E2 WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2020 LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR
MARCH 21, 2020
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byJohn Patrick Shanley
directed byMartin BensonRichardDoyle ScottFerrara LynnMilgrim DevonSorvari
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directedbyMarti Lyons MAR 28–APR 25ArivetingtakeonNathanielHawthorne’sacclaimed
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Recommendation:Highschool&above.Containshazeand
thesmokingofnon-toxicelectroniccigarettes.yoga and has a private
teacher lead physics classes
for her and her friends. And
when she moved out of her
parents’ home last year — her
father is Will Smith — Willow
chose to put down roots near
Venice, where she can fre-
quent the organic, vegan
restaurant Cafe Gratitude.
So she’s already prepared
herself for what the reaction
will be to her next unconven-
tional move: a 24-hour per-
formance art event at the
Museum of Contemporary
Art’s Geffen Contemporary
in which she will transition
through eight stages of anxi-
ety from the inside of a box.
(The performance is not offi-
cial MOCA-curated pro-
gramming but rather a rental
event.)
On Wednesday, starting
at 9 p.m., Smith and Tyler
Cole — her creative collabo-
rator/maybe boyfriend (more
on that later) — will begin cy-
cling through emotional
states: paranoia, rage, sad-
ness, numbness, euphoria,
strong interest, compassion
and acceptance. Visitors will
be separated from the duo by
a glass wall, but the three
other sides of the box will be
composed of canvas, on
which Smith and Cole plan to
paint and write affirmations.
‘Very primal’
They will spend three
hours in each emotion and do
not plan to speak, although,
Smith said, “We might grunt
or scream — it’s going to be
very primal.” They will not be
forgoing sustenance or sleep,
and they will exit the box for
bathroom breaks, which they
want to keep to no more than
two minutes apiece.
Audience members will
be allowed to observe Smith
and Cole in the box for about
15 minutes, but after visitors
will be welcome to loiter in a
room with a video feed, self-
help books and stations to
donate to mental health or-
ganizations. (The art instal-
lation also will be streamed
live online.)
“This is not so that people
are like, ‘Oooh!’ This is for
awareness,” Smith said, an-
ticipating the public’s reac-
tion. “The first thing we’re go-
ing to be writing on our title
wall is something along the
lines of: ‘The acceptance of
one’s fears is the first step
toward understanding.’ So
then you know this is on
something real. This is for a
real cause.”
The idea for the exhibit,
Smith said, emerged during a
late-night studio session with
Cole while the two were re-
cording their album, “The
Anxiety.” The music — a mix
of alternative rock and punk
— will be released immedi-
ately following the perform-
ance art show this week. As
the pair reached the comple-
tion of recording, they began
talking about the catharsis
they felt after putting their
emotions to music.
“We were like, ‘Wouldn’t it
be so interesting if we could
personify this experience?
Starting from being scared
and feeling alone and moving
to a place of acceptance and
joy?” said Smith, sitting at a
spare table on a Venice side-
walk and wearing a patch-
work jacket over a dress with
the Venus symbol on it. She
eventually brought the idea
to her mother, who was sup-
portive but urged her daugh-
ter to make it clear that
“everyone’s anxiety takes dif-
ferent forms.”
“We understand this is a
very sensitive subject,” she
adds. “And we don’t want to
be like, ‘Our experience is the
experience.’ This is just us ex-
pressing our personal experi-
ence with this.”
Cole, who moved to L.A.
from Detroit when he was in
middle school, met Smith
through a mutual friend on
an outing to Pressed Juicery
roughly five years ago. The
two bonded after he gave her
a copy of “2001: A Space
Odyssey,” and they slowly be-
gan to open up to each other
about their anxiety struggles.
Cole was so nervous
about impending doom —
“always thinking that things
can’t go well for too long be-
cause then something ter-
rible and tragic is going to
happen” — that he used to
wake up every morning and
vomit.
Sharing such revelations
brought the friends closer,
and before long, they were
being snapped by the papa-
razzi midkiss. But both arehesitant to characterize their
relationship as a romance.
“We are the best of
friends,” insisted Smith, who
doesn’t believe she’ll ever get
married. “I like to think about
it in terms of friendship, be-
cause I think that a lot of at-
tachment and control issues
come in when you start down
that romantic road.”
“She just has a different
perspective than a lot of peo-
ple,” said Cole, 23, who was
wearing a pair of jeans on
which he’d written things like
“We’re in love and the world is
ending” in black Sharpie.
“She’s smarter than most
people that I know.”
It was Super Tuesday,
and the friends had just come
from voting in the Demo-
cratic presidential primary.
Cole said he went for Bernie
Sanders, but Smith wouldnot reveal whether she se-
lected Sanders or Elizabeth
Warren. She said she doesn’t
like to talk about politics be-
cause “it becomes so emo-
tional that we lose sight of
what we’re actually trying to
do.”
“I was so stressed,” Smith
said. “I was looking at the bal-
lot and all of these thoughts
were coming into my head:
What if I don’t make the right
choice? Am I contributing to
the death of America? Am I
contributing to the death of
the world?”
Climate change is, in fact,
one of the biggest sources of
Smith’s anxiety. She said she
feels overwhelmed when she
sees photographs of the wild-
fires in Australia or the Ama-
zon and often feels like not
eating meat and taking cold
showers are doing little to
combat the issue.
“The fact that we only
have 50 years to survive?
Like, great. Looking at your
phone as a young person and
seeing that, how are you sup-
posed to feel?” said Smith,
who in person is so earnest
that she somehow comes
across as more endearing
than pretentious. “But you
can’t completely just go,
‘Whatever.’ You have to have
awareness that you’re just
doing your part and that’s all
you can do. ... Whenever I
have a negative thought, Izero in on that thought. But
when I have a positive
thought, I brush it aside. We
have to retrain our minds to
see the perspective of grati-
tude.”
Smith didn’t always think
like this. The transition
started after the release of
“Whip My Hair,” her first sin-
gle, which came out just be-
fore her 10th birthday. The
2010 song went double plati-
num in the U.S., she joined
Justin Bieber on tour and
was signed to Jay-Z’s record
label Roc Nation. She was the
toast of the pop world — an
adorable kid with famous
parents to boot — but she
was miserable. She began to
self-harm — something she
only recently revealed to her
family on “Red Table Talk,”
the Facebook talk show she
co-hosts with her mom and
grandmother, Adrienne Ban-
field-Norris.
“I felt like I was creating
something for myself that I
would be very regretful of in
the future,” Smith said. “The
music was not my truth, and I
needed to find my truth. I
didn’t want to be fake. I
wanted to have a real mes-
sage and not feel like I was be-
ing controlled. So for three or
four years, I cocooned and
went into hibernation.”
Smith spent those years ex-
ploring other passions —
sneaking into her mother’smeditation room, taking sci-
ence classes and even taking
a college tour at the Massa-
chusetts Institute of Tech-
nology. She ultimately de-
cided not to pursue uni-
versity because she has had
such an unconventional edu-
cation — she went to tradi-
tional high school for only
one year — and feared she
wouldn’t fit in.
“I’m still kind of debating
it,” she acknowledged. “My
mom always tells me, ‘You
would really love it. I think
that could be really cool for
you.’ I’m honestly scared. All
these thoughts are coming
from my ego: ‘Are you smart
enough? You’re not smart
enough. You can’t be in there
with those people.’ ”Letting it all out
In the meantime, howev-
er, she has returned to music.
Her last three albums have
been decidedly anti-pop. She
describes them as having
“more of a psychedelic, shoe-
gaze, soft-rock kind of feel-
ing.” With “The Anxiety,” she
said she was able to “scream
and get raunchy,” letting out
a side of herself she’d previ-
ously contained.
Which is why she thinks
the performance Wednesday
will be so cathartic for her.
She and Cole aren’t rehears-
ing anything, though they’ve
already decided what they
will be painting on the walls
— symbols like the flower of
life or the E=MC^2 equation.
And if you’re expecting her to
scream for three hours dur-
ing rage or bawl her eyes out
for the entirety of sadness?
Think again.
“Honestly? That’s not
what it’s about,” she said.
“I’ve learned so much from
being in the public eye that
you really can’t care what
people think. You have to do
art because you want to do it
and because it inspires you.
And whoever likes it? Amaz-
ing! And whoever doesn’t?
Amazing! I’m doing this be-
cause I’m inspired by this
idea and I see that anxiety
around me is an epidemic
and people don’t talk about
it. And so as long as it’s bring-
ing awareness and a positive
light to the darkness, it
doesn’t matter if you don’t
enjoy it.”Exorcising anxiety in a box at MOCA
[Smith,from E1]
WILLOW SMITH, who had a huge hit before she was 10 with “Whip My Hair,”
sees music as an emotional outlet. She performed at the Novo in December.Rich FuryGetty ImagesWillow Smith
and Tyler Cole
Where:MOCA’s Geffen
Contemporary, 152 N.
Central Ave., L.A. (rental
event, not official MOCA
programming)
When:9 p.m. Wednesday
to 9 p.m. Thursday
Admission:Free
Info:theanxiety.life