FSU Trailblazer: Ellen Boener

By Tamiera Vandegrift on February 19, 2016

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet a truly talented and dedicated Seminole that Florida State is very fortunate to call their own. Senior Ellen Boener exemplifies the meaning of hard work and dedication in everything she does, from her work on the stage to her work in the classroom. Ellen, a sushi fiend and diehard Harry Potter fan, sat down with Uloop for an interview to give our readers the chance to get to know such an upstanding and diligent young woman, a true trailblazer. With that being said, let’s meet this week’s Trailblazer, Ellen.

Image via: Ellen Boener

Q: Where is your hometown?

EB: I was actually a military kid. My dad moved all over the place, but we spent the last ten years in Port Orange, Florida. I moved there the summer before sixth grade.

Q: What was it like living there?

EB: Port Orange is interesting because it’s very close to Daytona Beach  so we get a lot of the same traffic flow as Daytona. We also get the Nascar races. It’s a good place to live. I like it.

Q: Do you prefer it to Tallahassee?

EB: To choose between the two is very difficult. I like that Tallahassee has a bigger youth population because the only youth population you see in Port Orange is through school, which I mean, that’s true here but we don’t really live in Tallahassee, we live on FSU’s campus, which is like living in a city of young adults.

Q: What’s your major?

EB: I am a triple major in Creative Writing, Theatre, and International Affairs.

Q: What year of school are you in?

EB: I’m a senior.

Q: Why did you pick your majors?

EB: I started off as a theatre major. I knew I really enjoyed theatre. I was originally interested in playwriting predominantly so I thought, “Okay, we don’t have a Playwriting major so I can do Creative Writing and Theatre and that kind of morphs into one.” I spent a lot of time working on those and then added International Affairs this past spring. The thing about art, in my opinion, is that you can’t just be good at the technical aspects of the profession. You also have to be passionate about something outside otherwise you’ll have nothing to talk about. You have to have something you’re interested in that you channel your art towards. For me, I’m interested in international affairs because international outreach, refugees, and impoverished populations have always struck a chord with me.

Cast of “The Chairs”
Image via: Ellen Boener

Q: What is your favorite thing about FSU?

EB: I think for me, my favorite thing about being at FSU is having a network of artists and students all producing really good work. So as opposed to working somewhere like Broadway or Chicago where you’d have to pay to see all of those things, student work on campus is very prolific and cheap, but it’s also good and it’s a huge variety! So, I can see a huge variety without having to go far from home and it’s a network of my peers that I can later work with or collaborate with so it’s very useful to me.

Q: What do you like to do in your spare time?

EB: What spare time? *laughs* I’m lucky enough to like what I do so my spare time is me waiting to get back to what I do. You’ll find that with a lot of art students actually. If you like what you do, you’ll want to do that. Making sure I get enough sleep and self care is honestly a lot of my spare time.

Q: How would you describe yourself?

EB: One of my favorite descriptions I’ve ever heard of  myself comes from a lot of my good friends. I’m very direct, but it always seems like there’s a lot more underneath that. I don’t really lie to people about who I am, but I’m often told that I’m very enigmatic. I really enjoy that about myself that I can surprise people just by allowing myself to make strange connections and let myself go. I like to let my mind do strange work. I take my work to heart. That’s one thing that’s very important to me. I’m very ambitious. The one thing that can upset me more than anything else is if you threaten my work. You can threaten me, but if you threaten my work, I will be very upset. I’m also the friend you want in your corner because I don’t take friendships lightly either. I don’t allow people to throw pity parties for themselves. I’m also a huge Harry Potter fan and I don’t say that as like “Oh, everyone’s a Harry Potter fan,”. No, I know so much about these books, it’s insane.

Q: Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

EB: I’m not planning on going directly to grad school, which is surprising to a lot of people because I’ve been told many times, “Ellen, go find a program. You need to get into a school.” because I’ve always been very academically driven. I’m doing two honors theses, I’ve got three majors, and a 4.0 so I’m very academic but I’m not planning to go into a grad program because I’ve been burnt out on school. I also believe grad school is not something you should take on lightly. It’s not something you should do unless you know what you need to further yourself. I don’t know which direction I’m going yet so I want to take some time to figure out which direction I’m going in. So, in ten years, I could potentially see myself back in a grad school program, but directly after, I plan to teach abroad. I’ve applied to a couple of programs to teach abroad. I might be going abroad to South Korea next August to teach English for two years. I’ve also looked pretty heavily into doing some work with the Peace Corps and their education sector. I’d really like to take some time to figure out what I’d like. In the theatre, you get a lot of trial runs while you’re in school. You get an idea of what it’d be like to work in your field, but I don’t know what it’d be like working with humanitarian efforts abroad because I haven’t had the time to devote myself to that in a long term capacity. In ten years, I’d love to be doing some groundbreaking stuff basically.

A poster for Ellen’s production, An Evening with the Carousel of Progress. Image via: Ellen Boener

Q: What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment during your time at FSU?

EB: Well, I’m proud of a lot of things that I’ve done so far. I’m proud that I’ve been able to maintain such a high GPA. I’m proud that I’ve been able to become well known to my peers as somebody that does good work. That’s something I’m very proud of actually. Not only do I have the numbers, but people appreciate the work that I’ve done as an artist. I recently did a production that I developed myself based off of the Disney ride, A Carousel of Progress and it was ridiculously well-received by my peers. That meant a lot and I was so happy throughout that entire process. I’m always the most proud of what I’m doing at the time, which I think is a good way to look at it. If I had to pick something I’m the most proud of, it would have to be something more general: continuing to push myself to make more work, continuing to reach out, continuing to be the truest part of myself. The more time I’ve spent in college, the more true I’ve become to that.

Q: If you could go back and change something in your time at FSU, would you? If so, what would you change?

EB: I would have jumped into making art a lot sooner. This goes out to all the little freshmen, sophomores, and even the juniors and seniors who have ever stopped themselves from taking on a project in any field. I was worried for so long about making something good that it took me forever to actually make something. But if I had shrugged all of that off and said “I’m just going to make something,” years ago, how much work would I have done while I was here? That’s my biggest regret but also, I didn’t waste that time. I was gathering skills for my first two, or one and a half years here that went into the art I’m now making, but I wish I would’ve stopped being self-conscious and started experimenting, not caring what people thought.

Q: Are there any projects or ideas that you’re trying to regenerate? 

EB: That’s the saddest thing. You totally lose them. On the other hand, maybe it’s not so sad. For me, my ideas don’t get lost, I just find something else I’m more interested in. Unless I work on it in the moment when it’s fascinating me, it’s gone.By letting go of those old ideas and not chaining myself to them, I’m able to find new ideas that still fascinate me now. I’m not a very nostalgic person.

Q: What is a little known fact about yourself? 

EB: I have a brown stripe in my right eye. I was actually born in Yokosuka, Japan because my family was deployed there at the time, which means I get two birthdays. I actually get a year older the day before I celebrate my birthday because of the time change.

An image from the stage of Ellen’s latest project, The Chairs, currently playing at the Augusta Conradi Theatre in the Williams Building 2/18-2/20 at 8 pm. Image via: Ellen Boener

Q: I’ve heard that you’re the only undergraduate student that was chosen to direct a play for the School of Theatre’s new Act II program. What can you tell us about that experience?

EB: So the School of Theatre is trying out this new series of productions called Act II and I’m the guinea pig. I’m the very first Act II piece to be going up with the School of Theatre and with that comes its own issues, yet promising and exciting challenges. I’m also an undergraduate. The second Act II show this season is actually being put up by two doctoral students. It’s called, 100 Years of Hope. It’s looking at generational racism. That goes up in April.  The Chairs is my piece. We had to pitch our production to the SOT School of Theatre and we were selected by a board of faculty and staff, including the dean of the school, several of the performance teachers, and several of the technical staff members. At first, I was not expecting to get it. I submitted very late and I wasn’t sure if I was what they were looking for, but I went in and defended my production and why I thought it was poignant. Then, they selected me and I got really excited. The two things I think you need to put up a piece are space and people to do it with. Being told that I would have the space was a big deal. Everyone’s competing for space here. I was kind of overwhelmed because not only am I doing this piece, I’m doing this piece with the School of Theatre that people who aren’t my friends and family are going to see it. As a guinea pig, it’s been difficult because they’re still figuring out what Act II is going to be and how it continues on from here. I have no idea. Hopefully, Act II will end up serving the students of FSU as best possible, providing them with space and a structure to put up work.

Q: When does The Chairs open up?

EB: It runs Thursday through Saturday at 8 pm. It’s free for faculty and students. It’s five dollars for anyone else. It’s in the Conradi Theater in the Williams Building.

Q: Who or what would you consider to be your inspiration for theatre or for your life in general?

EB: This is going to sound really cheesy but I am constantly inspired by the other students here producing work in a sort of competitive way. Whenever I see [someone else] putting up a piece, I’m like, “Gosh dang it, I need to catch up. They’re doing twelve, I’m only doing five!” My competition with the other students here has always inspired me to do more work and do better work. So the other students at FSU are really inspirational to me. That sounds really dumb, but they really are. All of these people have pushed me to do work just by the past that they exist. I originally got interested in theatre because of my middle school teacher. Her name was Stacey Pape. She was just so passionate about it that I was intoxicated with how much she cared about doing stuff and how much she really engaged us.

On a personal level, being the best person I can possibly be, a lot of that came from my mom. One hundred percent. My mom has always been one of the strongest people in my life, one of the most loving, caring, and driving forces in who I am.

Q: What other advice would you give to a freshman at Florida State for the beginning of their college experience?

EB: Don’t let yourself get tied down to something just because you think people are expecting you to do it. If you don’t like the work you’re doing, stop doing it and do something else. Defy expectations, I suppose.

Q: What can you tell us about your senior thesis?

EB: My first honors thesis was in the area of practical performance research. It was looking at the way we communicate in a performance setting, between performers as well as how people observe performers. What I did was take traditional language out of the situation. The performers weren’t allowed to talk, write, use sign language, or use any form of semantic, formal language. Then I saw what they used instead and then used it to analyze not only performance interactions, but general human interactions and seeing how we prioritize and communicate in that way. That one’s done. My second one is in the area of creative writing and it’s going to be a collection of short stories. One of the biggest focuses I have as a fiction writer is writing from a female perspective because even when we have female writers a lot of them are still writing from male perspectives. I like to write from a female perspective. There are a lot of writers that now do it, but I want to be one of those people.  So right now, I’m still working on it so I don’t know what else is going to come between them. Right now, I’m just working on writing interesting stories that I find interesting and engaging and we’ll see whether or not they’re tied together by anything else.

Q: Is there anything you would like to add that I might not have thought to ask you?

EB: This is really general. I strongly believe that ignorance is a choice in the technological age in that no matter what your personal beliefs are, we all have a responsibility to fact check ourselves. That’s a very general thing, but I was just thinking about that earlier.

Find more information regarding Ellen’s production The Chairs here.

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