We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Anita Castillo-Halvorssen speaking with us on behalf of Taproot Creatives.

Hi Anita, thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

Each of our projects has meant the world to our team, but I suppose the biggest endeavors we’ve taken on as a young collective thus far are the short film Therapy Won’t Kill You by Claire McKey Berkman and the play Without God As My Lover by Megan Medley.

Therapy Won’t Kill You is a queer musical horror-comedy that digs into the nightmarish challenges of finding the “right” therapist. For this project, each scene was directed by a different ensemble member, allowing multiple perspectives and styles to shape the story. Members took on a variety of on-set roles, each gaining new production skills while supporting the low-budget process. Taproot co-founder Claire McKey Berkman – who wrote, edited, and led the project – used contemporary theater practices including site-specific writing and devising to structure the collaborative elements of the production. Ensemble members traveled from NYC, DC, and LA to film Therapy Won’t Kill You in the snowy woods of Vermont.

Throughout the post-production stage, Claire led a remarkable team of local Vermont editors and shared drafts of the film with the directors and performers for feedback, making sure that the group’s creative insights were put to full use. Claire also collaborated with London-based composer Emily Rose Simons, who has masterfully scored several Taproot projects, to write two musical scenes. With so many of us trying out new roles and duties for this film, the project stands as a beautiful example of the kind of work we do and the opportunities we provide for one another within Taproot. The film was selected to screen in several festivals so far, including the Chain Film Festival, Yonkers Film Festival, Big Apple Film Festival, and awarded Honorable Mention for Best Music/Musical at Milan’s Absurd Film Festival. We were proud to hold its world premiere at the Vermont Film Festival this past summer.

Without God As My Lover is a full-length two-hander that we’ve now had a chance to mount twice – once in NYC this past spring at Theater for the New City and a second time as part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival at Yellow Bicycle Theater this fall – co-directed by two of our founders Megan Medley, the playwright, and Sarah Cuneo. The play is about a queer, lapsed Catholic woman wrestling with questions of family and faith in the wake of her estranged father’s passing, and her attempt to coerce answers out of the priest who took his final confession. The play challenges orthodoxy and patriarchy and the way these ideologies trickle down from churches to families to everyone in between – with distinct consequences for women and queer people.

Our team hosted talkbacks for each run of the play, to allow the full team – including stage manager, designers, intimacy director – time to expound on what is meaningful to them about this work, and to engage intimately and honestly with audiences’ questions post-show. We found that the effect Without God As My Lover had on audiences allowed for nuance of opinion about the richly layered characters it portrays. Our mission is to use our work to call people together across the aisle so that distinct (and often siloed) communities can genuinely open a dialogue with each other. Taproot’s work provides a vital service that we want to see more of in the theater community: cultivating spaces to gather in communion without fear of judgment. I think what we’re realizing as a relatively new collective of passionate, hungry artists is that our human truths are strong enough to spark all kinds of rich discussion among our supporters, new and old.

Anita, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Absolutely, I’d love to share a little bit about Taproot. Taproot Creatives is an ensemble collective uplifting new work by and stories of women and other marginalized genders via non-hierarchical collaboration. We’re made up of and led by women, primarily queer-identifying, with members spanning coast to coast – and from 2021 to present we’ve produced eight NYC theater productions, one touring theater production, and two short films. Every film, play, and reading Taproot has produced has been written, directed, and produced by a team entirely composed of women and queer folks. We’re committed to making art accessible to all and creating work that sparks thought, conversation, and action.

Taproot began as a weekly writers’ workshop and continues as such to this day! By workshopping consistently with each other every week, our ensemble gets the opportunity to receive feedback and to hear our work read aloud. Many of the scripts developed in our writers’ workshop go on to be Taproot productions. Our members’ work encompasses everything from horror screenplays to fantasy novels – we’re proud of the diversity of genre, style, and themes present in the writing brought to Taproot every week. The Taproot workshop provides a safe space for experimentation, a sounding board to work through next steps, and a weekly deadline to motivate the creation of new work. Because all of our members are actors as well as writers, the workshop also provides the opportunity to hear work read aloud by professional actors – an invaluable experience for any playwright or screenwriter.

What’s currently cooking in Taproot world? I’m co-directing Megan Medley’s one-act play Ava and Ty with her, which was selected for SOOP Theatre’s short play festival and goes up this month in Pelham, NY. It’s a hilarious, sweet, and moving little queer rom-com that I can’t wait to share with audiences ASAP! The Taproot team is also making our way through some terrific festivals with Claire McKey Berkman’s short film Therapy Won’t Kill You which will screen at the Big Apple Film Festival on December 10th.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Taproot’s founding arose out of a need. Our goal is to be consistently intentional and thoughtful in the way we create our work and the way we empower our collaborators. Taproot’s mission to champion women, non-binary, trans, and queer folks doesn’t simply inform what work we make: it’s at the root of how we make the work. We need this work to be sustainable for the artists making it, as well as accessible to the audiences we want to reach. Despite being a small group building each project with a humble budget, we pay our people. We understand that artists feel freer to do their best work when they feel respected and supported, and for us that includes financial support.

This past spring, we facilitated our first full casting process for Without God As My Lover. We were determined to create an audition space that felt safe, welcoming, and fun for the performers. After working our way through an initial 1,500 submissions via Actors Access, we succeeded in building relationships with many actors in the city beyond their auditions and callbacks. Every actor who was called back was offered comp tickets for the show, and we were thrilled that many came out to see it! We’ve been out supporting these artists in their work, going to see their shows and celebrating their wins. We believe in building each other up and we care deeply that the experience of making art with others (even in an audition room) be enriching and inspiring, never disempowering or antagonizing.

Another puzzle piece in the mission to make sure this work is sustainable is safety! We’ve hired an intimacy director for two of our projects thus far: the brilliant Carin Jennie Estey helps our team build a common practice and vocabulary among directors and actors that ensures mutual trust throughout each project. This new and long-needed standard of intimacy protection in rehearsals has been a cornerstone of our productions. We always want to make sure from start to finish that everyone in the room feels safe enough to share their best creative work.

How did you build your audience on social media?

We love this question – because we’re just starting out when it comes to social media, but we’re grateful for the chance it’s given our team not only to dive into video and graphics creation, but also to connect with people in totally new ways. Social media has let us watch each other grow in so many fun directions and share our work with supporters all over the world.

The first, biggest strategy for building a presence that we’ve certainly taken to heart is…talking to people about Taproot! When we took Without God As My Lover to the Philly Fringe Festival this fall for instance – whether it was our rideshare driver, the DJ at the bar down the street, someone we’re standing in line with at the deli – we indulged in what it really means to spread the word about a show in a city where our team didn’t have many connections. And guess what? Putting ourselves out there paid off. We have some new ride or die supporters of Taproot who took a chance on us and came to see the show based on a simple conversation. Those kinds of genuine followers, on and off social media, are priceless.

The other thing we’ve learned about building a social media presence is that, especially in this early phase we’re in, there’s no reason to overthink the content. Someone’s got a wacky new video series idea? Just do it! Toss it up there! Keep letting the world know who you are and what you’re about, instead of worrying about nailing down consistent branding and over-regulating your own expression. Trust that people will pick up what you’re putting down as long as you keep making and sharing in a way that feels true to your work and mission.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/taproot_official
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/taproot_official
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Taproot-Creatives/61555474656809/
• Twitter: https://x.com/TaprootCreative
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TaprootCreatives
• Other: Email: [email protected]

Image Credits

Therapy Won’t Kill You film poster by Sarah Cuneo
Ava and Ty poster by Aurélien Bayo
Antistrophe and Without God As My Lover production photos by Aurélien Bayo
She Said, She Said production photo by Jeremy Varner