QolorTOPIX Light Conversation with Lighting Designer Mextly Couzin

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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

00:00:37 Jackie Morreale of City Theatrical: Hi and congratulations, Mextly, on making your Broadway debut as lighting designer for Job at the Helen Hayes Theatre! 

Mextly Couzin: Yay! 

City Theatrical: Let's start today's interview by telling us a bit about yourself. So first, please help us pronounce your name?

Mextly Couzin: Yes, of course. It's Mextly, just like the way it's spelled. M-E-X-T-L-Y. Mextly Couzin. Just sort of the way it's spelled. 

It's funny because my whole life, everybody's asking me, what does my name mean? So I've done my own sort of research to find where it comes from. The origins of it come from Aztec culture. The Aztecs mythology had this moon goddess named Metztli, it's spelled M-E-T-Z-T-L-I. Sounds like “Metzly”, which sounds similar to Mextly, and I think through translation and over the years it's ended up M-E-X-T-L-Y. But it's funny because Astecs spoke Nahuatl, their native tongue, and in Nahuatl, the X sounds like “Sh”. 

So, if you were to read M-E-X-T-L-Y and now I thought it would sound like “Meshtley”, which is not the intent at all that my mom had when she named me. But it's been interesting to learn about that. 

I had a teacher in 3rd grade, who refused to call me anything other than “Meshtley”. He was also Mexican, so he was like, this is the correct way to pronounce your name. And I hated it. I was in 3rd grade, and I was like, this sucks. Nobody can say my name correctly to begin with, and now they're calling me weird things. 

Now I enjoy it because it's part of the history. But no, it's Mextly. Mextly Couzin.

00:02:15 City Theatrical: Mextly Couzin, thank you so much for being with us today. So where are you from?

Mextly Couzin: Originally, I was born in Mexico, in Baja California. It’s a border town. I spent the first four years of my life there. Then my mom and dad moved us to Los Angeles and my brother, and my sister were born. I then went to school in San Diego. 

I feel like home is Los Angeles. SoCal. It's all SoCal.

00:02:44 City Theatrical: So you're SoCal raised, but how about now? Where do you currently live?

Mextly Couzin: I currently live in New York. I'm in Harlem. I pay rent year-round in New York.

00:02:54 City Theatrical: Very good. So how many years of experience do you have as a lighting designer?

Mextly Couzin: That's a great question. The first time I ever got paid to do this in any way was to be an assistant. It was the summer of 2016, I had just graduated undergrad from undergrad. I have a degree in pure mathematics which is theoretical math, so I wasn't doing it as an undergrad. I learned about lighting as an undergrad, but I didn't know it was anything more than a hobby, or a fun, cool thing to do. 

But when I graduated, I assisted at the La Jolla Playhouse, and then I went to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where I was an assistant as well, and then Cal Shakes. 

So 2016 was, I think, the first year of real experience. What year is it now, 2024? How long has it been?

00:03:38 City Theatrical: Let's call it eight years. That all sounds like it counts! Congratulations, you've really come a long way in a short period of time. 

What is a favorite show that you have worked on?

Mextly Couzin: Job, it's always going to be Job.

00:03:51 City Theatrical: Love it. So do you speak any other languages?

Mextly Couzin: Spanish, I speak Spanish.

00:03:56 City Theatrical: Do you have any hidden talents?

Mextly Couzin: None. I have zero. It's lighting. I can light things. That's about it. 

Even math. I'm not that good at counting or fast math.

City Theatrical: I doubt that, by the way! 

Mextly Couzin: I keep thinking about math as a degree. The thing that I take from it or what I learned was problem solving, which is what I use every single day in my work.

I just do it creatively now, I get to do it with an artistic flair. I like graphs, charts, data, logic.

00:04:28 City Theatrical: So, you were able to find creativity in math?

Mextly Couzin: I think the universe is like a language for art is math. Everything that the world creates is math. The way that the universe creates art, it's totally math. It's the same thing.

 

00:04:43 City Theatrical: Let's continue with some quickfire questions. 

What is your favorite food?

Mextly Couzin: Mexican food or Thai food depends on the day.

City Theatrical: What is your favorite place to create?

Mextly Couzin: Oh, the tech table.

City Theatrical: What is your favorite lighting tool?

Mextly Couzin: Three things off the top of my head: a Lustr 3, an EOS magic sheet, and my iPad, which feels like such a millennial or a young person thing. All these technology things! But those three things.

City Theatrical: Job at the Helen Hayes: What is your favorite scene?

Mextly Couzin: Job is interesting in that it doesn't have scenes. When you read it, there are no scene breaks.

There are moments or episodes in between, and one of those is what we call the Reverie. Jane, the main characters retelling this drama moment, or the reason why she's here in this therapist office. That moment is, I think beautiful, the composition of it, and the power of it. That moment, and Sydney Lemmon is amazing. She's such a powerhouse in that moment. So that's my favorite.

00:05:48 City Theatrical: Let's talk more about Job. Tell us more about your design for the show. If you were to use 3 words to describe it, what would they be?

Mextly Couzin: I think the bold answer would be Tony Award-winning!

But, in actuality, I think it's: 

1.      Supportive.

2.      Adequate.

3.      Surprising.

City Theatrical: I like that.

Mextly Couzin: I hope at least.

00:06:12 City Theatrical: What were some of the unique lighting challenges in lighting Job?

Mextly Couzin: Job is so peculiar because we did it three times now. Now that it's on Broadway, it’s the third time we've done it. Each time has had its own challenges.

When we were doing it the first time, we did at the Soho Playhouse. We were kids running around with power tools. I brought my boyfriend in to help me plug in some PARs. We were crawling around the dusty deck floor. Producers - guys and girls and people - were hanging up, stapling blacks onto the walls. There was like toilet onstage because the show before and during needed it…

Anyway. It was wild and it was a Rep plot also, so there was not a lot we could do. We also didn't have any money, so we couldn't really flesh out the design, but it was fun. We learned so much about the play and the world of it. When we moved it to the Connolly Theater, we really learned about the design, the lighting specifically. 

What was challenging there is that Job exists in two worlds: it's in sort of a realistic world. We're in a therapist office for 90% of the play. 

But the other 10% of the play we're in what we call the Internet world. To get that across is hard. What does the Internet look like? What does a person's brain look like when they're under a panic attack or having an anxiety attack? What does that look like or feel like or sound like?

So we created this wall of lights, what I was calling a collage of Internet lights. That was really fun. It was challenging because we didn't really know what it was going to look like, or if it was going to be effective, or if it was going to work. But it was super fun! When we moved it to Broadway, we expanded on that. 

On Broadway, the challenge is, which is what we learned every time, is they're in this therapist office and it's a tiny room, pretty much it's just a little platform. They use every inch of that space. Let me tell you, anywhere where there might be a dark spot, they go there and they find it, and they stand there for a long time.

So, it needed to be evenly as balanced as much of a room as it can be. So that was challenging and very fun to make happen. 

There's also this beautiful crown over the set. That coupled with a small platform, coupled with actors that go everywhere. Also, we have the scrim this curved scrim in the back that hides the internet walls. So you also need enough depth to lead onto it. It wants to be contained so you don't want to spill off the deck. You don’t want lights everywhere. 

It's a fun balance between lighting everything correctly, but also not having light where you don't want it to be. It is just the challenge, I think, all the time, in every show. 

And this show is so short – it’s 80 minutes. It's an 80-minute play, so every queue matters. Everything has to be either subtle or impactful. And it's fun to figure it out.

00:09:11 City Theatrical: You've done this show now at the Soho Playhouse, at the Connolly Theatre, and now at the Helen Hayes Theatre. Are there any learnings that you've taken from one show to the other or that you'll take into future shows?

Mextly Couzin: Yeah. At the Soho Playhouse, I programmed it myself with six lights at the Connolly. I also programmed it myself. I did not have to hang my own lights, which was very wonderful. But I still did it myself. So again, I was limited to my own knowledge and time constraints.

On Broadway, we also teched it for two days, and then we did an invited dress, and then we previewed for a week. It was very, very short. But I had a full team, which is amazing. 

We used so much pixel mapping. The Internet wall, or world that we were calling it, is all pixel mapped. I had never really done any show with that, or a little bit, but not enough to really know or design myself. 

We learned a lot. We learned a lot about layers and blending, and timings, and creating content with lights, which is interesting. It's very cool.

What we did in the amount of time we did it in, with the restraints, and with the lights that we had, which are not theatrical lights, they're film lights… it was all very interesting. We learned a whole lot about fixtures and how to control them and talk to them.

00:10:32 City Theatrical: Sounds like you'll definitely be a pixel mapping pro going forward!

Mextly Couzin: I know! I hope so. Now every show is going to have pixel mapping and all the programmers are going to have to deal with it.

 

 

00:10:39 City Theatrical: Why not? Any special shout outs to team members or other creative teams who worked on Job?

Mextly Couzin: Working on this show on Broadway: I feel so spoiled. I feel like such a lucky little girl. It’s so cool, it's so awesome. The way that you feel supported every step of the way, or at least I did, on this show. That is so much because of our producers. Michael Herwitz, the Director, was very kind and generous with our collaborations. And to the rest of the design team. 

Mia Roy at the Helen Hayes Theatre is incredible. She's so kind and patient. We had so many Broadway debuts. Broadway is a whole culture thing. There are some things we don't know about. Mia is amazing at helping us through it. 

But my team specifically - Kirk Fitzgerald drafted the plot and did all the pre-production stuff. It's the most beautiful plot I've ever seen in my life! The paperwork is so good, I cried the first time I saw the shop order come out with my name on it. The paperwork is so good, and he's amazing. He's a rock star. 

Aaron Tacy was the associate on site with me and he is also such a good designer, with such a good eye. His notes were always spot on. And everything he said was so smart, so good. I keep saying, he is so supportive. I felt like I could just do my job! I never get to just focus on doing my thing, and designing a scene. It's always all these other million things to worry about.

The programmer Manuel Da Silva was amazing. Nobody worked harder on that show than he did. He would pull out his laptop and start looking at pixel mapping and make sure that it was working. He would do something on the server so that we were ready for the next day.

00:12:26 City Theatrical: It sounds like you had a Rockstar team!

Mextly Couzin: Incredible. The best team.

00:12:30 City Theatrical: What is the best part of your job as a lighting designer?

Mextly Couzin: That I get to paint with lights. I'm not a good painter with my hands. I can doodle a little bit. I like painting, it’s therapeutic, sure. But painting with lights… is unreal. It's so cool. 

How you can create something and then two seconds later have something entirely different with the same rig. Even if you were using the same colors, same lights. 

The way that you can change the world of something just with a couple of lights is amazing.

00:13:03 City Theatrical: I agree. Let's talk more about the lighting. We live in a very high-tech world of lighting. How do you deal with the challenges of technology?

Mextly Couzin: Every day, it feels like something new comes out. What I'm excited about for the future is also brighter lights and better color. We're going to get there but keeping up with it is the hardest part. It's tricky. It's a love hate relationship.

00:13:26 City Theatrical: What do you see for the future of lighting?

Mextly Couzin: For lights, in general, who knows, right? I feel like every light is going to be a little projector. They're going to be smaller, brighter, and better. And hopefully cheaper someday. 

For lighting as a whole, I’m excited for it to get weird. I think because technology could be so cool, I think there's such an opportunity for new designers and young people to come into the field and do weird things with it that don't haven't been done before. I think that'll be really exciting.

00:13:57 City Theatrical: While we're talking about the future, let's backtrack to last year. 

You were one of the award winners of the 1/52 project presented by Beowulf Boritt. So how did you feel when you were presented with this award? 

Mextly Couzin: It's very exciting. I never won anything before, so I was super excited to win. It's such a sweet community. Beowulf is so cool. He and the rest of the committee that started this give early career designers support to get to do what they want to do. 

The whole idea is that working designers on Broadway, and other creatives, donate a week of their royalties into this fund and then they redistribute it to a number of young designers. And that's beautiful! It is so sweet. There's not enough of that.

  
00:14:44 City Theatrical: If you were to be in that boat and to get to whatever pinnacle of your career that you're going to as a lighting designer, what do you see that looking like?

Mextly Couzin: Oh gosh, the goals, right? 

I hope that I get to do everything. 

I love theater. I hope that I get to work on Broadway, only on Broadway, forever. That would be great. And some other things, too.

I guess to have a running show, a long running musical, would be so nice. 

And I love film and TV. I would love to be a cinematographer. I've done a little bit of short films and TV, but to do it for real as a as a cinematographer or DP, would be amazing.

Or an installation artist. I can't wait to do something on my own as a lighting artist. Something sustainable and outdoors. So, people can see something cool, experience something and be in nature with lights and technology at the same time. It would be awesome. 

I'd love being a new places. I can't wait to do an opera in Asia, or dance in France, or a musical in Mexico City. I want to go everywhere, anywhere, and I want to light things. All sorts of things. People. Rooms. The world.

City Theatrical: I'm so excited to see where your career is going to go, Mextly. Lots of big things!

Mextly Couzin: I hope so. 

00:16:11 City Theatrical: Can you tell us a little bit about your work for the new play N/A at Lincoln Center?

Mextly Couzin: Yes! N/A the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center. It's a very fun play. Also, a two-hander, with Holland Taylor, who is a treasure. Technically, she plays Nancy Pelosi and then her counterpart Anna plays AOC. It’s an imagined conversation of AOC and Nancy Pelosi speaking in in their office, and what those conversations might look like. 

It's surprisingly very funny. Holland Taylor is incredible.

00:16:46 City Theatrical: How does the lighting for this two-person show change from various other ones?

Mextly Couzin: It's very simple. Although it's also not realistic or naturalism, because it's not real office space. It still is just two women on stage speaking. And there's no flashy, trashy anything. It's just good writing, good acting, clear lights. I think it worked.

City Theatrical: It looks beautiful. I think it worked out, too. Great job!

Mextly Couzin: Thank you. Thank you.

00:17:18 City Theatrical: Is there anything else that you want to talk about today? Promote any new shows?

Mextly Couzin: The next thing I do is this really, really cool musical that I've done twice before. We did this new musical at Baltimore Center Stage and then at Mosaic Theater. It's called Mexodus. 

It's about the Underground Railroad that led into Mexico. It's told by two dudes, Brian and Nigel, who wrote the book, write the music, and are in it. It's just them two, live looping. I don’t know if people know that means - they have a bunch of triggers on stage, they push a button, and play 15 instruments all throughout the musical themselves. They'll record a couple of beats, or beatbox. They record a couple things, then it loops, and they create 16 different songs over a course of 90 minutes.

You learn so much. Even as a Mexican, I had no idea that there was a movement of the Underground Railroad that was helping these humans to freedom. Over the course of 90 minutes, you learn so much about that. And they're so good at it. They live loop - they're doing it live on stage every day.

It's really cool. We do it at Berkeley Rep next. I'm very excited about that.

00:18:32 City Theatrical: All the best of luck with this and all of your other future projects! Look forward to bigger and better and more amazing awards and projects in your future.

Mextly Couzin: Thank you. I hope so. 

City Theatrical: And wishing you all the best.

Mextly Couzin: Thanks so much. I look forward to whatever comes next.

To learn more about Mextly Couzin, visit her website: https://www.mextlycouzin.com/

Read more about Mextly Couzin and her Recent Projects