Since far too often we only publicly say nice things about people when they are dead I’ve decided to randomly pick a Facebook friend every day and say something nice about them.
May 5, 2019
Today’s person: Anna Ishida!
I can’t remember when I met Anna. Or where. Or why. A show? And audition? No idea. I just know I remembered her. She looked dangerous.
I’m not particularly into dangerous people, but Anna is a particular kind of dangerous-looking person. Onstage she has a dynamic combination of passionate interest in who she is listening to with so complete an inner life that each line she says seems that much more immediate. She conveys the reality of a person trying to fit the new dramatic situation into an already complete and complex life.
Watching her perform in a staged reading at ACT a few years ago and I realized why. It struck me, a certain look... why she looked so complete, and so dangerous...
Anna always looks like she rather be somewhere else, killing someone.
That’s the depth and complexity she shares, that whether comedy tragedy, horror, romance, or farce there is a deadly serious backstory. She should be playing glorious super villains or waiting to be awakened heroes in blockbuster films - characters looking for life on their terms. There is nothing fake. Its life or death real. Just like real life. Onstage and off Anna has the steady gaze and forward lean of someone looking for the truth, looking for shared passion, looking for real connections, looking to not be bored in a world full of mundanity.
Because if she’s bored she has something better to do elsewhere...