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| Isabel Hagen in On A String: 'It makes sense that filmmaking would be the kind of culmination of everything because it involves writing and acting and directing and music' Photo: Courtesy of POFF |
Isabel Hagen is a Juilliard-trained violist, or violist,who has several more strings to her bow, first stepping into the world of stand-up comedy before creating a web series, Is A Violist, focusing on the misadventures of a jobbing viola player. That provided a stepping stone to her first feature On A String, in which she also has the starring role as Isabel – also a Juilliard-trained violist – who is trying to navigate the jobbing nature of her profession along with her personal relationships. It won the Best Screenplay prize after its world premiere at Tribeca Film Festival and recently had its European premiere Out Of Competition at Tallinn Black Nights, where I caught up with Hagen for a chat.
As we attempt to conduct our interview in the space near the third floor lift because the festival’s bustling environment means it’s the only space we can find at the time, I suggest that it’s just as well that she likes a challenge.
“I guess so,” she says. “I don’t think that in my brain but my actions would say that.”
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| Isabel Hagen in Tallinn Photo: Courtesy of POFF/Erlend Staub |
Hagen learned the violin first as a child before switching to the viola when she was ten, noting “I got more serious when I switched because I liked the instrument more. I liked being an inner voice in a chamber group. It was really fun for me.”
After that came comedy and then the filmmaking, so does she feel as though this is the end point? “It makes sense that filmmaking would be the kind of culmination of everything because it involves writing and acting and directing and music. So it kind of uses all of the things I've been working on. So I would be comfortable with filmmaking being the landing point. But I will always be doing stand-up, it’s my greatest love.”
There’s no doubt that she has fully embraced the filmmaking concept, not only writing and starring in the film but also directing – becoming all the parts of the chamber orchestra rather than just a single voice.
“It’s a very different position than just playing a viola in a string quartet. But I think it's a new position that I was craving, or just sort of being more involved in the real creation of the work and having ownership over everything, or a part of everything, at least.
Hagen has previously spoken about having performance anxiety and I wonder whether becoming director and star is a way of having more control?
“I think so. It's doing a lot of different things in spurts rather than with viola, where my performance anxiety really takes hold when I'm playing like a recital. That's just this long, one thing and there's really no room for error, whereas with comedy and writing and filmmaking, trial and error is kind of the essence of it.”.
Speaking about her inspiration, she adds: “It was me freelancing that made me want to write this movie because I thought I'm a small part of all these different people's stories. I want to tell that person's story. It's important. All those different ones.”
Starting with the web series – which you can watch on Hagen’s YouTube page – she says: “I think in the back of my head I thought it would be a proof of concept for a half-hour scripted TV show originally. But I just had these little ideas and I thought, ‘Let me try making something’, because I’d never done anything like this before. Then pitching TV shows didn’t work out in the timeline I wanted it to and then Covid hit and I thought, ‘Why don’t I just write this into a movie and make a movie because I know people do that independently so I bet I could do it’.”
She says doing the stand-up helped her to have confidence but says: “Stand-up also gives you the ability to fail and not have it ruin your whole existence. So much of stand-up is failing, so you're flexing that muscle of, ‘Okay, that didn't work or oh, they rejected me. Okay, onwards, let's make it better’. So I think it gave me the confidence to potentially fail.”
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| Isabel Hagen onstage at POFF during On A String Q&A: 'For me, all movies should have comedy in them' Photo: Courtesy of POFF/Georg Korotkihh |
Another thing that went into the film is the performance of her brother, Oliver Hagen – an accomplished pianist and conductor in his own right.
“He took a little convincing just because he's a really busy guy,” says Hagen. “Once he got into it, he had a lot of fun and he really blew everyone away on set because he’s not an actor but he was really natural on camera and really funny and it was great.”
In the film, the parents of the central character also appear, so how did Hagen’s parents feel about that – are they like the family in the film at all?
“They are and they aren’t. I mean, there's certain elements that are from my brother that I put in the mum character, so I kind of mixed it all around. I think they're, they're really got a kick out of it and I think, in the end, you can tell that they're good parents. So I think they're happy about that.”
Looking forward, she adds: “I just really like writing and so I'm writing another movie and then, I think, once I have the script fully established, I'll figure out what other roles I want to play – if I want to act in it. I think I’ll definitely direct it but I might play a smaller acting role just to have a different experience and get to be behind the camera a little more than this movie – I mean, I'm in almost every shot.”
In terms of what’s next, Hagen doesn’t want to say too much. “I’m a little superstitious,” she admits, but there will at least be some humour in it. She says: “For me, all movies should have comedy in them because life, no matter how dark the subject matter is, also has comedy in moments. I find if something is comedic it just means that there's an awareness to it. But yes, it’ll be a comedy.”
