Mor Cohen Dreams of Chaos
Award-winning actor and filmmaker Mor Cohen on accepting and embracing the inherent chaos of our lives and selves.
Dreams of Chaos is a series of Q&As with folks who are engaging with chaos in their work. Sometimes that means they love the chaos and use it as an engine for creativity. Sometimes it means they struggle with the chaos and are trying to harness it in whatever way they can. I’m interested in the ways in which we, as people, acknowledge the messiness of living in the world. And I’m excited to share conversations with those are thinking about this as well.
Shortly after my wife and I moved to Bed-Stuy, I started booking and producing a series of concerts at a local, now defunct, coffee shop called Kava Shteeble. Kava, as everyone called it, was more than a coffee shop—it was a neighborhood institution, where folks from all walks of life would come together to spend a day, chat with neighbors, meet new friends, whatever. The owner, Yidy, was open to all event ideas. Music night, comedy night, art auctions, fundraisers, you name it. That open energy led folks to become spontaneous friends with the person at the table next to them, to pitch in at closing or during a rush, to pay for someone else’s coffee.
I met Mor Cohen at the first ever Kava Musik night, a packed house of neighbors and cheap beer and indie rock. We immediately clicked. She had this look in her eye, something between determination and a fun-loving sparkle; it made me stop for a moment amid the hubbub of noise and drink orders.
That night at the café, she’d just moved to the Big Apple with no contacts and a lot of ideas about being an actor. Hah! Her and a zillion other people. But Mor is not a zillion other people. She’s a creative powerhouse with a vigorous energy who’s very serious about her work—she doesn’t half-ass anything—and is somehow also hilarious, with one of the best laughs out there and a quirky-nerdy-cool sense of humor.
I’m overjoyed to bring you our chat about the inherent chaos of being an actor, living with the ghosts of your characters in you, and why we don’t need to fix our neurodivergent selves.
Were you always a theater kid, or did you come to acting later in life?
You know, I've been acting on and off since I was nine. And I'm the kind of person who will get really interested in a thing and then kind of drop it after a year or two, but acting is the one thing I kept coming back to. I went to both junior high and high schools with really good arts programs, I worked on both amateur and professional projects, but I kept wondering, is this the path? What's happening? I remember being afraid of becoming a working actor, of whether it was even possible.
In the army, I worked as a psychotechnical interviewer. Essentially, this meant I was making basic personality assessments of teens who were being sorted for enlistment into the army. It's really crazy to think I was 18 and evaluating 17 year olds, but it really is a very basic assessment. If I spotted anything major, I sent them to see a psychologist. Basically, it's a way to ensure only those who can handle combat duty and up in a combat unit.
Turns out, I was really good at it, and that threw me into a crazy spiral of asking myself, do I have to act? Is this what I want to do? It was a weird year. I was on the fence for a while. But every time I would make the decision to stop being an actor, or say, "Enough, this is a hobby, I shouldn't be doing it," I would get a call from someone with a new project or role. It was small stuff, but still, every time I decided to quit, somehow acting was there.
I was in my early 20s, and those are the years when you decide who you are, what kind of person you're going to be, what you want to do. Not just professionally, but what kind of life you're creating here. What am I? What am I here for?
So, little questions. Have you figured out any of those answers?
Well, around that time, I moved to Paris with a gig that was related to a film I was working on. It wasn't an acting gig, more generally related to the production, and it was the best job I’d ever had in my life. I loved my employers, they loved me, I loved living in Paris, I had so much fun, I got paid well—I was just thriving. I did that job for about two years, but towards the end of it I started feeling an itch, like something was bubbling inside me. I wasn't sure what it was, but I decided to follow it. So, I sent a monologue to this acting competition and I won a partial scholarship for a summer intensive in New York. That was the first time I’d interacted with acting at such a serious level, and I was suddenly so alive. That’s when I understood this was something I needed to do.
At the time, I only had an Israeli passport. But I decided to spend a year in New York, on an artist visa, knowing that this specific visa would not let me work at anything but acting. It felt crazy, but I knew the only way I’d be able to actually commit myself fully to just this path would be with an external limitation. No security of a day job, something to lean on in case acting doesn't work. I'm making the decision: acting is the path. And I’ve been at it ever since.
Sounds scary as hell.
Yeah, it was a scary decision, but also like the most exciting one. And yeah, I feel like when I'm given a structure or a limitation, I really thrive within it. And I feel like that decision to give myself a limit really worked out. It just cut away so much of the bullshit.
So, let’s talk chaos. Is there something inherently chaotic about being an actor?
Yeah, 100%. And it will never stop. Acting is always a profession where you're either going to have a lot of work or none. You never know when the next role is going to come because you never know what's out there. And today, actors are also kind of our own casting directors. We have to do a lot more production work on our own at home, recording auditions and stuff like that, and a lot of actors who want to break through often also write for themselves or produce something they also act in. I think the most chaotic part about being an actor is that there's no stability, no routine. And whenever you do create a daily routine that works for you, you find yourself on set for a week and you don't own your life anymore.
Sheesh.
Yeah. And there's also a psychological chaos to it, too. I remember my first leading role in a short film, this really troubled and anxious character, and I really let her enter my psyche. Anything I did, whether it was making eggs or lying down to sleep, I thought, "The character would do it this way." It was almost as though I had a ghost person who was just present everywhere with me.
When you’re working on a project, you really have that person in your system, you have them in you. They embody you for a time. Then someone says, "Okay, that's a wrap," and you're left with a shadow, followed by a character. It's hard.
It's almost like you have to kill your best friend. This character was with you all the time, was a part of you, and you know them to their core. And you love them. You found so many beautiful things that they do or think or say even if it's not in the script. And now they're just going to fade away. The only thing that matters is what's left on screen. When I was younger, I would get more emotionally attached to my characters. Now I think I've kind of learned to hug them goodbye. But it's still weird.
Sounds weird! So, speaking of having voices in your head, you and I have talked a lot about ADHD. I know you’re thinking about whether you might have it or not and am wondering—how has learning about ADHD impacted your understanding of the role of chaos in your life?
Learning about ADHD definitely had a big impact, mostly in the form of acceptance of the chaos as something to go with rather than hide, judge, or try to fix. So, just to clarify, I’m currently seeking an official diagnosis, but before understanding that what I’m dealing with are probably ADD/ADHD symptoms, I thought something was kind of broken in me. I was always a straight A student, never seemed to have any problem functioning under pressure, and never missed a deadline (though I was always cutting it close). I was a multitasker to the core. My brother was diagnosed with ADHD when we were kids and he was the complete opposite. No one (including me) ever thought I was struggling at school, and I really wasn’t, but there was definitely this underlying anxiety and pressure to perform that I thought was just a part of life. Just who I am. I was able to keep that high functionality going far into my twenties, and I never even thought to seek a diagnosis until recently, when the industry switched to self-taped audition (a blessed move that I hope will never be reversed) and I started working primarily from home.
The lack of a set structure to my day cut my productivity in half, I was over-occupied with basic decision-making, and everything that worked for me before just… stopped working. The more I learned about ADHD the more I realized my day is colored with literally every symptom in the book. Looking back at when I felt more "productive,” I think I had a sense of urgency to prove something to the world, and that pressure may have been what allowed me to, ironically, function better. The decline in functionality was alarming and very frustrating to me, but of course, that amount of stress is not healthy and could not last.
The chaos that comes with the profession I chose, with being a freelance artist, and with having any sort of neurodiversity while trying to function in a neurotypical world is overwhelming at times, but embracing it and learning to work with it rather than against it has strangely brought a lot of peace into my life. Are things perfect now? No. I think I’m beginning to accept they never will be. But there’s definitely less self-judgment and less guilt in my life today. And that’s a really good start.
Mor Cohen is an award-winning Israeli actress and filmmaker based in Austin, TX. As an immigrant creative living in the U.S., her work naturally revolves around the concept of identity and explores the mental, emotional, and psychological struggles her generation faces as the fragile infrastructure of society crumbles under their feet. Her work has been exhibited around the world and is meant to inspire thought and reflection while bringing societal and environmental injustice to the forefront. She has over 10 years of experience in creating innovative, high-quality, and effective content for stage and screen, and a natural knack for production and storytelling. She believes that progress is inevitable and it is our responsibility as artists to shape a future that is both beautiful and just.
On screen, Mor can be seen in Natalie Portman’s A Tale of Love and Darkness, Noam Argov’s Sulam (The Ladder), and A.K. Espada’s Sundance Institute-supported and award-winning short film This Is Our Home. Her productorial credits include the Off-Broadway production Scoop, the German-American co-production Klaviermann, and multiple award-winning short films The New Galileos and Over the Wall, in which she also starred.