Interview: Liza Birkenmeier and Tara Ahmadinejad Reopen Their Grief Hotel Off-Broadway

Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks productions are notoriously short — their runs are a matter of weeks at a time when a lot of New York audience members are out of town. And yet, many still make their mark and cry out for longer engagements. The latest recipient is Grief Hotel, a dark comedy by Liza Birkenmeier, directed by Tara Ahmadinejad, that struck a chord in 2023 and is now getting a monthlong engagement (through April 20) at the Public Theater.

In Grief Hotel, which earned an Obie Award special citation, a figure called Aunt Bobbi has opened a getaway lodge for people who have experienced a life tragedy and is trying to pitch her concept, the “grief hotel” of the title to the audience. Except she keeps getting interrupted by her current tenants. The cast is made up of Susan Blommaert, Nadine Malouf, Bruce McKenzie, Ana Nogueira, Naren Weiss, and Susannah Perkins.

As previews began for their Public Theater run, Birkenmeier and Ahmadinejad gathered on Zoom to discuss the play and what they’re expecting to experience during this new engagement.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Liza, when I saw the play, it felt like somewhat of a response to Covid and isolation. Or am I reading too much into that?
Liza Birkenmeier: No, it certainly was post-quarantine that I was thinking about all of this stuff. I don’t think it was an accident that I wrote a response in certain ways to isolation or the pandemic, but I wasn’t consciously thinking about writing that experience. In a completely joking way, I had thought of the conceit of Grief Hotel before Covid hit, and it always felt fun and absurd and ridiculous as a concept. After that, I was really thinking about how this play was, accidentally, actually earnest and about real feelings of desire, a desire to heal, desire to do things.

Tara, what was your reaction when you first read it?
Tara Ahmedinejad: Everything about it felt so specific but open at the same time. The dialogue is so idiosyncratic and each of the characters are so specific that it felt like I knew them when I read it. But also, some of Liza’s stage directions are like “She sort of leaves.” I love the ambiguity of that. It’s intentionally vague in a way that says so much, and it immediately put me in a certain kind of headspace in thinking about it. This is a play that can be done in a million different ways, but you want to preserve some of the ambiguity. It takes a lot of precision to do that.

What does having an audience bring to this sort of piece?
Tara: Having an audience was a critical piece of the puzzle — it felt like there was a missing character or something. Some nights the audience gets it or some nights they don’t depending on the alchemy in the room, but with an audience, it feels like it’s cracked open and able to do its thing.

Liza: I’ve been so happy to be in the audience with these groups of people so far. It feels like a warm place to be. It’s kind of shocking, the parts of the play that feel uncomfortable and tricky. But we’re having enough fun that we can get through those together. Tara, I don’t know how you felt, but the first performance felt very much like SummerWorks. It felt like people who knew Clubbed Thumb were coming to have a good summer night, and that was fun. There’s a bit of a feeling of event to it. I don’t know why, but it feels like a summer event.

Tara: Yeah. I mean, the audiences are probably gonna change during this longer run now, so it will be different, and it will be a new thing for us to experience that we haven’t experienced yet. But I do think with a show like this that’s funny and dark, dealing with grief and loss, what you find some nights are the darker notes hitting more, and it has to do with who’s in the audience and how their day is going. That feeds back into the actors. It’s really interesting to see the temperature mood shifts happen.

I know awards aren’t always the most important way to quantify success in art, but as early-career theater-makers, what does an Obie for this play mean to you and your work?
Liza: I feel very happy to win something. I don’t have any complicated feelings about that. It’s a happy thing to happen and I’m so glad to have another reason to celebrate the play. To me, the specifically cool thing about the Obie is that…I don’t want to say it felt really correct. [Laughs] When people, last summer, came to the play and had a great time, I always had this thought of, “We got to show you this really delicate little balance of everything, that in some ways felt effortless and in some ways felt inevitable, but we had fun and cared so much.” It felt like the Obie acknowledged the environment and atmosphere of the play, which came from a place of ease and collaboration that I haven’t ever really known. It was affirming and celebratory.

Tara: Totally. We’re always dealing with ephemerality in theater. A SummerWorks show is a short run and we didn’t know it was going to come back. We knew it made an impact from the responses we were getting, but to have that acknowledgement months later, we definitely did not see it coming. None of us even considered that a SummerWorks show at that time of year would even be eligible for any award. So, we were very surprised, but validated. I think it made us all feel seen. It’s a meaningful award for people like Liza and me, who have been working in New York for little while. And to be part of the history of the Obies is really special.