim your space and recognize that the obstacle to your peace is in your very, capable hands. ■

ABOUT MARY ROGERS McMASTER Mary Rogers McMaster is a holistic wellness coach with over twenty years of acting experience. Her work in personal wellness spans many forms including chakra work, energy healing, Alexander technique, leadership training, executive coaching, fitness, dance, talk therapy and emotional release.

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fashion

Phylicia Rashad and company in a scene from Lincoln Center Theater’s world premiere production of Bernarda Alba, for which Toni-Leslie James designed the costumes.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PAUL KOLNIK

Theatre is a Spiritual Home

BY JEAN LI SPENCER

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life-changing mentor in Michelle Guillot, the costume designer and illustrator. She put it this way: “I knew I had found my place in the theatre.” To this day, she calls the theatre her spiritual home.

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ince then, James has worked her way up from being an off-Broadway usher to wardrobe supervisor at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and Dance Theatre of Harlem.

Now, she is a costume designer for stage, film and television and has been the recipient of The Irene Sharaff Young Masters Award, the 2009 Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in Costume Design, and on several excellent occasions, a Tony Award nominee.

Being a young person of color, I was eager to speak to James as a woman who has paved the way for later generations of aspiring creatives. I became deeply interested in hearing about her experience working within an industry that has a longstanding tradition of whitewashing (at least in the West), and if that history has shaped her sense of purpose. Among her long list of projects, she has worked on August Wilson’s Jitney, Othello and Whoopi, the television series. Her answer to the question of supporting and working with Black talent is complex: “It is absolutely important to support the work of Black talent and BIPOC members of the profession. But, honestly, this is not a question that would be asked of my White colleagues who also worked on the productions above and a conversation we have been having in Design Action, a group

world

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is now more silent. Shattered. In some irrevocable ways, stunted.

Change is the new normal. Staying home is the new normal. Then, out of the disconsolate void comes Toni-Leslie James. She is a bursting reminder that the world, although transformed forever in frustrating and frightening ways, can still be hopeful. Can still be beautiful.

When I emailed James in August, it was immediately clear that she was going to tell me something. And that something—as I was prepared to learn—was going to be honest and scrutinous, but above all, thoughtful. Even through email, though the two of us are perfect strangers, James was genuine and good-humored with me in a way that translates into everything she does: on the theatrical stage, where she designs costumes; in the classroom, where she teaches at Yale Drama School; and with her children at home, where she is a mother.

James found the theatre at 9 years old through a colorful production of Jack and the Beanstalk, and she was magically introduced to a community that, for the first time in her life, felt like her tribe. “I was an only child and lived in my head for the most part, so that experience was a revelation to me by opening up a world of possibilities that called to me.” She is an alumna of Ohio State, where she found a

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August Wilson’s Jitney at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (261 West 47th Street). Directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson. Pictured (left to right): André Holland as “Youngblood” and Carra Patterson as “Rena.” © 2017, JOAN MARCUS

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Opposite page, left to Right: Randy Harrison, Emily Gunyou Halaas, Christine Toy Johnson, Paul Nakauchi, Ann Michels, Sasha Andreev and Erin Mackey in the Guthrie Theater’s production of Sunday in the Park with George, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by James Lapine, directed by Joseph Haj. Scenic design by Jan Chambers, costume design by Toni-Leslie James, lighting design by Jane Cox, projection design by Caite Hevner, and sound design by Elisheba Ittoop. June 17 – August 20, 2017 on the Wurtele Thrust Stage at the Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis.

PHOTOGRAPH BY T CHARLES ERICKSON

THE THEATRE WAS CREATED TO TELL PEOPLE THE TRUTH ABOUT LIFE AND THE SOCIAL SITUATION.”

A costume design sketch by Toni-Leslie James for the play Flying Over Sunset. This classy red dress is made for Clare Booth Luce, a playwright, diplomat and Congresswoman who is featured as one of the main characters in the play.

COURTESY OF TONI-LESLIE JAMES

formed to support BIPOC and White emerging designers.”

James’ response acknowledges that she has a role in promoting Black talent and diversity. But in some important way, I get the sense that she rejects the role society has assigned to people of color—and specifically Black women—of being the “fixers” of racism and diversity. It is true that if she were White, I would not have asked her this question (instead, I might have framed the issue around the position of White people in affirming a commitment to diversity); it is also true that as a Black woman, James should not be limited or tasked with the responsibility of telling the entertainment community how to remedy its problems.

For James, costume design and teaching are not merely a paycheck—it is the work of her life. “The productions you stated were fantastic experiences, artistically and creatively, but I’ve always had a seeking spirit in exploring and visualizing a wide range of characters through costumes on the stage.”

Her seeking spirit is what has led James to productions such as the original Broadway run of Angels in America, Tony Kushner’s two-part depiction of the AIDS epidemic in New York City, and the theatrical interpretation of Gabriel García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

She affirms that a well-written character “gives us an opportunity to build upon and create the arch of their lives.” James praises other artists for their unmitigated and constant wealth of inspiration; she is a dedicated art enthusiast and has a current obsession with Michael John LaCuisa and Patrick McGrath Muniz, who she calls “revelatory and iconic, particularly during this pandemic.”

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oni-Leslie James is drawn to a specific way of doing things: looking to truth and always making her work a labor of love.

She starts an ideal day with a cup of coffee and the leisure to procrastinate. Unlike many accomplished women who are afraid to admit it in the face of stress culture, she is candid about the benefit of procrastinating and “then procrastinating some more.”

She prefers to conduct research during daylight and starts designing around 10 p.m. (the reality of being a night owl). “This comes from raising two children and not being able to get going until the kids were in bed,” she explains. I can only imagine what James’ studio must look like: rough sketches on costume boards that include meticulous notes about the character, the fabrics, buttons, every item worn and hairstyles. “If it’s a contemporary production, I design in order of the script scene-by-scene. If it’s a big period musical, I’ll design the ensemble first. […] I’ll lay out the final colored sketches in Photoshop for presentation, do a detailed shopping list and budget, then turn the design over to my associate designer and the theatre.

Once it’s in their hands, I get to procrastinate some more.”

Her personality emanates resonance and warmth. She has an endearing tendency to not always take herself too seriously: “It’s glorious to be recognized for your work. Being nominated for a Tony was fantastic because I never have expectations of anything, and when I’m pleased with my work, I’m at peace and move on to the next. As for the awards ceremony, I never pass up an occasion to shop for new clothes!” This must be a quality her students admire about her, and it’s one that has the power to draw a person in completely.

James believes in leading by example. She has battled against “the angry Black woman” trope in theatre and academia her entire professional career. While she embraces being both strong and present

in a room, anger is not her style of persuasion. She is often used to exerting her influence behind the scenes as a costume designer and playing the long game, as she puts it, in everything else. “I was on an exploratory committee regarding the School of Arts at VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University), and when I received the minutes of the meeting, the chair wrote all my comments in capital letters like I was screaming. Unfortunately, he didn’t see his gesture said more about him than it did about me. In the end, I let my work speak for me.”

We also take a long moment to discuss the role of women as key economic decision-makers, especially in their consumer power. I ask James how she sees women’s habits and desires driving forward the kind of content that gets produced: “Women, particularly BIPOC women, have not always had access to the upper-echelon executives, decision-makers, and, most importantly, the funding that allows our work to be seen and flourish. The key is in the preparation, in being prepared to capitalize on your talent once you get in the room, recognizing the power we have over the art we produce, and opening the doors for others when we have the opportunity.”

As with many of us, James has been forced to reassess herself and slow down as a result of the pandemic. She is now back at Yale, where she and her students are working together to make the best out of the new normal. And although we did not get to meet in person for this interview, an intimate dialogue nonetheless blossomed in the digital space between us. I feel a little closer to Toni-Leslie James. Her parting words are ones I will carry with me into the new normal and that I hope you will too: “It’s an exhilarating feeling to continue seeking knowledge and develop creatively. I welcome and embrace new lessons and experiences and use them as a tool for growth.” She reminds us that we are, all of us, still growing and thriving despite the circumstances. ■

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The Supper Club attendees dine in style while overlooking the breathtaking city lights that illuminate the elegant, one-of-a-kind dinner table.

PHOTOGRAPH BY SEAN PAUL FRANGET

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food&dining

THE SUPPER CLUB

BY HILLARY RICHARD

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D

awn Simpson Jones, The Supper Club’s national membership director, spent up to two hours pouring over the list of attendees for the event.

She had gotten to know most of them personally—through initial membership interviews as well as past events—and had enough details memorized to consider the potential talking points each guest could bring to a conversation as well as their personality traits.

“We want the storytelling to feel effortless. Sitting at the long banquet table, watching members and guests finally get into conversation and watching that unravel, having people at the end of the night say, ‘I think I met my new best friend’ or ‘I think I just met my future husband’—it’s pretty incredible,” she said.

The Supper Club is an upscale members-only social club across several U.S. cities (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin and Miami) that hosts up to eight events per month. The idea is to celebrate the lost art of the dinner party by creating impeccable, enjoyable events with fascinating people. These aren’t exactly your average dinner parties, though.

In East Hampton one summer, Tom Colicchio cooked dinner at a private waterfront estate, Nicolas Feuillatte poured the champagne, Hendricks Gin crafted the cocktails, and Audi provided the transportation.

Another time, at Miami’s Art Basel, The Supper Club sipped Maestro Dobel tequila with Mexican artist Camille Rose Garcia on the Edition Hotel’s Matador Terrace. In Los Angeles, the 100 members who attended Picnic and Polo in the Park dined on Haute Chef LA cuisine in picnic baskets while they watched a polo tournament at Will Rogers Polo Club.

The Marie Antoinette Fête in New York transported 75 costumed guests back to 17th century Versailles via the Pierre Hotel’s fairytale Rotunda Room, where they played parlor games and enjoyed classical arias.

The Supper Club founder Tamsin Lonsdale observes the luxurious scene she and her team created for one of their exclusive gatherings.

PHOTOGRAPH BY SEAN PAUL FRANGET

This autumnal floral arrangement is one of the many sumptuous decorative elements the club is famed for.

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PHOTOGRAPH BY JASMIN VAN T.

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The

Supper Club events of today are a far cry from the club’s inaugural event, where founder Tamsin Lonsdale cooked fish pie for 20 guests in her family’s London home. Even so, the premise has always remained the same.

Lonsdale started The Supper Club on a whim in 2005 while living in London and working as a fashion stylist.

“I spotted a gap in the market,” she explained. “No one in London was hosting dinner parties for big groups at the time. Most of my contemporaries were going to nightclubs instead. I was bored of clubs and frustrated by the inability to have a proper conversation over the loud music.

“I wanted to bring back the art of the dinner party, how our parents used to entertain in the ’60s and ’70s: salon-style, with an eclectic mix of wonderful people sharing stories and engaging ideas,” Lonsdale said.

The idea was a hit. Within a year, she decided to turn her hobby into a business. Now, there are hundreds of members, and annual membership fees range from $950 to $10,000. The company itself has grown to four dedicated women—three in Los Angeles (including Lonsdale) and one in Austin, Texas.

“The one constant with The Supper Club is that it’s fabulous, it’s glamorous, it’s beautiful, but it’s authentic,” said Simpson Jones. “There’s a lot of substance behind everything. We’re a group of four strong, educated, creative women behind this.”

“In a way, I think it’s easier to be a female in this line of business,” said Lonsdale. “A lot of doors opened. People for the most part were very supportive. It’s a very personal business that has everything to do with relationships.” Women excel at being social butterflies and warm hostesses but can also handle the organization and difficult work of managing detailed events across multiple cities, she added.

“We create bespoke experiences for our members—from polo fields to private estates to new restaurants,” said Londsdale. “We like to weave art,

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Light floods into this unique dining space curated by The Supper Club.

Extensive artwork ranging from modern photographs to detailed portraiture fill the walls surrounding an elegantly set wooden table.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MARY SPENGEMAN

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Almost too pretty to eat, these extravagant hors d’oeuvres are simply a sample of the many delectable dishes The Supper Club’s award-winning chefs have to offer. This invite-only meal is the perfect combination of luxury and exclusivity.

Below: Heads turn as one of the evening’s guests performs a surprise musical number at a Valentine’s Day party in New York City. The Supper Club team loves to wow their guests at the end of each gathering with a secret performance.

PHOTOGRAPH BY DANIEL BRENNAN

music and fashion into the events to make it a one-of-a-kind evening.”

This often includes details like flower arrangements on the table, passed craft cocktails (so guests won’t have to break up conversations to get to the bar), mood lighting, transformative spaces, talks with the chef, and of course, the optimized seating chart.

“We love to include a secret reveal at our dinner parties—usually during dessert—where one of the guests may stand up and perform on an electric violin, or a guest magician will do a special show, anything that creates a memorable experience,” said Lonsdale.

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THE ONE CONSTANT WITH THE SUPPER CLUB IS THAT IT’S FABULOUS, IT’S GLAMOROUS, IT’S BEAUTIFUL, BUT IT’S AUTHENTIC,” SAID DAWN SIMPSON JONES.

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he Supper Club planners love themed dinners, both the expected and unexpected kinds. Past themes have included Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Solstice, The Oscars… and also Seven Deadly Sins, a Jonathan Gold Food Lovers Series (where guests went on a culinary tour around Los Angeles), and a Krug champagne outing in New York to pair drinks with Greek food in Queens and Indian food in Brooklyn.

There is no “typical” Supper Club member, which inspires the event planners to be even more diverse and unexpected with their soirees.

Members come from various backgrounds, but they tend to have a few common qualities—they’re passionate, talented, smart, stylish, worldly, interested in others and kind. Potential members are interviewed and vetted carefully to make sure they bring the right energy. Countless friendships and romances have blossomed through the club—Lonsdale even met her now-husband at an event, and several members of The Supper Club she now considers friends attended their wedding.

It was their special kind of consideration and attention to detail that helped The Supper Club during the pandemic, when they had to make some obvious changes. The Supper Club held complimentary virtual events and curated experiences for members, complete with multi-course tasting menus delivered to members’ doorsteps. Perhaps unsurprisingly, as people grew more starved for socialization than ever, interest in The Supper Club increased. Now that in-person events have returned (at safe distances) and the rules of dining have changed temporarily, providing special events with unforgettable details and stimulating conversation seems more important than ever. ■ Editor’s note: For membership enquiries, please visit www.thesupperclubinc.com or contact Dawn Simpson Jones at Dawn@thesupperclubinc.com

The painstakingly organized seating arrangement clearly works its magic in this captivating scene from one of The Supper Club’s events in New York City. With dinners and parties happening every month, TSC knows how to bring sophisticated individuals together from across the globe.

PHOTOGRAPH BY AZUREE WIITALA

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Glasses tinkle as a group of lively guests grin ear to ear while discussing a myriad of topics ranging from art, theater, literature, and more. A scene quintessential to the City that Never Sleeps.

PHOTOGRAPH BY DANIEL BRENNAN

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by Laurie Bogart Wiles

THE

ARIA’S MUSE 44

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Maria Callas, Turandot, 1950..

MARKA / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

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1958, distinguished American broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow interviewed Maria Callas at her opulent suite at New York’s famous Waldorf-Astoria.

“Much has been said and written about your temperament. What do you have to say? Are you really temperamental?” he asked the world’s most celebrated diva.

“What do you mean by my temperament, Mr. Murrow?” she replied, surprised. “I don’t understand that…”

“I suppose,” he replied, “tantrums, throwing things…”

“Oh, dear,” she demurred. “I have never, at anyone, though sometimes you feel like it! No tantrums. It’s not true. It’s just, disturbing situations that turn up, you know anything about it, you just react as any normal human being.”

The fact is, Maria Callas was not just any normal human being.

That same year, 1958, she walked out of the Rome Opera, was barred from appearing at La Scala in Milan, left her husband for Greek tycoon and shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, and was fired from New York’s Metropolitan Opera by its legendary director, Rudolph Bing. When interviewed he stated, “There came to a point where I had to decide was Madame Callas running the Met or was I running the Met, and at that time, I was running the Met—and said so—and cancelled her agreement.”

The unprecedented incident caused an explosion heard far outside the opera community and in a world where few did not know the great Callas— so great, she was known as “La Divina.” Again, Callas appeared on television with Murrow at the height of the fracas. The respected English conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham, was streamed in live, on television, from London.

“Can I ask Madame Callas a most important question?” he asked.

“One of the most startling rumors is that Madam Callas is supposed to have hit [a director] over the head with a bottle of brandy, and I want to know if that is true or not.”

Taken aback but nonetheless quietly grinning at the humor masked behind the question, Maria replied: “The newspapers have written so much, and so much, that God only knows. I would’ve by where readers would have believed half of the half because I don’t believe anything because when I read it, I have the shocks of my life,” the New York native replied in the quasi-accent, broken English she had acquired in her 25 years living as a European.

“Could it have been a bottle of something else, madame?” Sir Thomas then asked, earnestly.

Feigning indignation Maria replied, “I never threw anything at anyone, unfortunately, and if I did, it would be a shame for the bottle, you know!”

Maria Callas, the diva, the greatest name in opera, lived a life constructed on drama as rich—and ultimately, as tragic—as any of the opera roles she had sung on stage.

Born Maria Anna Cecilia Sofia Kalogeropoulos on Dec. 2, 1923, in New York City to Greek immigrant parents, she was 7 years old when her mother left her father and returned to Greece with Maria and Maria’s older sister, Yacinth.

Their mother, Litsa Kalogeropoulos, had lost her firstborn child, a son, and was certain her third would be a boy. When a daughter was born instead, Litsa determined she would never show her any love, and she never did.

In 1939, when Maria was 14 years old, she was accepted into the Conservatory to study music. Her overbearing, strong-willed mother lied about her daughter’s age, confident she would become the family breadwinner as a singer. The storm clouds of World War II had gathered, and soon the hardships of war set in. Maria’s mother forced her to sell herself to Nazi soldiers, so her family could buy food. Years later, as Callas rose to fame, her mother made extraordinary demands for money.

Maria completely and forever distanced herself from mother and sister.

“My mother used blackmail, unfortunately,” Maria reflected later in an interview. “They (her mother and sister) had a way of living that was not my way.”

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THE MAKING OF MARIA CALLAS fter the war, Maria went to Italy to study with the great opera teacher Elvira De Hidalgo, who would be the closest thing Maria ever had to a mother.

“She was the perfect student,” de Hidalgo said. “When she made a mistake while singing, I would tell her what was wrong. She’d answer, ‘Si, capito’—I understand—and never make the same mistake again.”

Callas signed her first contract in 1942 at the Athens Opera House, where she sang Puccini’s Tosca, which became her hallmark role. She also sang Beethoven’s Fidelio and Wagner’s Parsifal. Callas then devoted her repertoire to the Bel Canto (“beautiful singing”) school of opera. Bel Canto not only suited Callas’ voice and performance style, but she dominated, and identified, that school of singing over any other opera singer to this day.

Her career soared. She was taken under the wing of some of opera’s greatest conductors. Maestro Tullio Serafin worked with her to perfect the Bel Canto technique and repertoire. Serafin also taught her to forget about the notes she was singing and focus on the truth of interpretation. This would define her as a singer.

When Callas was under the guidance, and spell, of Luchino Visconti (“she was like a schoolgirl with a terrible crush,” one friend observed), Callas commented, “I was thoroughly spoiled by him because he was the Grand Seigneur treating the Prima Donna lavishly—and I enjoyed it thoroughly. He taught me the less I move without evident reason, the more it is my own personality.”

Subsequently, when she performed La Traviata, conducted by Carlo Maria Giuliani, at La Scala, she found a kindred spirit. Their approach to the relationship of the music with the drama on stage created such a chemistry that after four performances of La Traviata, 17 more were scheduled the following season.

One of Callas’ most important professional relationships and friendships was

The captivating Callas gazes on as she is photographed at Covent Garden in London, England. Covent Garden is home to the Royal Opera House where she would eventually carry out the performance of her lifetime.

PA IMAGES / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

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48 Callas smiles as playwright Noel Coward and famed party-giver Elsa Maxwell greet her at “Cuba Gala Night,” a benefit dinner dance intended to promote scholarships for Cuban fashion designers studying in the U.S. The event was held at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria by Earl Smith, U.S. Ambassador to Cuba. Middle: Greek shipowner Aristotle Socrates Onassis and Callas, followed by the Maharanee of Baroda, leave the Opera of Monte Carlo after attending the ballet “The Queen of Spades.”

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with the great Italian director Franco Zeffirelli. He was one of the great influences on Callas’ life. When asked to describe her as a performer, Zeffirelli said, “If I had to pick one thing, it would be pathos. She could bring to the turmoil of Tosca a pathos.”

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CALLAS, THE PRIMA DONNA fter a performance, Maria, then 26, met Giovanni Battista Meneghini, an Italian industrialist 27 years her senior. Less than a year later, in 1949, they married—she for the life and security of his money and he for the glamorous life of the opera. But he also realized she was lonely and adrift personally, and he became fascinated by her. There was no romance, however.

She sang under the name of Maria Meneghini Callas, and he would control her life and career until 1959, when Aristotle Onassis entered her life.

In 1949, immediately after her wedding, Maria, the new bride, left for Argentina without her husband to perform Turandot, by Puccini, Verdi’s Aida, and Bellini’s Norma. From 1948 to 1952, she gave over 173 performances of 18 operas. From Mexico, she went to Naples, Buenos Aires, London, Venice, Sao Paulo and Rome, where she was acclaimed as the greatest Prima Donna of all. Yet Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, the temple of opera, still refused to make Maria its Prima Donna.

As she perfected her voice and acting, the only challenge that remained to her was her body. Being a perfectionist, she felt her interpretation of her Bel Canto heroines had to be as credible as possible—especially her Violetta in

La Traviata, a young woman dying from consumption. Callas envisioned her as slim, almost skinny. Above all, Maria wanted to change her appearance and be recognized not only as a great singer but also as a glamorous woman.

In 1953, she lost 80 pounds in 10 months and became one of the most glamorous women in the world, wearing extraordinary gowns, coiffeurs and jewels. She was unlike any diva the world had ever seen.

In 1951, La Scala’s director, Antonio Ghiringhelli, finally surrendered to the public’s adoration of Maria, and she opened the season with I Vespri Siciliano. It was an absolute triumph, and Callas was reborn as “La Callas.” The same season at La Scala she sang Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata and Bellini’s Norma, the two operas Callas would perform the most in her career.

In striking ways, the theme in Tosca, a diva living and dying for love and her art, mirrored Callas’s life. Tosca is a grand, intimate story adapted by Italian composer Giacomo Puccini from French playwright Victorien Sardou’s 1887 dramatic play of torture, murder and suicide, set in Rome in June 1800 as Napoleon Bonaparte is about to invade the Kingdom of Naples.

Sardou, who wrote 70 plays, collaborated on several historical melodramas with the great French stage actress Sarah Bernhardt. La Tosca premiered in Paris on November 24, 1887, with Bernhardt as Tosca. Puccini’s opera Tosca premiered on January 14, 1900, in Rome.

Callas sought to make the role her own. At the first rehearsal, she cleared the table of all music and papers and said she wanted to create the role from scratch. She brought to the role a femininity, beauty and freshness that had never been performed before.

Some critics claim her weight loss negatively affected her voice, but, in

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49 Callas chats with Winston Churchill aboard the yacht Christina after arriving in Monaco from a three-week Mediterranean cruise. On the voyage, Callas and Churchill were both guests of Aristotle Onassis.

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fact, it was more magnificent than ever. Callas expanded her Bel Canto repertoire to include Cherubini’s Medea, Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, and Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma. In1955, her finest year, she returned to La Scala to perform La Vestale by Spontini, La Sonnambula by Bellini, and again, La Traviata, reuniting with Luchino Visconti. She was so spectacular that she was crowned Prima Donna Assoluta by La Scala—the absolute Prima Donna. American soprano Leontyne Price and English soprano Joan Sutherland were among the few to earn such a distinction.

It was 1956 when Callas made her Metropolitan Opera debut in New York, performing Norma, Tosca and Lucia di Lammermoor.

In

ONASSIS

April 1956, Callas met Aristotle Onassis in Venice at a party given in her honor. Callas was performing Anna Bolena at La Scala.

The critics called her interpretation “an unreal and superhuman performance,” and the opera world christened Callas La Divina “La donna la voce La Divina.”

In 1958, Callas performed at the Opera Garnier in Paris for the first time. This was a particularly difficult time in her career. A huge scandal in Rome had just ensued when she became sick after the first act of Tosca and left a glittering audience of dignitaries, celebrities, heads of state and movie stars angry and disappointed. The incident and the defamation she suffered plagued her the rest of her life.

In 1959, Callas and Meneghini were invited on a summer-long Mediterranean

cruise on the world’s grandest yacht, Christina, by its owner, Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis and his wife, Tina. There was an instant dynamic between the two Greeks, Callas and Onassis, and in the course of the cruise, the two began their affair that would, in the end, destroy them both.

For the first time in her life, Callas experienced a passionate sex life. “She did not have sex, perhaps once a year with her husband,” one friend commented.

Onassis had an enormous impact on the emotional and physical life of a woman who had experienced years of no emotion, no sex, from a husband who increasingly was seen as an obstacle rather than asset in both her professional and private lives. Though Meneghini had showered Callas with his wealth and successfully managed her career, he was no longer of any use to her.

When the yacht finally docked, the two left their spouses behind and went off together. Onassis started divorce proceedings against Tina, and Callas, claiming her husband had mismanaged her career, started proceedings against him.

Reams have been written on the explosive, ill-fated relationship between Callas and Onassis. Callas had found the love of her life in Onassis, but those who observed them from their social circle believed he never reciprocated with the same intensity. For eight years, her life was absorbed into his; she abandoned her career.

All her life Callas wanted a family, and she would have happily forfeited her career and fortune to have children. She tried to get pregnant with Meneghini but could not conceive. With Onassis, she did.

On March 30, 1960, Maria, age 37, delivered a baby boy. He lived that one day. A picture was taken of the innocent, which Maria kept—and had with her when she died.

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Surrounded by fans and draped in a glamorous tulle gown, Callas reaches out to grasp a supporter’s hand from onstage, circa 1965. As her fame erupted, Callas quickly became an icon in the opera world.

PICTORIAL PRESS LTD / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

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You are born an artist or you are not.

And you stay an artist, dear, even if your voice is less of a fireworks. The artist is always there.”

T H E ATTEM P T E D C O M E B ACK

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hroughout her eight years with Onassis, Callas maintained she needed to detach from her career, living not as the great “La Callas” the soprano, but as Maria, the woman.

“Years go by very quickly,” she said in an interview reflecting on those years away from the stage. “I wish I was what I was 20 years ago.

The acrobats and top notes, they used to be, and you know, the fireworks that a young person has.”

Nonetheless, she attempted a comeback. When she opened her tour in Hamburg, she received acclaim for the actress, the personality—but not the voice.

“I don’t really read the critics,” she commented when told of the negative reviews. “During my full glory I have always had bad critics. The fact that I have made a career without public relations or bribe newspapers or build my image has made things difficult. To have a job you have to be nice to some person or another. Very few persons reach the peak with no help at all but your own talent.”

Many people believed her career had peaked; some said it was over.

Contrary to the general belief that Onassis maintained a stranglehold on Maria, he actually urged her to perform, to train. But she began to smoke, went to bed late, was not practicing, and was so involved with her relationship with Onassis that she told him she didn’t want to sing anymore.

It was then that the greatly respected administrator of Covent Garden, London, Sir David Webster, ganged up with Franco Zeffirelli for a new production of Tosca at the Royal Opera House as a ploy to get Callas on the stage. She could not ignore that bait and agreed when she was told that playing opposite her was her friend, the great Italian baritone Tito Gobi.

On opening night, January 21, 1964, Callas, consumed with fear, was physically prevented by her dresser from leaving the theater.

Zeffirelli and the stage director had to physically push her on stage for her entrance. On stage again after so many years, La Callas came alive and gave the performance of her life.

Zeffirelli could not have done more to support Callas’ return than pairing her with Gobi. Not only was he her friend, but they were simpatico, equals; he played off her, and equally she played off him. Callas and Gobi would shift slightly every night they performed, creating a fresh moment as they interacted. Ultimately, they set the bar so high that no one has yet come close.

Maria’s ability to define and refine Bel Canto phrasing was one of her greatest powers. She was determined her characters would not be one-dimensional.

Great sopranos become the part they play, but Callas embodied the women she played as if by birth—Tosca, Violetta, Aida, Carmen, Medea, Manon, Elvira in Bellini’s I Puritani and Maddalena in Andrea Chenier.

Tito Gobi understood this. In Tosca, he observed, Callas would “go to the absolute limit.” She kills Gobi’s Scarpia because she is afraid of becoming his victim. Both Gobi and Zeffirelli confided they saw Onassis in Scarpia.

After her comeback, the question arose: Did Maria really want to escape café

society after all? Clearly, she wanted to become Mrs. Onassis. But did she genuinely want to abandon her career?

On May 22, 1964, Callas walked onto the stage of the Paris Opera to perform Norma. In the last act, as she hit the last high note—considered the most spectacular note in opera, the high E-flat—for the first and only time in her career, she couldn’t sustain it.

On March 19, 1965, she gave two performances in New York to herald her historic return to the Metropolitan Opera. She was met at John F. Kennedy International Airport by cheering crowds and hordes of press.

At the Metropolitan Opera house, the line for standing-room-only tickets formed four days before the performance.

The first performance was historic for another reason. Jackie Kennedy was in the house. There was a standing ovation when the young widow of John F. Kennedy entered the hall to take her seat. Then things quieted down … and there was the voice of Maria. At the first note, the audience again rose to their feet in a furious, wild, five-minute ovation before settling down for the performance. The applause for Jackie was polite, respectful and restrained.

The applause for Maria was deafening, boundless, almost out of control.

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ver the next two months, Callas performed a run of Normas— then fate struck. She collapsed as the curtain came down on the opera—and her career. Callas’ blood pressure was dangerously low. The turmoil in her life with Onassis, his affairs, her fear of losing him, the anxiety and exhaustion from performing, had taken its toll.

Directly after this trauma at the Paris Opera, Callas was scheduled for four

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Callas is illuminated by the spotlight as she performs the role of Violette in the opera La Traviata alongside Ettore Bastianini. Photograph by Giuseppe Verdi, circa 1955.

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Callas takes an excursion in the fishing village of Portofino in Italy as she and a group of friends travel on Aristotle Onassis’ yacht. The group is comprised of Onassis’ first wife, Tina, daughter of Winston Churchill and actress, Sarah Churchill, and Umberto Agnelli’s wife, Antonella Agnelli. July 27, 1959.

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The diva’s range of emotion are captured throughout an interview.

Callas became well-known for her temperament and was even nicknamed “the Tigress.”

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more performances at Covent Garden. She cancelled three and kept only one—the Royal Gala Performance, to be attended by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.

“I can give one performance,” Callas announced. The British were unforgiving. When the curtain rose on the first act, there was a horrible silence. However, Callas’ witchcraft started to work. The audience warmed up after the second act. By the end of the opera, she owned the audience.

Nonetheless, the horrible experiences of her career deeply hurt her. She lost confidence. It was the beginning of the end. The final note she sang as Norma at Covent Garden was the last note she would sing on the opera stage. As she prepared to leave her dressing room, she told a friend, “Callas is dead.” Old nightmares plagued her — her tormented relationship with a mother who never loved her, her failed marriage, and now, the loss of the only man she ever loved.

Rather than leave opera totally, she taught at the famed Julliard School of Music in New York. She proved to be a great teacher, and from 1971 to 1972, Callas shared the wisdom and secrets of the most extraordinary career opera had ever known. She loved teaching, but everyone asked when The Divine One would sing again.

She never answered the question. The voice remained silent.

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allas was naïve to believe that Onassis would ever marry her.

He began seeing Jackie Kennedy in 1965, making “friendly” visits to the United States. Perceived as a romantic relationship by the press, it was based on money, fame and notoriety.

Maria went berserk. She took pills and was hospitalized. There were big scenes on the phone. Onassis wanted both women but felt he had to marry Jackie because conducting an affair with the former First Lady would have created a scandal—and besides, Jackie was encouraging him. A lavish spender whose finances were not unlimited, Jackie saw marrying Onassis as a business contract that could ensure her lifestyle, and on October 20, 1968, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy became Mrs. Aristotle Onassis.

Though the marriage ended in divorce in March 1975, during their six years together the couple seldom spent time together and rarely on the same continent at the same time. Maria learned of the marriage in the newspapers—Onassis never had the decency to tell her. On his wedding night, he phoned Maria multiple times, penitent. She would not take his calls.

Never once was she nasty about Jackie. When asked, Maria said she didn’t know her, couldn’t blame her. She kept a poker face with the press: “Mr. Onassis and I—we had a wonderful life,” she said when interviewed.

“I don’t regret any bit of it. I regret when I stopped singing. I worked less and less. He did not want to see me sing.” And, “In some ways, both of us are probably in love. Both of us understand each other as nobody else.

At a certain stage, love becomes different. You see, if I was brought to the state that I left him, it meant that at the deep core I didn’t love him. There are not many men who would marry me. It’s a sort of a handicap to be famous.” None of this was true. In private, Maria was devastated, furious.

“He deceived me,” she confided to friends.

Just 10 days after his wedding to Jackie, Onassis flew to Paris, to Maria, who he now understood was the love of his life. The longer he was away from her, the more he regretted marrying Jackie. The marriage quickly deteriorated as Onassis’ urgency to go back to Maria consumed him. He hired lawyers and told them to find a reason for divorce.

An enormous fresco of Callas on the side of a city building.

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Always the center of attention, Callas is joined at Covent Garden by her two co-stars Tito Gobbi (left) and Renato Cioni (right) to take a curtaincall after her comeback performance in 1965.

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Ava Gardner Park premiere.

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I would like to be Maria, but there is La Callas who demands that I carry myself with her dignity.”

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THE CURTAIN FALLS ON THE FINAL ACT He could have filed for adultery, perhaps, had Maria taken him back, but she had built a wall after the cruel trick he played on her. The real-life saga played out like a Greek tragedy. Onassis’ beloved only son, Alexander, died in a small plane crash on January 23, 1973. Seeking the consolation only Maria could give him, Onassis flew to Paris to seek comfort from her. “He’s gone, my son is gone,” he told Maria. Onassis was completely crushed. The once powerful, vibrant, electric man never recovered. Then, on October 10, 1974, Onassis’ first wife, Tina, committed suicide.

On March 15, 1975, Aristotle Onassis died at the American Hospital of Paris at age 69 from respiratory failure, a complication of myasthenia gravis, which he suffered in the last years of his life. The divorce proceedings with Jackie had been hostile; nonetheless, as a public show, Jackie visited her estranged husband before leaving for New Hampshire on a ski holiday.

She ordered nurses not to admit Maria should she turn up to visit Onassis.

With the end looming, Onassis’ sister, Artemis, phoned Maria and begged her come quickly if she was to say goodbye to her great love.

Maria by that time had become a recluse and had not left her apartment for months. Upon receiving the call, however, she left immediately and snuck in through the service entrance of the hospital and up the back elevator. Onassis was barely conscious. “It is me, Maria—your canary,” she whispered to him, and told him she loved him and always would.

Maria’s life was very dark and unpleasant after Onassis died. She stayed home, went for walks and to restaurants alone wearing big sunglasses and scarves, and listened to her recordings over and over. Almost all her friends had abandoned her, and she grieved over what might have been.

“How slow death comes to those who long for it,” she sang as Tosca. On September 16, 1977, 21 months after Onassis’ death, Maria Callas died in her apartment in Paris, at age 53, from, it was said, a heart attack.

Those who knew her, who loved her, know better.

Maria Callas died of a broken heart.

he legacy of La Divina, La Callas, The Tiger, has inspired generations. She opened the door to the popularity of opera at a time when interest was waning.

What remains—her recordings, interviews, and photographs— show a woman who touched people’s souls in a curious way. The movie version of Medea in 1974, one of the few times Maria was filmed, was not a success, and yet, in her screen performance, it was clear how she drew people to her.

In 1961, when Callas was losing her voice, she performed Medea at La Scala and was booed by the audience. During the aria, “Dei Tuoi Figli,” she raised her fist toward the audience and shouted, “Ho dato tutto a te!”—I gave everything to you! By the end of the aria, not only had the boos ceased, but the audience was on their feet shouting cries of adoration.

Ho dato tutto a te. Maria Callas indeed gave everything to us. ■

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Every quotation is verbatim from recorded, televised, or written interviews by Miss Callas or about Miss Callas by others.

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In preparation for her recital in honor of the Order of the Knights of Malta at the ChampsElysées theater, Callas sits in her hotel room taking notes at her desk while the city of Paris peaks through her window.

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Anne Fougeron: reDesigning Society

by Paige Farrell

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Francisco-based architect Anne Fougeron has made it her life mission to make a difference in the lives of those who are disenfranchised. Founder and principal of Fougeron Architecture, Fougeron started her firm in 1985, not long after graduating from Berkeley with a master’s in architecture.

With but a few years working for another firm, she felt ready to strike out on her own.

“I was eager to work for myself and determined. You could say that I was a bit naïve,” she says with a quick laugh, adding, “I did not have a proper business plan, and in hindsight, I might have thought things through a bit more!”

Her tenacity, vision and desire to make a greater difference in communities and for those with less have brought her numerous accolades and earned her high national praise and respect as both a woman and architect.

Asked what matters most, Fougeron replies, “Social issues, women’s issues and affordable housing. With my work, I constantly ask myself, ‘How can I give back to the community? How

These pages & previous spread: in Big Sur is set on the cusp of a 250-foot drop to the Pacific Ocean, with the “main bearing system of the house set back twelve feet from the bluff, both to protect the cliff’s delicate ecosystem and to ensure the structure’s integrity and safety.”

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOE FLETCHER

can I creatively solve problems? How can I serve the disenfranchised, bring something of elevation, and better the community?’

This is my driving force and that of my team.

Creating serene and safe spaces for Planned Parenthood has been very important to me— and my focus on affordable housing, without a doubt. When we make a positive difference, we give the power of optimism.”

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aised in France and the United States, Fougeron embraces both cultures with vibrancy and reverence for their influence on who she is as a woman and on her work. She completed her undergraduate studies in the 1970s in Massachusetts, earning a bachelor’s degree in art history at Wellesley College and taking classes in architecture at MIT. She recalls the times: “Remember when it was acceptable

to call oneself a feminist?!” She says her teachers and her family nurtured the notion of “you can do anything you set your mind to.”

“I was and am a proud feminist,” she says. “I believed I could do anything. I had privilege; that is not lost on me. It is why I do the work that I do.”

Neither are setbacks lost on her. Just as her business was beginning to take off, the economic downturn of 1989 dug in its heels, and in tandem, her beloved father became terminally ill. Her husband at the time, the notable linguist Geoffrey Nunberg, was offered a sabbatical in France, and to France they did go, with their young daughter Sophie in tow. Fougeron closed her practice and worked for a firm in France while caring for her ailing father. Their return to the states coincided with the Brookline, Massachusetts, Planned Parenthood shooting in 1994. Called upon to redesign the space for both security and serenity, she reopened Fougeron Architecture.

“This was a pivotal time for me. The work for Planned Parenthood influenced the direction

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“Situated in a densely populated, urban setting in San Francisco, we reversed the original flow of design and hence the program orientation of the home.”

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Translucence House

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With , “glass and natural light both diffuse and hold together the composition, defining scenes throughout the house that explore perceptions of inside/outside, private/public and light/dark as well as materiality. Situated on a doublewide lot, the house sits atop a bluff and next to a community garden, making for a rare condition in the heart of San Francisco: a large, secluded site overlooking the city and the bay.”

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of my firm, and from there we were known for having a clear social conscience. And I knew that architecture could influence that and help.

My daughter was on the board at Planned Parenthood as a teenager, and this brought us closer. I was in my 40s—just a baby really in terms of my career—but it became the pivot for the trajectory of my focus as an architect. It was a time of ‘don’t hold back.’ I was by then a single mother, and I had a renewed focus and drive. It solidified a confidence not only in myself as an architect but as a woman who could make a difference, and one who admittedly won’t stop at ‘no.’

“I do have a bulldog mentality,” she says with a hearty laugh.

Speaking to the art of confidence, she shares, “Confidence, yes, it is important. To have a belief in oneself, this is something that is part personality trait, I think, something inherent, and also part cultivated. I am one of three siblings, all women.

Our parents were successful and really instilled

a sense of ambition in us, in working hard, and finding success—I think they were hoping for one boy?” she laughs. “There really wasn’t a question—rather, we had a set of values and drive instilled in us from a very early age. They believed in our possibility. When I am asked how did I get to be who, where I am, I say: ‘Find your passion. Find what matters to you, dig deep, and keep talking about why it matters.’”

Fougeron, on top of being smart and brilliantly erudite, is funny and knows the value of a good sense of humor. “A sense of humor is essential, especially in establishing an equilibrium for open and honest discourse with anyone, certainly, but especially men, and highly successful men. My field is still dominated by men, and we need to work together. And to work together successfully, there has to be respect and equality. A common ground needs to be established without losing the personal vision, especially in collaboration.

Communication is key. How we communicate is

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as important as what is communicated.”

She goes on, “As a woman, you can’t take yourself too seriously. You need to engage people, make them laugh, and make it clear that you are not—and do not see yourself as—a person on a pedestal, but simply another human being in front of them. I have learned the importance of finding common ground through my career and certainly through my many speaking engagements.” She laughs again: “Not that I’m a stand-up comic by any means!”

Influenced by a bevy of architects, notably men, Fougeron shares, “My field has been dominated by men. It’s changing, but ever slowly.

And I have a great reverence for architects such as Louis Kahn; his juxtaposition of the austere and sensual, the rigor in his work, it’s woven into the telling of a story. And Borromini, the Baroque, albeit tortured, genius of his time. Julia Morgan was a transformative female architect, prolific and influential here in California.”

She pauses, then adds, “Given these times, especially, I do miss the inspirational process

Ingleside Library

The branch in San Francisco is “a library which serves as a neighborhood hub and source of civic identity; the reading room’s bay window—a glowing beacon of glass—projects the value and accessibility of literacy for all.”

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOE FLETCHER

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of visiting ancient, architectural beauty and indulging in the resonance, keeping my mind progressive.”

er upbringing and the crosscultural confluence resonate still. “I don’t spend as much time in France these days as I would like to, but I did take a quiet getaway earlier this year to Paris. As with all of us, an introspective pause is the norm, and it was a time I really treasured. I see the way of life in Paris as something to emulate, and that is something I am looking toward, futuristically, in San Francisco. Quality of life, in terms where we work and live—a closer proximity— and community engagement: art, culture, joy, shopping locally, more affordable housing, and bridging the gap between those who have and those who have less.”

Fougeron admits she has begun the retirement

dialogue with fellow female architects.

On what makes a good urban space, and her vision for future work, she states: “What makes a good urban space is to me the idea of rethinking the American city, the way we approach buildings. There is not much space left in San Francisco. We just finished The Avery (Transbay Block 8). We started with a courtyard and asked ourselves what kind of influence it had on the buildings around it. We worked with New York-based architect Rem Koolhaas of OMA on the idea of having an ‘urban living room’ with affordable housing and integrating residents and others, a sort of knitting back together this more fractured urban environment. The experience we have had this past year, all this isolation, we will want more communal spaces, especially outdoors. We are going away from ‘hiding in home’ to a more porous relationship of participating in an urban environment. Social interaction is ever more necessary, and the desire will be to become more integrated. We

need a more wholesome way of thinking of cities—living in them, socializing in them— and most importantly, we need to break down the barrier of social inequity.”

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he breadth of work designed by Fougeron Architecture is nothing short of visual splendor. The use of light alone—transformative, uplifting, elegant, provocative. Whether for residential, multifamily, civic or community use, the works of Anne Fougeron embrace architectural opportunities found in opposition.

With her work, she evokes a dialogue, a participation between observer and inhabitant, a confluence of the archetypical “feminine” and “masculine.” Fluidity and emotion converge with solidity and statement. For here are creations shimmering between vibrant and poetic, inviting us to take inspirational, respite pause. ■

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The intention of the , in Oakland: “Our goal was to create an architectural manifestation of the Kapor Center’s core values: connectivity, openness and democracy. It is environmentally efficient and also conducive to pioneering work.”

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It was when the artist formerly known as Judy Gerowitz made a radical proclamation.

“Judy Gerowitz hereby divests herself of all names imposed upon her through male social dominance and freely chooses her own name: Judy Chicago.” The news broke in an ad in Artforum magazine, accompanied by an iconic photograph of the 31-year-old artist posed coolly in a boxing ring. The intention here was twofold: to promote her solo exhibition at California State University in Fullerton and to establish Chicago as a feminist force majeure here to KO the patriarchy.

Chicago pulls no punches at 81, either. Her seminal work as a multidisciplinary artist, author, educator and activist has commanded recognition on an international scale, including a coveted place on TIME magazine’s list of the 100 “Most Influential People” in 2018. Chicago’s is something of a household name these days, all the mightier for its rebellious liberation from patronymics. (The artist was born Judith Cohen before assuming the surname of her first husband, Jerry Gerowitz. Chicago remarried twice after Gerowitz’s death in 1963, though her chosen name, playfully derived from her Chicago accent, has endured.)

Chicago has spent the better part of her six-decade career sparring for visibility. Born in 1939, Chicago matured in the age of muscular Abstract Expressionism and misogynistic Pop art. She obtained her undergraduate and graduate degrees from UCLA in Los Angeles, where the nascent art scene was tolerable only to women with unflinching grit.

In 1964, persuaded by the ubiquity of men and cars in her environment (and, perhaps, in a bid to process the recent loss of her husband in a car accident), Chicago enrolled in an auto body course where she was the only woman in her class of 250 students. She became skilled in the notoriously technical art of spray painting, which facilitated her natural sensibilities as a colorist.

Long before the ombré craze, Chicago used sprayed acrylic to yield ethereal color gradients; from her shimmering Star Cunts series (1969) to the ecstatic checkerboards comprising Fresno Fans (1971). She sprayed canvas with radiant,

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Once I knew that I wanted to be an artist, I had made myself into one. I did not understand that wanting doesn’t always lead to action. Many of the women had been raised without the sense that they could mold and shape their own lives, and so, wanting to be an artist (but without the ability to realize their wants) was, for some of them, only an idle fantasy, like wanting to go to the moon.”

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Judy Chicago with 10 Part Cylinders, c. 1966 © JUDY CHICAGO/ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK PHOTO COURTESY OF THROUGH THE FLOWER ARCHIVES COURTESY OF THE ARTIST; SALON 94, NEW YORK; JESSICA SILVERMAN GALLERY, SAN FRANCISCO

Previous pages: Judy Chicago, On Fire at 80, 2020 © JUDY CHICAGO/ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK PHOTO © DONALD WOODMAN/ARS, NEW YORK

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Judy Chicago with Zig Zag and Trinity, c. 1965. © JUDY CHICAGO/ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK PHOTO COURTESY OF THROUGH THE FLOWER ARCHIVES COURTESY OF THE ARTIST; SALON 94, NEW YORK; AND JESSICA SILVERMAN GALLERY, SAN FRANCISCO

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Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, 1974–79, Ceramic, porcelain, textile, 576 × 576 in. (1463 × 1463 cm).

BROOKLYN MUSEUM, GIFT OF THE ELIZABETH A. SACKLER FOUNDATION, 2002.10 © JUDY CHICAGO/ARTIST RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS) NEW YORK; PHOTO ©DONALD WOODMAN/ARS NY

Opposite page: Judy Chicago, Installation view of Wing One from The Dinner Party, 1979.

COLLECTION OF BROOKLYN MUSEUM, GIFT OF THE ELIZABETH A. SACKLER FOUNDATION © JUDY CHICAGO/ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK PHOTO © DONALD WOODMAN/ARS, NEW YORK

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reaching compositions like Heaven Is For White Men Only (1973); and she sprayed detached car hoods with sinuous, candycolored forms.

Of course, the car hoods specifically referenced the machismo culture around her, hence the screaming irony that Chicago’s male teachers and peers denounced their suggestive imagery and bright, emotive hues. Chicago abandoned the practice shortly thereafter, though she resurrected three hoods—Birth Hood, Bigamy Hood and Flight Hood (1965/2011)—to critical acclaim in the Getty Center’s multi-institutional initiative Pacific Standard Time, a regional celebration of work made in Los Angeles between 1945 and 1980.

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ell-bent on making space for women in the art world, Chicago established her pioneering Feminist Art Program at Fresno State College in 1970 and helped found the Feminist Studio Workshop in Los Angeles, a public cultural center where women could safely nurture their practices, in 1973. All the while she felt a mounting urge to contextualize her own existence amid the dizzying continuum of women’s history.

“Learning my history as a woman is what saved me,” Chicago recalls from her studio in Belen, New Mexico, in a conversation over Zoom. “I struggled so hard to get my work acknowledged . . . One of my goals from the beginning was to make sure that my work would not be lost . . . [because] even women who were successful in their own time have been erased.”

Think French portraitist Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, who, despite her place as one of the most prolific artists of the late Rococo period, wasn’t deemed worthy of a single retrospective in France until 2015. Or Artemisia Gentileschi, the virtuosic Italian Baroque painter whose work was erroneously attributed to her male contemporaries until (shockingly) recent years.

These women are but two of 1,038 female figures whose names Chicago immortalized in The Dinner Party (1974-79), a monumental installation in which mythological deities, literary heroines and notable women who lived—“Those who’ve done the cooking throughout history,” as Chicago has previously explained—are paid tribute.

Today, The Dinner Party is the keystone of Chicago’s oeuvre and the crown jewel of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. But Chicago has a complicated relationship with her magnum opus. In 1979, The Dinner Party debuted at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to substantial fanfare and a barrage of ridicule, mainly

Because men have a history, it is difficult for them to imagine what it is like to grow up without one, or the sense of personal expansion that comes from discovering that we women have a worthy heritage. Along with pride often comes rage—rage that one has been deprived of such a significant knowledge.” for the overt vulvar forms of each honoree’s dinner plate. (Later on, critics would take issue with the association between biology and gender, as well as Chicago’s predominant focus on white women.) The Dinner Party wound up in storage just three months later.

It was not without significant efforts that The Dinner Party was reconsidered the following year, when it toured six countries across three continents. But it came back with such a vengeance that it steamrolled Chicago’s subsequent work—including the Birth Project (1980-85), for which she rallied some 150 needleworkers to illustrate the emotional, psychological and physical complexities of childbirth; and the Holocaust Project (1985-93), an immense endeavor on behalf of Chicago and her husband, photographer Donald Woodman (both of whom have European Jewish ancestry), to illuminate the Holocaust’s resounding impact on society.

The Dinner Party also eclipsed Chicago’s previous work, thereby threatening to bury her contributions as one of the only female fixtures of California’s formative art scene. This is why, despite her present renown, Chicago has taken meticulous measures to preserve her legacy in its entirety. In addition to maintaining an archive near her studio, Chicago’s work is archived at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Harvard University, Penn State and the Nevada Museum of Art. In 2019, she launched a comprehensive online portal that digitized her artworks

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Boxing ring ad by Jack Glenn Gallery for Judy Chicago’s solo exhibition at Cal State Fullerton published in Artforum Magazine’s December issue in 1970. © JUDY CHICAGO/ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK PHOTO BY JERRY MCMILLAN PHOTO COURTESY OF THROUGH THE FLOWER ARCHIVES

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The Female Divine is an inflatable anthropomorphic sculpture that was designed and installed in the gardens of Musée Rodin by Judy Chicago in 2020.

The incredible womb-like chamber represents divine femininity and acted as the venue for the Dior’s 2020 Haute Couture show in Paris.

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During the show’s finale, models make their final turn on the runway inside Judy Chicago’s inflatable sculpture The Female Divine at the Musée Rodin gardens in Paris, France. Opposite: Two Dior Haute Couture models sport the vibrant and intricately elegant dresses designed by Dior’s creative director, Maria Grazia Chiuri, for the fashion house’s Spring/Summer collection.

COURTESY OF CHRISTIAN DIOR COUTURE

and her feminist art curriculum—a move that fortuitously preempted the necessity of remote viewing in the Covid-19 age.

Not that a pandemic could slow Chicago’s roll. In August 2020, the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation announced the acquisition of Chicago’s print archive, which is being honored with a forthcoming catalogue raisonné as well as three online exhibitions of her prints at Turner Carroll Gallery in Santa Fe, (August–December 31, 2020); Jessica Silverman Gallery in San Francisco (September 3–October 15, 2020); and Salon 94 in New York City (September 16–November 30, 2020).

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ome November 2020, Dior is launching three new purses adorned with Chicago’s abstract portrayals of “great ladies” from history, whose names will be featured on each handbag to inspire research into why, exactly, these ladies are so great. That’s in conjunction with an exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch, Inc. in New York City, where Chicago’s series of 21 banners—designed for Dior’s spring/summer 2020 couture show back in January—will go on view to the public, also in November.

Chicago’s collaboration with Dior has been one of the most talked-about creative partnerships of the year. It all started when Maria Grazia Chiuri, Dior’s first female artistic director, named Chicago among her top 10 influences. Previously unfamiliar with Chiuri, Chicago applauded the designer’s priority to support her fellow women; Chiuri’s historic inaugural line for Dior included a T-shirt asserting, “We Should All Be Feminists,” after the book by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

In the summer of 2019, Chicago received an unexpected invite to attend a Dior runway show in Paris, where Chiuri proposed that Chicago design one of the label’s runway shows herself. With its waist-cinching, boob-pinching silhouettes and ankle-annihilating stilettos, the world of haute couture is an unusual place for a feminist; and as Chicago experienced the sensory chaos of a runway show

for herself, she ruminated on whether her art could have a meaningful place in such a setting.

Upon returning home, Chicago consulted Jeffrey Deitch, the gallerist and curator who incubated the career success of ’80s-era art stars like Jean-Michel Basquiat. Deitch is no stranger to the potentials that exist where art and fashion meet—he had recently partnered with the Japanese retailer UNIQLO himself—so with his blessing, Chicago proceeded with her concept for Dior: A vision entitled The Female Divine.

“In the ’70s, I had designed this goddess figure that was 60 feet long,” Chicago recalls. “But I had so little support back then, there was no way to realize it.”

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decades later, armed with the plentiful resources of a major fashion house, Chicago brought her goddess figure to fruition. At a much grander scale, too, spanning 225 feet in length. Inside the colossal womb-like structure, Dior’s pantheon of models glided down a floral runway in flowing frocks and flat gladiator sandals. Lining the runway were 21 banners, each 10 by 7 feet, posing rhetorical questions like, What if women ruled the world? in English and French. The banners were hand-embroidered at the Chanakya School of Craft in Mumbai, India, where young women are taught the intricacies of this ancient art form.

“Not only were [these girls] working on my banners, but they were having empowerment discussions with facilitators to help them understand the meaning of my questions,” Chicago exclaims. “Dior brought my questions to people worldwide, to countries where women cannot imagine women in power. That’s why I say that my collaboration with Dior was the greatest creative opportunity I’ve ever had. There is a way for art to interface with fashion [so that] it has meaning. And fashion can be empowering as opposed to oppressive. It is possible to transform an oppressive tradition.”

A truth that Chicago holds dear, as she’s largely responsible for creating a world in which her work is seen and her questions discussed. Nowadays, she’s musing on how feminism must continue to evolve.

“What are feminist values moving into 2021?” Chicago ponders. “They’re not just about equality for women, and certainly not about equality just for white women, but about transforming the world into a place of equity and justice for all creatures.”

Not one to dole out blanket advice, Chicago is aggregating her wisdom for a new autobiography, which will be published by Thames & Hudson in 2021 with an introduction by feminist spokeswoman Gloria Steinem. Chicago hopes that her story will equip women with the confidence to keep on shattering those glass ceilings. It’s still a man’s world, and many credible women won’t be invited to the table. But if Chicago has taught us anything, it’s that sometimes, you just have to pull up a seat. ■

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Judy Chicago, Queen Victoria (left) and Christine of Sweden (right) from the Great Ladies series, 1973, Sprayed acrylic on canvas, 40 x 40 in. (101.6 x 101.6 cm).

COLLECTION OF ELIZABETH A. SACKLER © JUDY CHICAGO/ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK PHOTO © DONALD WOODMAN/ARS, NEW YORK

9 Judy Chicago sports an opulent golden pantsuit at Christian Dior’s 2020 Haute Couture show.

Behind the artist is a tapestry embroidered with a question Chicago first proposed in 1977: “What If Women Ruled the World?”

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These three paintings, titled The Rainbow Man, by Judy Chicago can be found in the New York City art gallery and exhibition space, Salon 94.

ZUMA PRESS, INC. / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

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There is jewelry and there is fine jewelry, and then there is Maison Édéenne.

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Portraits in Precious Stone

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Édéenne beams across the table during a business meeting. The jeweler draws inspiration from her clients, individually crafting each piece to represent the wearer’s life story.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PIERRE CHOINIÈRE

Opposite: Édéenne dons several stunning pieces from her own collection, including the white gold and diamond Quatuor Butterflies Ring.

PHOTOGRAPH BY THIBAULT BRETON

ith clients and the world around her acting as inspiration for every piece, Canadian expatriate Édéenne is making a name for herself in Paris. She not only specializes in bespoke jewelry, unique pieces that have been created to order, but also pieces that tell a story belonging only to the owner.

When we speak, Édéenne shows me her most ambitious creation yet: a branch of purple wisteria, three grape-like clusters of 84 life-size flowers made from amethyst, linked onto an articulated necklace and displayed on a branch that can stand on your dressing table, turning the necklace into a sculpture. It is a stunning oeuvre that bridges the concepts of jewelry and design and looks breathtaking when worn. She has not found a buyer for this creation—which will fetch a sum ending in six zeros—and yet she does not advertise her work. Nor does she have a public display of it. She shows her pieces only occasionally in highly exclusive exhibitions, such as the recent Sotheby’s exhibition or her exhibition at the Museum of the Legion of Honor in Paris. Édéenne finds her clients solely by word of mouth, which makes her one of the most exclusive fine jewelers in the world.

“If I were to publish a photograph of the wisteria necklace, then every time it was seen, I would lose more chances of selling it. My clients only want pieces that no one has seen before so that when they wear it for the first time, it really makes an impact. So I do not share my special pieces on social media or in advertisements. That is the privilege of the owner of the piece,” she explains.

The House of Édéenne sits alongside names such as Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Boucheron and Chaumet on the prestigious Rue de la Paix just off Place Vendome, the center of fine jewelry in Paris. All are long-established historic houses that have catered to the elite for over 100 years.

Maison Édéenne, however, is the baby on the block and came about by chance. Édéenne originates from Montreal, Canada, and studied first sciences and later art history at college. She moved across to the Sorbonne in Paris to continue her art history studies and later succeeded on numerous varied career paths, ranging from film producer to festival organizer at the Centre George Pompidou to setting up an internet company and later coaching CEOs. She wore every hat with pride and delighted in each change and challenge as she went.

“I enjoyed each path I followed,” she says. “All of them were really challenging.

I was never, ever, in a zone de confort.

Obligation to improve myself and to discover an unknown strength.”

Not surprisingly, while on vacation one September to Lago Maggiore in northern Italy after a relationship shake-up, she grabbed the opportunity to try scuba diving for the first time. It did not go too well at first.

“I was underwater,” she says, “and when other divers passed by, I was unable to see where I was, and I went up without knowing it. In bad shape, I went down again to recover, even though I was so scared. Against my fear, I dived down and discovered that unexpectedly

With pencil in hand, Édéenne sketches out her next remarkable creation. This signet ring featuring intricate floral details in white gold, pink sapphires and diamonds, transforms into a work of nature on the page.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PIERRE CHOINIÈRE

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An artisan from Maison Édéenne applies a glossy finish to a hand-crafted wax ring prototype adorned with dolphins that appear almost lifelike as the creatures leap through the air.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PETER FALKNER

ersonal stories like those inspire Édéenne now. When a client contacts her, she arranges an interview that lasts between two and three hours, during which she asks the most intimate and private questions about their lives. Nine times out of 10, by the end of the session she is inspired and has a potential piece in mind, with the right stones and metal that suit the personality of the wearer.

But looking at some of the more commercial pieces by Maison Édéenne, you can also see threads of fairy tales, magic, travels and secret gardens that run through the collection. She draws even on her former student life, when her thesis was on the links between cinema and art from 1895 to 1985. One of her first pieces was a ring inspired by the film Peau d’Âne, the 1970 film with Catherine Deneuve: a golden ring in the shape of a donkey head but with the “donkey skin” being removable, revealing a smooth stone underneath. This piece was her entry into the world of fine jewelry and was recognized by jewelry historian and writer Vivienne Becker as reportedly the first time a creator had been inspired by the world of cinema.

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I felt so much better. An epiphany happened then. A rainbow turned all the stones beneath me into fake sapphires, rubies, emeralds, and I knew then, ‘I will be a jeweler.’” Édéenne was 45 years old at the time.

She picked up one of the most golden-colored pebbles as a reminder of the moment that changed her life, and two weeks later she was at the Institute of Gemology in Paris, taking in five months a course that normally would be spread over four years. She founded her Maison Édéenne in December the same year. She followed this step with a course on jewelry-making, the actual hands-on sculpting and working of the metal and stones, realizing that her background in sciences, which included geology, and her love of art history stood her in good stead. She never looked back.

Reinventing yourself and changing your path at any age can be daunting to most of us, but starting on a challenging path and a career that is certainly not mainstream at age 45 did not deter Édéenne.

She says, “How could age be a hurdle? As soon as you think this way, you are done! The game is over.

Everything comes from your own mind and strength. And beliefs. The most important reality is to be aligned with who you are, no matter the age.”

It is an attitude that she must have gotten from her late mother, who also started afresh at age 45 by going back to college and launching a career running a hospital, setting a shining example that everything is possible whatever your age. Édéenne says her father would have preferred her to stick with the sciences in college rather than change to art history, but he no doubt would be very proud of her today.

This delicate white gold Butterflies Necklace adorned with Colombian emeralds is its own ecosystem of elegance and charm.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PIERRE CHOINIÈRE

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The sumptuous strands of this white gold Medici Broche de Corsage gleam through the shadows of this austere image of elegance and grace. This delicate piece also features Colombian emeralds, natural pearls and glittering diamonds.

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he ability to change the shape, design and display of one piece of jewelry, first seen in that ring, has become a bit of a signature of Édéenne. Not unlike the fabulous Fabergé eggs, there is often more to a piece, be it a ring or necklace, than first meets the eye.

Mechanical little wonders allow you, for example, to have one necklace but alter its design for spring, summer, fall and winter, as with Édéenne’s customizable Four Seasons necklace. Or the piece of art she showed me, a square gold frame with a real piece of tree bark in the center, on which dozens of gem-encrusted butterflies sit. As they are installed on fine sprung wire, they move as if alive, but look closer, and two of them have a slightly different design, and you can pull them out of the display to find an immensely wearable ring that you would never have known was there.

Being surrounded by such magical and enchanting masterpieces, I wondered if she has a favorite piece. She hesitated. “It is pretty hard to say because every piece I made for each one of my clients, I am so surprised to see how it gets into their emotions. What thrills me the most is to deliver finished pieces. I look at their eyes when they open the box, and it is at this precise moment that I know how deeply I listened, understood and interpreted their life, feelings, and emotions.

“The most impressive one was about a family who lost their older daughter at 7 years of age. It turned into an incredible convertible piece as a tribute to a strong tribe.”

And her personal choice of stone? “My favorite stone is undoubtedly the Paraïba tourmaline. Almost as precious as diamonds.

The mine in Brazil is closed. There is no more from there. It is the only stone having this blue lagoon color. The copper gives you the impression of light inside.”

A very appropriate choice, considering that the incredible journey of Maison Édéenne started with an underwater rainbow. The birth of an empire, no doubt. ■

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The intricate design of this yellow gold Nymphea Ring shines through the fingers of a Maison Édéenne artisan as he adds more magical details to this delicate piece of jewelry embellished with pink sapphire, emeralds, and diamonds..

PHOTOGRAPH BY PIERRE CHOINIÈRE

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Jewelry is like a biography, a story that tells many chapters of our life."

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107 These opulent white gold Butterflies Earrings are encrusted with aquamarine gemstones and a stunning drop diamond. Even when shrouded by shadows, the piece’s bright details shine through.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PIERRE CHOINIÈRE

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WOMEN INSPIRE the

INSPIRING INTERVIEWS

BY KAREN FLOYD

Our Inspiring Women have been selected because each has carved out a unique path through life that is recognized by others as exceptional. You will see a commonality in the interviews. These remarkable women have achieved greatness by following their internal compasses while facing the circumstances they are dealt in life.

None had a road map.

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WHO US FEATUREFLASH PHOTO AGENCY / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

2020 PUBLISHER’s NONPAREIL DIANE WARREN

DEBRA AUSTIN

LOLA DEBNEY

SIRI GARBER

First African-American female dancer at the New York City Ballet; Ballet Master and Founding Member of Carolina Ballet in North Carolina; Former principal dancer at the New York City Ballet, Zurich Ballet and Pennsylvania Ballet; Danced lead roles under recognized choreographers and artistic directors George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and Robert Weiss.

Vice President of John Debney Productions Inc.; Music score coordinator for highly acclaimed films, including Passion of the Christ, Elf, The Jungle Book, Princess Diaries, Hocus Pocus, Bruce Almighty, Dora the Explorer and more; Oversaw production on scores that were awarded multiple Emmys and nominated for Academy Awards.

Founder and CEO of Platform Public Relations; Voted as one of the top six publicists in Los Angeles by LA Confidential, “Best Personal Publicist” in “Best of L.A.” by Los Angeles Magazine and has been featured in Inked, Elle, US Weekly, The NY Post, Steppin Out, Stuff Magazine, Cleo, Women’s Own and The Daily Telegraph in London; chosen as a “Power Woman” in 2006 by New York Moves Magazine.

Songwriter, musician and producer; Grammy, Emmy and Golden Globe award winner; Received 11 Academy Award nominations, 5 Golden Globe nominations and 15 Grammy award nominations; Over 100 top ten hits; Six-time ASCAP Songwriter of the Year; Four-time Billboard Songwriter of the Year; Two-time Publisher of the Year; Songwriter’s Hall of Fame Inductee; Has written for Whitney Houston, Cher, Aerosmith, Celine Dion, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and more.

I STILL WORK HARD. I WORK MY ASS OFF. I LOVE IT. I LOVE TO WORK HARD. I LOVE MY JOB. I GET TO WRITE SONGS. I GET PAID. I MEAN, I BOUGHT A BUILDING WITH MY SONGS. HOW CRAZY IS THAT WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT?”

debra Interview Date: August 6, 2020

DEBRA AUSTIN’S instructor decided that she lacked talent at the age

of eight when she took her first ballet class. “When somebody says you cannot, I say I can.” That determination pushed Debra to continue, giving up weekends to practice and commuting by bus and train to the school. At 16, she became the first African-American female dancer at the New York City Ballet when George Balanchine invited her to join.

It was there she learned to perfect her jump and became known for her ability to fly. Debra later joined the Zurich Ballet in Switzerland, before returning to the U.S. as a principal dancer for the Pennsylvania Ballet.

Today, she is a Ballet Master and Founding Member of Carolina Ballet in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she teaches students that no one should ever stop them from doing what they’re born to do.

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You are a world-renowned ballerina, breaking many barriers along the way. How did you start your career?

My parents divorced when I was probably eight, so I did not really grow up knowing my natural father. My mother, who has since passed away, remarried, and my father, Lionel Austin, lives in New York. His influence, more than my mother’s, was the impetus for my starting ballet. He just loved dancing which is odd because he did not know anything about it. He never danced in his life.

Ruthanne, my friend across the street, was doing ballet, and I asked my mother if I could take ballet with her. She agreed, and I went to the local ballet school. After about three months, the instructor told my parents I had no talent to which my father said, “If you think she has no talent at eight years old, I don’t know if you’re a very good teacher.” They sought out a ballet school that was housed in Carnegie Hall that had a wonderful children’s program. I really lucked out because the offshoot school was in the Bronx, and the woman who taught there was a soloist in the New York City Ballet, Barbara Walzach. From that point onward, I had good training. In hindsight, I was lucky that my parents were told I had no talent.

How involved were your parents in ballet in your formative years?

Every dancer’s parent is a part of their profession because the parents have to get you to class every day. When you are in the School of American Ballet, you are not allowed to miss one class unless you are deathly ill. If you are injured, you must be in class, sit, watch and take notes. It takes a lot for a parent to support ballet. We lived in Riverdale, which is in the Bronx. I used to take a bus and a train to get to the School of American Ballet and go to PCS (Professional Children’s School). It takes a lot of parental involvement.

Your first big break came when?

My first big break came when I auditioned for the Royal Ballet School. The Royal Ballet came to town with Rudolf Nureyev, ironically enough, and I was picked to be a mouse in the Nutcracker.

How old were you?

I was 10.

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10 was a pivotal age for you because that was when you dedicated your life to dance, your raison d’etre?

Yes. It is so funny because when I first started, they enrolled me at the Children’s Ballet Theater, the school in Carnegie Hall, which was the offshoot school in the Bronx. They told me I had to take class three days a week, and on Saturday, we were required to take class and rehearse. I said, “What? Saturday? No, I play with my friends on Saturdays and don’t want to do ballet,” which of course was not an option. After I made the decision to dance on Saturdays, I never looked back, never thought I would rather be playing with my friends. My friends became my classmates.

You were known for your jumps. Is jumping physiological or psychological?

I think you are physiologically born to do jumps because I remember when George Balanchine came into the studio to see the B class (B class in the School of American Ballet is about 13 years old). He would come in and watch the younger ones just to see what we were like. He watched us grow up. One day when he came, there was a step called coupé jete, which men usually do. You jump off one leg, and you push around in a circle. It is a female set, but men are more known for it. That day, for some reason, the teacher gave us that step to perform in class. I think that step is what got me into the New York City Ballet.

Do you think the instruction was done purposefully to highlight your ability to jump?

Her name was Muriel Stewart, and she was one of Anna Pavlova’s apprentices. Muriel was one of 12 children that Anna Pavlova mentored. The step was not something that she usually gave. I am not so sure that she did not give it on purpose. You know, I never asked her.

Mr. B (George Balanchine) played a significant role in your career?

He was a father figure to all of us, especially, when we were young.

He was larger than life, and it was so hard for me to even talk to him. I was fearful of him. One time, I slipped out of Sean Lavery’s hands, and I fell to the ground during a fouetté. Mr. B always stood

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Opposite: Choreographed by George Balanchine, Debra was part of the original cast of New York City Ballet’s Ballo della Regina which premiered in 1978.

PHOTOGRAPH BY STEVEN CARAS

ELYSIAN Publisher, Karen Floyd, with Debra at The Carolina School of Ballet in Raleigh, NC, where they recorded Debra’s Inspiring Woman interview.

to get into the New York City Ballet because they said I would have to be a soloist to dance there. It may have made me strive harder because I wanted to be a soloist.

Perhaps your drive comes from a belief or the desire to overcome when someone says you cannot do something. When is your first memory of being told you could not?

Exactly. When I was 12 maybe. In some crazy way, I was told often that I was not good enough to do ballet and that did make me strive harder. When somebody says, “You cannot,” I say, “I can.”

You broke through many barriers because of the color of your skin. Tell me the first time you realized that you were viewed as a young African American as opposed to a talented dancer.

When they told me that I was not going to get into the New York City Ballet because I would not fit in. I would not be able to be in a line of corps girls because I would stand out. I would not be able to blend.

It made me say, “I am not going to let the color of my skin stop me.”

What is the moral of that?

No one should ever stop you from doing something just because of your looks; if you are Asian or your skin is a little darker, that is no reason to stop anyone from doing what they’re born to do. In some ways, to be a dancer, you need discipline as well as being born to be a dancer. You have the combination of being born to dance and the discipline to do it too. Why let somebody stop you from doing something that you are passionate about? It is not fair, but then I guess life is not fair. My mother used to tell me that all the time.

Why did you leave the New York City Ballet for Zurich?

in the stage right side wing. People used to say, you could see the outline of his nose if you really looked in that direction. Later that day, as I was walking home, I caught up to him because I walked faster than he did. I said, “I am so sorry. I am so sorry.” He said, “No, dear, falling does not matter. It means energy, energy.” He almost liked it when you fell because it showed that you wanted that jump to be big and to fly in the air. When he choreographed Ballo Della Regina, for me, he did the finale first and jumps in second position. When my solo came, he gave me those jumps from my solo. That is how it starts. He used to say to me, “Dear, do not listen to music, just jump, just jump.” I felt like he gave me Peter Pan’s strings and let me fly. Like in your dreams.

On a scale of one to 10, how important is discipline?

You must have a lot of discipline to be a dancer. 10.

Is discipline more important than God-given talent?

Yes. Because you can have given God-given talent, but if you are not disciplined, you will not make it. I have seen a lot of dancers go down that path too.

Where did that drive and discipline come from?

I am not really quite sure. Nobody has ever asked that question. I knew I was passionate about ballet. I chose ballet over playing with my friends on Saturday. When I was about 10 years old, studying in the School of American Ballet, they told me that I was never going

At the New York City Ballet, I danced a lot of principal and soloist roles, but I just could not seem to break the barrier. I have been told by certain people that there was a little underhandedness that went on. When I visited my friend in Switzerland, I just loved being in Europe. We traveled a little bit, and I thought I can see myself there. I worked with George Balanchine in Zurich Ballet and danced Symphony in Three Movements. He chose me to dance the lead. I thought it was a good place to go because I did not fly too far away from the nest, and it was not some strange company.

After two years, I was ready to come home.

Did you ever want to stop?

Stop dancing? No, I wanted to leave Zurich. I wanted to come back home because it was just too far. I was an only child. My mother had me when she was 19, and I was her little doll. We were awfully close, and at a point, I just had enough and decided it was time to go home. Peter Martins actually asked me if I wanted to rejoin the New York City Ballet, but I had been there before. He said to me, “I know someone who’s taking over a ballet company. The deal is not signed yet, but when it is, give me your number, and I’ll have them call you.”

Being a principal dancer lured you from New York City to Zurich. And then finally Mr. Weiss (Ricky) called, and you landed in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia as a principal dancer. Was that what you expected?

Zurich was wonderful too. I mean, I danced the principal and soloist parts there and in Pennsylvania.

Rudolf Nureyev. Was he as fabulous as they say . . . the greatest ballet dancer of all times?

I adored him. I absolutely adored.

You called him Rudy.

Rudy. Yeah.

Was he as temperamental as has been reported?

He was.

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Were you scared of him?

No, not at all. He was so kind to me. I was a jumper, and I could do double tours. I would do them in class, and he would look at me and say, “Debbie, go show those boys how to do it.” It was so cute.

At what point did you meet your husband?

Pennsylvania Ballet. Ricky Weiss took Marin and me when he got the job as director in 1982.

When you saw him, did you know he would be your life partner?

Yes. He is the dearest person in the world, and he is my best friend.

Tell me about that moment when you first met.

We met in a ballet class. We arrived the same year I came back home. Sometimes on the weekend, I would come home from Philadelphia to visit my mom in New York City. He had a friend that lived in New York, and we would catch the train together. We started talking and then, game over. We went out to dinner, and the rest was history.

Were you paired?

No, he was paired more with Ricky’s wife, Melissa Podcasy.

He is taller than me in shoes but not on point. We have danced a few things together, including a ballet which was a Spanish piece similar to Don Quixote. We also did Tarantella together but no major partnering. He danced with Melissa more than me, which was probably a good thing because partners sometimes fight.

In the Philadelphia Ballet, you were the principal. Tell me about that experience.

It was wonderful. I mean, Ricky was good to me. We had four or five principals, and we danced everything; the classics, Swan Lake, Coppelia, Giselle, La Sylphide, along with many of Balanchine’s and Robert Weiss’ work.

Is ballet mental or physical, and which is more exhausting?

I think they are equal. Sometimes it is more mental because when you do not dance well, you go home. You are your own worst critic. You feel like you were not as good as you would have wanted it to be. The audience might not know, but you know.

Why did you stop performing?

Ricky wanted the Pennsylvania Ballet Company to go forward, not backward, so he left. Marin became a guest with a dance company in Seoul, Korea. They hired us both and paid for everything which allowed us to keep our house in Philadelphia, go to Seoul, Korea and dance. When that job was over, it was time for me to decide whether to have a family or not. I was 34 or 35 years old at the time. We moved to Miami, and Marin danced for Miami City Ballet with Edward Villella, and I had Bianca, our first child.

Are decisions to have a family for professional ballerinas complex?

Yes. Now, a lot of dancers have children, but I was at the age where getting a job (age 35) was not as easy. I asked myself, “How many more years am going to dance?” I did not want to do a disservice to a company, … get a job, then get pregnant. I was at the point in my personal life that I felt I had to make a decision. It is possible though to do both. We have dancers in this company who have children. We have a principal dancer here who has two little boys. She danced through two pregnancies, had a baby, came back, had another baby, came back.

Shifting of the times?

A little bit. When I grew up in the New York City Ballet, Mr. B would not have allowed it. But Allegra Kent had three children, I think, and Karin von Aroldingen had a daughter. It was not impossible, it just was not acceptable for most people.

The white butterfly or Sylph. What was that about?

This is my famous Peter Martin story. Melissa Podcasy and Tamara Hadley were chosen to dance the role, and Ricky was directing. Peter was overseeing it and would come to coach. Ricky said, “I want Debbie to learn the sylph.” Peter was like, “What? No, I just don’t see her as the sylph.” To which Ricky responded, “Well, why not?” Peter said, “Well, quite frankly, I’ve never seen a black sylph before.” The reply was just total Ricky. “Have you ever seen a sylph before?” It was a great story, but it was sad. I know.

Was racial discrimination prevalent, and are there examples?

I once was told I was not admitted into the American Ballet Theater because . . . “I already have one of you” . . . an African American soloist in a Ballet company. Another small example was in Cinderella.

I was chosen to play the Ethiopian Princess. In that performance, the Prince goes around, searching for Cinderella. I wore a nude unitard, with bones on my bodice and whatever. I was asked to play a buffoon, roll my eyes and do the blackface basically. “If you want me to do it like that, then get somebody else,” I said. It was Valerie Panov’s version of Cinderella, and he was rehearsing me. When I said that he looked to me and said, “Are you stupid? Or you just don’t get it?” Looking back over my career, my entire nine years with the New York City Ballet, there was never another female black dancer. Mel Thomason was the only male, I believe, in the company with me.

Is Raleigh, North Carolina a good place for you?

It is, yes. When we first moved here, it was a little difficult because the downtown did not exist. We came from Miami which was booming. We moved here when my youngest daughter was 18 months, and my oldest daughter was in first grade. It was a great place to raise children and schooling was really good. Miami is a great place for young people, but to raise children, it is harder, and private schools are a must. Here, you can send your child to public school. They are going to have a good education.

What is the Carolina Ballet?

It’s a company that was founded 22 years ago by Robert Weiss. It’s now one of the top ten ballet companies in America. Our home is here now, and our life is here.

Debra with Tamara Hadley, Suzanne Farrell and Rudolph Nureyev during a rehearsal of Balanchine’s Apollo.

Left: Debra with her husband, Marin Boieru, who she met at the Pennsylvania Ballet.

Being a ballerina requires immense dedication. What does that look like?

Ballet begins at age eight to eighteen years old - usually your growth spurt. It takes 10 years to really become a dancer. It takes as long to become a doctor as it does a dancer.

12 hours a day for 10 years . . . and then you are 18-20 years old. What happens next?

Hopefully, you get a job in a ballet company.

How many women are in a ballet company typically?

Well, it depends on the company because the New York City Ballet has probably 50 - 60 women.

What is the average salary of a principal?

That also varies. New York City Ballet is in the $3,000 a week range, but we are nowhere near that range.

Racial injustice in the world of ballet . . . what is your reaction?

No one should be marginalized because of their skin color.

You should never, never have to experience it. Somebody once said to me, “You got into New York City Ballet because you were black.” I looked at them and said, “Are you crazy? No, no, no way. You know, no one should get in because they are black, and no one should not get in because they are black.”

Is life a big circle of sorts?

Yes, it is. I just taught at the Dance Theatre of Harlem Art School last week too. The director of the school is a man named Robert Garland who is also a dancer and the resident choreographer and director of the school. They had their 50th-year celebration at City Center and invited black ballerinas over the years to attend.

Robert called and asked me if I could bring a picture of my mother. He told me he wanted a picture of my mother because when he was first at Julliard, my mother was working at a bank, opened his account and granted him a student loan. Robert said that my mother asked him about Juilliard and what he was studying? When he said he was in the dance department, she said her daughter worked in the New York City Ballet. He asked her for her daughter’s name, and she said, “Debra Austin.” He went, “Oh my God, you’re Debra Austin’s mother?” Every time he went into the bank my mom would ask, “Did you eat? How are you? How is your money? How are you doing?”

Every now and then she would give him money to go get a sandwich. He said to me, “She fed me.” Robert hired me to teach for the Dance Theatre of Harlem School summer programs. Not that he would not have done it, but my mother was so kind, it made us cross paths again and made a complete circle.

Will your daughters carry your torch forward, in their own ways?

Yes, hopefully. They will eventually. ■

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lola

Interview Date: September 24, 2019

At the young age of 21, LOLA DEBNEY was busy helping doctors and surgeons as a vocational nurse when her path crossed with John Debney, then 24. John, who at the time could act, sing, play and write music, possessed the perfect combination of talents to become one of today’s most prolific and successful composers in Hollywood. Every step of the way and on equal footing, was Lola, who oversaw the entire musical production process. From the moment a client is signed to mapping out the project to being the liaison with managers, publicists, producers and directors—Lola is there from inception to conclusion.

Together, they have worked on highly acclaimed films such as Passion of the Christ, Elf, The Jungle Book, Princess Diaries, Hocus Pocus and more. They stay busy with projects today while working alongside their sons, who have now added their talents to the Debney team.

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What a beautiful home. You and your husband usually sit outside, but on a calm day like this, which is a rarity, where do you sit?

We try to sit in the shade and watch the golfers in the morning . . . and argue and have fun.

Everyone in your family congregates in your home?

That’s what it’s about. Life is about having them all over, jumping in the pool, feeding everybody and running after all the children. That is what is most important to me.

You are the family matriarch. I’m curious about your sisters.

Yes, I have five sisters, and we’re very close in age. The first four girls are almost a year apart. So, we are like twins, and it was really hard to know your number or order because we were just all together all the time, including my mom. My mom was very young when we were born, so we all grew up together. It was very busy with a lot of screaming and pulling hair but also having a good time. We never really had to search for friends because my sisters were my friends and still are.

And then you had three boys?

John and I have three men now. They’re successful and in their thirties. We have one grandchild.

Where does the idea of family come from? . . . because that is core to who you are.

Yes. I believe that is the result of being raised in a big family. My dad had 11 siblings. My mom seven. So, it was a big family. Always loud, lots of food. There was never a dull moment until you hit that bed, and even then, it got kind of crazy. We grew up in a small home in the valley, and we all shared rooms. We were connected.

Your five sisters all reside within the State of California?

Now, yes, and it’s great.

Three sons . . . boys are different from girls.

Boys are different. I was very excited to have a boy because of the differences. Boys don’t do all the wonderful chatty things that women or girls tend to get into. It was different to find myself folding little boy’s underwear. They seemed a little calmer at times. They weren’t as loud. They were busy but in a different way. I don’t know. I just didn’t think they were as needy.

Did they gravitate toward the music industry and were they proud their dad was touted as one of the world’s most prolific composers and conductors of film, television and video game scores?

Yes and yes. Today, the oldest son works within the immediate business.

How do you get away from the underlying stress of the music industry in L.A.?

Deep breaths, meditation, I go inward. I pray before I get out of bed. I pray before I get into bed. Going inward, reading positive quotes, picking up the Bible, being with the babies. That is a release for me. Yes, it might be physical sometimes, more physical than I anticipated, but, overall, it’s just being in that moment. I think that forces me to find the time to stop and just enjoy life without worrying about a to-do list. I make a list every day, and it’s a good feeling to cross tasks off. I used to be upset when I didn’t complete my list, but, as I get older, I realize that the list will be there tomorrow.

When you were taking an acting class as a young woman, in walked this man named John Debney. Did you know immediately that he was different?

Yes.

How?

He was very confident, very handsome, very sure of himself. At that time, he was into acting as well as music, and my heart pitter-

pattered. That was when we first met, and we ended up playing husband and wife. We were forced into this role and held hands, and then we had lunch. Didn’t take very long before we decided to connect and see where it would go.

Did you know how talented John was at that age?

He would sing to me. He used to get on the piano and write songs.

He was in bands. So, I’d go see him in Westwood. He was in a rock and roll band, and that was very exciting to me. I was very proud of him.

How old were you both?

I was 21, and he was 24.

And how many years have you been together, and then, ultimately, married?

Together, 38 and a half years and married 37 years.

In Hollywood, that’s quite a feat and equally unusual. Was it hard?

No.

Because you worked together or because of your religious conviction?

Both. I think it hasn’t been difficult in Hollywood, per se, because we worked together for many years. We started to have children at an early age, and I didn’t want to be away from our baby. We decided that John would leave Walt Disney Studios and start his own business as an arranger and composer. From the start, I took over the business. We operated our corporation from our garage.

You were John’s original manager. I’ve read that your talents were equal to, if not greater than, in some ways, his. Your capabilities in management and administration were not always recognized because you were always lifting him up. How difficult was that?

I didn’t think of it that way. I thought we’re a team, and we’re doing this together. Whether I’m picking him up or lifting him up at one moment, or he’s lifting me up, did not matter. We had three children right away, so we were very busy. He believed that I could take care of our babies, home and do the bookkeeping. That allowed him to focus on his music. We would come together, but it was difficult.

You began your career in vocational nursing. What is that?

The position helps doctors and general surgeons in the back of the house do the blood work and other procedures. I worked with

Opposite: Lola and John at the Dreamer Los Angeles Premiere at the Mann Village Theatre Westwood, California.

Lola holding an award they have just received at the Prime Time Emmys with John Debney and their kids Josh, Jason and John Jr.

How many years of struggle did you experience when you were fighting, fighting, fighting to stay afloat before John and you experienced your break-through moment? When was that?

It was probably about five, six years into our marriage.

So, you had five rigorously tough years? A new family with three toddlers, a new job, new surroundings…giving up a profession you loved. Then what happened?

He got the big job-- the big Hollywood moment. Hocus Pocus.

That was what you consider to be the breakthrough moment?

I think so, particularly for film. John was very successful in television at that point. He had won Emmys and had done a lot of television. But I think in terms of breaking through to the next level, he would say we turned a corner with Hocus Pocus. Before that, his success allowed him to support our family, but it was not easy. We had three babies in the first five years. We bought our first home, which we couldn’t have done without the support of his parents and my parents. They were our rock, the support, the love, feeding us and helping to take care of our babies when we were at meetings. They helped tremendously, and we needed a team.

During those first five years before Hocus Pocus, was there one project that you both worked on that gave you hope and inspired you to continue? A project that symbiotically told you, this is the right path . . . that gave you that reinforcement to stay on the track . . . because it must have been hard.

Yes, I think there was one. He won an Emmy and was nominated twice for this great program called the Young Writers. At that point, we were traveling to the location, and I think we felt okay, we’re in it.

At times, we talked about me having to go back to work outside of our business for financial reasons. But, with the support of our family, we were able to get through those lean months. It really helped us stay together and to realize at a young age how important family is.

Did you ever leave your husband’s side during that time when he was building the business build-out?

No.

the doctors, and I really enjoyed that. When I was young, I always thought I was going to become a nurse because I loved helping people. I loved taking care of people.

Those characteristics are the core to who you really are?

Yes. At that point, I had a family, and I didn’t want to be away from my family, so I chose to join John on his career path. I knew I could do it. I mean I always had. He had faith in me. I had faith in him. We also had our religious faith together, praying and knowing that we would take it a day at a time.

You are both Catholic.

Yes.

Was religion central to kind of keeping your marriage on track?

Yes. For sure, yes.

Catholicism or spirituality?

I think, as I get older, spirituality, but originally, Catholicism.

And your children were raised in the Catholic tradition as well?

Yes.

You were young, with three children, and you made a conscious decision to give up your training and career as a nurse to handle the books for your husband?

Yes.

You were at every single meeting?

Almost everyone.

What was that like?

I would be the little fly on the wall—the observer. It was important for me to evaluate everything that was going. At the end of the meeting, John and I would always get together and talk about what had transpired. I would tell him, from my viewpoint, what happened because most of the time John’s back is facing the main people in the room. He sits up front with a director, other producers, et cetera, and people can only see his back. I was able to see it all. I sat in the back of the room and could see everything that was going on . . . all the communication and the notes. I would take written notes as well as mental notes. The observations were important because it would be good feedback for him after the meeting.

You were literally working 24 hours a day. You would get up, tend to your children, family would step in, go to meetings, and then you would do a debrief with your husband?

Yes.

And then get up the next day and start it again?

Yes.

Meanwhile, john was receiving Emmys and a lot of accolades.

Where were you in that?

It felt good supporting him. Again, I always looked at our

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relationship as a team. I felt that, when you’re a team, you help each other, you bring each other up, and he just did that in other ways for me.

How?

He is very romantic. He would surprise me with flowers, write me a song or leave me a note. Yes, he was, from day one, appreciative.

I think that was his core. I never have met anybody that was such a gentleman at such a young age.

How have you been able to sustain that for 38 years?

Taking time for each other. It might not have been as often as a lot of people do but more often now. Back then, it was taking small moments together. I would say, “Hey, mom, can you take care of the kids, so we might go out and have a nice dinner together?” He’d pick flowers for me or get me little gifts. So, it was small acts showing a little appreciation and a lot of communication. You can’t do it without a lot of communication. When you are young, you can kind of let things build up, and then you lash out for no reason. With time you realize if you had spoken about that, each of you would have understood the other’s perspective. It’s different. It’s really different.

Do you still communicate?

Oh, yes.

More so now. Just in a different way.

How is it different?

We have more time alone. There is no longer chatter everywhere, and we are not rushing to make dinner or something. Raising three boys and having cousins around was very hectic. We made sure our house was the hub, and I wanted everybody to come to my home.

So, there was always activity, noise and chaos that made communication back then different?

Always.

Was there one director that you worked with that stands out of above all the others?

Yes.

What role do you have with John now?

I oversee all aspects of music production. It starts with the first meeting. We have a small team at the office, and they are exceptionally talented

Let’s start from the beginning. How do you all get engaged?

What is the first point of contact?

John receives a phone call. He’ll say, “Looks like the director wants me to do this movie.” Great. How does this look?

What’s the budget? Will it be recorded in town? What does the timeframe look like? How much time do you have to write this music? After we have some questions answered, we map it out.

We have a huge calendar, and we go through what the project possibly will look like. It changes most of the time once you get in contact. Before that, we talk about his contract. We contact the lawyer. I oversee that process, talk to them, to his managers.

We bring in the publicist, if possible, once we know if we’re going to need that. My position is responsible for getting the team together because everybody has their individual role - I oversee everything.

We have always had a small team. Right now, Stephanie has been with us 13 years, Natalie, five years, and our son, Johnny, is our youngest. He graduated from S.C. Film School.

He helps me oversee his dad’s career as well because he knows the producers, directors and what’s coming out. He’s looking at deadlines. Do you know this director’s doing this? You worked with him on that. He helps put the pieces together.

He is also a scriptwriter. He hopes to get one of the scripts sold one day. Josh is our oldest and works in our studio. He is a film composer and has done both film and television. He is really good about stepping in. He’s the rock and roll dude that has the great sounds. His dad might say, “Hey, can you come in and play this little piece? I want to hear how this sounds with you doing it. What do you think about this sound?” They collaborate depending on the film.

How many projects, at any given time, do you all have going?

Who?

Garry Marshal.

Why?

He was the consummate family man. He was surrounded by his family, very similar to our own life. The family was everything.

His entire family was in the movies. His family also assisted in directing. He trusted his family and was surrounded by them. I loved him, and he respected those he worked with. When you came into his world, you were equal. It was not about “I’m the director,” or “I’m this or that.” He had a lovely wife. Unfortunately, Garry has passed away.

How many years ago?

We are heartbroken. Three years ago, I think. Heartbroken because he was part of our family. His office, studio, theater were just five minutes from ours. So, we saw him a lot.

Was he your husband’s mentor?

I would say that, yes.

And his wife was for you as well?

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Yes. She was very much so.

How long has the current team been in place?

As rigorously?

Yes.

Were they equally ensconced in each other’s lives?

My goodness. We can have television, a musical like we just did in Austria and a film at the same time. There are many, and John is so good keeping them fed. We keep them going to maintain the studio. He usually writes from 9:00 to 10:00 to whatever time on any one project. Sometimes, he starts as early as six o’clock in the morning. Then, he will put that away, answer phone calls and go onto another project. We just help keep him on track.

How does he maintain that level of creativity?

I don’t know. He goes inward a lot. I think having a big family around him helps him get out of his head. I can’t imagine living in that.

Where does his talent come from? How did John’s talent evolve?

When he was very young, his parents recognized his gifts. They put a guitar in his hand at age six. At 10 years old, he was in a little band.

He took lessons. He took piano. His main instrument is guitar.

How many hours a day does he create?

It depends on the project. Sometimes he goes 10 hours a day.

Sometimes he makes an eight-hour day. In the younger days, it used to be 12, 14, 16 hours until. But now, he maintains a schedule of no more than 10-12 hours a day.

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So, you really are responsible for the entire scoring cycle— from inception to conclusion?

Yes.

At what point will this chapter end?

I don’t know when that point will be.

You don’t think about it?

I don’t think we think about it. At this point in our careers, John really trusts my opinion on whether or not he should take a project. I think that trust is really important. John will never stop writing. I think I will never stop lifting him up and taking care of him. No one really knows what will happen in the future. Writing is his soul, you know.

How do you make that decision—yes or no—to accept a new project? Is it budget-driven, or is it emotional?

I think it’s more emotional. It depends on the future and the past . . . if we’ve had any connections with the studio or the director or producer. They call him up and say, “Do you think you can do me a favor?” That is the majority of what we do now.

Do you turn away a lot of work?

Yes.

One in five, one in ten? How many “turn-aways”?

One in ten.

Would you have ended up in this career had it not been for John?

Probably not.

In 2004, Lola and John at the Sony Classical Record Company with Steve McEveety, the producer of The Passion of The Christ.

Do you think that that’s providence, or do you think that that is just hard work?

I think it’s a bit of both.

When he’s in one of those work zones, where are you?

I’m either at the studio taking care of all the paperwork, taking phone calls, overseeing or speaking with the team at the studio or wondering what that the next day will look like and what that next week will hold We go over the calendar constantly. We’re pretty tight in that little studio. I mean it’s nice.

What do you consider the five most well-recognized projects that you all have worked on?

Okay. Passion of the Christ. Elf. Jungle Book. Princess Diaries. Bruce Almighty. October. Hocus Pocus.

I thought you would say Dora the Explorer.

Well, that project is so new.

Yes, but every young mom will know Dora the Explorer. How labor-intensive is scoring the music and getting it to full production?

It depends on the project. With Dora, we filmed out of the country in London with The Philharmonic, which is always an incredible experience. Their musicians are fabulous. LA’s musicians are amazing as well. The production wanted to go to Abbey Road, which is classic. Just the respect that they give the Hollywood composer is beyond what we could ever imagine.

When John is there and conducts, he commands the orchestra.

They work long, hard hours. The last time with Dora was a triple session, which is three hours, and they don’t take long breaks. It is not like L.A. where you have a union, and breaks are mandated. They worked nine hours straight basically with little breaks here and there.

Do you stay in the room during all that?

Yes, I’m in the orchestra as well.

What brings you the most joy?

Being around all the babies and Dallas, our grandchild.

Your greatest accomplishment?

My children.

What was your favorite movie?

Passion of the Christ.

That project was a real love for you and your husband. Why?

I think it deepened our faith. I believe that John was meant to score this incredible, deep, spiritual film. It was Mel Gibson’s version of the Bible, and it was his vision. It was a Hollywood movie, but it brought us to just a deeper level of faith. When we thought “times were tough, and woe is me,” it brought us to reality.

Do you have a constant conversation with God? Constant.

What do you say? Are these just small little moments, or do you repeat the same thing?

Both. I repeat, “Our Father, Hail Mary” to prepare me for meditation. I listen to Christian music. Lately, there is silence when I’m driving. I just go inward. I pause to listen to my inward thoughts.

Do you feel blessed?

Absolutely. Every day. I am so grateful.

You have an opportunity to talk to your younger self right now.

What is the one piece of advice that you want to give yourself?

You are going to make me cry. You know what? Trust. Trust yourself. Trust your intuition. Continue to do that, always. ■

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siri Interview Date: September 26, 2019

In 1998, when Los Angeles was still very much a “boy’s club,” SIRI GARBER set out to start her own public relations company using the money she had saved in college. In a field she knew nothing about, Siri hit the pavement with only a vision, while also dealing with industry bullying for being young, and a woman. Within six months, she received a “Best Personal Publicist” accolade in “Best of L.A.” by Los Angeles Magazine and has since been voted as one of the top six publicists in Los Angeles

by LA Confidential. Platform Public Relations recently merged with Serge PR in NYC and now serves more than 180 clients with offices in Los Angeles, New York and Sydney, Australia.

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You own Platform Public Relations. Tell me about the PR firm you founded, in L.A., nonetheless.

We are a boutique talent firm mainly specializing in representing actors and music artists. I started the company in 1998 because I felt the bigger firms were all similar and a little bit generic. I had a vision of how I wanted to run my own company and the types of talent I wanted to work with. I wanted to be creative and to have really fun press kits.

This is aging me because we actually used paper press kits back then.

How has PR evolved?

We used to put press kits in the mail and send them to editors. Now, everything is digital. I had a vision of what I wanted my company to become, and I knew that if I worked for a large agency or someone else, I wouldn’t be able to do that. So, I took the money that I had saved in college and started my own company. I had no idea what I was doing.

None whatsoever. I looked in the newspaper to figure out how to do a DBA (doing business as) for my name. I had never represented talent.

At the time, we used media source books called Bacon’s. We now use Cision which is all online. Then, we went through volumes that were thousands of pages long. If you wanted to lookup an editor, you had to go through a 1,500-page book and look up addresses and phone numbers. When I started, there weren’t even emails because email was new. My first email was an EarthLink email, which I don’t think anybody has anymore. I had only done “event PR” before I started my company when I handled the PR for a celebrity golf tournament that we did out in La Costa. There were six actors there, and every single one of them told me I should do talent PR. “We all love you,” they said, and each one told me they would be my client. When I decided to start my company, I went to each of them and said, “Hey, remember what you told me at the golf tournament. Well, I’ve decided to start my own company.” I started my company with that handful of clients, and within six months, I was awarded the “Best of LA” in the LA Magazine.

We grew from there and became the firm that was known to represent hot, young talent or the new Hollywood publicists.

Do you focus primarily on young talent?

We target young talent, although our age range in talent goes across the board. We represent Jon Voight, and a slew of clients over 30 as well. We have clients that are in their mid-twenties to forties, but we also represent talent as young as six. We represent a lot of tweens, but teens seem to be where we land. We represent talent for the younger Netflix shows.

We are open to any talent of any age. It just depends on the project.

How do you get clients? Do you work through an agency or through individual referrals?

We often get referrals through an agent or a manager. Sometimes our clients refer friends. We also seek talent out. We watch the casting announcements each day at Variety, Deadline and the Hollywood Reporter.

When there is something we are passionate about or projects that we’re excited about, we look for whoever’s been cast who doesn’t have representation or reach out to the agent or the manager. Sometimes they don’t have representation at all yet.

What’s your client base at any given time?

We have about 180 to 200 within the company and about 30 that are actually active with us at a time. Clients come on and off based on projects. When they are actively promoting their TV show, film, releasing a single, whatever the case is, they are active. When the project ends, if they don’t have another season or another project booked right away, we do what we call hiatus where they’re not actively paying us, but we are managing events and young Hollywood stories that come up. Our contracts are not targeted to any specific timeframe because we still make sure that everything that needs to be done gets handled when they’re not actively on with us. So, our active client base varies from month to month based on how many projects are on at a time.

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How large is the team working with you?

We recently merged with the firm Serge PR and now have an office in NYC. We also are now officially Platform, not Platform PR, and we updated our logo. Our joint roster now includes Samira Wiley from The Handmaid’s Tale and Daniel Radcliffe from Harry Potter. We also have an office in Sydney, Australia, run by Jane Negline, who was here in the U.S. with me for eight years. She has amazing clients like Miranda Tapsell from Top End Wedding, Danielle Cormack, Nicole da Silva and Zoe Terakes from the award-winning Wentworth and Geraldine Hakewill from Wanted.

Your parents divorced when you were 21. Was it a surprise for you?

When it happened, yes it was. My parents had always seemed like the perfect couple. All of my friend’s parents that were separating and divorcing would fight and have all kinds of craziness. My parents were always super chill and always doing really fun things. I had the house that everybody wanted to hang out at because I had the fun parents. My parents were also very mellow, kind of ex-hippies. I came home from school one day, I was at USC, and one was sitting on this couch, and one was sitting on the other couch. “My God, I’m busted,” I thought.

“What did I do?” I was trying to think of what I had done wrong. I’ve never done drugs in my life. I hadn’t been drinking, so I couldn’t figure it out. They asked me to have a seat and announced to me that they were separating. It was a total shock because I had never seen my parents even argue. It was bizarre.

They divorced, and my dad remarried. He has now divorced again. My mom is remarried too. I found my mother’s husband on Jdate, the Jewish matchmaking website. My mom wanted to meet someone, and I took her photo and wrote her profile because she didn’t know what to do. A few days went by, and she called me because she couldn’t figure out who to approach or how to pick someone to approach. I went over to her house, and I picked five or six men that I thought were possibilities. I wrote her emails. She has been married for over 15 years to one of the ones I picked.

What a great story. You did a good deed, and you are a yenta.

I was an online yenta, yes.

You are Jewish. Practicing?

I’m a terrible Jew. Terrible Jew. We’re having a Rosh Hashanah dinner with my family next Monday. I had a bat mitzvah. I was not very happy about it. I was sort of forced to go to Hebrew School, more of a cultural thing. I love the culture of Judaism. I’m not really into the prayers, and I’m one of those who’s not sure what’s out there. I don’t believe that there is God, or one God, but I do know something is out there, but I don’t know what it is. I’ve always felt so strongly about that. When I was about 11, my parents sent me to this very Jewish sleep away camp out in Simi Valley, and it was kosher. It was like blue plates for dinner or yellow . . . I don’t remember which was which. You couldn’t have your meat and whatever together. I absolutely hated the camp. But they had this day where they decided to make us do this exercise. They asked us all to draw God, and I was horrified. I said, “I don’t even know if there is a God.” They thought I was the devil.

They replied, “There is a God, and you need to draw him.” I thought, “Well, if there is a God, I don’t know if it’s possible to be female?” Everyone was drawing the same thing, a man looking down from the clouds or a man in a throne. I refused and decided I could not do this. They took me to the office, and I called my dad who picked me up and took me home.

That is my stance on religion, even today.

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Siri at the 2020 premiere of Mulan with one of her clients, Yoson An, who is the star of the movie.

Is your daughter being raised in the Synagogue?

No, not at all. My husband is not Jewish. My daughter is Jewish by birth which she knows. She knows about Hanukkah and as she gets older­—she’s six—we will teach her the culture and the events that have happened. If she wants to be Christian, if she wants to be Jewish, if she wants to be Buddhist, I don’t care. When she is older, she will gravitate towards something that makes her happy.

We celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas. So, who knows? I would never force anything on her.

You and your husband have been married over 9 years, and you have one daughter. Is that forever?

I believe so. We have a child, and I think that kind of seals it. My daughter will be eight in January and is the center of my existence. When this business gets really difficult or someone screws you over, which is probably three times a day every day of the week, I just look at her, and it just makes it all disappear.

I remind myself that I have created this creature, and she’s amazing. She puts everything else back into perspective. If I never had a child, I possibly would not still be doing this.

Both you and your daughter are only children. Did you ever think maybe another child?

My husband would like another child. He has baby fever. Every time there’s a baby anywhere, he notices. My problem is I started late. I was pregnant at 43, which is a high-risk pregnancy. While I didn’t have any issues, I retained a lot of water and was blimpish.

People would ask me if I was expecting twins. I had so much water in my body that, for a while, I couldn’t even feel her kick because she was just floating. I was not a happy pregnant person. I love kids, and I’d love to have another one if someone else carried her for me.

You mentioned changing career paths if you had another child. How hard is the work?

It’s hard. It’s stressful. I would probably have another career or join a big firm because it is very hard to be a woman in this business. When I started this company, it was pre #Metoo and pre the movement that we’re in right now. I was starting a company in the middle of what was very much a boy’s club in this town, and women were not treated well. For example, I walked into one conference room, and there were eight agents around the table. I brought a presentation and press kits because I wanted them to start working with my company. I was really young and looked young, and as I walked in, one of them said, “What are you, 12 years old?” There were many moments like that, and some of them were a lot of worse. I came up through the worst time to be a single white female and was constantly abused.

Gender was your primary impediment?

Yes. But we’re a small firm. I don’t have partners, venture capitalists or a big corporation backing us, so we compete against really big firms when we’re trying to sign clients. It’s tough for us. We always have great talent, and we curate a great roster, but we do not have the Brad Pitts the J.Los or the massive superstars of the world. Unfortunately, that is what a lot of new talent is looking for. We come up against these big firms, and sometimes new talent is under the impression that they’ll get better opportunities if they sign with a firm that has the bigger stars, but it doesn’t work that way. That is old school thinking. I have the same relationships with the same editors that a big firm has. We have the same connections, and very often we work harder and give them a lot more personal attention. Nobody ever gets lost in our roster because not only do we have a small roster, but we don’t take on clients that are similar to each other. Some firms have six or seven girls that all fall into the same age bracket and category and have projects at similar times.

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I cannot imagine how they divvy up who they’re pitching for this page in Vogue or this page in W when they have five or six people that are competing for the same things. We try to be very careful that we don’t do that. I think that we have a great reputation and are always included in the same meetings as bigger firms.

But the world is changing.

Yes. The interesting thing is that the PR world is shifting right now with everyone splintering off and starting their own firms. There are more boutique firms than there ever have been, in the sense that they have fewer employees because they’re leaving huge firms and taking half of a roster with them. They have as many big stars as a big firm would, but they have that advantage of being smaller. I never worked at a big firm, left and took a bunch of their top clients with me. Instead, I started my firm from the ground up and had to pound the pavement to get my own clients and grow the business.

It must be heartbreaking for you when original clients, (who started with you and reached a certain stature) decide to leave. You have loyal talent, like Jon Voight, but what about the others?

I’ve been with him since day one. We do have some. But this is the sad part of the business. We are really good at elevating our clients who remain with us for four, five, six, some seven, eight, nine years. We get them to a point where they finally hit the pinnacle of their careers; covers for Vanity Fair and Vogue and nominations for top awards. They are in every young Hollywood portfolio or Elle’s Women in Hollywood. Then one day, they get that really big starring role or someone new on their team, like a new manager. They leave their agent and go with a big agency.

Doesn’t that bother you? The lack of loyalty?

No one is loyal in this town. It’s very difficult. People behind the scenes are loyal. We have amazing agents, managers and lawyers that we work with who are great at referring clients and are constantly helping us. But the actual talent is different. There is always someone in their ear. There is always someone telling them that they could be bigger and better.

Often what happens is they get to a point where they’re hugely successful, but maybe they’re not booking the roles that they want and are looking for someone to blame. They cannot see that they are responsible for flopping auditions, and their team is not going to tell them that. It is really painful when you’ve started someone’s career from scratch, and then it’s over. We are very good at giving discounts and working with talent financially to help them when they’re coming up because sadly, the younger you are the less you get paid in this town. When they finally get the big paycheck, they are willing to pay the large firms four times what we were paid. It is insulting. They say, “I wouldn’t be where I am without you,” and we get all the accolades, but we aren’t worth it now? When we take somebody on at a discounted rate, the goal is to grow together. We are in this long term, but memories are short.

How do women stay so thin in Hollywood?

I don’t think I want to know most of the time because so many have to really struggle. Some use means that we don’t want to know about . . . and it is definitely a battle. But, I think that it is changing.

I remember, when I started in this business, a lot of young actresses were being called ‘lollipops’ . . . because many of their bodies were so thin that their heads became exaggerated. And now, thank God the industry is embracing all kinds of body types.

You really do believe that?

One hundred percent. I’m not working with her now, but for the past two and a half years, I worked with Danielle Macdonald, who is a plussize woman. She is so talented and so beautiful, so stunning. We had her on the cover of Australia’s version of Elle “Women in Hollywood.”

She did one of the four covers. She was the first plus-size woman to ever

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be on the cover of Elle in Australia. We did that. She had an amazing photoshoot in Elle magazine where she just looked beautiful. Vanity Fair.

She did the cover of Teen Vogue. We did so much great stuff. Part of my excitement in working with her was not only was she talented, but I loved the fact that she wasn’t this waifish cutout looking like everybody else.

She had her own look, and her own vibe and was totally comfortable in her own body. I hope this is the way the world is moving, and Hollywood seems to be moving towards that as well. There are so many women that are powerful now in Hollywood that are leads in TV and film and are not the size 2 body that was the standard in Hollywood for so long.

Many women in this industry that have ascended have done so by keeping a protective core around them—their inner circle. Who is your core?

Because we rely on the referrals from agents and managers, my “core” is a small group of agents and managers that have supported me and always given me business—a small handful of them.

Do you trust them?

Always. They are great. Here is an example. I called someone saying I have a bunch of covers that I need someone to fill because a client left. The next day, I get a call. “Can we send someone over to you right now? She’s leaving tomorrow to go back to South Africa.” I just threw together a meeting, and she signed with us before she left.

I just said to a manager, “I really need a girl . . . ” It was someone who cares enough about us in our business that they thought about it overnight, and the next day, we had new wonderful talent.

What is success to you? Are you successful in your mind’s eye?

I am successful, but I’m very hard on myself. I’m a Scorpio. I don’t ever feel that it is enough. Other people around me, like my husband, my family, even my staff, constantly point out to me that I’m doing a great job, that I have created this company from scratch. I bought my own house. Everything that I have, I’ve done for myself. It didn’t come from my parents, a rich family, connections or any of that. But, I never feel like it’s enough. I still feel like I have so much more to do. I have ideas for a couple of shows, and I want to produce.

Ten years from now, where will you be?

I don’t want to fully retire, but I don’t think I’ll want to do PR anymore. I want to have sold my company and oversee it. I don’t want to be as busy and stressed out as I am now. I would like to be able to spend as much time with my daughter as I can in the next ten years.

I want to travel. I want to produce. I don’t necessarily know whether I just want to be a producer or write a book about my life and my career and then turn that into a show. I have a couple of shows in mind and pitched a show to an agent last night. My ultimate dream is to be wealthy enough to have a farm somewhere, probably not in L.A. My husband and I both would love to have a sustainable farm; grow all of our own food, and have animals, a horse, and be away from people. I am definitely not a Hollywood person. It’s not the world that I want to immerse myself into for the rest of my life. If I can make money in it and be away from it, that is what I would want to do.

Tell your younger self a lesson or a piece of wise advice. Just your younger self.

I would tell my younger self, “Do not allow yourself to be bullied.”

Now I know that I’m good at standing up for myself. When I started my company, I was walked on and suffered constant industry bullying.

I’m not saying childlike bullying, but I was bullied by other people, other companies and people I dealt with in this business. I really let it get to me. If I had put all of that aside, then I may have even been more successful than I am now. I let it affect my work by not going after clients with really big managers because, in my head, I told myself they will think I’m too little, or I’m a peon. I still have a little bit of that, but it was a lot worse when I was younger. If that had been gone, I would have propelled myself quicker into the stratosphere that I’m in now. ■

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Siri posing with her daughter, Autumn, while at Solaz, a Luxury Collection Resort in Los Cabos.

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PUBLISHER’s NONPAREIL An exemplar of excellence and success in her field, distinguished by achievements with transcending influence and impact.

Diane Interview Date: September 25, 2019

DIANE WARREN is one of the most prolific and successful songwriters

of our time. At the age of 11, she started playing guitar, and by the age of 14, she was writing songs, while using her Billboard magazine subscription to grow her knowledge of the industry. Three decades into her career, her songs have had over 100 top ten hits and have been performed by iconic artists such as Whitney Houston, Cher, Aerosmith, Celine Dion, Beyoncé and Lady Gaga—just to name a few. Diane is a Grammy, Emmy and Golden Globe award winner and has been nominated for eleven Academy Awards, five Golden Globes, fifteen Grammys, is a four-time Billboard Songwriter of the Year and was inducted into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame. Her awards and accolades are endless and only continue to grow… Diane is not stopping anytime soon.

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Your studio and building Realsongs is pretty amazing.

When did you land in this Hollywood space?

I bought the building four years ago. I had been renting down the street since 1985 where my writing room is. I record here. We have four studios on this floor. I have various tenants. Eva Longoria is here and a lot of cool people.

The rented space where you write hasn’t been cleaned for how many years?

Basically, I haven’t cleaned it for 34 years.

It’s your creative space.

I have a couple of rooms here, and I have a writing room there, also.

Where do you create more . . . here in your studio Realsongs or in your writing room down the street?

Probably in my writing room because I start out there in the morning, but I work here too. I come in the afternoons to write here. Like, when this interview is done, I’ll have a session here later on tonight.

I want to go back to the first thousand songs that you created. Your dad took you to the Songwriter’s Showcase, and what did he tell you?

It was called LA’s Songwriter’s Showcase. It was two guys, Len Chandler and John Braheny. John’s no longer with us. Both great guys. I was 15 years old and kind of a brat. They would criticize my songs, and I would give them shit for it. But they were right. They said, “You’re not ready yet.” I’d go, “Okay, yeah, fuck you, what do you know.” And then my dad would say, “You need to listen to them.”

They’d go, “Mr. Warren, wait in the other room.” Then I’d come back with five new songs next week. Ultimately, I played at their showcase. I was 16, and I went to some publishers. I was a bit arrogant.

But you worked hard.

I did. I still work hard. I work my ass off. I mean I love it. I love to work hard. I love my job. I mean I get to write songs. I get paid. I mean I bought a building with my songs. Like how crazy is that when you think about it?

Do you ever not think about writing?

No. I always do.

Are you ever frightened?

I don’t know. I don’t think about it. I just work.

You don’t ever get frightened?

Yeah. I mean, you know, I probably do, but I don’t like to give it the time of day.

I want to go back to your childhood.

Yes, doctor.

I read where you admitted that counseling helped you write.

I haven’t been in therapy for a long time, but yeah, it was a good thing.

You were a reluctant participant?

People told me, you know, don’t go to therapy. It’s really going to like fuck up your songs. I think the next song I wrote after that was How Do I Live or Because You Loved Me, you know around that time. So, it didn’t hurt that much.

When I look at all this, I would like to think it did not hurt you at all.

No, I don’t think so.

You’ve written and talked a lot about isolation. Is that from your Jewish heritage?

I think the Jewish thing I’m talking about stems from being an

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immigrant. Like when immigrants—my relatives, or whatever, (great-grandparents or grandparents) came from Russia. I didn’t really know them, but you know, they wanted to make it. They came here with the thought that America is the land of gold. It transcended them, and I wanted to make something of myself.

And you believed you could.

I knew I could.

Did you ever doubt?

No.

You started to write. . . .

I never had a Plan B either.

You did not have a Plan B?

No, I have a saying, basically, that I really believe is true. If you have a Plan B, don’t bother having a Plan A.

In the beginning, you were starting out, and you were working hard to get your work published and sung. Everyone was saying you were not ready.

When did you know they were wrong...and it actually broke in your favor?

I always thought I was ready. It just took people a while to catch up with me.

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ELYSIAN Publisher, Karen Floyd, with Diane in her studio Realsongs during the Inspiring Woman interview.

The songs that you’ve written... did more end up in the hands of women or men?

Both. Let me see. I mean I’ve had just as big a hit with a man— you know, with Steven Tyler as with Celine Dion and Beyoncè.

You believe your songs resonate 50/50 with the artist that performs them?

Maybe more female artists because maybe more female artists do outside songs, you know. But I’m working with male artists now.

You don’t like gender-based typecast or being placed into a box, do you?

No, I don’t. I’m a songwriter. I happen to be a girl. So, I’m a female songwriter. I feel bad for some of my friends that are directors, right? And it’s like female director… they’re just great directors.

But you admit you are a great songwriter?

Yes.

You are brilliantly gifted.

I’m not saying everything I write is great. God, how do I do that without sounding like an arrogant asshole? I’m not. I know I’m really good at what I do, but it hasn’t gone to my head, and let’s put it this way . . . I write great songs.

You have said that you “knew when you had a good song” when you wrote one. How do you know?

I just feel it.

So, you sit there. You compose something. You write it down.

Then you have an epiphany—you know?

Yeah, that’s a great song. That’s a hit. That’s whatever. I feel it.

You said the song that you co-wrote with Lady Gaga that she sang with the documentary The Hunting Ground was very political because it was based on molestation.

Do you believe that?

I had to get better, and I got better. The break was those 10,000 hours, you know, I put in 50,000 hours. That’s what it takes though. To hone your craft in whatever you do, whether it’s being a great athlete, a great songwriter or a great anything, you had better do the work.

You’ve been touted the greatest songwriter ever.

I’m not the greatest songwriter ever. I hope I become one of the greats someday. You know it’s a work in progress.

You’ve also been deemed, as a woman, the most successful female songwriter.

Can I just tell you my issue with that?

Tell me.

I’m so sick of the whole thing. Not just about me, but I had a conversation last night with some people, with women directors. They don’t say male directors. They don’t say male composers. It’s female composers. It’s female songwriters. I’m not saying it in anger, like I’m not being an asshole. I guess I am kind of angry. Why do they have to do that? Why do women have to be put in the box like that?

So, you are not singularly the most successful female songwriter of our time?

I don’t know a lot of guys that are as successful as me.

When I wrote it, I wasn’t thinking that I only wanted that song to work for the movie. If you notice, I never said what it was. When I write a song for a movie or when I write a song, but especially for a movie, obviously, it has to fit that movie. It has to be great for that movie, but it has to exist outside of the movie too. Outside of the movie, Til It Happens To You means whatever happens to you. You could have been bullied. You could have been going through something. Going through a divorce. Going through whatever.

Until it happens to you, you don’t know how it feels, which is the truth because everybody can say, “Oh, you’ll be okay,” but you know.

Many of your songs are about love and perseverance. Love is an interesting topic for you, the ability to describe connection . . . Love, and yet you are very nontraditional, not married, no children. You just singularly want to create?

I have kids all the time. They’re my songs.

And you create, nurture and watch them completely go and fly away?

Yeah, you just want them to have really good lives and grow up.

You know, you want them to be heard. You want them to touch people. Look, I walk down the street and people say things like, “That song saved my life, or you have no idea what that song meant to me” . . . or notes I get. You know, wow. That’s so cool. I sat in my little room, you know, and wrote.

Your thoughts just come up out of nowhere, and then you put them down on paper?

I just, I don’t even know what I do. I never even really analyze what I do. I always say I show up, you know. I really do. I show up, and I see what happens.

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Coming over the hill to Hollywood was a whole other world. My mom loved to paint and was artistic. My dad, after he retired, worked at this place called the Megaw Theatre, a cool little theater near where we lived. He would go over lines with the actors. I think my dad was maybe a frustrated actor. I guess everybody has probably something artistic in them, whether it’s realized or not.

Your mother was from Russia and your dad?

Her whole side was Russian. My dad, third-generation American.

Before 1983, was there anyone who took a chance on you?

This guy Jack White. I mean he took a chance on me. I think it was a little before that I signed with him, maybe 1981, ‘82.

And then you broke through in 1983.

Yeah, I wrote lyrics to a song called Solitaire, but I don’t consider that my first hit or anything because that was just lyrics to an existing song. Rhythm of the Night was my first big hit because I wrote it by myself. There were a lot of people that believed in me.

Early on, who else saw your talent?

This guy named Alan O’Day. He was a songwriter. It’s funny how I got to know him. I took one class in songwriting at Pierce Junior College. There was a girl there; her name was Clarice, I think. She said her dad had taken a class with Alan O’Day at UCLA, and did I know who he was? I studied the charts, so I knew what he’d written. She did not have his telephone number but did have his address. So, I wrote a letter, like I was her talking about me … “a girl in my class that was the best songwriter and your biggest fan and that my dad was from his class.” I got all the information and sent the letter, and he called me. I got to know him, and he was always really super encouraging to me.

Are there some days when you wake up and think this is not going to be a good creative day?

No, I don’t think that way. I show up. I go to work. I mean it’s really simple. Who knows if it will be something great or maybe something the next day. I don’t know.

Are you religious?

No, I guess I’m spiritual. I mean I’m proud to be Jewish, but I don’t go to Temple a lot.

Do you feel that your creativity is inspired by God?

It can be, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it could be a higher power because I think I channel a lot. See, I don’t think about all that.

I’m grateful, and it feels like it’s, it’s from something, right?

So, talk to me about perseverance. You have pushed hard since you were a child.

Yeah. I still do.

Your first musical instrument was a guitar. How old were you when you started playing?

Probably 11. Ten or eleven.

And your dad was your biggest champion?

Yeah. My dad was, especially when I really got into writing songs, about 14. Yeah. He would take me to publishers, and I got a subscription to Billboard. I would memorize who wrote everything and who produced what. I studied it. That was college for me. I really made it my mission to know everything that I needed to know about this business.

Where did your creativity come from? Your father was an insurance salesman . . .

There was no one in my life in the music business at all. I mean being from Van Nuys was like being from the Midwest.

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Did you ever confess the impersonation?

Oh, yeah I told him. We became really good friends. He passed away a few years back, but he was just a great guy. He took me in.

He really believed in me. He took me into the head of his publishing company at Warner Bros. Music, and they didn’t want me.

All those people that didn’t want you, did you learn to harness that energy?

Yeah. It makes me stronger. I’m like that.

Well, if you weren’t, you wouldn’t be where you are making great music!

Thank you. I mean I’m still like that. If I believe in something, you know, nothing’s going to stop me.

What is “songwriting”?

I write words and music, a song. That’s what a song is, words and music. I do that myself.

Then do you shop it out with different artists in mind?

Do you say, “Gosh, that sounds like a Beyoncé song?”

Yeah, yeah. That’s what I did with I Was Here. I called Jay-Z and played it on the phone, and he loved it. He said, “Stay by your phone,” and he got Beyoncé on the phone. So, that’s an example and one of my best songs too.

You have a tremendous reputation. Do you turn business away?

Yes, sometimes. I don’t like to say no a lot. So, sometimes I take on more than I, you know, maybe should.

What is your favorite song?

I have lots of favorites.

Like lots of children?

Yeah. I mentioned I Was Here. You know, that’s one of my

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Left: Diane on the red carpet at the 92nd Annual Academy Awards in Hollywood, California. February 2020.

At the 2016 Primetime Creative Emmy Awards, Diane holding an Emmy in the Press Room at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, California.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JOE SEER

favorites. Songs that you don’t know of yet. I love my recent song I’m Standing with You I did for the movie Breakthrough that Chrissy Metz sings. It’s a really great movie, and she’s an amazing singer.

The song’s called I’m Standing with You. That’s one of my favorites.

When you pass off your “creation” and someone else records the song, it becomes known as theirs. Do you retain a business interest?

I want the song to be theirs, and their listeners to think it’s theirs. You know when Steven Tyler sings I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing, they’re not thinking, “Oh, Diane wrote that song.” They’re thinking Steven Tyler is living that. That’s the whole thing.

It’s a wonderful business model to have.

Yeah, I mean I never thought of it like that, but it’s cool—I love it.

I love that I can write something, and someone brings it to life.

Willie Nelson . . .

He did a song of mine two years ago.

That was a fun song. We just wanted to write it, a fun pop song. I just started singing that. And the line they make fun of, the one that Bradley Cooper’s character makes fun of, is “Why did you come around here with an ass like that?” Guilty.

Is there a person with whom you create or collaborate best?

No. Well, just me. Do you mean like writing or artists doing my songs?

Artists doing your songs.

Cher’s done like 20 of them now. Celine recently did a new one, and I think that brings it up to like 18 or something. I have done a lot with those two. I’ve done a lot with Aerosmith, and sometimes it’s one-offs you know.

Cher has said incredibly kind things about your writing.

Yeah, she’s cool. I love her.

I know he did.

Why did you go to college?

That was really cool.

He’s a cool man.

I love him. I mean he called me, after he heard the song, he goes, “You think it’s okay if I record this song? Is that all right?” I’m like, “Are you really asking me that? Like are you kidding me? Of course. I’m honored. I mean I’d beg you to do that song. You don’t have to ask me.”

What’s next?

What was behind the song you wrote with Lady Gaga, Why Did You Do That, from the movie A Star is Born? The derivation?

Everything. Lots of things. I mean—okay. What’s next is what I do now, writing songs. You know, there may be a Broadway show based on my songs hopefully—it’s in development. There’s movie stuff I’m working on developing. There’s something I’m doing with Shonda Rhimes. She’s doing an anthology about love, and I’m doing one. Well, mine’s going to be different from everybody else’s. I don’t even know exactly what it is yet, but it will be cool.

What’s next? You know, there are things I don’t want to put out in the world yet but some exciting recording projects that I’m super excited about. More of the same, writing songs for people. A lot of movies. A lot of great movies. Oh, it’s so good.

Because my dad said he would support me if I went. So, I took all these film classes where I didn’t have to do anything except watch movies, which probably made me good at writing songs for movies. It all works out, doesn’t it?

You have been nominated and won numerous Grammys, Emmys, Golden Globes and consecutive Billboard Music Awards. You have been nominated for 11 Academy Awards.

Ask me how many I won.

How many?

Zero.

You were inducted in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. You’ve been named the ASCAP Songwriter of the Year six times. Billboard Songwriter of the Year four times, the list is extensive. Of all the accolades and awards, which was the one that you said WOW?

All of it is cool. I was named Publisher of the Year one or two years, which was really cool, because most publishers have hundreds of writers and I have just me. So, my company Realsongs, which owns this place, has one writer, and that’s me. So, it’s crazy. I mean it’s really hard. When you think of a publisher being Publisher of the Year with their hundred writers, and you think I did that with just me, it’s kind of a phenomenon. I’m maybe proudest of that, but I’m proud of everything. I’m proud that these songs matter. I’m proud when I get nominated for an Oscar because there are only five songs a year nominated. I won one Grammy. I’ve been nominated a few times for that, but there are 50 song categories in the Grammys. You know what I mean? Best Country Song, Best Pop Song, Best Traditional. There are only five songs in the Oscars. Five.

ELYSIAN Impact’s mission is to support efforts to eradicate violence against women and children. Silent Tears is one of the charities that this publication supports which is focused on children that have been sexually abused.

I was. I was molested.

At the age of 12.

Yeah. You know, my friend’s dad molested me.

And did you tell anyone?

No. No. That’s the thing. We don’t tell, do we?

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We do now.

Yeah, we do now, and I think my song helped. I think Til It Happens To You, helped me blurt it out at a Times Talk. I blurted out that my friend’s dad stuck his finger up me when I was 12, right? I told my mom later in life, you know, but I never told people. I certainly never told my friends or never told my dad.

Were you ashamed or scared?

I don’t know what I was. Maybe ashamed. I don’t know.

Maybe both, you know.

I wasn’t scared. I don’t think I was scared. I don’t know.

Maybe it’s just uncomfortable or something.

When you told your mother many years later, what did she say?

Why didn’t you tell your dad? He would have killed him.

Did you tell your father at some point?

No, I never told my dad. My dad passed away years ago. I think my dad might have killed him or certainly hurt him.

The times have changed now.

Yeah.

So, a piece of advice for these young women that are facing similar things?

Talk about it. Tell. Just speak. If you go through that, it’s not your fault and tell everybody. Tell the police, and get these fuckers put in jail. They don’t like sexual molesters in jail.

Will you continue producing and creating until you die?

Yeah.

I knew that. Is there anything that you have not done yet that you want to do?

I just want to do what I’m doing.

Do you ever get scared that you’ll get tired, you’ll get stuck?

No, I don’t think about it.

You don’t think about anything negative?

I don’t want to think about stuff like that. I get tired of people I have to deal with all the time. I get tired of some of the stuff and certain aspects. I don’t get tired of doing what I do because I love it.

Do you like interviews? This kind of stuff?

Not really.

You have done really well.

Thank you. It’s not my favorite thing to do. I have to kind of psych myself into doing stuff like this.

I WANT THE SONG TO BE THEIRS, AND THEIR LISTENERS TO THINK IT’S THEIRS. YOU KNOW WHEN STEVEN TYLER SINGS I DON’T WANT TO MISS A THING, THEY’RE NOT THINKING, “OH, DIANE WROTE THAT SONG.” THEY’RE THINKING STEVEN TYLER IS LIVING THAT. THAT’S THE WHOLE THING.”

Your songs have helped people. Some young women will read the excerpt about overcoming abuse, and it will make a difference for them.

I think it will too. Like that song Til It Happens To You, when you watch that—and, by the way, Catherine Hardwicke did that video which is little stories of what happens to these girls. At the end, they’re fighting, and they’re just like what the song is about.

Was there a childhood dream that you did not fulfill?

No.

You have a charitable foundation dedicated primarily to . . . ?

All—mostly animals. I have to say that, you know.

Rescue?

I have a rescue ranch with almost 50 animals there—various animals saved from slaughterhouses. The meat industry is murder.

It’s disgusting. If people really saw what happens to get that chicken, pork or steak on your plate, that was a beautiful animal.

I have pigs. I have cows. I have chickens and turkeys. They’re awesome. Really think about what goes on your plate; it wanted to live as much as you and I do. We have no right to take its life.

I’m pretty passionate about that.

2020 resulted in many amazing projects. The original song titled Free, just premiered and was performed by Charlie Puth for a Disney feature. Can you tell me about that?

Yes. The movie The One and Only Ivan came out a month or so ago. It is probably my favorite song that I have written for a movie. I am a big animal activist and the story really touched my heart. Do you remember Born Free?

Yes. I loved that song.

As a kid, Born Free was my favorite movie. On one level, I think it is one of the best songs ever written. I needed to write

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American songwriter Diane Warren is photographed for Buzzfeed on November 20, 2015 in Los Angeles, California.

PHOTO BY EMILY BERL/CONTOUR BY GETTY IMAGES

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something with that movie in mind. When I was writing the song, I started crying, which is always a good sign. I feel that it captured the modern Born Free.

I predict great things with that song. I feel like this is an Oscar year.

I am hoping … wouldn’t that be great? Please, please, please.

It would be awesome if it were that song too, because the song connects my love for animals. The song could also be about us right now. None of us have felt very free this year, you know. It has been such a hard year that I’ve decided birthdays in 2020 do not count, and no one is a year older.

I’m all about that. Without a Net is another song written after you watched an amazing documentary, Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story. Tell me about that.

I didn’t write the song for the documentary. But when I saw the documentary, it was the perfect song for it. I gave the song to Mickey Guyton who is becoming a big country music artist. She is one of few black female artists with a major record deal there. I have known her and worked with her for some time. I believe she is the perfect artist for the song because it reflects what some of those stunt women go through.

IO SÌ (SEEN), from the Netflix film The Life Ahead starring Sophia Loren, can you tell me about that?

About a year ago, Eduardo Ponti, Sophia Loren’s son invited me to Bari, Italy. I had read a script for The Life Ahead and loved the beautiful story. I was asked to write a song for the movie.

The day I met Sophia they were actually shooting, so I just took in the atmosphere. When you see the movie, you realize both Sophia’s and this young man’s character are both on the outskirts of society. He is seen as a little criminal, and she portrays an older, former prostitute that takes care of other prostitute’s kids.

The world doesn’t see them for the beautiful people they are.

Ultimately, they see each other. It is a heartbreaking and beautiful story. What came to mind with me is the word Seen. They see each other where no one can see them. By seeing each other, they accept each other and ultimately love each other. Laura Pausini and I had talked before about working together. I thought, this is probably the song because I hear her big voice. It needs that emotion. She is amazingly talented and loved it. And then, she worked on the Italian translation, which is beautiful.

I’m curious about Sophia Loren who is notably iconic. What couple of words come to mind when you are with in her presence?

Strong, powerful, ageless, timeless. She is still beautiful with an aura around her. They don’t make them like that anymore.

You know?

I’m talking to one, you have a God-given talent and a kindness that comes through in your songs. Talk to me about I’ll Get There (The Other Side)?

I love that song from the movie Emperor, too. Reggie Hudlin produced the movie. I had written another of my favorite songs, Stand Up for Something, for the movie Marshall, which he had also directed. That song became a modern protest anthem. Reggie told me about this movie as well, and I saw a rough cut, and it felt like the right song for it. I was really proud of that song and had worked with Emeli Sande before, who is an amazing singer out of the UK. She loved the song and recorded it.

What triggers you to write songs?

There are so many ways. I’ll give you an example of how IO SÌ (SEEN) came about. I was attending the luncheon which Diane Von Furstenberg holds annually for Oscar nominees.

I was talking to someone that I knew, and she mentioned the

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Sophia Loren movie and told me about the story. “Oh my God,” I said, “I need to know more about it.” She got me the script, and I worked on it with Bonnie Greenberg who was the music supervisor. With Free, Mitchell Leib, the head of music at Disney who is amazing, told me about this movie about animals.

When he told me the story, I had to do the song, I had to.

The Change, was it written for political purposes?

The Change was not at all intended to be a political song but about changing something in yourself. I wrote the song months before the protest but then felt the song needed to be heard. I had just written it when the Biden campaign came to me and asked me if I had a song. I go back a bit with Joe Biden. Earlier in his campaign, he used another of my songs, Til It Happens To You from The Hunting Ground. In fact, he introduced Lady Gaga’s performance at the Oscars; he’s just a lovely man. It was a full circle moment. They loved The Change when they heard it, and we talked about different artists. It was really an eye-opening experience because some people that I thought would want to sing it didn’t want to be political. For me, it was not a political song. When I called JoJo, she said, “I’m coming in tomorrow,” which she did, and coincidentally, gave one of the best vocal performances I’ve ever heard on that song.

What’s next for you? Broadway maybe?

A features record which is exciting. Why not get some artists I really love, or that I’ve worked with, and let’s get a bunch of songs together. My album Diane Warren: The Cave Sessions Vol. 1 (via BMG), will feature an all-star line-up including John Legend, Celine Dion, Mary J. Blige, Jason Derulo, Ty Dolla $ign, Jhené Aiko, LP and Darius Rucker.

I am also part of a Broadway show called The Right Girl where I have written a bunch of songs. It is so very sad because Broadway has its own ecosystem. You look at all those people that aren’t working and aren’t able to because of the pandemic: it’s the actors, it’s the actresses, it’s the set designers, it’s the lighting people. I hope it comes back soon.

I hope it comes back too, but people like you show others there is hope, and you can push through by taking one step at a time.

Exactly. And each step is a large step, right. You know, every small step is a big step.

And you persevere.

That’s right. That’s what I do. That’s what I’ve always done.

Close the door on me and I will go right underneath it, or I’ll go to the backdoor. If the backdoor’s closed, I’ll climb in the window.

The window’s closed? I will just dig right under there and get in.

Do you believe in God? Yes.

If you could ask one question, what would it be?

I have a song called Five Minutes with God which is about that.

It’s interesting. It’s a song about what would you ask . . . for the wars or world to stop? Would you ask for the things you have?

You know the song basically asks what you would ask for. I don’t know what I would ask for.

What about you?

I’d say thank you. How about that?

What’s a piece of advice that you would give to a younger you?

Keep working hard, and just do what you’re doing. It will be okay.

I think that’s what I’d say. I have a song about that too, by the way. ■

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Grammys

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change creator

As an expert in style and music, Nathalie Joachim has been featured in several noteworthy magazines and television shows including Fudge, Telemundo, BK Live and The Daily Buzz.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ERIN PATRICE O’BRIAN

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N athalie Joachim always loved music. She loved the records by popular Haitian singers like Emerante de Pradines Morse and Emeline Michel that her mom and dad would play around the house when she was growing up in Brooklyn. She loved the Haitian songs her grandma Ipheta taught her when she came to visit the family in America. And she loved the minuets she learned to plink out on the piano when she began taking lessons at age 4.

She would run home from school, drop her coat and bag on the floor, and sit on the piano bench and practice. And practice. She would spend hours basking in the exuberance of her sound. But there was one small problem: As far as technical proficiency goes, she was never very good at the piano. So, it was pure kismet when a visiting artist stopped by her school to demonstrate various orchestral instruments, and Nathalie was introduced to a magical cylindrical pipe that makes high-pitched sounds when air is blown through its mouthpiece. She picked up the flute for the first time at age 9 and has never put it down.

“Your daughter is very good,” said the band instructor at Nathalie’s elementary school. Her family had relocated to New Jersey, where there was a push to preserve band and orchestral instruction, which has been proven to build up the neural pathways linked with discipline, problem-solving, mathematical computation, focus, memory-building and language mastery.

Nathalie’s parents agreed to allow her to take private flute lessons during her lunch break at school. Within a few months, the sacred name “Juilliard” began floating in the firmament. Established in 1905, the Juilliard School, located in Manhattan’s Lincoln Center, is the most prestigious performing arts conservatory in America, on par with the top institutions in the world: The Royal Academy of Music in London, Conservatoire de Paris and the Moscow Imperial Conservatory in Russia. Three months after she first picked up the flute, 9-year-old Nathalie auditioned for Juilliard’s “Music Advancement Program,” a new initiative dedicated to making quality instruction available to youth from the New York area. Her acceptance into the program was nothing short of miraculous.

Nathalie’s music studies rapidly intensified. She spent her Saturdays at Juilliard learning theory, ear training and ensemble performance techniques. A few days a week, she would take the bus into New York City for additional private flute instruction. She practiced every day, without fail, and never needed so much as a prompt from her mother.

“My parents were always my biggest supporters and my biggest cheerleaders,” Nathalie recalls. “Yet I don’t think they could have navigated the path of a gifted child without the support of teachers who helped along the way. As immigrant parents, they always wanted me to

We all shared this willingness to help others and a desire to scream from the mountaintops this pride we have as Haitian women.” be happy and successful, but in Haiti, music is not really something most people think of as a career option. It’s an integral part of the culture but not a typical profession. It wasn’t my parents’ original plan for me.”

But from her first professional performance at age 11, when she played among the hallowed acoustics of Avery Fisher Hall (home of the New York Philharmonic), Nathalie’s personal trajectory took aim at the great stages of the world, and she hurled herself toward this goal with complete abandon.

Which isn’t to say that she neglected the signposts of teendom in America. She attended her classmates’ birthday parties. She joined the track team and the cheerleading squad. “I didn’t want to be seen as this special flute kid. I lived a dual life. When I was with my music peers in New York, it was one thing, and when I went home to New Jersey, it was another world. I wanted to have this sense of normalcy.”

One thing she did not do in high school was participate in band culture. “Starting from middle school, I convinced the administrators that I should get credit for being in band, but rather than attend rehearsals,

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I could use the time to practice on my own.” After all, she did have a lot of practicing to do for the Juilliard program and her continuing private lessons. And the music she was working on was far more complex than what her fellow high-schoolers were doing. She did, however, promise to perform with the band in all of their school concerts, which would anchor the wind instruments and ameliorate the band’s overall sound.

It was the type of resourceful win-win scenario that would come to characterize Nathalie’s journey in the world of music.

For the hundreds of students who participate in Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program, the transition from high school to college is typically rocky. It’s the classic big fish, small pond scenario. You may have been the best musician at the school in your hometown, but suddenly, you’re forced into a big pond with the most elite musicians from around the world. And the acceptance rate for Juilliard’s undergraduate admissions is famously low, hovering around 5 percent.

But Nathalie breezed through the auditions and was one of two flutists selected among thousands of hopefuls. She was exactly the kind of talent that the Music Advancement Program had been designed to discover and develop, and, indeed, she was the first of its participants to make it from the Saturday youth program to the college division.

Nathalie was exhilarated by the rigor of her studies at Juilliard, but as she navigated the elite training ground for the world’s most prominent orchestral musicians, she came across a serious roadblock: She had no interest in a career as an orchestral musician.

The love of music that bonded her to Grandma Ipheta and Haitian folkloric traditions had never left her soul. It had morphed into an unquenchable curiosity to explore new genres, like the hip hop and electronica scenes that were exploding in the late ’90s while Nathalie was in college. (Think Wu-Tang Clan, Erykah Badu, A Tribe Called Quest, The Roots, Björk, Roni Size, Tricky and Massive Attack.)

Interdisciplinary collaboration became her mantra. She combined forces with innovative students in other disciplines—theatre and dance—and even organized a show with a student from NYU film school. Her Juilliard recitals became wildly popular events, so well-attended that the administration took notice—and shut her down. Rigor was not the only foundational value at Juilliard; it was paired with its equally formidable sibling: tradition.

Interdisciplinary collaboration was not part of the curriculum.

Instead of trudging back to chamber music rehearsals sheepish and defeated, Nathalie marched into the office of Juilliard President Joseph Polisi to express her displeasure at being censured by the school. Polisi also was the child of immigrants, and his prodigious rise through the ranks at the Philharmonic to become the most powerful music educator in North America was the stuff of legend. He wouldn’t be one to extinguish Nathalie’s entrepreneurial flame; in fact, he had the foresight to stoke it. “Is $2,000 enough?” Polisi asked while administering a payout that would finance Nathalie’s first professional venture—as both a musician and a producer. When Nathalie graduated from Juilliard, they created the “InterArts Award” in her name, to honor the interdisciplinary collaborative performances that she had become known for.

The

innovation and unbridled creativity that germinated in Nathalie’s soul at Juilliard blossomed over the past two decades into an acclaimed performance and teaching career. She toured the world as a featured instrumentalist with the award-winning, contemporary music ensembles Spektral Quartet and Eighth Blackbird. She co-founded the eclectic duo Flutronix (with fellow virtuoso Allison Loggins-Hull), which has reinvented the meek flute as a tool for transcendent musicality.

Above all, Nathalie is most proud of her 2019 album “Fanm d’Ayiti” (Women of Haiti), which garnered superstar status on Spotify, critical accolades in the press (The New York Times called it “powerful and unpretentious”) and a Grammy nod for Best World Music Album.

“It was the first time in my career that I was able to stand in my full identity as a black woman, a Haitian-American, and a 21st Century artist. I found my own voice within the folkloric traditions of Haiti and how it connects with modern electronic music.”

Before recording the album, Nathalie spent two years traveling the Haitian countryside, visiting her parents’ hometown of Dantan and connecting with female Haitian artists along the way. “I put all of myself into that record,” recalls Nathalie. “I did all the writing and arranging in Creole, a language most people don’t interact with. To have it received by the general music public and the Haitian music public showed me that I can share my deepest self, and it will be accepted.”

Although the Covid-19 pandemic has altered Nathalie’s upcoming performance and travel schedule, she has several projects on the calendar that will expand the process she pioneered with “Fanm d’Ayiti” of exploring folkloric musical traditions within the larger context of history and culture. She has a mountain of commissions and collaborations in the works, including projects with Pulitzer Prize-winning violinist Caroline Shaw, the percussion quartet So Percussion, and the guitar ensemble Duo Noire.

Regardless of who stands beside her on stage or in the studio, Nathalie recognizes that her greatest strength is the love of music and culture that was born years earlier in the company of Grandma Ipheta and rekindled by the women she met in the Haitian countryside. “We all shared this willingness to help others and a desire to scream from the mountaintops this pride we have as Haitian women. It has changed how I walk through the world and how I approach my art.” ■

Flutronix, created by fellow flautist Allison Loggins-Hull (left) and Nathalie Joachim (right), is a groundbreaking musical duo that is re-defining and modernizing flute music and forging a path into the realm of the pop charts.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ERIN PATRICE O’BRIAN

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Bloggers and best friends Nikki DeLoach and Jen Dede shine in front of the camera at a photoshoot for their blog, What We Are, where the pair share their experiences in life, love and the entertainment industry.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY INDA REID AT IMAGES BY INDA

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art&culture

Supporting Women One Star at a Time

BY KATIE JENSEN & CLAIRE KUWANA

FOUNDED BY HEAVY HITTER JESSICA KATZ, KATZ PUBLIC RELATIONS REPRESENTS SOME OF THE MOST TALENTED WOMEN IN HOLLYWOOD. WE SPOKE WITH ACTRESSES & KATZ PR CLIENTS LISA LINKE, VICTORIA KONEFAL, AMBER NASH, NIKKI DELOACH & JEN DEDE ABOUT THEIR LIVES, CAREERS AND UPCOMING PROJECTS.

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Nikki DeLoach & Jen Dede Featurette

PHOTOGRAPHY BY INDA REID AT IMAGES BY INDA

A

ward-winning actresses and theater performers Nikki DeLoach and Jen Dede share their unique experiences working in showbiz, raising families and becoming confident women on their blog “What We Are.” The two touch on tender issues such as love, loss, infertility, miscarriage and supporting loved ones with Alzheimer’s disease—but they also feature raw, unfiltered, uplifting stories about women succeeding in a male-dominated world.

Many may recognize Nikki DeLoach from the MTV hit series Awkward, in which she plays Lacey Hamilton, mother to the protagonist, Jenna (Ashley Rickards). But before she was a hip TV mom helping her child navigate the turbulent waters

T

Fine Arts degree.

After graduation, Jen went on to work extensively for the most well-respected theater in Chicago, including the Court Theatre, Northlight Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre and the Writers’ Theatre. A review by the Chicago Tribune gave a glowing comment on Dede’s performance at the Writer’s Theatre, stating, “While all the acting is capable, there’s truly extraordinary work here from Jen Dede. In a fiendishly difficult role, the elegant Dede offers a performance of great richness, capturing [the character’s] strength and her emotional dependence . . . ” Together, these accomplished women share their experiences with what it means to be a woman in modern society on their blog What We Are. The website serves as an online community for women to freely express themselves—a sisterhood of sorts— in which no topic is taboo. DeLoach and Dede explain, “It is when we choose to share our darkest, most surreal, most insane times in our life that we connect to each other.” ■

Amber Nash

he world of voice acting has traditionally been male-dominated.

Famous characters such as Edna Mode from The Incredibles, Tina Belcher from Bob’s Burgers, and even Maggie Simpson from The Simpsons, for example, are all voiced by men. But Amber Nash is changing the game with her character Pam Poovey on the critically acclaimed animated series Archer.

Born and raised just outside of Atlanta in Lilburn, Georgia, Amber Nash wasn’t introduced to the world of acting and improv until she attended Georgia State University.

After receiving her BS in psychology, she began working at a wilderness camp for troubled youth where she remained for several years.

However, in 2004, Nash decided to focus her energy on breaking into the entertainment industry and never looked back.

Her acting career began at Dad’s Garage Theatre in Atlanta where she served as the Educational Director. In addition to her fulltime position, Nash joined an improv group called Laughing Matters and worked as a voice actor for several local radio stations. A few months later, her hard work paid off when she caught the eye of Matt Thompson and

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of high school, she was a dancer. Born in Waycross, Georgia, DeLoach was always a performer. She began dancing at age three and eventually added singing, modeling, and acting to her repertoire.

Her hard work finally paid off at the age of 12 when she became a member of the Mickey Mouse Club alongside Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilara, and Ryan Gosling. After leaving Disney, Nikki went on to lead a successful acting career, starring opposite Mark Wahlberg and Bill Paxton in the feature film Traveller and the TV miniseries Misery Loves Company. Her passion for singing and dancing was also fulfilled when she briefly became a pop star as part of the girl group Innosense.

Jen Dede’s mother was a choreographer in Chicago, so Dede, like DeLoach, was drawn to the beauty of dance from birth. She grew up taking dance classes in her mother’s studio but by age 13 found her true passion was acting. Several years later, she was accepted into the prestigious Theatre School of DePaul University, where she earned a Bachelor of

Adam Reed of Floyd County Productions.

After Nash landed the role of Pam Poovey on the award-winning series Archer, her life was never the same. Often considered the hero of the show, Pam is a gun-slinging, sandwich-eating secret agent who never misses a punchline. In an interview with Atlanta INTown, Nash explains why playing Pam has been such an important experience: “I love that she’s one of the boys in a lot of ways. Coming up in improv comedy, I was oftentimes the only woman in a room, so I definitely identify with that… I’m a big fan of well crafted dirty quips in my own life, and Pam gets plenty of those.”

The show received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Animated Program in both 2014 and 2015, but it wasn’t until 2016 that Archer cinched the award. Each year since 2011, the show has also been nominated for Best Animated Series at the Critics Choice Television Awards; in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015—Archer won.

But Nash isn’t only known for Archer; she also plays the protagonist in the hit web series Hart of America, is the co-creator and co-host of Archer After Hours with Lucky Yates, and the star of the upcoming film How to Ruin the Holidays featuring comedic icon Colin

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Mochrie (Who’s Line is it Anyway?).

When she’s not acting, Nash works alongside Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong as board members at Projects Chimps. Project Chimps is an Atlanta-based wildlife sanctuary dedicated to the care of chimpanzees who were previously experimented on in product research facilities. She and her husband Kevin Gillese are also proud parents to Carol, a cuddly brindle pitbull, and Rubby Chuthers, a beloved rescue cat. ■

Emulating her Emmy-winning character Pam Poovey, Nash gives a cheeky wink to her fans, champagne bottle in hand. Opposite: Actress Amber Nash dons a fancy fascinator as she strikes a pose for the camera. As the goofy yet lovable secret agent Pam Poovey on the hit show Archer, Nash is the voice of TV’s favorite character.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY YASMINE KATEB

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Victoria Konefal

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rom the age of seven, Victoria Konefal knew she wanted to become an actress. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, she was always drawn to theatrics, performing poetry and hoarding the camera while her mother took home videos.

But Victoria’s journey into the entertainment industry really began on a fourth grade field trip to see an off-broadway production of The Hobbit.

During the performance, the young actress was so captivated by the show that her mother had to keep her from singing along. After the curtain closed, they sought out the director who invited Konefal to audition for a production of The South Pacific. She quickly booked the role and went on to perform in the theater company for six years.

Konefal was blessed with certainty at such a young age. “There was never really a back-up plan,” she admitted in an interview with Period magazine. “I was always interested in other things like medicine and law, but ultimately I knew I would never be satisfied with those jobs.

I have always been a creative little bean, and I gave myself no other choice than to pursue it.”

Thus, the young actress attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia Performing Arts High School in New York City—the same place where prestigious actors such as Timothée Chalamet, Jennifer Aniston, Sarah Paulson and Liza Minnelli got their start. After graduation, she decided to move to Los Angeles to pursue acting full time.

Shortly after arriving in LA, the starlet hit the ground running, securing a guest spot on the hit show Modern Family as well as a more serious role in the slow burn drama Forgetting Sandy Glass. With this experience under her belt, Konefal soon found herself starring in hit Lifetime movies such as The Wrong Crush and Deadly Exchange.

The young actress’ big break came in 2017 when she was cast as Ciara Brady, the daughter of power couple Bo and Hope, on the hit soap opera Days of Our Lives. On the show, Brady is a fierce young woman navigating the troubled waters of broken family relationships.

In fact, Konefal plays the character so well that she received a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama Series category. She was also consecutively voted the number one Soap Actress several weeks in a row in TV Source Magazine’s 2019 poll.

Although Konefal recently announced her departure from Days of Our Lives, fans of the starlet can still expect her to make guest appearances on the show. The promising young actress has just begun making her mark in Hollywood. With highly anticipated releases in the works such as the indie horror film Living Dead Presents: Fog City, Konefal’s name is certain to be on everyone’s lips. ■

Actress Victoria Konefal looks ravishing in red, echoing Audrey Hepburn’s acclaimed billboard for the hit film Funny Face. Right: Konefal strikes a pose in a stunning green silk and lace ensemble. The young starlet recently left her role on the hit soap opera Days of Our Lives, striking out on her own to make a name for herself.

PHOTOGRAPH BY YASMINE KATEB

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Lisa Linke and Misty Stinnett are blowing off books on their podcast Go Help Yourself. From self-help fails to sage advice, this comedy duo puts the personal’ in personal care.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ZACH LYONS PHOTOGRAPHY

While she may be known for her quick wit and boisterous personality, Linke takes issues relating to women’s empowerment seriously.

PHOTOGRAPH BY BIRDIE THOMPSON

Fix Sh!t In Your House, an award-winning show that she also produced and starred in. She is the creative mind behind and star of Dog Moms, a satirical web series that has been recognized at multiple film festivals, including the New Media Film Festival and Austin Revolution Film Festival. Finally, her most popular role online is in Successful People, a comedic web series in which she plays the lead’s classmate (who helps jumpstart his musical career). Both Successful People and Dog Moms are available to stream on Amazon Prime. ■

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Lisa Linke

ctress, producer and improviser Lisa Linke truly does it all. From appearing on countless hit TV shows to hosting her own hilarious podcast, the triple threat has made a name for herself across several industries. Many critics have recognized Linke’s talent, including the panel at LA WebFest, which named her best lead actress, as well as the Chicago Comedy Film Festival, which recognized her web series as the overall winner of the event.

Linke has put her comedic talents to the test in the podcast Go Help Yourself, which she created alongside fellow comedian Misty Stinnett. Together, the two review selfhelp books, bringing humor to a serious topic. Linke and Stinnett cover much ground with discussions covering “what they loved, what they hated, and all the absurdities of life,” according to the podcast’s website. The pair’s unique approach to comedy and podcasting has helped their show generate more than 100,000 downloads to date.

In her acting career, Linke most recently appeared on ABC’s Bless This Mess, starring in a recurring role alongside other eminent actors from shows including Veep, Parks and Recreation and Gilmore Girls. You may also recognize her as Sue from the legal drama Goliath or Terry from the hit comedy Teachers. Linke has also guest-starred on a number of popular shows, including ABC’s For The People, Disney’s Bunk’d, and Netflix’s AJ and the Queen. Her most notable recent appearances on the small screen have been on successful shows such as Grey’s Anatomy, This Is Us, Black-ish, Modern Family and Shameless.

Before she became a full-time actress, Linke lived and worked in Chicago, honing her improv skills and gaining experience at the famed Second City comedy club and the iO Theater. Not long after, she made the 2,000-mile drive from Chicago to Los Angeles, where she advanced her career in entertainment. Now she uses her social media platforms to continue sharing her passion: every Sunday, Linke hosts a live improv show on her Instagram. The series, which she has coined #SuggestionSundayShow, includes a different celebrity guest each week to shake up the content.

Outside of improv, Linke uses her comedic flair to contribute to several web series. She co-created Rick & Len

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philanthropy

Helping Victims Reclaim Safety:

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ELYSIAN Impact & Silent Tears

BY JEAN LI SPENCER

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Safe Harbor is focused on helping women and children alike. Pictured here is a playroom in the organization’s facilities where kids across Upstate South Carolina can find safety and comfort.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAMANTHA TUCKER

nspiring women means more than placing women’s achievement and determination on a pedestal. To truly pay it forward and honor women, ELYSIAN Impact seeks to improve a woman’s life no matter her circumstances. Although much of the content that we publish celebrates success, we acknowledge that there is no such thing as living perfect lives without blemish. Life is very much a process of untangling.

That is why, beginning with underserved areas of South Carolina, ELYSIAN Impact has overseen the distribution of $5 million through a series of grant programs in support of child advocacy and women in crisis centers. This effort, in conjunction with Silent Tears, is the first in a program of ELYSIAN Impact Partner initiatives, which seeks to create a template for change in South Carolina and beyond.

The relationship between causes and long-term outcomes is a theme repeated throughout the Inspiring Women interviews we publish, and collectively, our Circle Women find fulfillment in supporting causes in which they have a direct impact.

Success cannot be charted without giving back; the circle must complete itself to become whole. This is where ELYSIAN Impact and Silent Tears step in to partner with organizations on the ground to bring aid to women and children in need.

As women, we can recognize that, at one time or another, we have either chosen to remain silent or been forced to stay powerless during a trying time in our lives. In our position as women, who have been treated as second-rate citizens by society, we can easily rally around the cause to uplift our communities by bringing marginalized voices to the forefront. One in four women is a victim

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of violence—a fact that is largely obscured. In South Carolina, especially, the issue of domestic violence and abuse is a complex issue and a phenomenon that remains largely invisible. The threat is tainting the lives of women and children across the state, but the visibility of this alarming reality is a hard pill to swallow.

According to the South Carolina Domestic Violence Advisory Committee, South Carolina ranks as the nation’s sixth-worst state for rates of women murdered by men. The domestic-violence homicide rate is still more than 1.5 times the national average. It is a hidden cancer within our society.

We cannot allow the pain to perpetuate.

We cannot remain silent.

One of Silent Tears’ and ELYSIAN Impact’s biggest partners is Safe Harbor, a service center based in Greenville, SC. Safe Harbor’s mission can be broken down into three general goals: prevent domestic abuse in the first place, intervene and provide services to victims of domestic violence wherever they are on the continuum of need, and educate and advocate to the public about the prevalence of domestic abuse.

Greenville County, in particular, reports the highest number of domestic violence incidents. “[We] must provide our specific communities with ways to partner with us as well as victims and survivors to make our communities safer,” says Safe Harbor Executive Director Becky Callaham.

Clearly, the rate of trauma within American households has been painted as a marginalized issue even as it affects us all. The prevalence of this reality—although largely ignored—hits too close to home. It is in our backyards, across the street, in our schools and a part of our lives. Callaham stresses how important safety is to children and adults by reflecting: “As I’m thinking about the idea of ‘healthy,’ it is hard for me not to go to the very core of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, with safety being the most important thing. The whole concept of having a home, and home being a place where you can be your safest, is flipped upside down and undermined by domestic abuse.”

Experts are finding more insight into how trauma follows children throughout their lives. Dr. Robert Block, former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, even goes so far as to call adverse childhood experiences the “single greatest unaddressed public health threat facing our nation today.” Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, who became California’s first surgeon general in 2019, is a pediatrician whose experience has led her to the breakthrough

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Safe Harbor’s annual fundraiser “Fashion With a Passion” has raised over $120,000 in 2020 alone.

Donors and children alike strut the stage while raising money for a good cause.

PHOTOGRAPH BY LANCE ANDREWS OF INVOGUE PHOTOGRAPHY

that there is a high association between childhood trauma and the onset of learning and behavioral issues. She noticed a terrifying trend in her young patients: when she conducted a thorough history and physical, Harris found that most of her patients with ADHD had severe trauma as the root cause of behavioral issues.

In short, high adversity transforms the minds and bodies of our youth, but it is still largely misdiagnosed from lack of attention to trauma as a root cause of the disorder. By giving victims of abuse access to the resources they need to lead better lives, we can lower the risk of lifelong, long-term trauma.

The crisis of domestic violence and abuse against women and children is exacerbated even further by the current global pandemic. Callaham draws attention to the dilemma that Covid-19 places on domestic violence and abuse victims: “We cannot have this conversation without talking about the impact of Covid-19 on organizations throughout the state and how Covid has affected the rates of domestic violence.[…] I think I can speak on behalf of the 13 agencies in South Carolina that we have found ourselves limited in terms of emergency shelter.”

Covid-19 has detracted from the slight improvements being made in South Carolina’s domestic violence rates by restricting victims’ domestic situations and mobility. Ellen Hamilton, from Pee Dee Coalition, another Silent Tears partner in South Carolina, remarks: “I think the challenge for victims of domestic violence and child abuse is that they are at home and cannot leave [right now]. If you look at reports of child abuse and neglect, they have mostly come from educational institutions, so it has worried us a lot about what we are not hearing from now. Our numbers have decreased; our number of calls has decreased. But there is enormous stress on families right now.”

Pee Dee Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Assault, in Florence, SC, is dedicated to the reduction of sexual assault, family violence and child abuse or neglect. Pee Dee Coalition

offers victim assistance through counseling, criminal justice advocacy, 24-hour crisis intervention, satellite centers and both emergency and transitional shelters. With support from students from Francis Marion University and South Carolina State University, the organization also trains in prevention education (including self-defense) and broader community education.

Over the past few years, Pee Dee Coalition has benefited greatly from community partners like long-time supporter Purdue Foods, and more recently, Silent Tears, to fund the necessary services that they provide. If you are interested in contributing to the cause, Barbara Chappell, Pee Dee Director of Resource Development, urges: “There’s every way from Sunday to get involved.”

Help is needed now more than ever. Silent Tears and ELYSIAN Impact have so far contributed to Safe Harbor and Pee Dee Coalition by hosting a match-for-match drive in which any donation you make will be met by ELYSIAN Impact. Chappell and Hamilton add, “Silent Tears has made a huge difference in our work. If it hadn’t been for Silent Tears, we would not have been able to acquire or renovated our crisis center in Williamsburg County, which is one of the most resource-challenged counties in South Carolina. We have also been enabled to have a children’s crisis center in Sumter County.” If you feel that now is a vital time for you to help someone in need, please join us in making sure every family in South Carolina gets the care and support they deserve. ■

A whimsical mural brings a spot of joy into the courtyard at Pee Dee Coalition’s Williamsburg County Satellite Crisis Center in Kingstree, South Carolina. The PDC has facilities available to victims of domestic violence across Northeastern South Carolina.

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PHOTOGRAPH BY ROB SPRINGER

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Confined to home with an abuser could mean life or death.

The very measures put in place to reduce the spread of the coronavirus take away some of the few outlets survivors of abuse have for respite. Additionally, many crisis centers have canceled or postponed their annual fundraisers, adding tens of thousands more in lost revenue. Crisis centers have also had to pivot to provide their services via telehealth, adding unplanned expenses. Some need basic equipment, like laptops. And with fewer people donating due to economic uncertainty, we have a horrible, perfect storm. Please consider supporting your local center during this global pandemic.

Silent Tears advocates on behalf of women and children by taking a systematic approach to addressing the complex issues associated with child sexual abuse and violence against women. Silent Tears provides resources that help frontline organizations as they support victims of these pervasive crimes.

To learn more about Silent Tears, please visit SILENTTEARSSC.ORG

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Cover model: Haley Hudson • Location: Maggie Macdonald Art Studio & Gallery in Spartanburg, SC Photographer: Heather Smith of Pressley Smith Photography • Artist: Johni Bleu

back story

or years, the breadth of ELYSIAN’s Circle of Women expands into new territories of excellence, purpose and achievement. Yet, shining a spotlight on these remarkable women is not nearly enough. It is our challenge—our responsibility—to harness this incredible power for the generations to come. Within ELYSIAN’s Circle lies boundless opportunity and inspiration that is ripe for sharing with younger women who are on a similar path to greatness.

On our cover is one such woman, Haley Hudson.

In ELYSIAN’s search for a budding creative, we quickly recognized that Haley’s spirit mirrored many of the women highlighted in this issue. Haley recalls, “When I was little, I would sit in my room and sketch clothing designs.

I was always drawing. If it wasn’t clothing, I was painting or I was outside making art out of what I found in nature.”

She soon found the purpose for her creativity: interior design. Haley discovered that, by studying how others interact with their environment, she could change the way people think and function—for the better—using interior design and interior architecture.

With her target in focus, she set her sights on attending the renowned Parsons School of Design in New York City.

“I was not going to take no for an answer. I was going to go there no matter what. I was so sure I was going to go to my dream school that I only applied to Parsons School of Design.”

“I want to allow everyone to be themselves, and I want to design a world wherein everyone has the opportunity to succeed.” Only in her freshman year, we have no doubt that Haley will become a powerhouse in the design community, allowing ELYSIAN’s Circle to expand that much further. ■

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