Tanna Frederick: Acting is "A Way of Life"

Tanna FrederickStage/film actress Tanna Frederick, 33, knows more than anyone that good things come to those who wait, whether in Wall Street meetings or Hollywood. As someone who has earned positive reactions from The Chicago Tribune and New York Times, she executive produced and starred in The Farm, an indie film shot in her native Iowa this summer.

What drove you to directing? In the future, how do you plan to do more directing in film and on stage?
Directing was a bucket list deal with myself that I didn't consciously realize until I was researching a play to do proceeding Sylvia. I was searching and searching for the right piece to do and Sylvia had been a huge comedic hit and loved by audiences and I decided it needed to be something dark but comedic that would be a challenge for me to test my comedic skills with. I was Backstage surrounded by 35 or 40 scripts before a show one night and just looked up and realized the play that I needed to do was Why We Have a Body- a play that had stuck with me since I performed it in 1996 and I needed to mount the show in my terms and I needed to direct it. It was my first directing experience and i knew exactly what I wanted from the start. I had the vision and I had that sort of perfectionism grip on it which is a good thing to have I suppose when you are directing so that the play was created exactly as I wanted it and saw it in my mind to be. The next thing I will direct will be a film. I'm currently searching for a piece that grabs me as much as WWHAB did. So I cam see the vision from start to finish and I have to say it was easier for me to direct and be in the show because I was able to have control over one of the actors in the show every night of the performances so the control freak in me liked that so in the film I want the exact same control over it so I have to find a role that works for me.

Some people became actors for the sake of being famous. How do you approach it differently? Instead of acting to live, living to act?
It's a way of life. Being an artist is a choice that I never had in my mind because I can't live with out it. I can't live without creating something on stage or on film and I am constantly balancing four or five projects at a time and I love it. I think I had the best training for it coming from Iowa and starting acting when I was 8 because you aren't doing it at tat age for an y reason other than to play and pretend. I loved the rehearsal process from a very young age. Iowa is trained to contribute to all aspects of the production. Doing four or five shows a year in children's theater, the kids would be the stage managers, tech monitors, paint the sets and none of us were getting paid then. We were a part of the theater. I never look at art as something you will get paid for. I have been paid for it but my brain never equates the money with the project because my mind is completely enveloped in the creating and the focus of a piece of art.

When you are acting, how do you recommend other current or aspiring actors to drop their real personalities when playing a role?
I actually encourage people to take their personalities and take everything they have inside of them and use the character as a means in working through life and discovering things about yourself. I encourage them to bring as much of yourself as you can to the character. Because the more naked you are the more you provoke a response. Having a character to play is an immense gift from a playwright. I am so thankful that there are so many delicious writers out there who have created such amazing spaces for roles to discover myself in. The more frightened I believe you are on stage or in a film the closer you are to revealing human truth and the human predicament so I believe never drop who you are in real life. bring as much as you can to the table.

What are your future career goals?
To direct a film, to inspire others to keep creating films when they have doubts in their own mind. i love speaking to students from my Alma Mater, University of Iowa, and this summer I went back to Iowa and did a high school musical with a group of high school kids. We played to a house of 1200 people and their intensity and drive and work ethic blew me away and raised my bar. I want to keep Project Cornlight going, where we are inspiring and providing funds for people in the Midwest who don't feel they have "permission" to create. We have a line up of three films scheduled for project cornlight to revive the Midwest film industry initiatives. I also really want to work with Tim Burton, Jim Jarmusch. And of course to keep filming more films with Henry Jaglom and producing plays with him- the sort of Rollins/Casavetes relationship where we are in a great tennis match of ideas and new concepts, new characters. Its a very joyful process to create with him.

What has been your favorite acting experience?
Playing Sylvia. Playing a dog. I was really linked into that role. I was really happy to play a dog and determine the basic needs of a dog which are eating sleeping and pooping and of course human attention. While I was playing Sylvia, my real life changed in that I really started to appreciate the small things in life like a good meal or a hug or going for a walk around the block.