#56: Julia Hynes

On this week's episode of the podcast, we've got Julia Hynes who performs with Junior Varsity, The Stank, and Sad Kids. A founding member of long-running Megawatt team, BRICK, Julia talks to host Louis Kornfeld about her improv development, being "good at school," and the freedom of improvising with an all-female team. Louis begins this interview by asking Julia about what it's like to go from forming and being on BRICK for four years to joining a very established team in Junior Varsity (JV). Group email threads aside, Louis wants to know about Julia's own differences in play between the two teams. She says that on BRICK she was a big editor and now with JV, she’s not as concerned with that task. Julia also describes a big improv lesson that came during her early days of BRICK which she has always kept in mind: Remember to make it feel honest and real. Between the end of BRICK and when she joined JV, Julia was able to take some time off from performing on a weekly show. She's a full time school teacher, so the additional time in her evening schedule was appreciated, as was the ability to step away from the pressures that can exist at a theater. Julia's interest in improv began in college at Penn State, but she initially pursued academia after graduating. Eventually, she moved to NYC because a lot of her Penn State comedy friends were living there and doing improv at UCB. On a recommendation from a friend, she ended up taking Level 1 at Magnet and loved it. It wasn't until around Level 4, when she met some future members of BRICK, that she began to get more fully involved in the community. Julia says she's at a stage in her life where she’s evaluating, “What do I actually want and why do I want it?” This leads Louis to discuss finally facing our mortality after the age of 30 and how that change from "I've got plenty of time" to "time is running out" feels. Life is already happening, he says, which seems to cause him alternating feelings of crippling anxiety and a cool calm sense of acceptance. Speaking of "who she is," Julia is a full-time English as a Second Language 5th Grade Specialist in New York City. Since high school, she was someone who wanted to make a difference in some way. Since becoming a teacher, Julia feels like she’s making a bigger difference, especially in the last year, during which she feels she really started to come into her own as a teacher. Speaking more about teaching and class, Julia claims that she's always been "good at school," which is something that Louis has never really heard. As opposed to Louis' oppositional experience, Julia says she had a good rapport with teachers and a family who encouraged her to take school seriously. They talk about how Julia's had to add more structure to her practices over the years and be “less chilled-out” than when she first started. What does it take to control a room of 5th graders? She enjoys finding the balance between making the kids laugh and having them get down to business. Louis tries to avoid asking about the difference between playing with an all-female show versus a mixed-cast show, but he asks anyway! Julia says that the biggest difference is, “Whatever I say is going to be just embraced…” in a way that is beyond what happens normally. She also credits the women she plays with. She he notes that duo partner Beth Newell has a way of molding whatever Julia says into a beautiful game. On The Stank, they're all seasoned improvisers, strong players, positively minded, and nonjudgemental — all of which goes a long ways. Julia goes further to says that, even when the men on a team are great, there’s just something there that doesn’t quite feel the same. There’s a added sense of pressure to be the token female, which then can inhibit how she plays. There's a feeling as if she has to represent for all women. Relieving that pressure opens up more freedom of play.