CALL HER KAYLA
June 14, 2023
By Jack Helbig
Kayla Boye’s solo show about Elizabeth Taylor carries the influence of the late Hollis Resnik.
Chicago, IL —Fresh off her success playing Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s daunting, dark one-hander, Happy Days, Chicago actor Kayla Boye is appearing in a lighter role, that of movie icon (and OG tabloid favorite) Elizabeth Taylor in a one-person show, Call Me Elizabeth, written by Boye. The show is being produced at Venus Cabaret Theater June 16-18. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Jack Helbig: I understand that this is not the first production of Call Me Elizabeth. Can you tell me the history of this piece?
Kayla Boye: I first started writing the piece in 2017, while I was backstage doing Mary Poppins at the Mercury Theater. I was understudy for Mary Poppins and in the ensemble. I had just seen some great solo shows [at the Greenhouse Theatre Center’s “Solo Celebration” series]. Ron Keaton’s Churchill and [Linda Reiter] in Rose, the Rose Kennedy show. And I was inspired. I was a young artist, relatively new to Chicago. I was taken under the wing of these mature, veteran actors who told me, “You can write your own show, and you can tell someone’s inspiring life story for a new generation.” So I was searching for someone I could feasibly play and whose name still resonates today.
And you decided on Elizabeth Taylor?
Who better than Elizabeth Taylor? Of all the movie stars that we think about, especially from the golden age, I think she’s one that stays with us, not just because of her face and her beauty but because of the work that she did in her second act. She was an entrepreneur with her own perfume line. She was also, as we know, one of the very first celebrities to speak out against HIV and AIDS. She brought it directly to the attention of President Reagan through their movie friendship and testified in front of the Senate for funding for Americans impacted by the AIDS epidemic. She was not afraid to speak out; she had no fear of career suicide.
She was also a woman who took control of her career. She got fed up with the old Hollywood studio system and saw that it was broken and helped shape the new age of moviemaking. She taught women generations later that they can also negotiate on behalf of themselves and be smart about their career. She negotiated a million-dollar salary and 10 percent of the gross with Cleopatra. That was a really smart move and is a lesson we can take from her.
And we both have bushy eyebrows. I do not have the violet eyes, so I do wear contacts in the show for more authenticity.
When did you begin writing the show?
So it began in 2017. I wrote Elizabeth over the course of two years. I pored over all the published works I could find about her. Watched all the movies, of course. I had the benefit of speaking to the late Senator John Warner [Elizabeth Taylor’s second-to-last husband]. We had a wonderful conversation about her character and sense of humor.
Elizabeth Taylor began as a child star, appearing in movies like Lassie Come Home and National Velvet and then made the often-difficult transition to a career as an adult movie star. Which period of her life are you focusing on?
The show takes place at a pivotal point in her life. It’s right after she’s won her first Academy Award for Butterfield Eight and after she had her tracheotomy, when she had pneumonia and they had to stop work on Cleopatra. She died technically a few times on the operating table. So in my show, she’s experiencing a kind of rebirth. So we find her at the Beverly Hills Hotel as she’s recovering, and she wants to talk about the first third of her life.
I had a reading at the Den Theater in 2019 directed by Hollis Resnik.
The late Hollis Resnik directed the reading?
Yes, we met doing The Wizard of Oz at Chicago Shakespeare. We would sit backstage together and bond over conversations, watching the rehearsal process unfold. She would point things out to me like, “You should take note of that. Watch how the director adjusted this, or watch how that actor took this note.” And just having someone look at me and say, “Let me show you. Let me teach you how much you can learn by really being active, even if you’re not the one rehearsing.” You can learn so much by watching others adjust their acting. And by watching her come into a room, always prepared. And how she could mine so much out of one line. One word could be a song in her mouth. And I learned from her how to take my time and to relish the moment onstage and not speed along.
As a young woman, I think a lot of us feel, “We’re sorry we’re taking up your time; we’re just here for this 15 seconds and then it’s onto the next person in the scene.” And she was like, “No, you deserve to be here. Take your time, and take your space in the room. Be present in the scene, and people will be drawn in. You don’t have to necessarily reach out; draw them in.”
I did Happy Days for Hollis Resnik. She was someone that told me that I had depth and more to share than I was showing in the roles that I had done to date, mostly in musical theater.
Did Hollis help you with the development of the show?
Yes, she was really helpful with me trying to find the voice of Elizabeth in my performance. The voice which is difficult in this piece because it’s a play, and you want to resonate in a theater. So I try to toe the line by emulating her sound but also projecting because she again drew people in with her soft resonance, her movie voice. And so Hollis and I worked on trying to get that perfect balance by having enough of the inflection while still projecting. So that was the focus of our time and just getting it ready for a public audience.
Due to health circumstances, Hollis unfortunately was not able to continue with the piece past the staged reading. She was incredibly generous during our time together, helping craft my voice and essence as Elizabeth.
What happened after the reading?
We were supposed to have its live world premiere in 2020, but of course, the pandemic happened. Because of the lockdown, I ended up filming Elizabeth because I had received a grant from Illinois Arts Council through Arts Midwest. So I had a friend, Erin Kraft, who’s a young female director, help direct the film version of this, which premiered in March 2021 with Porchlight Music Theatre and Broadway on Demand. And then it also streamed with the Edinburgh Fringe. So I was able to have international exposure without ever having done it live in front of people.
Finally, last summer—2022—I premiered it live in Los Angeles as part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival. So it was weird. It was a movie before it was a play, which is backwards. It’s always been a play in my mind.
Between the reading and the first live production, Resnik died [April 17, 2022]. What was it like to finally get to the show live and not have Resnik around?
She was incredibly generous during our time together, helping craft my voice and essence as Elizabeth. I wish I had the chance to show her how much the production and performance have grown since our initial work together. I felt her presence with me during the world premiere in Los Angeles, shortly after her passing; there are moments of loss within the play that presented opportunities for me to move through my personal grieving process. It was bizarre. After I premiered the show live, I went home and watched the Tony Awards. And she was on the Tony Awards In Memoriam list. I was like, that was a sign, the timing of that. She’s still very much, I think, present, in this production.
Is Call Me Elizabeth your first play?
Yes, this is my first play. I have a degree in writing, but I’ve never used it in this fashion until recently. I actually got to Chicago by doing grant writing and fundraising work. For a while, I was working for the Goodman Theatre in the office. And my first week there, I was allowed to sit behind the casting table for an Equity audition. And I said, “I need to be on the other side of the table.”
I went to Youngstown State. I was a writing major, technical writing. My minor was nonprofit management.
What brought you to Chicago?
I was searching for my first step, honestly. And everyone thinks,”Go to New York.” New York is always where you want to go. But I had family here. My uncle lived in the suburbs. He let me stay with him when I was getting started. And then I got a Goodman internship and was like, “Well, that’s that. I’m going to Chicago.” And it seems like in this city, you can build a community, and you can dabble in both sides of it and still have some sense of self without getting too lost in the rat race.
You were both the star of Happy Days and its producer. That’s unusual and a hard trick to pull off.
I wasn’t supposed to produce. I was just going to act, and then with different [Actor’s] Equity restrictions, the only way I was able to do that show was make it a solo show, and I had to produce off contract. Equity does not have a showcase agreement for the Chicago market. So it had to just be me. I was not allowed to have anybody else help me, which was like the worst-case scenario for that kind of show. I was like, “Oh, my gosh, this is the hardest piece of material. Now I have to worry about everything else.” It was terrifying. Running box office and PR and all that stuff can be overwhelming when you’re just trying to show up and say your lines.
Are you working on another solo show?
Yes, I am thinking about a couple of different other solo shows. One is potentially about Mary Tyler Moore, another strong producer, actor, and activist. And then the other one is about Ann Miller. She was the flip side of Elizabeth Taylor. She loved the studio system. It saved her from poverty, and she went through many acts and chapters in her life. And she hasn’t really gotten, I think, her just dues. People think of her as a crazy dancer, which she was, but she had such a heart of gold and wild sense of humor. I think there’s a lot to explore there. So those are two I’m noodling on.
