Adam King
@adamdking711 in his back yard
-Theatre-
Adam got 100% blindsided by my interview. I just texted him when I was close to his house one afternoon and pretty much demanded he speak with me on the record. I’m hoping he is use to me demanding things of him by now.
My fiance and Adam have been best friends since college. They lived together on and off for 7 years before I came on the scene. There was a time when Dan and Adam lived together but I was at their place so much I just became another room mate who did dishes and cleaned the bathroom. Adam was Dan’s last room mate before Dan and I moved in together. So Adam and I have a history so I figured he would be the most likely to let me just drop in.
I also thought I would know exactly how he was feeling. That his interview for some reason wouldn’t be surprising. I was wrong.
Interviewed 5.22.20
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Casey: So, first and foremost, how are you doing?
Adam: I'm doing well.
Casey: Yeah? Are you?
Adam: I… yeah, I'm doing fine. I've gone through lots of different phases in the past couple months. There's sort of been some highs and lows but I'm doing good. We worked in the yard yesterday and I felt like, finally, I was doing something productive.
Most of that is to prevent the mouse that we saw in our house a week or so ago. So it kind of gave us a little bit of purpose and drive yesterday to clean some stuff up and do some yard work and get that done. But, you know, I'm I'm okay. I'm happy with the amount of time I've had to read books. I do feel sort of antsy and jittery from time to time. But it sort of balances out with feeling finally like I have had some time to… What's the word?… To recenter myself a little bit.
Casey: What are you discovering in that recentering process?
Adam: It makes me value the work that I do and reminds me that it is meaningful not only for myself, but for other people. And then it also makes me appreciate my free time that I do have, because we get caught up in just running from one job to the next. Going from rehearsal to class to performance. You know, ad nauseum, repeat.
And so I feel like, when I do have time to myself in the middle of that craziness, I waste it more than I would care to. And this has sort of given me a new appreciation for having that time to read, to socialize.
I haven't had the sort of isolation experience that a lot of people have because I have roommates. Essentially four roommates with Gaby who's been here pretty much the whole time. So there's always something going on at my house because we're all stuck in the house. Vinnie has been going to work, and Jake works from his room, nine to four each day, but other than that, you know, we're all around each other all the time.
Casey: Are you and your roommates, when you're not with each other, following guidelines?
Adam: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. We try to and we’ve only now gotten to the point of like "OK, I'm going to go visit with my family outside and that's gonna be fine." But yeah, that's only been in the last week or so that we felt comfortable doing that.
We're wearing masks, of course, going the store. I usually wear gloves too. And then we got the hand sanitizer in the car and you do that whole thing. I try to make it as infrequent as possible, mostly because it just stresses me out, but also for safety. When we bring our groceries back, we Clorox wipe them all down. We have a little station where we wipe them down. So I feel like we've been following the guidelines pretty carefully. I mean, because there are so many of us in the house, if one of us gets sick, we're all screwed.
Casey: What have you been doing in quarantine? You've been reading a lot and you've kind of been working.
Adam: Well, the first couple of weeks, I was still working for the Tavern, putting together digital content. So we had tour shows that we filmed at the tavern and then I worked to put those together. And then I did a couple of videos and stuff like that just for some digital content for Tavern audience people and for students.
So the first couple of weeks I was doing that during the day and then, of course, that just dried out. There's only so much we can do when we're at home. So after that, again, I've gone through like phases. So I've had a couple days where I've been like, "I'm cleaning up stuff!" And have attacked the bathroom in my room and stuff like that. Stuff that I've been meaning to do for a while but I just hadn't gotten around to it.
Went through a phase of doing nothing. Just having blank days essentially where I wake up and watch some TV and maybe read a book outside, you know, which is not terrible. It didn't exactly stress me out, but it's not like I got to the end of the day and was, like, "That was a fulfilling day!" It was just like, "Great. Now I'm gonna go to bed and wake up and do it again tomorrow."
I've had to monitor the drinking level and sort of the substance levels, because in that little period of doing nothing, I was drinking way too much. So I've had to take a step back from that. I've gone through that whole arc and phase. So that's been fun.
Casey: So you mentioned that you saw your family. How are they doing? What are they doing?
Adam: My family is doing well. No one has been sick or anything, which is great, of course, but they seem to be doing fine. We had done video conferences throughout. And then I finally just visited my dad and my mom on separate occasions this past week. And they're doing fine. My dad got a new townhouse so he's excited about that. My mom has been working from home. Her husband is retired so it's like nothing really changed for him other than not being able to visit with his family. But they're all doing fine.
My older brother had a baby. I think he's three weeks old now, two or three weeks old now. So that was an interesting experience, I'm sure, for them. And, you know, from my side to hear how it all played out. They had to be at the hospital for quite a bit, delivering Kellan King.
And then my younger brother, he's got his wife and three kids now. And it seems like they've been doing really well. His wife is really good about sharing stuff. They had little school days for their kids, like really beautifully planned out. They did a really great job, it seems. I'm sure it was not as easy as it looks on their Facebook story, but they had fun activities every day for their kids. And I know that they were doing digital learning.
I know it's been hard on my younger brother because the company he works for is is an office shared space company like one of those like places where you can rent out spaces to have meetings and business stuff like that. And obviously, that's not a business that has fared well in these times. So I know he's struggled a little bit with his work. His financial situation has been not as steady as it was, and that's probably a lot more terrifying when you have three children. So I know he struggled with that, but otherwise they seem to be doing OK. So we've been doing all right. We've been doing all right.
Casey: It seems like you've definitely had a journey throughout the last ten weeks. You know, with obviously substances and cleaning…
Adam: Well, it's kind of hard not to. I mean, it's been so much time. If it had been a couple weeks and then we all got back to it, it might have felt like a little one note, but enough time passes and you have to... Things have to change. Like for our sanity.
Casey: You can't not go for ten weeks feeling -
Adam: - feeling like it's the exact same day over and over again. And I'll say, you know, I was talking about how like I have roommates. And so I haven't had the isolation experience. I mean, I am very grateful. I love my roommates. It's been an overall very positive experience.
But if you're stuck in the house with anyone for that long, there's gonna be times where I just want to close my door and turn the volume down outside. The most stressful times I've had has been not needing to isolate more, which I judge, is probably a different experience than a lot of people have had. But just having that cabin fever with the same people from week to week. What has been sort of stressful is needing some time alone and making sure I find that for myself.
Casey: Just to sum up, what do you think you'll take out of this? What do you think will be something that you learned or, I mean, it can be something like a new habit. And I feel like for you, it seems to be more of a mental space.
Adam: Yeah, on a sort of surface level, I was really diggin' working from home. I always thought that was not conducive to the way I work. I felt like I just am too lazy to actually work from home. And so, on a surface level, I feel like I can do more of that and be more productive.
And then on a sort of deeper level, it's interesting because we're gearing up to teach over the summer digitally. So we're teaching classes online. It scares the shit out of me. Like, I'm really nervous about it. And we've had kids who are really resisting it and who have dropped out because, like, "That's not the experience I want." I mean, teenagers are very dramatic, as you know. You know, it's just like, "I appreciate that you're trying, but it's not going to be worth it." You know, "I'm not going to give a penny!" is what one teenager said to us. And it's like, OK. It's finding that balance of maybe they're right. What if they're right? What if we suck at it? There's gonna be a huge learning curve. But also like brainstorming, like all the cool things that could come from it. We're gonna be able to branch out from what we do every summer because we have to. So trying to come up with ways to do devised work on film and filming it and thinking outside of the box. Because we're not just going to film a two and a half hour Shakespeare play on Zoom and call it a program.
That's been the thing I've been pondering the most, I think, over this whole time is like, how does that transfer? And I feel like that has been an interesting challenge that will continue moving forward. And I feel like that's going to be a big takeaway for myself, too. I mean, maybe it'll go terribly and that will be a lesson in and of itself. But I'm hoping that it'll be more of, "Wow. We were put in this situation. We had to completely rework and rethink what we do as teaching artists and how we go and how we accomplish things." And I'm hoping that it will be a rewarding experience to be like, "Wow, we we are able to do this! We are able to take this into a completely different format and and still offer something for the kids".I 'm sorry, it's a little stream of consciousness for you there.
Casey: I just thought of a last thing. Do you miss creating? I know that you're creating content through the Tavern. But you as a performer; do you miss it as much as you thought you would?
Adam: Yes and no. So when I lived in New York, I wasn't doing anything creative that I wasn't creating myself. Do you know what I mean? I kind of went through a period of, “if I'm going to be doing anything, I'm going to have to make it for myself.” And so we filmed a lot of stuff. I wrote stuff and would write little short webisodes and film it or stuff like that. And I feel like there's nothing stopping me from doing that now. I haven't really been doing that, which, you know, at times I'm like, “I really should.”
So, yes, I do, I do, but I also recognize that there's nothing stopping me from doing that, do you know what I mean? So in that way, I could do it whenever I wanted to. And what I miss is the motivation to do it. And maybe that's been sort of drained from this whole experience, you know, is that motivation has been drained a little bit. But it's not like if this wasn't happening I would be out there doing anything different. I could film stuff at any time. That's sort of what my creative outlet is. It's sort of like writing and filming stuff. I just appreciate it a lot because I was just editing videos for the tavern and I love that, like, I love doing that. And that was a creative outlet for me. We did a funny Facebook fan video of Shakespeare characters giving advice for how to get through Covid 19. Editing gives me complete control over comedic timing. And that's a huge creative outlet for me.
Casey: Is there anything else you would want to share or remember about this experience?
Adam: Yeah, yeah. To be outside more. I come out and use this backyard much more now because it's my only place to go a lot of times. To be outside more. To read more.
Casey: What are you Reading?
Adam: I'm reading through Stephen King's Dark Tower series again. And I'm getting really nerdy about it because I'm listening to a podcast that's going section by section and breaking it down.
It's it's been spiritually calming in a way. I think just out of pure necessity because if I wasn't able to calm myself down, it would just be like stressful torture, being trapped in a box. So I guess there definitely has been some sort of like deep breath moments that I would take away from it on a on a deeper level.
