During a conversation the other day with Camila Canó-Flaviá, who plays the animation artist Jane amidst the half-dozen seekers in The Coast Starlight, I wondered if the play’s subtitle, with apologies to Pirandello, might be “Six Characters In Search of Belonging.” This thought occurred as Canó-Flaviá said that her character had emigrated to the U.S. when she was a baby “but she’s never quite felt at home here.”
Canó-Flaviá, whose own family moved to New York from the Dominican Republic when she was a child, explained: “Where Jane comes from is not specified in the text, but we decided it might be Colombia. Her parents are mathematicians, they teach at Brown. Jane grew up in Providence, but in some ways she’s remained a migrant.” Jane boards the train in the grip of a break-up with her longtime boyfriend. “Being with him,” Canó-Flaviá said, “is where she was able to find more than a home. It has been a space where life hasn’t felt so effortful.”
Jane is struggling to imagine life without her relationship. Canó-Flaviá said: “For me, the central line conveying her struggle is: ‘I understand that people generally survive [a break-up], but I don’t believe that I’m gonna survive it.’ On the train, Jane meets T.J., who stirs things up for her. She decides that if she can find a way to live the emotions he’s inciting it might be worth letting go of the pain she’s been feeling.”
Canó-Flaviá’s character is the chronicler of The Coast Starlight’s journey: “She draws other people on the train. At every transition, she points out who is getting on.” Canó-Flaviá did research into Jane’s profession as an animation artist. “I read a book about an early-Disney layout artist, Maurice Noble. I watched a bunch of old Disney films, like Pinocchio. My sister went to RISD” --Rhode Island School of Design – “and I reached out to someone in the animation department there, someone who had done work in storyboarding as well. I interviewed her about the culture of the school and about the industry. I learned that there are animation artists who spend their entire careers focusing on fingernails or eyebrows – miniscule things. Can you imagine? Amazing.”
Canó-Flaviá own career focus came relatively early. She studied acting at Professional Performing Arts High School, on West 48th Street in Manhattan. “I met so many insanely talented people through that program, including Lee Sunday Evans” – who in 2018 choreographed and directed the very well-received off-Broadway production Dance Nation, in which Canó-Flaviá and a terrific ensemble performed with great beauty and emotion. (Sunday Evans directed In The Green and Bull in a China Shop for LCT3.)
The place of emotion in her acting work came up in our conversation. “In my early years, I would look at a character and say: ‘I will die for this person.’ I loved the raw rush of emotion that attitude provided. More recently, I’m finding a way to give that emotion more shape. And to find ways to tap into emotion without exhausting myself right away.”
Such technique has been useful with The Coast Starlight. “Doing this play is a marathon,” Canó-Flaviá said. “I’m on the whole time. There’s no time to go backstage, grab a drink of water, and catch my breath.” But Canó-Flaviá isn’t complaining about the drama’s demands. “I feel so grateful to come back to Jane after playing her in 2019 in La Jolla.” Then, in reference to companies such as the Moscow Art Theatre, which rehearse a work on and off for years before inviting the public, she added: “I think of all this as my Russian rehearsal.” And further, in reference to the play’s fortysomething character who makes a tornado-like entrance, Canó-Flaviá added, wryly, “Maybe some day I’ll come back as Liz.”
Brendan Lemon is a freelance journalist in New York.
