Lilliangina Quinones
@lilliangina on her back patio with a cigar ashtray.
-Theatre-
Lilliangina is an incredible force for change and good in the theatre world right now. Her stories of racism and hatred in our community have inspired so many more to share their stories and shed light on an institutionalized issue in Atlanta.
Our talk wasn’t about how to fix Atlanta theatre. It could have been but it wasn’t. It was about her as a human trying to navigate anger, frustration, fear, instincts. After we were done she told me most of the conversations she has had recently were about the movement but it was nice to just be asked and talk about herself for a while.
If I could offer her any solace and comfort I’m so happy I was able to. That statement made me feel like I should keep doing this work. So thank you Lilliangina.
Interviewed 7.3.20
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Casey: Ok, so we'll put that right there.
Lilliangina: On the ashtray.
Casey: That's right. It's probably going to be pretty good sound quality, actually.
Lilliangina: I should take a picture.
Casey: Hey, where it fits, it fits. So first and foremost, how are you doing?
Lilliangina: I'm doing well.
Casey: Yeah?
Lilliangina: Yeah, I'm doing well. It's been tough, a tough adjustment like it's been for everybody else, right? Everything just stopped and it didn't just stop for me, it stopped for everybody in my house. I think the big challenge for me was trying to find that balance between it's happening to me, but it's also happening to my girls. It's also happening to my husband. And everybody's going to have their ups and downs. And we're not used to all being together all the time.
Casey: And how old are your daughters?
Lilliangina: 19, 17 and 14.
Casey: I'm so sorry.
Lilliangina: My oldest came home from living in Boston. She had just finished a semester abroad. We hadn't seen her for about six months and she was living her free adult life. And then all of a sudden, she's stuck in the house with us. She's been away at school, all of her friends are in Boston, and then here she was. The isolation hit everybody pretty hard, but I think it definitely hit my college child the hardest. So it was a lot of navigating how to coexist in a really hard moment, together. And how to not be grumpy all the time, but how to honor each other when we were. Right?
Casey: Because you're not all going to be grumpy or happy at the same time.
Lilliangina: Right. Correct! And then also just being OK with taking the space when we needed it. But in a lot of ways it has helped us also because we weren't spending any time together, really. My girls are big; they all have their lives and their circle of friends. And my husband works full-time, plus he's a musician. And I work full-time, plus I'm an actor. So we've got five lives. Plus Chico.
Casey: The puppy.
Lilliangina: In a sense, it's been...I don't know if the word is good or nice. I think it's more like it's been necessary. It's been healing. It's been awakening to be able to find those points of togetherness and enjoy each other's company.
Casey: Yes. I mean, I know you said your college-age daughter and this has probably affected her life the most. How are your other two girls holding up? And how is your husband?
Lilliangina: Let me retract that it hit her the hardest. I think that she was the most vocal about how it hit her.
Casey: So a lot of change for her.
Lilliangina: A lot of change. But I think all of them were in really critical points in their education. My middle child was a senior this year. So we had to deal with the no prom, no end of senior year activities, no graduation, et cetera. And that really hit her hard. My youngest daughter is in eighth grade, which is also a terminal year, and because we moved here she's switching districts, too. So she was leaving her friends behind and she's starting at a new high school in the fall. It was so abrupt. There was no opportunity for her to make the smooth transition that we'd hoped that she'd make. Of course, all these things are things that we have the privilege to mourn. I try to keep in perspective that both my husband and I have jobs still. And that my girls have what they need. My oldest daughter found a job.
Casey: During this?
Lilliangina: She's at work right now, yes. My middle child who graduated, was actually in "On Your Feet" with me when we closed. She does hair, and as soon as it started to kind of loosen up, she set up her little hair station. She's been doing braids for really, like, really cheap.
Casey: Yes. So People are coming.
Lilliangina: People are coming. She only has one client in a day. She keeps her area really clean. And she's figured it out. My youngest is only 14, so you know...
Casey: Yes.
Lilliangina: She's on TikTok.
Casey: Yes. Oh, to be 14.
Lilliangina: Oh, gosh.
Casey: And your husband's doing OK?
Lilliangina: He's doing good. He is doing so good.
Casey: Dan, I think is thriving in this time, as well.
Lilliangina: Thriving.
Casey: I'm a little infuriated by it, but I'm also really happy for him.
Lilliangina: He's got his little corner desk in our bedroom and he puts his little headphones on and he gets on his meetings and he works all day, comes down, says "Hi," eats food, and goes back. He's livin'.
Casey: He's livin'.
Lilliangina: Yes, no problem.
Casey: It's interesting to see who thrives in this kind of situation. So we talked about are your daughters; one of your daughters has a job and the other one is making her own job, which is great. I know that you guys are working. But what else have you been doing to fill your time during quarantine?
Lilliangina: My husband's gig started back up early. As soon as our crazy governor, feel free to quote "crazy governor!" I refuse to say his name. Anyways, as soon as he loosened the requirements on dine-in services, several of my husband's steady gigs opened back up. They're rotating musicians, so they are not all there at the same time, and doing the best that they can with social distancing or whatever. But he's been working all day. And he plays his gigs here. And actually, because my husband's also a studio musician, the studio work never ended. They very quickly figured out, one person can come in at a time and we can keep this fairly safe. So he's continued, for the most part to work. It's just been in a different and, if I dare to say it, I don't want to speak for him, but I feel like it's even been more sustainable because it hasn't been as busy. It's just not every night, you know?
Casey: He's not burning the candle at both ends.
Lilliangina: Yes. Yes, it's lovely. It feels a little bit better. So that's what Frankie is doing. I taught all the way through the end of May. I worked harder and longer when we went virtual than I did when we were in-person.
Casey: That's what I've heard from a lot of teachers.
Lilliangina: Oh my lord, I'm not even going to get into it. And then I had a two-week window before I went back to pick up a semester of grad school that I had left on hold. I'm doing my Master's in Theatre Education. When I booked "Titanic" I had to put -- I didn't have to, but I chose to because who can do anything with Brian Clowdus and do anything else? I just don't know.
Casey: Not with a job too, not with teaching, as well. That's a lot.
Lilliangina: No. It was *exasperated sound*. But it was in the summer so I thought, "Oh, I'll be able to do school during the day and then go to rehearsal at night."
Casey: Oh I see. It's been a minute so I was like, "When was that show?"
Lilliangina: Forget it. Forget it. It's been a hot minute. But as soon as rehearsal started I was like, "There's no way. There's no way I'm going to be able to do both things." It was the add/drop period. I said, "You know what? I'm gonna save this." But they said, "Well, we're not going to offer these same courses until the year after next because they're only offered in the summer, blah, blah, blah." I said, "OK, fine." Well, I didn't know I was going to be stuck in the middle of a pandemic trying to do courses in Scenic Design. Hence, my really bad scenic painting project right back there. The one with the ugly stones.
Casey: I love it. I think it's great. I don't know what you're talking about. That looks like a floor on a stage.
Lilliangina: See? Yes!
Casey: For sure. I'm there.
Lilliangina: Distance.
Casey: Which is how you would see it anyway.
Lilliangina: Right. But yes. So I'm in the middle of that right now at Columbus State University. They have a program that they designed for people who are already teaching to be able to complete our Master's, which is why it's only offered in the summer. And then the general education courses like special ED and those kind of things are offered during the school year. I had done all of that stuff and I had only the one semester left. So I'm doing that right now.
Casey: So will you finish at the end of...
Lilliangina: I'll be done at the end of July.
Casey: Yeah! With a Masters! That's awesome!
Lilliangina: Yes. Finally.
Casey: What a great use of time.
Lilliangina: It has been a great use of time. Yes.
Casey: That's awesome. Well Sounds like ya'll have been busy. Kind of switching gears from internally to what's going on outside of your house. What do you miss? I mean we miss theater? We miss performing? Obviously.
Lilliangina: I miss people.
Casey: Yeah.
Lilliangina: I really miss people. I don't like Zoom. It makes me tired.
Casey: It's screentime.
Lilliangina: It is screentime. And there's so much decoding social cues. Makes my brain tired.
Casey: That's an excellent point.
Lilliangina: I've learned that hiding my self-view helps; because I'm not looking at my own face when I'm talking to you.
Casey: No, no. But you are on Zoom.
Lilliangina: But I am on Zoom. So, hiding my self-view works and putting it in speaker-view helps.
Casey: So your focus is to the person who is speaking.
Lilliangina: So I'm looking at whoever is talking. And I'm not looking around the room. Stupid little things that we can do to help ourselves. What was the question? Why did I get into Zoom? Oh, what do I miss? I do. I miss hugs. I miss people.
Casey: Do you think hugs will come back?
Lilliangina: I don't know, Casey. I feel like there's so much fear. We have been immersed in fear for the last three months, now. How do we collectively recover from that? I just don't know. How do we recover from this feeling that we're afraid if someone coughs near us? Or Afraid if someone walks by us in the wrong direction at the supermarket? I mean, don't get me wrong, I think following the one-way is important. Just do what you're told, people! Wear your mask and do what you're told and stand six feet away from me. But even with that, will there ever be a moment when everything becomes OK? We did not recover from the fear of 9/11. Things changed.
Casey: Permanently.
Lilliangina: Yeah. I'm from Buffalo. I lived right in the neighborhood that was adjacent to the Peace bridge, which you could cross by foot or by bicycle when I was growing up and go to Canada. No problem. As long as you had ID. Everything changed after 9/11. Everything. So I feel like everything has changed. And I don't know. I don't know when or if or how we'll go back to hugging each other.
Casey: Do you think, in that same vein of the world changing forever, I hadn't really thought about it in the context of like 9/11 where everything changed and you're like, "Oh my gosh, this is possibly bigger, affects more people," and how that will change forever. Is there anything that you think won't come back? What do you think won't come back because of this? Obviously, ease of transportation after 9/11, but I was taking to Jessica Miesel the other day, she's like, "I don't think menus will come back because it's something people touch."
Lilliangina: I know. Gross!
Casey: I was like, "That's an excellent point!"
Lilliangina: Gosh, what do I think won't come back? That's funny. Honestly, I don't think, in many sectors and industries, that going back to a physical workplace for 40 straight hours is going to come back. Like comeback, comeback.
Casey: Why would you? Everybody can work from home,
Lilliangina: Right? I mean, we kind of sort of knew that.
Casey: That meeting really could have been an email.
Lilliangina: Oh, my god. What else do I think won't come back?
Casey: It's hard because we're not on the other side of it yet. We haven't really been out in the world to see what's not going to come back. But...
Lilliangina: No. Yeah, menus is good.
Casey: I'm thankful for that.
Lilliangina: Totally.
Casey: Let me scan a QR code. I'll look at it on my phone.
Lilliangina: Yeah.
Casey: Do you have any sort of new sacred spaces or habits that you've created for yourself in quarantine that have helped you kind of stay sane, that you would like to continue and take forward into the future whenever we do go back to school? And whenever we do go back to work.
Lilliangina: I wish I could say that I've toyed with a couple of things, but it's still... Even though I'm not leaving the house, I've still had so many things to do. So I still have the bad habit of waking up and checking my email; waking up and getting straight to work. But I eat now.
Casey: Were you not eating before?
Lilliangina: Not really great.
Casey: Oh.
Lilliangina: I always choose sleep over food. So I would snooze my alarm profusely in the morning and leave the house without eating. I hate public school food with all my heart and soul; I'd rather not eat it. I was really bad at food prep; like really bad at food prep. I would spend an entire school day without putting anything in my mouth or eating a granola bar or a piece of chocolate and lots of coffee. I had gotten to such an unsustainable level of busy that I had forgotten how to completely take care of myself. Eating had become really low on the priority list. Drinking water -- I would find myself during my third-period class at one o'clock in the afternoon like, "God, I don't know why I have a headache." And then all of a sudden I'd be like, "Well, shit, I haven't drank water since last night." Really, really toxic habits. And it hasn't been something conscious where I was like, "I'm going to prepare my food and feed my body." No. It's just because I'm here and I have time and I have access to my kitchen and I'm quiet enough to actually be able to hear my body when it says, "Hey, I'm hungry." And then I eat.
Casey: That's great,
Lilliangina: You know? Yeah.
Casey: I'm also a very bad eater so I understand that.
Lilliangina: It seems like a stupid thing, but that was the worst thing. The other thing, Casey, and this is kind of kind of a tangent, but not so much. What month are we in? June? Still?
Casey: July.
Lilliangina: July, now?
Casey: July. I know you said three months. I was like, "We're almost on four."
Lilliangina: Damn.
Casey: Yeah. I go back and listen to the interviews, I did it at like week eight or week nine and I'm like, "I never would have thought."
Lilliangina: Crazy. So last year, July, I was neglecting my health really, really bad.
Casey: Well you weren't eating.
Lilliangina: I wasn't eating. I was just like work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work. And joyful work, but nonetheless, all output. So I do this thing where I save all of my appointments for summer break.
Casey: Like health appointments?
Lilliangina: Yes. I went to my annual female appointment and I say to the gynecologist -- Side note, I have PCOS and I have Endometriosis, and I'm fine with your sharing this because I think women don't talk about our female parts enough.
Casey: When we really should.
Lilliangina: We really should talk about our female parts. Anyway, I've really, really struggled with the symptoms of those, especially in the last two years to the point where it was really disrupting my life, really disrupting my ability to especially to be in a show.
Casey: Sure.
Lilliangina: Because it's one thing if you have an office job or even a teacher job where I can hide behind my desk if I'm having a really painful day. But if it happens to be opening night and my period just started...Fuck, right? So I went to the gynecologist and did the whole routine thing and I said, "Listen, I am ready for that ablation scrape-y thing. Do what you need to do, because I don't want this period no more."
Casey: You've got your girls. You don't need it.
Lilliangina: I don't want this thing no more. And she says, "Great. We're gonna do a routine ultrasound" and I go back the next week. I'm in the ultrasound room and the ultrasound Tech is like, "Stand right here for a really long time." And then she goes, "I'll be right back."
Casey: Uh oh. That always makes you feel real good.
Lilliangina: Oh gosh. She comes back and she goes, "The doctor is going to see you now." I wasn't there to see the doctor. I was just there to get the ultrasound. So the doctor says, "Your ultrasound is showing that you have a 10 centimeter cyst on your right ovary." She showed me what that looks like. She said, "That's about the size of a grapefruit. We need to do some bloodwork to check your cancer markers so we can decide how we move forward. But we can't do what you wanted because we have to make sure you don't have cancer." Well, my cancer markers came back fairly high. And that I didn't get that information until the week of pre-planning, right before my students came back to school. I'm driving and I get the phone call and she says, "I'm going to have to refer you to the oncologist and they're going to have to take it from here." Big, scary words; cancer, oncology, all of those are big, scary words. Well, the oncologist was like, "You have the risk, et cetera, et cetera. This is what we need to do." So we set up the surgery to have the cyst, at that point they had assessed that it was more of a tumor than a cyst, to get it removed. He said "Chances are, because it's so big, your ovary will have to go as well." I'm like, "Take it!"
Casey: Go, please! That's what I wanted to begin with.
Lilliangina: Take it! You could take it all you want! I'm good. So at the end of September, right after "Mary Poppins," I went in for surgery and the pathology report came back; it was a stage-one malignant tumor, which means it was still completely encapsulated. I don't have to do any radiation. They caught it really early. I got really, really lucky.
Casey: Great.
Lilliangina: But it still shook me to my core.
Casey: Of course.
Lilliangina: I say all of that, give you that whole story to say, that surgery was a really hard recovery for me. And I had to sit for four weeks. And for four weeks, all I did was fight with myself about the fact that I was sitting. But I had to go back to work, even though I wasn't ready to go back to work. Even though I didn't do a good job of stopping and giving my mind and my body time to heal. And then I went back to a full-time plus loads; no transition, no boundaries, just --
Casey: Seven classes and rehearsal.
Lilliangina: Yes. Yep. So by the time I closed my show at school and opened "On Your Feet," I didn't know if I was gonna make it to the end of the school year.
Casey: Because you're in pain or --
Lilliangina: I was in pain periodically, not every day. But really exhausted. And the surgery didn't fix the problem, it made it worse.
Casey: Oh.
Lilliangina: Yeah. Because now I don't have a defective ovary. Now my good ovary is making me have a period every month because I still have my uterus. And so it hurts and it's awful and I hate it.
Casey: Does your doctor think you'll be able to go in for the surgery you wanted at some point?
Lilliangina: No. Now, I can't do it because I'm high-risk.
Casey: High risk just for --
Lilliangina: For cancer. Whatever. My only other option is to have a full hysterectomy. All this, just --
Casey: No, now this is just me being like, "So wait a minute."
Lilliangina: Wait a minute. Being a girl is such a pain in the ass.
Casey: At twenty-four I had my female doctor tell me that I needed to have a double mastectomy and a hysterectomy. At twenty four.
Lilliangina: Holy shit.
Casey: And I was like, "I don't know how I feel about anything you just said." So that's why I ask. Because it's like, "So did they said you can keep going?" But it's like, "No. I'd have to get the whole thing out." It's like, okay, well that's you know,
Lilliangina: [00:29:04] It's a mess. Anyways, long story short, it's been tough. It was a tough school year from the very first week of school that I got that phone call, before my kids even started. Then I had surgery. I was out for a month. I came back.
Casey: And then we were shut down.
Lilliangina: I put up a show. We got nominated for a Schuler. It was great. And then Covid.
Casey: Yes, it's been a hell of a year for you.
Lilliangina: Yeah. But I needed To slow down.
Casey: Yeah, sounds like it.
Lilliangina: I feel, in many ways, this saved me from having to completely quit my job.
Casey: Great.
Lilliangina: Because I was feeling like I was on the verge of having to make some decisions; either quit my job or quit theater. And theater would probably be the thing that goes because they don't pay me enough money to make up for me not having a job.
Casey: Correct. And so you've been listening to your body?
Lilliangina: I do. I take naps.
Casey: Great. You're eating.
Lilliangina: I eat.
Casey: That's good.
Lilliangina: I drink water and I nap. How about that? Yeah?
Casey: Those are good things.
Lilliangina: Yeah. I haven't done a fancy diet. I haven't done Buddhist meditation. I haven't lost 50 pounds.
Casey: Whoever has in quarantine needs to go suck it.
Lilliangina: I haven't. I've met a couple of people that I'm like, "OK. Whatever."
Casey: You are not watching nearly enough television. You're not going to know what's going on. You'll have no talking points. OK.
Lilliangina: And I've watched TV.
Casey: What have you been watching?
Lilliangina: That's not a thing for me, because I'm always so tired.
Casey: When are you watching TV? When would you have time to watch before?
Lilliangina: Right. Let me see, I watched Ozark at the beginning of quarantine. I've watched several movies. We went on a dystopian kick, me and my girls.
Casey: I love that.
Lilliangina: So we watched all "The Hunger Games."
Casey: Those are great movies.
Lilliangina: And "Divergent" and all that kind of stuff. I've watched "Little Fires Everywhere" twice.
Casey: OK.
Lilliangina: Oh, It's so good.
Casey: Twice?
Lilliangina: It's so good.
Casey: I have not watched it yet.
Lilliangina: Oh, it's so good.
Casey: Because I want to read the book, which is so nerdy.
Lilliangina: I don't care about no book! It's so good!
Casey: I know. That's my thing. I'm a loser, I know.
Lilliangina: Well, here's the benefit of not reading the book first...
Casey: I have no idea what's happening. That's a good point. That's a good point. Then I don't have to read the book.
Lilliangina: And here's my stupid -- this is my brainless TV that I have enjoyed way too much; I'm watching every episode of "Family Matters" from the beginning.
Casey: Where? Where Are you?
Lilliangina: On Hulu.
Casey: On Hulu! I was like, "Who has all of Family Matters?" That's great.
Lilliangina: Steve Urkel. Steve Urkel has been my therapy. I used to love that show so much when I was a little girl. Me and my mom used to watch it every Friday night. So it gives me happy feelings. Now that I'm doing my Masters, and I don't actually have brain space to track with a story, the brainless sitcom right before I go to sleep...that's perfect
Casey: That's great. I don't have Hulu, but I am very impressed. OK. Excellent. So let's kind of to sum up here: Covid happened, Black Lives Matter is now happening. And you're obviously resting, you're taking time for your health, you don't have the same distractions as maybe we all did before. We all have this group collective thing happening to all of us, right; Black Lives Matter, Covid, being at home alone. We have this time that's -- bringing us together is probably not the right word, but we all have this collective experience that we feel like in 20 years we'll be like, "Oh, I did that during Covid," and someone will immediately know what you're thinking about. Just like, "Oh, I did that in high school." They immediately have a comparative experience.
Lilliangina: "During the Great Depression."
Casey: I can't wait till I'm 80. I'm just going to rip into my grandkids, "Stop complaining about anything! Let me tell you about Covid." What do you think you -- and I would be interested to know what you think your daughters, especially because of where they are in their lives -- what do you think you'll take out of this? What do you think will be one of the defining things that you think about or remember or use going forward whenever this ends?
Lilliangina: I think the most important thing that we've had the opportunity to practice is the art of slowing down. You know, every group, every ethnic group, has their own story and everybody works hard in their own right. And I say that just to say that what I'm going to say about me and my husband doesn't mean that other people don't also work hard. I'm going to speak for ourselves.
Casey: Sure. It's your experiences.
Lilliangina: My husband and I come from really humble, humble upbringings. We both lived in the projects and subsidized housing when we were young, young children. We came up in a poor, Latino neighborhood. So it's taken us a hot minute to get to where we are. It's taken us hot minute. We just had our 20 year wedding anniversary. This is not our first home. We had one when we lived in Buffalo, but it took us a decade to buy one after moving to Atlanta. So we learned really, really early. We had our kids young. We learned really early that the way to make it was to work your ass off. You get up, you show up. We've never had less than two jobs ever; either one of us. We have been going and going and going and going and going for 20 straight years. We have gotten degrees, raised children, had multiple jobs, lost jobs, started businesses, lost businesses, all at the same time, all overlapping one another. So we got really used to the rat race. We had just kind of accepted that this is what life is; that you work until you die. Things like taking vacations weren't routine for us. We did it every now and then or for something special; for my husband's fortieth birthday from my daughter's graduation, things like that. But taking time for us and resting has always been an afterthought. So I think the greatest take-away that we will get is that slowing down won't break us. It won't make us go broke. It won't make us lose everything. It won't make us be poor.
Casey: And you weren't willing to take that chance before.
Lilliangina: We weren't willing to take that chance before because it was too big of a risk.
Casey: You've got three girls. You've got lives.
Lilliangina: Yes. We had too many people, three, depending on us to go out there and get it. So this ability to just slow down -- which, again, we recognize that we've been very privileged to be able to take -- and still have jobs, and still get paid, and still be able to pay our mortgage and our groceries and all that kind of stuff. It's given us the opportunity to --like he sits right there with his cigars, see that ashtray, and I sit right here with my glass of whatever, and we've actually had conversations. We've made plans or made big purchases that we had held off on or had important discussions with our girls that we had time to really marinate on. So, yeah, I don't think there is anything else but slowing down, because that has been the thing that has given us everything else; it has given us the meals, it has given us my husband at the grill, it has given us being able to watch movies, it has given us being able to listen to our girls tell us about their lives. If life ever goes back to normal, which I don't think it will, but should it go back to normal, I don't think that any of us in my house will re-enter at the pace we were doing it before. It's just not necessary. It makes you sick.
Casey: Yeah. It's not good. I'm glad that you're reflecting. I'm glad you're having time to like, sit.
Lilliangina: Yes. Thank you. I mean, I've obviously had my moments to be part of what's happening with Black Lives Matter and activism in the theater community and all of that stuff has been really great. And emotionally exhausting.
Casey: Can't even imagine. But important.
Lilliangina: But important. And I would do that shit all day, so I have to limit myself. I have to be like, "Time out!"
Casey: For your mental and physical health?
Lilliangina: Yes, yes, yes, yes. I've got to take breaks; little, not big breaks. But I have to be like, "OK, time to go to sleep now. Get off Facebook. You can't respond to everybody."
Casey: Well, it doesn't give you any time to sit and process what you're thinking and feeling.
Lilliangina: Right.
Casey: If you're just going and going and going and going, you don't have time to see what's happening.
Lilliangina: No, but even just that letter to Brian Clowdus that I posted and the shitstorm that came from that; I had no idea that it would be that huge of a thing. But I've got Forty-five pages worth of stories of people just...
Casey: But look at what an inspiration that letter was.
Lilliangina: Yeah.
Casey: Look at all that happened from it.
Lilliangina Yeah. I'm really glad that all of this slowing down and being stuck in my house has, in some way, made me say, "Well, I've got to speak up. I've got to live my values and not just..." That's it.
Casey: Thanks for talking with me.
Lilliangina: Thank you. It's been good.
Casey: You know, we're sitting here.
