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Leilah Weinraub<\/a> and I first met over Zoom during a Degrowth (an international movement for the global North to consume less and completely reduce production to preserve the planet) book club that our mutual friends, Atheel El Malik and Terence Nance, were also a part of. It was the first year of the pandemic, and stuck behind our screens we fortified our knowledge of the external world and our relation \u2014 and responsibility \u2014 to it, through conversation about the ecological future. The Earth is in decay. There was a sincerity about our desire to connect with it, to know how to be with it; everything during that time felt tectonic, urgent. Times have increasingly worsened, yet the palpability of evolution was potent in this book club. We read seminal Degrowth texts by Giorgos Kallis<\/a> and Jason Hickel<\/a>, and we discussed what possibilities existed in the future, not only for our species, but for all the beings we share this world with.<\/p>\n Fast forward five years, after the incredible success of \u201cShakedown,\u201d<\/a> Weinraub\u2019s last film about a Los Angeles Black lesbian strip club, and fashion label Hood by Air<\/a>, where she was the creative director and co-founder, she is now rigorously playing around with the art of storytelling \u2014 facilitating, writing and acting in plays. Through her work, there is an emphasis on relationships and how they impact both our current existence and our future. This presence, this inquiry, is so palpable throughout the full scope of her work.<\/p>\n Now, Weinraub is part of the Hammer\u2019s Made in L.A. 2025<\/a> exhibition, presenting a piece of her own, \u201cThe Kids,\u201d<\/a> which spans video, performance and billboard installation. She also stars in an episodic film called \u201cTheater\u201d<\/a> by the New Theater Hollywood, another Made in L.A. participant this year. As an extension of Made in L.A., \u201cThe Kids\u201d will also show as a live performance over three nights (Oct. 17-19) at New Theater Hollywood\u2019s space<\/a> on Santa Monica Boulevard. The description for \u201cThe Kids\u201d explains that it\u2019s showcasing \u201csurvival as a performance for the future.\u201d The future is a theme resolute in Weinraub\u2019s imagination and propulsion to make the best work she possibly can.<\/p>\n We talked over Zoom about working-class love stories, doing voice-over work, acting in Marxist films and being Capricorns. (The interview is accompanied by a photo essay from Weinraub\u2019s friend and collaborator, the artist Kiernan Francis<\/a>, inspired by the themes of the play.) <\/p>\n Fariha R\u00f3is\u00edn:<\/b> Do you remember we were in a book club together?<\/p>\n Leilah Weinraub:<\/b> Oh, my God, yes \u2014 the Degrowth book club. That was a really cool book club, I\u2019ve been telling people about it \u2026<\/p>\n FR: <\/b>Capitalism is failing us, obviously. So, Degrowth seems like the only way \u2026 I also watched \u201cSeek No Favor\u201d<\/a> [Leilah\u2019s short film with my friend, Elle Clay, which is a Black lesbian vigilante rom-com] recently. <\/p>\n LW: <\/b>Oh, cool. Where?<\/p>\n FR: <\/b>Well, I was on the BlackStar Film Festival<\/a> jury. So I watched it before everybody. I\u2019m loving everything that you\u2019re doing right now. Tell me, how have you been?<\/p>\n \u201cThe Kids Generation\u201d T-shirts and polos made by Kiernan Francis, Leilah Weinraub and Sadie Patten. <\/p>\n LW: <\/b>During the pandemic, we were doing that book club together, but I was developing features too. I was developing \u201cShakedown\u201d into a narrative adaptation, and I was doing that in a very Hollywood way, with an agent and going to producers and developing it top down. Not like the project itself was created, but in a Hollywood way, which is: you have an idea, you put the pieces together and you\u2019re like, go. It worked and didn\u2019t work. But I was looking for an entrance, a way to work with actors. So I started engaging more with an actor community and now I\u2019m part of this actor\u2019s studio where we have these monthlong intensives and work on plays. And I\u2019ve been doing that since the pandemic. I met Max Pitegoff and Calla Henkel [collaborators and artists from New Theater Hollywood, Leilah stars in the duo\u2019s work for the Hammer exhibition] because we have friends in common, and they\u2019re interested in similar stuff. They came to L.A. and in their process, talking to them a lot about what\u2019s needed, what kind of work could be brought to the world next, they asked me to be in their episode. But I [also] have my own work I\u2019m bringing to the Hammer Museum, and I think I\u2019m kinda taking up a lot of space in the show. So I\u2019m starring in their episode, plus I have my own film that\u2019s in an installation, and I have this billboard installation, I have a play called \u201cThe Kids\u201d that\u2019s at the New Theater, and that\u2019s my own work.<\/p>\n FR: <\/b>OK, tell me about all these projects.<\/p>\n LW:<\/b> It\u2019s a three-parter.<\/p>\n FR:<\/b> Talk me through the three-parter.<\/p>\n LW: <\/b>It was a way for me to process the end of all kinds of relationships. I made a story that was about four friends who do a performance together that only they can do together. The way that I\u2019ve been doing this process is I\u2019ll have an idea and I bring it to people and they write it with me. The first person I did that with was [the artist] Mykki Blanco<\/a>. I was like \u201cHey, I have an idea about these four friends that are caryatids\u201d \u2014 which are those sculptures that hold up buildings, you know? \u2014 \u201cI have four friends who work together as these stone-made columns. Should we write on this?\u201d They were like, \u201cOh, I really like this idea. Yeah.\u201d The first iteration of this play was Mykki\u2019s written version of it, a more straightforward version of: they\u2019re stone sculptures that are friends, kids that work together. I\u2019ve been doing that in different sessions with different writers. And usually the writers are young \u2014 my last writing group, everyone was under 25. They\u2019re really responsive to this idea about being young, being friends, knowing you have all these ideas and all this ambition, and you\u2019re in New York. It also feels like this enormous amount of pressure and impossibility, and that you\u2019re in a David and Goliath struggle. You feel like the world is built on your labor, or built on the idea of who you are. But you don\u2019t get to generate or help. You kind of feel stuck.<\/p>\n The story is fun. Things happen. They do drugs, and it takes them into a dimension. In that dimension they view the constraints of the world; they take each other to court. I\u2019m in the play and I act as sort of a narrator and kind of my own character.<\/p>\n The reason I brought it to Max and Calla is because I was in a more formal development thing inside of Hollywood, which lacks a process where you get to generate totally new ideas. Things need to be fast but more formal. I brought the project to New Theater to have it be more chill. Everyone wants to be big, like, \u201cWe\u2019re gonna make it to Broadway!\u201d But it has to be successful. Really f\u2014 successful. And also, there\u2019s a lot of scarcity with money \u2014 nobody has a job, so people have to have normal jobs on the side. There\u2019s this thing about being an artist and having another job, it\u2019s not a thing. It\u2019s as if you saw me working somewhere, you\u2019d be worried. It wouldn\u2019t be cool. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n FR:<\/b> Yeah, all of it. I\u2019m just coming on the journey with you.<\/p>\n LW:<\/b> I love bringing new work to museums because it\u2019s different from the film world, where it has to be so clearly defined. \u201cShakedown\u201d got placed because it was received in a museum context. So this world of \u201cThe Kids\u201d is coming out in a similar way, and that feels fab. It\u2019s a four-channel video and there are drawings. I\u2019m acting, but that\u2019s in Max and Calla\u2019s work.<\/p>\n FR: <\/b>How has the expansion been? \u2018Cause that\u2019s a lot to take on.<\/p>\n LW:<\/b> All those things are extremely immediate once you can harness them. Drawing is really immediate. It\u2019s not managing a production, it\u2019s not coordinating, it\u2019s actually intimate. It\u2019s small, and it can be private. It\u2019s pencil and paper. And acting is the same way: it\u2019s immediate, it\u2019s with other people, it feels like something\u2019s in the room because it is. I wanted to build this groundwork, a framework, that was very clear. I feel like I\u2019m a spectacle girl after all the years of fashion and I like that, you know? [But] I needed to come all the way down to what I\u2019m able to control, personally. My own body, my own voice. The mark of my own hand.<\/p>\n FR: <\/b>It feels like there\u2019s a different sense of intimacy with yourself, making something more individual. There\u2019s something almost meditative to what you\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n For the play, Weinraub worked closely with the artist Mykki Blanco, who helped write it.<\/p>\n LW: <\/b>Yeah, for sure. And also, I wanted to become a better director.<\/p>\n FR: <\/b>How did you know you wanted to be a director in the first place?<\/p>\n LW:<\/b> How did I want to be a director?<\/p>\n FR:<\/b> How did you know that you were one?<\/p>\n LW:<\/b> I used to work at this store in L.A. and I met this director and he took me on as his intern\/assistant\/protege. I was filming a documentary with him. His name is Tony Kaye<\/a>, he\u2019s a wild personality, and in the \u201890s he was the biggest-grossing commercial director \u2014 also he was a spectacle queen and a show queen in Hollywood. He had a movie called \u201cAmerican History X\u201d that came out. <\/p>\n He paid for me to go to college and he was amazing to me. I went to Antioch College and I studied with these amazing slate filmmakers that I fit in with really well. They\u2019re anarchists. It was filmmaking that was just immediate. Whatever means you have, whatever tools you have for video. It wasn\u2019t like USC film school. There\u2019s not really technical stuff, you know? There was no money. But I learned everything there. And I worked for amazing filmmakers who are old-school labor filmmakers. I inherited that as part of my thingy. Even in \u201cThe Kids,\u201d even with Hood by Air, everything I do is through the lens of how you identify with your labor. We all have to work; we all have to negotiate with labor. It\u2019s coalition building.<\/p>\n FR: <\/b>That understanding of coalition building \u2014 or even, the lack of it \u2014 it\u2019s like the scenes of the writer\u2019s strike in Max and Calla\u2019s film [showing in Made in L.A.]. We\u2019re seeing Hollywood face itself in such a way. I think also with the U.S. empire, the veil is lifting. All of the mechanisms that have kept this orchestration going are beginning to collapse. And the only way forward, it seems, is actually having real relationships with people. Have you watched \u201cFallen Leaves\u201d<\/a> by Aki Kaurism\u00e4ki? It\u2019s a working-class love story that came out, like, two years ago.<\/p>\n LW: <\/b>It\u2019s a rom-com? This is exactly what I want. This is the kind of thing that I wanna act in. I want to be in a rom-com so bad. But I need it to be like this, you know?<\/p>\n FR: <\/b>Is that exciting? Being on screen?<\/p>\n LW:<\/b> You know, I thought I was going to be a voice-over actor and I really wanted to be an animated character \u2026<\/p>\n FR:<\/b> Really?<\/p>\n LW:<\/b> I was like, \u201cThis is what my calling is.\u201d I\u2019d see Kim Kardashian in \u2014 what\u2019s that cartoon that she\u2019s in? \u2014 anyways, I was like \u201cOh, my God, I really wanna be an inanimate object like a cat or dog.\u201d I\u2019ve only done two films where I do voice-over. The first one was a fiction documentary and then I also am doing this film with a collective called Total Refusal<\/a> out of Vienna. It\u2019s an essay film about Washington, D.C. They\u2019ve never been to America, but they\u2019re doing this whole in-video game movie about the Capitol. I can explain their Marxist essay in a way that I feel … I can apply the theory. In the acting of it, hopefully, I can translate that theory, which is an extraordinarily important thing. These are very alive, difficult, important, relational situations. You just gotta do the job \u2014 [I\u2019m a] Capricorn.<\/p>\n FR: <\/b>You gotta do the job! I\u2019m a Capricorn too.<\/p>\n LW:<\/b> No, you\u2019re not! Stop it! When\u2019s your birthday?<\/p>\n FR: <\/b>I\u2019m 10th of January. Are you a December Capricorn?<\/p>\n LW: Yeah. I\u2019m the Nicki Minaj side. I\u2019m the first day, giving almost \u2014<\/p>\n FR:<\/b> Sag?<\/p>\n LW:<\/b> Yeah, but I\u2019m not. I don\u2019t completely identify with Capricorn. I have lots of Virgo \u2026 it\u2019s like, sorry about that. But what are your others?<\/p>\n FR: <\/b>I\u2019m Cancer moon, Cancer rising. I was born on an eclipse and a full moon. I\u2019m a sun-moon opposite. It\u2019s psychotic. Interesting, emotional, deep, but the depth of feeling is just psychotic.<\/p>\n LW:<\/b> I am a Pisces rising.<\/p>\n FR: <\/b>OMG, aw. This explains so much.<\/p>\n LW: <\/b>I know. That\u2019s why the future \u2026 it\u2019s all about the future. I\u2019ve been doing the reverse aging thing. I\u2019m not really understanding how I\u2019m describing time, but I like it. It\u2019s just very Pisces, you know?<\/p>\n Kiernan Francis is a New York\u2013based filmmaker, photographer, stylist and casting director working across film, fashion and photography to explore image, performance and subculture through intimacy, identity and queerness rooted in art, nightlife and underground storytelling.<\/p>\n Casting:<\/b> Kiernan Francis<\/p>\n Photo and styling assistants:<\/b> Kate Kim, Truman Schaffner, Olivia Tull, Vivienne Mount, Cyprian Marona and Leyla Tra<\/p>\n Clothing courtesy of:<\/b> Another Man\u2019s Treasure Vintage in Pasadena<\/p>\n Talent:<\/b> Zepkins, Korynn Washington, Barrington Darius, Shane Goldsmith, Christian Flippo, Logan McCollum, Vanessa Mendez, Leilah Weinraub, Nicholas Toggenburger and Mykki Blanco<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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