{"id":310335,"date":"2026-03-03T03:24:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T03:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/310335\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T03:24:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T03:24:07","slug":"alia-shawkat-on-her-off-broadway-debut-with-a24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/310335\/","title":{"rendered":"Alia Shawkat on her Off-Broadway debut with A24"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s almost difficult to believe that Alia Shawkat has never done live theater before. She\u2019s been a well-known actor at least since joining the cast of Arrested Development in 2003 and led one of the great New York comedies of the 21st century, Search Party<\/a>. But You Got Older presents a new challenge. The play opened at the Cherry Lane Theater in downtown Manhattan in February, becoming the latest production in the space since it was purchased by A24. When the opportunity came to her, Shawkat says it was a \u201cno brainer.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if you can consider yourself a real actor until you do theater. That was always the rule in my head that I made up, I guess,\u201d Shawkat tells The A.V. Club. \u201cI came to New York when I was 18 and lived here for several years and my goal was, I\u2019m gonna go to college and then I dropped out and I was like, well, I\u2019ll do theater. And then I never got any jobs.\u201d She did see some theater that inspired her, though. \u201cI saw The Antipodes, and I remember seeing that and being like, \u201cwow, okay.\u201d It was kind of the first modern play I would say I\u2019ve seen, really,\u201d she recalls. \u201cI\u2019ve seen some, some pretty great stuff, but I will say that Annie Baker one really stuck with me, where I was like this is so funny and new and so sharp.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThen as the years passed, I never read anything that I loved. It was kind of a timing thing,\u201d Shawkat says about reading a couple other parts that weren\u2019t quite right before You Got Older made its way to her. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely asking a lot of me. It\u2019s a big role. But I just connected to the piece immediately.\u201d You Got Older sees Shawkat star as Mae, a twentysomething lawyer who recently lost her job\u2014where she was dating her boss. She\u2019s back home in Washington state to lick her wounds and care for her father (played by Succession\u2018s Peter Friedman) as he undergoes treatment for cancer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is only the second time Clare Barron\u2019s play has been staged since its 2014 premiere, and that is where the characters in You Got Older still live, even as the world outside has gotten older. But Shawkat describes the show\u2019s themes\u2014themes of \u201cnot being able to be present with not only your own pain, but with your family\u201d\u2014as timeless, especially compared to some of her other especially millennial-coded projects.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think with Search Party, we were very much commenting on millennials, but it was of the time. It\u2019s just crazy how, not that it\u2019s aged, but that was capturing a moment and a generation,\u201d she reflects. \u201cAnd now how different the next generation is from that time and the things they were going through and just the sense of humor and what we were making fun of\u2026 it was very prescient. It was happening as we were doing it.\u201d You Got Older meanwhile is about topics that anyone can relate to: Realizing your parents are getting older, and that you\u2019re getting older, too. \u201cThe timing of when Clare wrote it, not that it\u2019s necessarily millennial, but it\u2019s of a time where we\u2019re commenting on what we\u2019re experiencing. The way familial dynamics are, the way we\u2019re relating to death, to cancer in the home, how we relate to female sexuality. All these things are very pertinent in this play.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But looking toward the future, it does sound like Shawkat wants to do more theater. \u201cI see now how actors who, even if they have these big careers in TV and film, always come back to doing a play,\u201d she says, adding that it obviously depends on schedules and traveling and finding the right project and all the other considerations a working actor has. \u201cIt\u2019s very utilitarian almost, like, I\u2019m just an actor! You know, I do a show, go home, wake up, do it again.\u201d As for the future of this show\u2014it\u2019s already been extended once\u2014Shawkat demurs, though she does suggest she\u2019s ready for another New York phase of her bicoastal life. \u201cWe relocated here for the play, but I think we\u2019re gonna stay for a while,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019re enjoying it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Drew Gillis is the news editor at\u00a0The A.V. Club.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s almost difficult to believe that Alia Shawkat has never done live theater before. She\u2019s been a well-known…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-310335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}