Art Imitates Life

Whether she’s being interviewed about one of her numerous TV shows, or her role as Viv in You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World!, the question of when Alysia Reiner became environmentally aware is never far from an interviewer’s tongue. And the answer Reiner gives is never far from her mind.

“I get asked that so often and I’m always shocked by the question, because if I’m being honest, I don’t understand other people’s lack of environmental consciousness,” she said. “I don’t remember when I got interested, but I don’t remember not caring about the environment.

“I’ve educated myself more as I’ve grown. As a young person, I remember that I was deeply reverent of nature and wanting to save it. I remember being a little kid and asking, ‘Why do we waste all this water when we flush the toilet?’ I didn’t understand. But I remember being thrilled when I purchased my first house and put in double-flush toilets and low-flow showerheads.”

You know Reiner for her roles as Fig in “Orange is the New Black” (which earned her a SAG Award), as Agent Sadie Deever in the Emmy Award-winning series “Ms. Marvel,” and as Christine Erganian in the Oscar-winning movie Sideways. You may not know that Reiner is also a dedicated environmentalist whose work on that front has been featured in Vogue, Flow Space, Felix (with the cover headline, “One Fierce Woman On A Mission”), Oprah Daily and Green Living (where the cover headline read “Activism and Artistry: Alysia Reiner Inspires Change”).

When she renovated her completely green Harlem brownstone, the work was featured on “World’s Greenest Homes,” “Hallmark Home & Family,” and “Renovation Nation,” along with Gotham and The Nest magazines. Dwell Magazine chronicled the renovation in a 10-part video series and the Wall Street Journal took readers on a tour of “The Surprisingly Not Evil Home of ‘Orange is the New Black’s’ Fig.”

Reiner’s “not evil home” philosophy travels beyond her New York home. She is constantly cognizant about avoiding plastic bottles and utensils, working with re-use groups to draw awareness to how plastics are environmentally unsound. This is why Rafael Goldstein’s scene-stealing soliloquy on the futility of recycling resonated so deeply, because when it comes to personal responsibility, Reiner puts her coffee where her mouth is—literally. She won’t buy coffee unless she has her coffee mug with her. Same with water.

“Plastics are fossil fuel and the more we invest as a culture in fossil fuels, the more fuel companies are going to double-down to make us want plastics more,” she said. “They will basically message around it in the most dishonest way possible to make sure we keep on using plastics and one of those ways is by pretending they are more recyclable than they are.

“… For me, how do I live as plastic-free and a zero-waste lifestyle as I personally can? How do I compost? How do I reduce food waste? How can I use the least amount of chemicals in my home as possible?”

This is why Reiner was a natural choice to play Viv in a play centered on one family’s coping mechanisms with cancer and climate change. She was working a phone bank around last year’s election when she came to the attention of director Zi Alikhan. He texted playwright Keiko Green asking, “What about Alysia Reiner for the role of Viv?”

“They were familiar with my TV work, but it was a huge leap of faith because neither had seen me on stage,” she said. “I’m so grateful for that. More importantly, I was so, so, so deeply moved by the script that the first minute I read it, I started to cry. Even now, when I read this play, I feel like this play has everything I ever wanted in a play. It is so deeply truthful, so deeply moving and it is about extraordinarily important things about this planet.”

There’s another reason Reiner emotionally embraces You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World! A biopsychology major at Vassar, she spent a year in London just doing theatre. She followed that by cramming a year’s worth of graduate school at the National Theatre Center in Connecticut in one semester. The combination of studying theatre in London and at the NTC gave her purpose and a sense of accomplishment.

It also came with a life scare, not unlike the one her husband in You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World!, faces. When Reiner returned from a year abroad, she found out she had a tumor.

“It’s ironic, given this play. I spent a week not knowing if I had cancer,” she said. “But I did decide in that moment that I really wanted to be an actor. I said, ‘I’m going to try it. If I die tomorrow, I want to try this before I die.’ Thank God it wasn’t cancer. It fully changed my life forever.”

When you look at Reiner’s life and career through that prism, you can’t help thinking how fortuitous it was to have her playing a key role in a play about cancer and climate change—and doing so while doing her part trying to save the planet.

“I don’t know how to judge my own impact,” she said. “… I’m powerless over what corporations do, but on a daily basis, I get to choose who I am and who am I being? That’s the most interesting question of all. What story am I telling with my own life?

“That’s why, again, I love this play.”