“Sorry, now we’re just railroading [the Q&A],” Hammel says to audience laughter as she continues an impassioned answer about the thematic layers of the film. “What is being represented is a layer of ignorance. It’s not like a fact-finding movie where you go out, and you get a look at the real world. For somebody in this position, the ‘stress position’ of being Terry Goon at that moment, there is no real world. There is no outside the house. There is no encounter with the Middle East or even with the street!”
She continues, “The world is coming at him in this house, but somehow he is not growing from this experience.”
Noting that he’s Palestinian, Harhash recalls his surprise at reading the script. “I saw so many Arabic words, and I was like, ‘Wait, who wrote this?’” he says. As he got to know Hammel and her perspective, he “started to think, ‘Oh, Theda’s not showing the Middle East as a safe haven, but she’s showing that there’s so much misinterpretation on the Middle East.”
To further answer Harhash’s rhetorical question, Hammel is a filmmaker who wears many hats; she served as a director, writer, actor, editor, and composer for Stress Positions. “It was a desperate situation, and things had to get done,” she explains of her willingness to take on all those roles.
Referring to her performance as Karla, she continues, “If you have a trans lady antihero who sort of swaggers around and does bad, it seems maybe more generous not to impose that on another trans actor, so you can take it on yourself and bear the brunt of it.” Her words are met with more audience laughter. Pulling quintuple duty sounds strenuous, but just like with Stress Positions, there’s humor to be found in the metaphorical pressure cooker.
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