We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Liisi Rohumae a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Liisi thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
The comedy ‘We’ll Come Back to the Title. It’s Fine.’ will have its world premiere June 3rd at the Zephyr Theatre during the Hollywood Fringe Festival.
It’s a play within a play and this is my first time directing a play! It’s thrilling and scary, overwhelming and challenging, but I love it.
I also wrote this play and the story finds three actors and a writer-director working on an action play called Die Yesterday.
There’s accents! There’s fights! There’s jokes! There’s no audience participation. There is some Shakespeare.
I am so proud of this passion project and our diverse cast and team (BIPOC and LGBT folk, people who’ve immigrated to the U.S.). It is very much about the creative process and how trying to make something can be such an impossible and funny ordeal sometimes. And yet we do it. Even after all the rejections and false starts. ‘We’ll Come Back to the Title. It’s Fine.’ is a love letter to all creatives everywhere who refuse to give up. Those are my people!
Liisi, 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?
Liisi Rohumae is a BAFTA and GALECA member, a screenwriter and playwright from Estonia who now lives and works in Los Angeles.
Her previous feature film credits include the 2012 Raindance Film Festival Best Debut Feature Nominee BAD HAIR FRIDAY and the 2019 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival Baltic Film Competition Nominee CHASING UNICORNS, available on Amazon Prime Video.
Rohumae’s play APART enjoyed a 13-month run in Estonia, followed by a revival in Toronto, Canada where it had its international premiere.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
Screenwriting is both such a lonely and an incredibly collaborative process – this is one of the reasons I love it. It is unpredictable and ever changing, miles away from routine and I love being as far away from routine as possible.
Now as I am also dipping my toe into directing, I find meeting new people and collaborators is such a gift. Every new project introduces you to a whole new group of people. I am in awe of actors, production designers, composers etc. I have such respect and admiration for creatives. It is not an easy path to follow. It is littered with rejections and false starts. Requiring you to be vulnerable over and over again.
I truly believe every creative project is a tiny miracle in and of itself. And the most rewarding aspect of it is the chance to be a part of it. To create something together.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Moving to US alone at the age of 37 and basically restarting my career all over again. Finding work, finding connections. Finding a footing in a new country.
But living and working in Los Angeles was always a dream of mine and here I am.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thelatime.com/
- Instagram: @danacurrtain
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/liisi.rohumae/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liisi-rohum%C3%A4e-986b71b2/