March 5, 2020

Meet Angela Horchem of AH Productions in Tucson

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Angela Horchem.

Angela, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I am a performing teaching artist because I believe performance goes hand in hand with education. I guide my students to create art by pushing them to share their own stories, and in turn their enthusiasm inspires me to create my own art. In retrospect, it’s remarkable that I found this life. I grew up on my family’s farm in rural Western Kansas where I graduated from the local high school with fifteen other students. Although my school had an amazing array of activities, given how small it was, the only “theatre” I knew was “playing” my favorite stories with my grandma. Apparently, I was always a performer: I recently found pictures of myself as a child playing in boxes and dressing as a clown, so it seems my new one-woman show, Fin, is the story I was born to tell.

In my hometown, sports were life and I played them all, loving the physical discipline and collaboration. I received athletic scholarships for college, but my love for a speech and debate event in high school encouraged me to sign up for a college theatre class that changed my life. From that point forward, I decided to pursue theatre rather than sports. So I graduated with a double major in communications (theatre emphasis) and education, two fields that are inherently linked in my experience. Upon graduation, my alma mater surprised me with a teaching offer while I worked on my Master’s. The closest program was 100 miles away at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and I threw myself into the grueling schedule of being a graduate student on top of teaching a full load. In graduate school, I encountered the perfect marriage between sports and theatre: “physical theatre.” It combined the physical discipline and collaboration of athletics with the storytelling of theatre. Upon completing my degree, I walked away from PhD plans to follow this mysterious calling.

I enrolled at Dell’Arte International in Northern California, a program which specializes in ensemble-created physical theatre (also known as devised theatre). I studied Commedia Dell’Arte (an old Italian performance style characterized by its use of masks, improvisation, and physical comedy), masking-making, and clown performance. I then embarked on my new career path, moving to Chicago and working with young circus students—many of them refugees—at a nonprofit called CircEsteem. I directed an extraordinary clown trio of young men from Ghana, Togo, and Ethiopia. Together we watched as Barack Obama was the first African-American elected to this country’s highest office. Back in Nebraska, I used to teach four sections of public speaking per semester, during which I developed a taste for helping people find the confidence to tell their stories. In Chicago, seeing this moment through the eyes of these young Americans from Africa showed me the power of that confidence. After CircEsteem, I spent six weeks studying Topeng dance and shadow puppetry in Bali, Indonesia. The Balinese don’t have a word for artist because, to them, every person is one. The Balinese taught me to value my ideas and stories and inspired me to return home and teach others to fearlessly embrace the power that comes with telling their own stories.

I had never been to the desert, but soon after returning from tropical Bali I found myself living in Tucson, Arizona. The climate was tough, but I fell in love with this place. I created a lot of work here, including a hospital clown therapy program, many original shows, and educational curricula to bring physical theatre into local schools. Challenging Tucson students and watching them exceed even their own expectations was the culmination of the education and work I had done up to this point.

Then, after nearly eight years of being relatively settled, I ran away with the circus. It seemed appropriate since I had done it metaphorically over and over in my life. My ginger cat and dog joined me as I lived in a truck on tour. I loved the audiences and performing in vastly different locations. I also particularly loved the look young farmer-fathers gave me, while waiting in line for their daughters to get their faces painted, when they learned that I too was a farm girl who grew up raising cattle but was now hanging by a rope thirty feet above the ground and meeting people across the continent.

Despite the exciting circus life, I missed Tucson. I returned with a mission to put down roots in this place I considered home. I began teaching for OMA (Opening Minds through the Arts) a local arts integration program. Now I teach physical theatre across our city. Last summer, The Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona awarded me a grant to create my solo show. Fin, a story that has been in my mind for many years, is a one-woman show in which I navigate the stages of grief in a way that is both funny and profoundly moving. This comedy without words is appropriate for all ages. My clown character’s beloved pet fish has passed away and, through her struggle with grief, she learns that the stages are messy instead of ordered and predictable. While its universal theme is inherently sad, Fin is sweet, sorrowful, touching, dark, and comic. I will tour Fin to local schools, and perhaps across the country, to inspire students to tell their own stories. Life has come full circle.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I am extremely fortunate to have had so many amazing experiences, but they were not without heartache. I had to live far away from family and move multiple times, which meant leaving friends and places I loved. Still, I’ve learned that true friends are never far away, and new friends are around the corner waiting to challenge and inspire me.

The discipline required for my early farm life—juggling chores with school, sports and other activities—was perfect preparation for my future. Time management skills helped me successfully navigate being a full-time student and teacher. Later, I worked multiple gigs simultaneously, allowing me to say yes to many arts opportunities while also paying my bills and still finding time to explore all of the cool places in which I lived. I was able to undertake all the responsibilities of an Artistic Director, Education Director, Managing Director, and Grant Writer as I created and taught physical theatre with my own company.

To be fair, I’ve created most of the challenges I’ve faced through my work. My first company’s flagship show, MixTape, required me to play many different characters within the span of an hour. In this show, I crossed genres, performing mask, clown, comedic, and serious pieces. The biggest compliment I received was when audience members asked: “Where is the other woman that was in the show?” (There was only one woman in the show—me.) Another show, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, was all about creating community and, as such, relied on the community to show up and participate. This was risky because it took a lot of control out of my hands and put it in the hands of strangers. Fortunately, the community did show up, and this inspired me to keep taking risks. I became a sort of risk junky in my work, which is why the circus was so appealing: I had not performed aerial before and had three days to learn the skill, memorize a routine, and perform in front of thousands of people hanging thirty feet above concrete. It might not seem as risky to direct a children’s production of Pinocchio. In the end, however, it was. I tasked myself with building every puppet and mask in the show—there were dozens, including one that was eight feet tall and another with a nose that magically grew—in only two months. Not only did I complete this task, but the production sold out nearly every show.

With Fin, a silent, one-woman show ranging from extreme tragedy to extreme comedy, I have out-challenged myself. Working alone in the rehearsal room for the first time was difficult. It was just me and the mirror and some days the mirror seemed to be getting more done than I was. I soon realized this show was different because of my solitude in both my earlier writing and my ongoing rehearsals. Usually I enter the rehearsal room with other humans and a vague idea for a story without a fully developed script. This time, for the first time ever, I had written the full script alone. I had to trust myself, my writing, and my process. Only later, after inviting into the room my dear friends and colleagues, Laura Lippman and Hannah Turner, did I realize that I had created an important work. With their collaboration, Fin blossomed and garnered helpful and positive feedback after its first workshop showings.

On a personal note, the subject matter of Fin is also challenging for me. While the theme originated from improvisations with hospital clowning colleagues in patients’ rooms years before, the story began to coalesce after my grandma’s death. So, my grandma who instilled a love of storytelling in me as a child continued to inspire me posthumously. I wrote the show while visiting my family in Kansas. Additionally, as I mentioned, I have two beloved pets who have traveled with me every step of the journey of my entire adult life. Within a week of receiving the grant to create Fin, my then 17-year-old cat was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease. Then, a month after the first showing of Fin, my 11-year-old dog was diagnosed with cancer. Art imitating life or vice versa? Regardless, I know my girls are going to accompany me through this next phase, and I will have Fin to memorialize them after they are gone.

Because challenges are such great teachers, I create them for my students as well. I introduce challenges that seem nearly impossible, provide just enough structure to get them started, and then see what happens when they aren’t trying to guess what I want. I am continually astounded by my students’ creativity and awed by the stories they have already collected in their young lives. And that is the part where they inspire me to continue challenging myself in my own work.

We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
Whether teaching or performing, the most important factor in all of my work is my deep concern for the authenticity of the story and my connection to the audience. A colleague recently wrote in a letter supporting my latest grant application that my work uses: “the power of physical theatre to tell stories in a way that brings the audience into the show; sometimes literally on the stage, but more often, her work requires the audience to bring their imagination and history to the story. This type of art deepens the experience as her characters ask participants to bring who they are to a new world.”

For me, the rehearsal room is where I experiment. Starting with a theme, character, or story, the embodied work tells me what it needs to come fully alive. I mix styles and genres: sometimes puppets, sometimes masks, sometimes clown, sometimes puppets and masks and clown. I show the tragic side of comedy and the comic side of tragedy. I consistently break the fourth wall and break the “rules” of theatre even though the worlds I create have their own strict internal rules. Each character I create explores some part of myself. Each story I tell is designed to take the audience along with me on a journey. My work is consistent in that it is always changing. But the one requirement for my work is that it must originate from a space of joy. Even when—especially when—telling a difficult story, I know that starting from and reveling in joy is the only way to find success.

My natural enthusiasm is the best tool in my toolbox. Every new story, gig, or class contains the enthusiasm of a farm girl venturing out to see the world for the first time. That enthusiasm allows me to create moving theatre pieces with nothing but paper grocery bags, old bedsheets, and glue. That enthusiasm inspires academically struggling students to step out of the definitions assigned to them and create professional-quality performances. Finally, that enthusiasm keeps me creating year after year and facing new challenges as they appear.

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