How did it feel to win Miss Mountain Laurel?
It really felt like a dream. It was a very strange sort of wondrous experience to be called as a winner. It was in December, so my parents were having a Christmas party here, and I was down in Louisa, Virginia. And I FaceTimed my parents afterwards. I was wearing the crown, and I was like, “Hi, how’s the party going?” My mom, she’s adjusting her glasses, and she’s like, “Did you win?” [Laughs]
What got you interested in music production, given that it’s so male-dominated?
No one was giving me gigs. And I was like, “Alright. If I’m going to learn how to assert what I want, what I need at a show and that I’m capable of doing it, I’ve just got to learn how to do it.” So I got a job on campus at George Mason. They have what’s called Event Services. It’s student-run, and they do all the audio and visual technology for all the different campus events. And I just went into their office, and I was like, “Hi, I’m a theater major; I’ve hung a light before. I want a job.” And now I work for Arlington County doing their different events, I work at Comet Ping-Pong in D.C., and I work at Center for the Arts.
What was it like to be part of Woman in E at the Hirshhorn Museum?
It just really immersed me into the art. We had to stand there, and the platform rotated, and people would come in. I would tend to react by either playing louder or quieter, so it was kind of like a new way to communicate where we didn’t talk to the patrons. But it was kind of like using body language or using one chord, one note on an instrument to communicate.
Down the road, how do you plan to fuse your various pursuits?
I’ve always been interested in combining different forms of art and different forms of entertainment and communication together. That’s why I became a theater major because theater’s always been a medium where I think that happens. And that’s also why now I decided to pursue writing because it’s the kind of thing where it just mixes all of these different aspects and different types of people and different feelings together. It’s just always helped me make sense of the world and gain a deeper empathy and understand what my role is as a public persona and then also as me, myself, just in the world.
