Rachel Kiel ’07 has attained stardom by tap dancing, acting, singing and showing up at the Argus office for this interview. She plays Laura Bush in Tony Kushner’s “Only We Who Guard The Mystery Shall Be Unhappy,” tonight in the MPR at 7, 9, 11 p.m. and midnight.
MB: Your middle name is Woodnutt. With two “T”s.
RK: It’s a Quaker name. No one makes names anymore like the Quakers.
MB: Are you a Quaker?
RK: No. I was raised in a mixed marriage between an atheist Jew and an ex-hippie Californian, I don’t know, Buddhist Episcopalian something or other.
MB: So where’d they get the name?
RK: It’s my grandfather’s middle name, on the California hippie side.
MB: So, you’re in a play on Friday.
RK: It’s called “Only We Who Guard The Mystery Shall Be Unhappy.” It’s by Tony Kushner. The play is about Laura Bush reading “The Brothers Karamazov” to dead Iraqi children, but it manages to be funny somehow, in the least offensive sense, at least at Wesleyan. I’m playing Laura Bush. I’m channeling my Southern side.
MB: Where are you really from?
RK: North Carolina.
MB: I thought you were from New York.
RK: Am I supposed to respond to that?
MB: Yes.
RK: Well, I don’t have an accent. I come from a college town, Chapel Hill. When they wanted to build a new zoo in NC, Jesse Helms, our former senator, suggested putting a fence around Chapel Hill and charging admission.
Because we’re liberals.
MB: Wait. So did you move to New York?
RK: No. Maybe you’re thinking of another Rachel.
MB: Hmm. No. I know who you are.
(extended awkward silence)
MB: What else do you do?
RK: I’m in Cardinal Sinners, I tap dance…Don’t judge me. It’s actually really cool. I play flute.
MB: Do you have an outlet for tap at Wesleyan?
RK: Well, they have a class here, and I was the TA for it last year. Obviously, you can’t go to a college expecting that they’ll have a really intense tap dancing program, but I travel with my company, the North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble, when I go home. We went to Finland this summer. There’s more tap dancing in Finland than you would imagine.
Have you ever seen any tap dancing?
MB: Um…yeah.
RK: Was it any good?
MB: Yeah, I saw some good tap dancing this summer in L.A.
RK: I’m glad it was good, because I get really sick and tired of people who think that all tap dancing is toddlers in bumble bee costumes running around making noise, or people in leotards with smiles plastered to their braces. When it’s good, it’s actually just like jazz percussion, like your feet are the drums. There’s a lot of improvisation in it.
MB: How did you get started?
RK: My mom got tired of me running around the grocery store with too much excess energy. She heard there was a good tap teacher in town and put me in classes when I was five.
MB: And you’ve been doing it ever since?
RK: Yep. I was never good at any other kind of dance, unless you count interpretive dancing to Enya in my room with my roommate.
MB: We don’t.
RK: Oh. That’s too bad. You really should see it. My mom likes it, but then I’m an only child so she likes most things I do.
MB: What was Finland like?
RK: I felt bad because everyone knew English and we weren’t expected to know the language at all. Everyone was so nice about it. Since other countries don’t like us very much right now, you always feel like the big American pig. You just want to say, “I didn’t vote for him!” They’re really into alcoholic cider over there.
MB: Was it light out all the time?
RK: It got dark around eleven o’clock or so. But all the restaurants close early, so there’s not that much to do. All of the clubs have ridiculously high age minimums there, like 24 or something. But the drinking age is younger.
MB: Were you tapping as part of a festival?
RK: Yeah. A lot of really good dancers came from around the world. There were dancers there from Scandinavian countries as well as Russia, China, the United States, and some other places. Oh, and Israel! They were really good. Actually, they were okay. But they were cool people.
MB: You’re taking Russian, right?
RK: Yeah, this is my first year. My mom has a degree in Slavic languages, but she doesn’t speak much of it anymore. She’s writing a novel right now where one of the characters is a Russian translator. And on my dad’s side, my family is from Lithuania and Belarus. So I have some connections.
MB: Can you say something in Russian?
RK: Ochen priatna.
MB: What does that mean?
RK: It means nice to meet you.
MB: You also bear a striking resemblance to Priscilla Meyer.
RK: Well, I don’t really know her, but I hear she’s “intense.” So I don’t really know how to feel about that. My best friend thinks she’s awesome. So maybe that’s why she likes me. Except that she met me first.
MB: Maybe she had a premonition that someone cool would remind her of you.
RK: She also thinks Priscilla Meyer looks and acts like my mom. Gee, it seems like this whole interview is about my mom.
[Rachel’s mom calls.]
RK: My mom has a subscription to the Argus, so she’ll probably frame this.
MB: Would it be fair to say that she’s the wind beneath your wings?
RK: That sounds about right.
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