In this powerful and intimate interview, Lisa Rose talks to Bettina Gracias about her critically resonant one-woman show Too Small To Tell. Inspired by real events and personal experience, the performance peels back the curtain on the power dynamics within the film industry and why it’s time more women were heard.
Lisa Rose has written a brave one-woman show, ‘Too Small To Tell,’ about her time working for Harvey Weinstein at Miramax. It has been on in London and Brighton and looks like it will continue to tour in the near future.
The show has had brilliant reviews, attracting interest from The Observer/The Guardian and the Jewish Chronicle.
Bettina interviewed Lisa about her motivation for the piece.
The following is a verbatim transcript of their talk.
The show was co-created with playwright Paula Stanic, whom Lisa refers to in their talk.
Bettina Gracias: What is your one woman show about and why did you want to write it?
Lisa Rose: I wanted to explore what it’s like being an actor, or an actress, and how it feels knowing something and wanting to talk about it and not feeling that you are important enough to be heard.
So, it looks at the power dynamics that exist within the film industry, but also equally in all other industries. How it is for women that want to do well in their profession and if there is a male at the top of that hierarchy, what that means, what it looks like, how it affects people.
I started off with Paula a few years ago and it was going to be a verbatim piece and we just interviewed loads of women and got lots of stories about how they felt they had been exploited or abused. Most women that I spoke to have got a story. So we were going to try it like that and then we just thought it would be interesting to look deeper into my time working for Miramax films and Harvey Weinstein, which was actually a minimal amount of time and I probably only met him two or three times. I spoke to him on the phone a few times.
Then there was the whole idea around getting the job through my sister, who had been working there. She told me to watch out for him. If he opened the door in a bathrobe, that was an alarm signal that he was in a predatory mood. She had something happen to her with him in the past and she wanted to check that I was able to handle it. So she warned me and then, you know, the fact that you are suddenly in a very luxurious setting, with lots of wonderful people who were spending money here there and everywhere, going to lots of screenings and a soon as there was any idea of him coming to town, it was like thunder. Everybody was running around kowtowing to him and I have never been someone who likes doing that anyway to authority. But I was very aware of the power he had.
It’s also about my feelings of having a daughter, thinking that only stories by powerful people get heard. I don’t want her to grow up thinking that she is not going to have any voice on things that she experiences. I know how crushing it can be to constantly be rejected, having been an actress and I want her to feel that she can always express herself and have a fair hearing, however important she is. I want her to have a voice, and that’s the same with other women, ordinary people that don’t get much of a hearing, have as much right as anyone else to point out bad behaviour. That’s the other thing, I’m just trying to point out bad behaviour and I feel that if everybody pointed it out, what a great world it would be.
Bettina: You approached this piece in an interesting way, tell me about the process.
Lisa: It was very organic, it was organic really. When we started out, Paula was very instrumental in getting me to look at Arts Council Grants, so we fiddled about with those for a bit and that gives you some sort of direction. And then I suppose with the Developing Your Creative Practice Grant, I just thought I really love the idea of ‘clowning’ because I wanted to somehow use grotesque in portraying Harvey Weinstein. I wanted him either as a clown or something really grotesque. I remember at drama school we did something called Bouffan, that comes from Jacques Lecoq and Phillip Gaulier, we looked at certain archetypes, so I was very interested in that. We got together lots of times, Paula and I had loads of meetings just discussing how we saw it happening and writing different scenes and me coming out with memories. The more we met, the more memories I had and the more angry I got towards society and the whole industry. I felt fury, as I had suppressed a lot of my own sexuality through seeing how a lot of women get jobs and not wanting to be like that. And not trusting men I suppose. It did have a lot of influence on that.
So, the process meant lots of meetings at either the foyer of Jackson’s Lane or the Park Theatre. Then writing something down, Paula very cunningly got me to go away and write things down until we got enough to put into a 15-minute scratch thing that we did at the Cockpit. Then I invited a couple to people to see that and listened to their stories. The process for me was also just talking to lots and lots of different friends and everybody’s got their own ideas and thoughts and ways to come at it. But I remember meeting people at the National Theatre with Paula and interviewing them for verbatim ideas. Then I realised that most women start out saying I’m really lucky, nothing ever happened to me, I was really, really lucky, and then they come back a little bit later and say, there was that time when..but they never think it was big enough. It was that tiny moment when someone grabbed them or looked up their skirt or something and they think it was nothing. But then we say when is it big enough? At what point can you reveal something without everyone thinking they are going to laugh at me. The men are going to point and, even now, I put something on my WhatsApp drama group from drama school and someone talked about a certain teacher whom I know, because a story was told me from a year above me, that he had, in a theatre history lesson, slipped his hands down her front. And she had told the registrar, and the woman just said oh yes, he’s going through a bad time at the moment, he’s having a breakup, we won’t say anything to make his life harder. So, I couldn’t help but say that, when his name was brought up in the WhatsApp that I knew a story about him, but I was worried that all the men in the group would be saying stop being such a kill joy. Whether they would or not, there’s a feeling that me pointing that out makes me a prude, suddenly I’m a prude. Even now, and that’s me having got this far with my story-telling. People who don’t dare because they are, whatever, they are, there are so many stories out there that haven’t been told. And now Russell Brand is denying all allegations, Harvey Weinstein is denying all allegations, what’s real and what isn’t?
What sort of world are we living in when Russell Brand is denying all allegations? He’s been openly crude in all his work. And women are actually saying that he forced them to do stuff. And then who do you believe? Kevin Spacey got off. But if you watch that amazing film called Unmasked, these poor men, are seriously, they are not lying when they are telling their stories.
Bettina: Is that about Kevin Spacey?
Lisa: Yes, you should watch it, online. You know, it’s really moving and there is no way that these men are lying. So how does he get off?
Bettina: When there are positions of power, consent is murky.
Lisa: But also, it’s the survival, trauma responses, people will freeze, or fawn. I found myself doing it and I’m watching people doing it all time. A, to keep them on your side, so that they’re not going to hurt you, and B, because you want the job, you see it all the time.
I’m not pretending that I’ve got the answers, I just wanted to express myself through acting. It’s always a shock, every time one of these stories comes out. We are taught to be in awe of people in power, and money makes power, so we are drawn to find value in wealth. I’ve got something I wanted to say which is something that Joan Plowright said to me in a meeting.
“The wealthy want the wealthy to be around so that they all feel safe together. They have a lovely lifestyle which is disreputable and they don’t seem to acknowledge that. They are admired for having the lifestyle of being a millionaire. They are shown in the papers as people who have made it. When you are not sure of what morals exist, how can people be accused of being immoral?”
