Club Glee Interview - Jane Lynch

jane lynch

Jane Lynch plays the egotistical, hyper-competitive and abrasive Sue Sylvester, coach of the Cheerios, on Glee. Her lines are often the funniest and most shocking, as Sue looks down on everyone, but especially on the Glee Club.

Recently our parent site, TheTwoCents, caught up with Jane.

TTC: Your character gets to say some truly awful, awful things. How important is trust for you as an actor with the writers and producers that everything that you say will end up looking okay? How much do you have to trust the people on the show?

Jane Lynch: I have to trust them a lot and I do. It’s [producers and creators] Ian Brennan and Brad Falchuk and Ryan Murphy, and they’re always pitch-perfect. Usually in the first draft, there is something so heinous and awful that we know won’t make it to the second draft because people will pull the plug on it, so they always have fun with the first draft, and they’ll throw things in just to make me giggle or be horrified.

TTC: At the end of the day, what do you think is Sue’s real problem with the glee club?

JL: Well, they want to use her power because she reigns supreme over that school and over that particular group, and she smells their hot breath on the back of her neck, and she wants to stay as top dog, and they definitely are threatening that. She’s turning the kids in the glee club against each other, and by separating them by race, disability, color, and kind of tried to make them hate each other for their differences.

I smell that [Will] could replace me as top dog, and so she does everything she can to keep him in his place, keep in intimidated, and she takes advantage of the fact that he’s a very fair guy who wants to be friends, basically, and she uses that to her advantage. What I love most about it is that she has fun doing it. There’s a sparkle in her eye and kind of a wink, wink. She finds being evil delicious, and she loves the effect she has on people. She lives to shock them with how far she will go. I’m not that easily shocked, but Sue does say some things that made me catch my breath, but no, no, they’ve created this wonderful world that can be shocking and out there, but it all really works.

TTC: Are we going to get to see any of Sue’s personal life? Does she have some kind of a love interest?

JL: Yes, there will be a little bit going on. I don’t want to give anything away, but her heart will be touched by somebody, and we learn a little bit about her family life and, perhaps, she’s humanized a little bit, but then, of course, that quickly goes away because she returns to her wicked ways. She’s not going to be giving out a lot of hugs this season, but we’re going to see her heart is actually affected by somebody, and she suffers a little bit of heartache.

TTC: Do you see any of yourself in the character of the mean Cheerio girls?

JL: No, not really. That wasn’t my group. I was more with the theater nerds, and Tina’s character played by Jenna Ushkowitz reminded me of me because she’s very talented, but she holds back. Tina’s character doesn’t allow herself to shine. She’s got all this talent, but she’s kind of in the background, and that’s kind of what I was. I don’t know if I was as talented as Tina, but I would always hold back just a little bit.

I had a theater teacher in college who had all of this mystique around her, and she was called the “dragon lady,” and if you got her approval, it was just wonderful. If she gave you the time of day, it was wonderful, but basically, she ruled through humiliation and fear, and I didn’t realize that I was drawing on her, but I think I am.

Lynch, who is wonderful in the film Julie & Julia, also appears as a reoccurring character in Two and a Half Men and Party Down. She will pop up on each of these shows, but not as frequently in the past. And, since she does have a musical theater background, she promises a little something artistic from Sue in the future: A Lindy Hop with Will! She admits that she’s not a strong dancer, but if she gets the opportunity down the road to sing on the show, she knows what song she’ll suggest: “Rose’s Turn” from Gypsy. A perfect choice for the Dragon Lady of Glee!

Thanks to Jane for the time. Watch Jane on Glee every Wednesday night on FOX.

Patricia Morris Buckley – Staff Writer

pmb@thetwocentscorp.com

Surprising new direction taken by Chinese cadaver artists and Saatchi stars: Sun Yuan and Peng Yu - interview

HONG KONG CHINESE PHOTOGRAPHY ART

Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, born in the early 1970s and both alumni of the prominent Beijing Central Academy of Art, have a long-established  reputation in Asia for their controversial collaborative installations featuring animals, human tissue and baby cadaver specimens. 

In the west they made a big splash in 2008 at the record crowd-drawing Saatchi exhibition of new Chinese art, The Revolution Continues with a satirical work called Old People’s Home (click for video). Both popular and critically-acclaimed, this life-sized 2007 work featured sculptures of decrepit old people “looking suspiciously like world leaders… now long impotent”‘ rolling slowly in wheelchairs around the gallery and occasionally crashing into one another.

Taking a surprising new direction, their exhibition Hong Kong Intervention (Aug 22 – Oct 10) at Osage Gallery delves into the working environments of Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong.

Each of the 100 Filipino participants took a photograph of a toy grenade placed in his or her employer’s home. Sun Yuan and Peng Yu talk with Wendy Ma about whether or not this experiment in spatial intrusion by Filipino maids creates tensions.

 

Toy grenade placed in the center of a dining room and the back of the Filipino maid. Photography by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. Image Courtesy to Erin Wooters.

 

AR: What inspired you to make photos with Filipino domestic staff?

Two years ago at a square in Central I observed the mass congregation of Filipino girls. I thought it was a very interesting situation since each one is connected to a family in Hong Kong. I started chatting with them and obtained their agreement to volunteer to do the photo shoots. Through them I could intervene in an relationship.

AR: Why do the photographs include the image of a toy grenade?

To intervene, I wanted to use a toy specifically bought in Hong Kong. It was up to them to place it anywhere inside their owner’s house, e.g. inside a garden, on the bed, blending it with the environment. Then they take a photograph of the scene. The toy is a legal product. When your kid plays with a toy grenade, you might find it cute, not dangerous. It was a chance for the participants to exercise their creativity. We wanted to use a very simple object to show how it can open up possibilities.

AR: Is it just a game or does it carry other implications?

It is a game because there are no real consequences. An example of something that is not a game would be the recent incident when a reporter threw a shoe at George Bush. However, it would’ve been a game had he said, “I’m going to throw it at you, first at your head then at your chest.” By not carrying it out, it would have remained just a concept. If something happens in reality, it changes the environment. But right now our work is only a photograph.

The proposition of the game is neutral. It doesn’t carry implications of danger. Last night someone told me that they treat their Filipino maids like guests.

 

Hidden toy grenade on the book shelve and the male domestic worker. Photography by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. Image Courtesy to Erin Wooters.

 

AR: Why is the photograph of the back of the worker juxtaposed next to the surroundings?

Actually, neither the person nor the environment is significant. They are entities with no individual characteristics. Instead of specifying a particular being, I just want to describe a phenomenon.

AR: What have you found out about their lives and about contemporary Hong Kong society?

One third of the Filipino population live outside their country. They are a special group in Hong Kong. During the week they enter into the homes of different families. On Sundays, they bond and return to their own world. When they work, they disappear into the families of Hong Kong. They play different roles in their working and living environment. They use their culture to communicate. As for us, we work outside the family and we bond when we return to our home. For them, they enter our families to work. It’s the reverse.

 

Bedroom and Filipino maid. Photography by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. Image Courtesy to Erin Wooters.

 

AR: Why is the exhibition called Hong Kong Intervention?

Intervention in Chinese can be small (eating a crab) or large-scale (invading a country). It can be magnified in the imagination of readers. You can imagine the explosive possibilities of the toy grenade, despite the fact  that in reality it cannot explode. How the viewer perceives ‘intervention’ is beyond my control.

Intervention can be a strategy to communicate ideas. Ours is the study of a social phenomenon. It does not necessarily mean invasion or changing a situation as it does in the English expression “tossing a grenade”.

Words acquire different meanings in different situations. They cannot be precise. Words cannot express what you actually feel. So art is not expressed through words or titles but through a different means to pull you closer to the underlying meaning.

AR: Are you concerned that the proprietor might feel violated if he saw the photograph of his home on display?

We had no intention to expose individuals. Like I said, the photos of the maids and the homes are not meant to be specifically meaningful; they only a representation and a portrayal of the mass.

 

Bedroom of a Hong Kong owner and the Filipino maid. Photography by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. Image Courtesy to Erin Wooters.

 

AR: What is the role/identity of Filipinos in your work? Creators, participants, or assistants?

I consider all the participants as collaborators: not just Filipinos, but also the audience involved in the discussions. They are common authors of the work. As part of the contract, we don’t have to give credit to them by listing their names as they transferred the copyright to us.

Contributed by Wendy Ma

Related Posts:

Editor’s note: This post is interesting to contrast with a recent exhibition at Para/Site in Hong Kong in which Filipino domestic helpers were invited to receive manicures given by the Australian artist collective Baba International.  Whereas Baba International sought to nurture and engage with their subject physically, the “‘Intervention”‘ exhibition carries intriguing tones of depersonalisation and violence. Baba was keen to explain the intentions behind their work whereas Sun Yuan and Peng Yu step away and allow the viewer to explore and fully shoulder the responsibility for interpretation.

• Hugs in Hong Kong by mainland artists formerly branded national criminals – interview Gao Brothers -Sep 09
• Thai Chinese artist Nipan Oranniwesna shows installation art made of baby powder in Hong Kong – review- Aug 09
• Embedding the Bed in Public Space – interview Hong Kong artist and ParaSite director Tim Li - Aug 09
• Wallpaper’s guide to Beijing art districts – Jul 09
• Young Chinese Artists The Next Generation – book review – Jun 09

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Chris Dickman on Australia's arid-dry zone

Below is a video package of a chat we had with Chris Dickman last week.

He has since left for what will be one of over a hundred research trips out to the Simpson Desert. 

As mentioned he and his team are investigating the benefits of feral predator removal, the role of small wooded plant life, the importance of local-regional dynamics and biotic interactions and the impacts of grazing on biodiversity in the Simpson Desert.

We hear about how we might imagine being in the desert space, his motivations, reflections on our connection with the land and the importance of conservation.