Today we’d like to introduce you to Antonia Czinger.
Hi Antonia, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers?
Growing up, I moved around a lot: born in Germany, moved to London, moved to Connecticut, moved to San Francisco, moved to Ohio, moved back to Connecticut. Stayed in Connecticut for college.
Meanwhile, my family moved to LA while I was in college and then immediately back to Connecticut my senior year, after I’d decided that I, myself, wanted to live there.
I moved to LA right after college and took a job at a fancy talent agency, where I lasted for about three months. I was a terrible assistant.
On the bright side, I still have these rather good, and also haunting drawings of despondent women that I made while there. Afterward, I briefly flirted with going into publishing by taking a (paid!) internship at a lit magazine for three months before being informed that the industry was dying.
The fact that the lit magazine industry was dying (RIP) ended up actually okay for me because it forced me to eventually move back to Los Angeles and face up to the fact that I wanted to be an actor. That was really hard for a long time.
Things got better when I started taking classes at Stuart Rogers Acting Studio, and then they got even better when I was cast in an absurdist play about politics and the media at Zombie Joes Underground. From here, I got to be a part of a bunch of plays and short films, but it was through that play that I initially found community, which is frankly the most important thing.
I was able to direct a play I wrote, The Rage Fairy, with Ballview Entertainment, which is a production company that was actually started by David Dickens, the playwright who wrote that play that I was the first cast in at Zombie Joes Underground.
I love the company because they are interested in absurdist original work that is very clever and interesting while also aiming to be vastly entertaining above all else. I am looking forward to continuing my work as a writer and director though I plan to continue acting as well.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It was absolutely not a smooth road. Along with being fired from that talent agency and also absolutely every coffee shop I ever tried to work at, I initially felt very stuck and frustrated and the only thing that kept me going was that I knew I had to do this because I wanted it more than I wanted anything else.
I think that I was partially duped by the idea that if I went to a fancy college, I couldn’t possibly wholly skid off the tracks, but honestly, going to a fancy Ivy college was part of my derailment when I was twenty-two! I had very mismatched expectations and felt like I was a failure if I was doing anything other than being amazing. Also, my liberal arts education didn’t make me a particularly experienced artist at all and I had to get most of my training post-college which was a hard pill to swallow.
Anyway, everyone knows pursuing a career in the arts is the worst, but here are some highlights: being forced to perform a Shakespeare play at the Scientology Center last minute and then witnessing the director throw a shoe at a fifteen-year-old actor, someone offering me a job to ghostwrite their memoir but really just wanting to tell me salacious stories for their own arousal, me deciding against performing in a play only to have the director call me to inform me that he was firing me, even though I’d just rescinded my participation.
At one point, I worked for a very chaotic party entertainment company where dressed as a mermaid, I watched a twelve-year-old boy steal a car and crash it into another car. While at that same company, I worked as an Easter Bunny and had to hop around on a scorching hot day, while the guests hunted for eggs containing fifty dollar bills.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I recently got to direct a play I wrote, The Rage Fairy, which went up at The Sherry Theater in NoHo. It’s about a manic fairy with a chaotic attachment style who goes looking for love in all the wrong places—including in the arms of a literal murderer.
Later, she is haunted by a cadre of murdered girls even as she tries to pretend that all is well with her dream man. It’s about codependence and obsession and what happens when we are unable to integrate the good and the bad. One reviewer called it, “a hilarious feminist version of a Book of Revelations,” which was pretty cool.
In terms of my style, I love dark comedy and I love blending off-beat absurdism and satire, with very real, relatable issues and themes, many of which have to do with femininity and masculinity, messages sent to women and messages sent to men, and the ideals of love in this modern world.
I appreciate the rhythms and textures of language and many of my characters speak in very distinctive ways. A key to writing I’ve realized is that I just have to let the “how” of the story unfold—I don’t get full control.
I am currently looking to see what I can write and direct next, while also seeing what other opportunities might exist for The Rage Fairy. We sold out most of our nights and had nearly full houses for the rest, and would have extended except for the fact that our lead actress, the incredible Holly Anne Mitchell, was going out of town.
I plan to continue my work with Ballview Entertainment and am excited to see what we will create next. I’m also excited to meet and find new collaborators as well.
Also, when I am not making theater, I am actually a therapist! Well, a trainee therapist, but I am about to graduate with my Masters in June, at which point I will become an associate therapist. I am working towards becoming fully licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT) and as a Professional Clinical Counselor (PCC).
I am endlessly fascinated by people’s stories and see a lot of overlap between art and therapy. Energetically, therapy is very receptive and the arts are very expressive and so doing both help me maintain equilibrium—not to mention a sense of financial stability.
Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
Honestly, the Covid-19 pandemic, while very bad for the world, made me feel as if I finally got to catch up on my misspent youth. I partially joking, but honestly, when the world shut down, I got to get closer with my friends in Los Angeles with whom I formed a pod. I wrote two plays, and I started my graduate school program—the same program that I am about to finish in June. My path to where I am now was very winding, so this catch-up time was good for me.
I was very fortunate in that way. I am of course aware of how terrible and isolating the pandemic was for many people, and I do want to acknowledge that as well.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/antoniaczinger/?hl=en
- Other: https://www.instagram.com/ballviewentertainment/?hl=en
Image Credits
Paul Smith and David Dickens
