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1100 Playwright Interviews

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May 31, 2010

I Interview Playwrights Part 184: Lee Blessing



Lee Blessing

Hometown:   Minneapolis.

Current Town: Brooklyn.


Q:  Tell me about When We Go Upon The Sea.

A:  When We Go Upon the Sea is a funny play about shame. It's set slightly in the future, on the night before George W. Bush goes on trial in The Hague for acts committed while he was the President. So it's speculative as well, of course. It doesn't suggest that anything like this will happen necessarily, but it helps us contemplate our own impulses to punish the man we twice elected to lead our nation. Oh--and it's a party as well. So bring your party hats.


Q:  What else are you working on?

A:   I'm working on a couple of plays. Private projects. Also a spec screenplay. Nothing I can talk about at the moment--or ever sell, probably.


Q:  You are the head of the Rutgers Grad Playwriting Program.  What can a playwright who gets into that program expect?

A:   They can expect what incoming MFA playwriting candidates generally can expect: a chance to work for three years in a concentrated way on their writing. They'll be working very directly with me, so that's something they have to know they want to do. At Mason Gross School of the Arts, they also can expect three productions in three years, the final one a full production on the Rutgers mainstage--that's a very distinctive feature of our particular program.


Q:  According to Wikipedia, you are married to Melanie Marnich.  I am also married to another playwright.  Do you have any advice for playwright couples?

A:  Don't write together. Unless you do write together. If you do happen to marry another playwright, make sure they're as astoundingly talented as Melanie. It makes life much easier. Oh, and Wikipedia? It's never wrong.
 Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A:   More space between the seats. Oh, and theatres which commission plays in order to actually produce them (as opposed to theatres which commission plays just to look good on grant reports).


Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:   I don't think of theatrical types as heroes. I prefer to think of them as unsettling.


Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:   Theatre which can genuinely make me think and feel--which is to say, theatre which most audiences find off-putting.


Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A:   Write a hit play that helps you get into television. Stay in television if you can. But if you must keep writing plays, write with far more ambition than your audience typically has. Write characters who are at least as smart as you are. Never have a character make a dumb decision (i.e., one that you wouldn't make) just to further your plot. Don't write passive central characters. That about covers it.


Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  No plugs, just outlets.

May 30, 2010

I interview Playwrights Part 183: Joshua James



Joshua James

Hometown: Farnhamville, Iowa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnhamville,_Iowa

Current Town: New York City (specifically, Astoria, Queens: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astoria,_Queens)

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I've recently completed a screenplay called A BLACK HEART, an action thriller, which is being handled by Bunce Media and Captivate Entertainment. I'm thrilled, I'm very proud of the script and they're great people to work with.

Currently I'm working on a new screenplay, another action thriller, don't know if I can describe it as of yet because I'm still in rough draft mode and discovering things, but I'm really having fun with it.

Q:  How do you approach writing a film as opposed to writing a play?

A:  Hmm, Well, this could be tricky to answer, heheheh ... bear in mind I consider myself still a student and still learning about both ... but I guess I'd say that when you prepare to write a film you need to know who your audience is for it beforehand, at least the genre of films that I write.

With a play, you can just write what you think might be cool and if other people dig it, then they try to find an audience for it (at least, that's how theatre used to be, when I started as a playwright) ... the business of film is such that, it's kind of hard to do that (though not impossible), especially with the costs involved in making a movie. It's smart to know exactly what audience you're aiming for when writing a film, I think.

I'd say that the other thing is that there is also a very specific set of expectations with regard to screenplays, especially with certain genres ... with a play, I can write as much or as little as I want, no second act, no other characters, it doesn't even have to be logical, the only thing that will matter is whether or not someone will be willing to sit through it ... in other words, zero expectations beyond DON'T BE BORING, with a play.

With a film of course it's important that it not be boring, but it's also very different, there's a very specific set of expectations not only from the people who buy and make movies, but from the millions of people who watch them every day ... you know?

I mean, movies permeate all our lives in a very different way from theatre, nearly everyone you know sees multiple movies per week, on DVD or on TV or in the cinema ... Even someone not in the profession, it's not usual for them to see three to five movies a week. Whereas most of us may see one play a week, if that, a truck driver in Iowa will see many more movies than that in a week, just for fun.

That kind of familiarity creates a set of expectations that a writer has to acknowledge and deal with, in one fashion or another, and it gets even more complicated when you talk about genres and the like.

The expectations for what a movie is, and can be, or should be, while in screenplay form, is a matter of significant consideration for those who make movies, which is understandable because movies cost millions of dollars to make. Even indie films have their own expectations for what they're meant to be.

I know some writers find those expectations limiting, but what is exciting is when someone is somehow able to transcend those expectations, that's kind of what I love about movies. I don't find them limiting, it's a form that can be very freeing, in its way.

I guess I consider film scripts to be very much like haikus, but rather than working with three lines consisting of five, seven and five syllables, you're working with three acts consisting of 25, 55, and 25 pages apiece ... and the goal, like in a haiku, is to be as emotionally complex and moving in as few words as possible. That's what's really awesome about movies, when you think about it.

Plays can do that as well, of course. But they also don't have to, and that's kind of what's awesome about plays. They can be, quite literally, anything you want them to be.

Q:  Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A:  When my brother and I were tow-headed youngsters with scabs on our elbows, we'd get on our bicycles, peddle like mad down this broken sidewalk and reenact the opening sequence of the show THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, which is, for those who haven't seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HofoK_QQxGc

We'd peddle furiously and do Steve Austin's lines from the opening:

"I got a blowout, pare for three!"

"The pitch is out, I can't hold altitude!"

"I can't hold her, she's breaking up, she's breaking up!"

And then we'd deliberately CRASH our bikes off the sidewalk into someone's lawn.

We'd do this again and again, and invariably some adult would see this and go, "You kids are gonna hurt yourself, you keep that up."

And we'd reply, "But this is how Steve Austin became the Six Million Dollar Man!"

I think that speaks to much of what I do now, heheheh.

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A:  I guess I'd have to echo the answer I'm sure you've heard from many of our peers, which is that the artists, specifically the writers, need to be paid on a level equal to the other craftspeople in the industry ... they need to be compensated for their work, or the business is going to continue to lose them to other mediums.

Sam Shepard has said, "You can't make a living as a playwright, you can just barely scrape by" and brother, he knew what he was talking about. It's pretty ridiculous, and I don't know what the answer is, whether it means playwrights need a union or what, but it's a very specific reason why so many playwrights immediately write for film and TV when they can ... to make a living.

I mean, I love movies, I love writing them, too, in my heart I'm a movie geek, so for me it's a dream come true to be able to do that kind of work ... I also love writing plays, theatre is the most fun a person can have with their pants on, but I have a son now and I want to be able to feed him, so ... you know. When he was born, I made a specific choice on what my career focus was going to be from there on.

People seem to forget that Jonathon Larson, author of RENT, lived in poverty for years, he lived in an apartment without heat for ten years, worked a waiter and had shows go up, there were multiple workshops of RENT for a couple years where the actors got paid, the designers got paid, the SMs got paid and you know the rent of the theatre was paid, but he wasn't paid, and he complained about it (according to what I've read) and was told this is how it works, he'll make money when the show hits big ... if I recall correctly, Larson got a grant a couple months before the show opened and only then was he able to quit his job as a waiter (in Oct or Nov) before the Jan opening of the show and, as everyone knows, he died before the opening, died of something that could have been caught and cured, had he insurance and not needed to depend on ER for health care.

He died and then made millions for others, but I'm sure if he'd at least been able to make a living wage like the other artists, it may have been different.

It's more than sad, it's maddening. And what's ridiculous is the looks a playwright gets when you complain about stuff like this, like we should feel grateful they're even doing our work for free!

I had a show done where they were only gonna pay me hundred bucks for the whole run, even tho' the actors were collecting union scale, and then the theatre didn't even pay me the hundred they owed me - LOL!

Really, it's the one thing I'd change, not only for the industry (who loses great writers to film, TV and comic books) but for the writers themselves, there are playwrights I know who are only happy writing plays, that's all they want to do, that's all that turns them on, they're not into movies and don't watch TV, they're only happy writing plays ... I think they should be able to make a living at it, if they so choose, and not have to teach or write TV to make a living if they don't wish to ...

It makes me realize how lucky I am that I love to write different stories in different mediums, I love movies, I love TV, I love books, theatre, I love it all and I'm fortunate for that.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Well, here are a few ... Charles Schutz. Creator of good Ole' Charlie Brown. I didn't have real theatre, where I lived, growing up, and my first, great influence was Charles Schutz. He was a master, he truly was, I wrote more about it here: http://writerjoshuajames.com/dailydojo/?p=487

My brother and I devoured Peanuts comics growing up. Everything a person needs to know about writing grand epic tragedy for the people in as few words as possible, you can learn from Charlie Brown.

John Hughes ... again, the bard of puberty, The Breakfast Club was a huge influence on me, and still is, and what's interesting is that it is such a great movie that is so NOT like a movie, a film like this wouldn't get made today, it's five kids in ONE ROOM, it's R-rated and NO NUDITY, it's five people talking for two hours ... I mean, it's basically a play!

Sam Shepard ... hard to be a theatre major and not be influenced by him, he's a rock star, and the thing I remember, when I got to college and started reading him, is that he totally upended what I thought theatre was, he wasn't writing drawing room satires, after all, I remember reading SAVAGE LOVE and being utterly blown away, thinking, "you can actually DO this in theatre? How cool!"

Anne Bogart ... I know you hear a lot about her, from others, but she changed my life, she came to Iowa during my grad years and I did a week long seminar and it literally changed my life ... I believe I am a writer now because I met her, there's just something about that work that again made me realize, "you can DO THIS in theatre? HOW COOL!" I later took an internship with her, it's how I ended up in New York City.

So ironic, because she's really (at least then) not that interested in story or acting, she's more interested in sound and movement, and lights, and events ... but it somehow just rang a bell with me. She's pretty cool, there's a reason so many love her.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Lots of kinds, but I guess if I had to pick (and that's what you're asking, after all) I really, really like plays that explore language, I really do ...

Amy Tan (the novelist) told Stephen King that, while doing book tours, she gets sad because "Nobody asks me about the language" and I totally got that, language is important, the words and how they're strung together, in unique and fascinating ways, I really love that ... I remember the first time I saw my friend Naomi's play IN THE HEART OF AMERICA which is a rocking piece that more folks should know about, it does things that you can only do in theatre (it has the past, present and future on stage all at once) but even more moving was the language (Naomi is a poet, after all).

Paula Vogel has her own language, Kushner, Shepard, Brecht. There's a bunch of writers who do that, I remember seeing a one act by Sheila Callaghan some years back called HE ATE THE SUN that just blew me away, I really dug it, I felt I could feel the language like it was a real thing, heavy, in the air. Things like that, they're exciting.

Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A:  Don't write plays as filler when you really want to write something else ... write plays cause you love 'em. Know your voice and don't abuse it or allow others to abuse it.

Be humble, but at the same time, don't be afraid to walk away from a bad director, a bad theatre, a bad show or group who doesn't appreciate the work ... you can always premiere later, but you can only do it once.

As my very wise manager has told me, there's no such thing as a "good bad deal" ... bad deals are bad deals, whether with friends or strangers. I've found him to be exactly right on this time and time again. Protect yourself, as humbly as you can.

Have something that you value in life other than the work, whether friends or family or meditation or yoga, your self-worth should not and cannot be linked only to what you do for a living ... it's not healthy.

I have great friends and peers, a cool dojo to train in, a wonderful wife and a truly awesome son who help me to appreciate how lucky I am, no matter what I write. Your writing should be an important part of your life, but not the only one.

The title of Gale Sayers's book was I AM THIRD ... he said it called it that because:

God comes first.
My family comes second.
I am third.

I am a Buddhist and therefore don't believe in God, but I've long admired the above saying and think it very wise in its humility.

And let's face it, Brian's Song is a fantastic movie.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My short plays THE PAP and F*CK YOU! open at City Theatre in Miami in a few days, link here: http://www.citytheatre.com/ It's their world premiere.

I have a collection being published by Original Works coming out soon: http://www.originalworksonline.com/

It will be titled The THE Plays, and it features my plays:

The Danger
The Fight
The Itch
The Pap
The Race
The Viewing

Also, I did the screen adaptation of Peter Biskind's DOWN AND DIRTY PICTURES which is in pre-production now, with Vincent D'Onofrio, Matthew Perry, Hugh Dancy, Andy Serkis, Sally Hawkins, Toby Jones, Bobby Carnnavale and many others, directed by the awesome Ken Bowser, so when it comes out I hope you go see it, it's gonna be great.

More info at my site: www.writerjoshuajames.com

In addition, I'd also like to point those who are interested in more screenwriting information over to my good friend Scott Myers, who created www.gointothestory.com, what I consider to be the best screenwriting resource there is online. And Scott's a great guy, to boot. I've learned a much from him.

May 29, 2010

I Interview Playwrights Part 182: Chisa Hutchinson

Chisa Hutchinson

Hometown: Newark, NJ

Current Town: Maplewood, NJ

Q:  Tell me please about about the Lily you just won. What is a Lily? What did you win it for?

A:  The Lilly is the beautiful brainchild of some really smart, really serious theater folks who were pissed at the conspicuous lack of recognition of women's accomplishments in the theater (specifically by the Tony committee). They were like, "That's bullshit. We should do something about it." And they did. And it was good. When Gloria-effing-Steinem does your invocation, you know it's good. I got the Lilly for "Outstanding Playwright at the Beginning of Her Career" for two plays I had produced last season, DIRT RICH (City Parks Foundation) and SHE LIKE GIRLS (Working Man's Clothes Productions). Both are about young, inner-city folks dealing with stuff no one should have to deal with, so the award honors them, too. AND I got to sit on stage with the big girls. Hell yeah.

Q:  You're reading something at the BE company's live reading series. Can you tell me what you're sharing?

A:  At tonight's BEginnings, I'm going to be reading some prose, for a change. Deep in the dusty archives of every playwright's laptop is a manuscript for a novel that she sent out like, twice and then shelved. Yeah. That's what this is from. It's called DISMISSED and it's about a scholarship kid's initially soul-crushing but ultimately reinforcing adventures at a swanky private school. Yeah. I seem to really dig writing about kids from the hood. Still processing my own shit, I guess.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:   Right now I'm working on two collaborative projects and ruminating on one independent one. 7 SINS IN 60 MINUTES (which kind of is what it sounds like) is a project I'm doing with six other writers. Each of us tackles one sin (I got "Lust"...mmhmm) and use the same four characters to weave our stories together. It's getting done at HERE this summer, Philly Fringe, and Edinburgh. Next is A GRIMM REALITY, a gritty, NYC adaptation of some of Grimms' fairytales by four writers. That goes up in Bryant Park the last two Saturdays in July and the first two in August. So stoked for that. When I'm in a good place with those, I can finally focus on this new thing I'm rearing to get at, a music theater piece for kids called TUNDE'S TRUMPET. Two words: Bunraku. Puppets. It's gonna be very different from anything I've ever tried, formwise, but I am so game.

Q:  Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A:  I went to a private, all-girls high school where there was (along with a dance studio, a field house, and a theater) an art gallery that displayed the work of famous, working artists. Once, it displayed the work of a photographer who took pictures of people living in sub-standard housing. I will never forget staring at one photo of a woman (who looked like she could've been my mama) sitting next to a giant hole in the wall, and hearing a girl behind me go, "Ew! Why doesn't she just get that fixed?" I was like, For real? You're that ignorant? I took it as a personal challenge to make those like me and my mama and the woman in the photo and anyone else who isn't readily visible... more visible. And that's why I write plays.

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A:   The obvious answer to this would be I'd make it so that all theater artists could make a decent living doing what we love, but then who knows how much we would love it? Frank McCourt once said of all the hardships he endured as a kid, "My life saved my life." Right on. Where would we be if we didn't have anything to rage against? If we lived easy lives? I'll tell you where. Sitting in a Park Avenue co-op with a severe case of writer's block and an unhealthy penchant for scrapbooks. That's where.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Theater Heroes: Lorraine Hansberry, August Wilson, Tina Howe, Paula Vogel, Janet Neipris, Rinne Groff, Lynn Nottage, Diana Son, Melinda Lopez, Radha Blank, Lucy Thurber, Tony Kushner, Suzan-Lori Parks, anyone who has ever written a play about someone very different from themselves like Young Jean Lee and John Guare...soooooo many!

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  As I'm constantly surprised at the kind of theater that excites me, I'll just tell you what kind of theater doesn't excite me. I don't like self-indulgent theater or theater that fails to invite its audience into it. I am bored by theater that feels like a sitcom on stage. And I'd rather read a dictionary than see a play that's all head and no heart, all intellect and no emotion.

Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A:  GET AWAY FROM YOUR DESK. Everyone else is going to tell you to keep writing, keep writing, keep writing, and that's fine. You should do that. But you should also go out, see shows, get drunk, embarrass yourself by doing something unseemly on a subway, see more shows, meet people, support your writer peers. I'm serious. Two reasons: 1.) Good material. You gotta live life to write about it. No output without input, y'all. 2.) People will see your face. For years, I underestimated how important it is to actually be in a room with people you're sending scripts to or directors you've been yearning to work with. Better for you when they can put a face to the name. Which makes sense because hey, they need to know that they want to work with YOU AND your play, right?

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Plugs! Yes! Okay, obviously anything the BE Company does: http://www.theBEcompany.org. They just blow my mind with the quality of writers and actors they snag. The Lark Play Development Center is a must for ANY playwright or any producer looking for the next hot thing: www.larktheatre.org. If you go to their presentation of David Henry Hwang's CHINGLISH there on June 10th, you'll see me. If you don't know about the NeoFuturists, check'em out: www.nynf.org . Amazing shows at the Kraine Theater every Friday and Saturday. And THEY know how to invite an audience into a show. Ooo! And hit the parks this summer! Summer Stage (run by City Parks Foundation) has a LOT of good stuff going on, including plays by my girls, Radha Blank (AMERICAN SCHEMES) and Zakiyyah Alexander (ETYMOLOGY OF A BIRD): www.cityparksfoundation.com. If you're suffering from Recessionitis like I am, you'll be happy to know it's all FREE. Yes.

May 28, 2010

I Interview Playwrights Part 181: Rob Ackerman



Rob Ackerman

Hometown: Columbus, Ohio.

Current Town: Upper West Side, Manhattan

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  A short play called RAW HEAT, a new musical called VOLLEYGIRLS, and a dramatic memoir called THROWING GUMBALLS. Just finished a new draft of CALL ME WALDO, a play about an electrician who becomes possessed by the spirit of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Q:  Can you talk about dropping gumballs on Luke Wilson?

A:  It's one of things I had to do at work this year. I earn a living as a union prop master, a film craftsman, and I devote many hours to TV commercials. It’s a good job. I like the crew people, and the work is intense yet sporadic, so it allows me time to write. This year AT&T made a whole series of commercials, and for one of them, my colleague Paul Kineke and I had to drop hundreds of big red gumballs onto Luke Wilson, again and again. We do that sort of thing all the time, but this job grew into a play. Plays are just transmuted pain.

Q:  Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A:  When I was four years old, all I wanted for my birthday was a Flintstones lunchbox, and I insisted that I wanted that and only that, nothing else, just the lunchbox. I was too young to go to school, so the Flintstones lunchbox would serve no purpose whatsoever. I knew the classic stamped steel container would include a little themos for beverages tucked beneath a spring-loaded clip. That was cool.

When my birthday came and there was only one gift, it turned out to be a Flintstones lunchbox, and I was astonished. Couldn't believe it. Hadn't thought it was possible. My mom made a sandwich and poured milk into the thermos, and I took the lunchbox into the dining room, sat on the floor, and feasted alone beneath the table, studying cartoon artwork. I was impossibly happy.

For me, having a career in theatre is like getting that lunchbox. I really hoped it was possible, but never thought I could be so lucky. I’m still amazed and grateful.

Q;  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  The first great stage production I saw was Shakespeare's AS YOU LIKE IT in Stratford, Ontario, with Maggie Smith and Brian Bedford. I had no idea theatre could be that good. My first acting opportunity was in A THURBER CARNIVAL. I had no idea writing could be that good.

I played Tobias in A DELICATE BALANCE, which taught me the wonder of Albee. Helped build sets for Steven Sondhiem’s COMPANY and learned every crystalline lyric and melodic line. Got to play the boy opposite Amanda Plummer in THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED by Tennessee Williams, an indelible experience. Directed THE LEARNED LADIES, which proved to me that Moliere ranks among the greatest dramatic craftsmen ever, along with Noel Coward, who took a few pages from his playbook. Staged THE GONDOLIERS, a lucky way to appreciate the art of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Then, when I saw A.R. Gurney's THE DINING ROOM, it felt like it had been written specifically for and about me. Pete Gurney later became my mentor and friend, and that’s a blessing I still can hardly fathom. When I first heard a snippet of Theresa Rebeck's THE WATER'S EDGE in a workshop at the Lark, I had that same feeling of falling in love. Theresa’s generosity has helped keep me afloat for years. I have a lot of heroes.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I'm thrilled by the ineffable-- Lindsay Kemp, Andre Gregory, Mary Zimmerman, Simon McBurney, Julie Taymor. They’ve all created works of genius that I'll never forget. The production of LONG DAY’S JOURNEY with Robert Sean Leonard. THE SEAGULL with Kristin Scott Thomas, HEDDA GABLER with Kate Burton in the wake of 9/11. Lois Smith in A TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL. Lin Manuel Miranda in IN THE HEIGHTS. When theatre is at its best, there’s nothing better.

Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A:  Love and you shall be loved. Emerson said that. He was right. You have to be willing to give yourself over to plays if you want people to do the same for you. Go to plays, and read plays, lots of plays. The other day, I heard Bill Clinton give a speech to graduating seniors. He told them that critics mauled Washington and Lincoln in their times, and nobody remembers the naysayers. They remember builders, people who took risks and dared to do difficult things. Nothing's more difficult than writing a play. You're gonna crash and burn again and again. Might as well get started.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Flux Theatre Ensemble. That's where I first met you, Adam. Your writing blew me away. And you didn't want to hear how moved I was by your words, but I freaking forced you to listen. Flux Artistic Director, Gus Schulenberg, is a god on earth. He's also a great curator of new work. That's why he picked your play, PRETTY THEFT. Gus and Flux rescued me from the scrap heap. I'm forever in their debt.

The Lark Play Development Center. John Eisner and his beautiful company have supported me, year after year, play after play, regardless of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

The Working Theater. Mark Plesent has the perfect surname-- he's a great gentleman of theater-- and he and Robert Arcaro and Connie Grappo have pursued a noble mission for 25 years. Love them all.

Craig Slaight and ACT in San Francisco-- the only theatre that's given me a paid commission, and it meant the world.

Hal Prince, my first boss in NYC. The man is still a beacon.

May 27, 2010

I Interview Playwrights Part 180: Janine Nabers



Janine Nabers

Hometown:  Houston, Texas

Current Town:  New York, NY

Q:  Tell me about Welcome to Jesus.

A:  WELCOME TO JESUS was developed during the 2009/2010 Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab series. I started writing the play in October of last year and finished it this spring. My director was the incomparable Adam Greenfield (Most of you may know him as the literary manager at Playwrights Horizons). Working with him is pretty amazing. He’s like a dramaturgical jedi.

The play is a dark and epic story of a football-crazed town in Texas that begins to fall apart after a mysterious murder that causes some people in the town to lose their faith. The fictional town is located in the Bible Belt of Texas... A lot of people say the play reminds them of “Friday Night Lights” meeting “Twin Peaks” or a really twisted version of “The Blind Side.” I haven’t watched any of these things but if the story rings true and weird to people who have then that’s fine with me. My main influence when writing the play was “Our Town.”

I rewrote the majority of the play while in residency at the Sundance Writers' Retreat @ UCross earlier this year before bringing it back to NYC for the lab.

The reading went really well. I’m kinda freaked out by how well it went. Right now I’m just rewriting and will hopefully hear it read aloud again in the near future.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  ANNIE BOSH IS MISSING is another play that I’m currently working on. The story centers around a biracial girl who returns home to Houston after a stint in rehab right as Hurricane Katrina hits the ground in Louisiana. It’s a play about an unstable girl who’s searching for connection in a once familiar place that’s now chaotic and unsafe.

I started writing the play with Ars Nova last fall and finished it at the MacDowell Colony this March. It’s currently nominated for the Cherry Lane Mentor Project.

In addition, there are plans for a professional reading of it this fall.

I’m also working on the very beginning stages of a musical. And finishing a TV pilot.

Q:  Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A:  When I was 10 years old I was obsessed with the fastest woman in the world (Jackie Joyner-Kersee). I wrote her a letter telling her I wanted to one day run in the Olympics. Joyner-Kersee liked my letter so much she called me and told me that if I never made it to the Olympics I should consider becoming a writer.

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A;  I think it would be amazing if there were therapy group sessions for playwrights. Free cheese, wine and a big circle. Each meeting would be a new topic of theatre discussion and we could all share our fears and wants and in the end work towards a solution.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: 
Anton Chekhov.
William Inge.
Alex Haley.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Right now I’m excited by NEW PLAYS. I’m currently in three writers' groups and the plays that these people are writing blow my mind. I mean…damn. I’m excited by the originality of every piece and the voices of writers that are screaming so loud it will knock your socks off once you hear their latest stuff. Writers like: Matthew Lopez, Branden Jacob-Jenkins, Erica Lipez, Annie Baker, Bekah Brunstetter, Liz Flahive, Amy Herzog, Kate E. Ryan, Andrew Rosendorf, Gabe McKinley, and Victor Lesniewski.

All of these writers are insanely talented and I can guarantee you their best plays aren’t even finished yet. I’m excited by their potential.

Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A:  - Don’t be afraid to ask other theatre professionals questions.

- If you find out about fellowship/grant/writers' group submissions tell your playwright friends about it. Help one another out. Don’t be competitive when it comes to things like that. Trust that your work will speak for itself and you’ll get whatever it is you’re applying for.

- Try to out do yourself with each new play you write.

Q:  Plugs, please:

Matthew Lopez's play THE WHIPPING MAN is currently playing May 26-June 13th here:
http://www.barringtonstageco.org/currentseason/index-detail.php?record=84

Branden Jacob-Jenkins adaptation of the OCTOROON is at PS122 from June-July here:
http://www.ps122.org/performances/the_octoroon.html

Kate E. Ryan's play DOT at the Ohio Theatre here:
www.clubbedthumb.org

Victor Lesniewski's CONSPIRACY: A LOVE STORY (a musical comedy) will be produced at the Midtown International Theatre Festival July 14th-21st here:
https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/740895

May 26, 2010

I Interview Playwrights Part 179: Cory Hinkle


Cory Hinkle

Hometown: Bartlesville, Oklahoma

Current Town: Minneapolis, MN

Q:  What are you working on now?


A:  I’m writing a solo piece for a Minneapolis actor, Terry Hempleman. Terry’s the kind of actor that can say almost anything onstage and the audience will still like him, which works perfectly for the character I’m creating. He’s a disgruntled American loosely inspired by the tea partiers and also a bit by Dostoyevsky’s Man from Underground.


I’ve been fascinated by the tea party movement if for no other reason than a lot of my family is very much involved. I’m interested in exploring the kind of paranoia that seems to have taken hold of so much of the “real America.” I’m also interested in writing a play from a more right-leaning perspective because I think this may actually be a play that provokes an American theater audience. I’ve read a stack of solo plays in preparation, so I feel I should know what I’m doing with the form but still it’s really challenging, but helps to have an actor in mind.


I’m also re-writing my play The Killing of Michael X, A New Film by Celia Wallace, which will be in this year’s Bay Area Playwrights Festival. It’s a play about grief and one young girl’s ability to deal with the loss of her brother only by seeing his death through the lense of the film she plans to make about him. The problem is she can’t start the film, so she can only imagine the film she might make, which the play becomes.

Q:  How would you characterize the Minneapolis theater scene?

A:  The exciting thing is there are some really talented people here and some good small theater companies – Ten Thousand Things, Walking Shadow Theater, Workhaus Collective, Red Eye, Bedlam, Open Eye Figure Theater, and a few others. There are also some good physical theater companies and devisors who are carrying on the work Jeune Lune was doing for 25 years like Jon Ferguson Theater and Live Action Set. Also, the Jeune Lune artists are still doing really exciting work.


And the presence of the Playwrights’ Center for so many years has created a community of actors that are very good with new plays. The one real negative about the Twin Cities is that even with so many playwrights here and so many new plays there are only a slim number of quality productions by the larger or mid-sized companies. You pretty much have to do it yourself, or very occasionally one of the larger theaters does a new play. That part is disappointing, but it might be changing. Smaller companies are doing a lot more quality new work now than when I first moved here so maybe the larger theaters will catch on, or maybe the smaller companies will take over.

Q:  Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A:  My dad grew up on a farm, but moved to the “big city,” (Bartlesville, OK, a town of 35,000) after my parents got married and when I was young (usually on a Sunday) he would say “you wanna drive up to Cow Town?” which was his name for Copan, OK (pop. 560) the little town where he grew up. And we would drive up there and go from farm to farm and talk to whoever happened to be around. I was a quiet kid and would watch these strange, grizzled farmers (the kind of farmers who probably don’t even exist anymore) talk about all sorts of things. My dad grew up there and was just as interested in how different they were from our regular lives just half and hour away. It’s a long road from Sunday drives with my dad to writing plays, but they’re connected – I learned early to watch for the idiosyncratic in other people.

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A:  More artists on the payrolls. If an Artistic Director is going to get a salary of over 600,000 dollars (like one of our large theaters here in Minnesota) there should be artists on the payroll, all year round.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Beckett, Tennessee Williams, Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, Shepard, Fornes, Len Jenkin. Recently, I discovered Bernard Marie Koltes and was blown away (Battle of Blacks and Dogs is one of my new favorite plays).

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Workhaus collaborated on a play this year called Fissures (lost and found) and the entire play was delivered directly to the audience. For me, the most exciting thing was how immediate and theatrical it felt for the audiences who saw it. We got rid of any pretense of reality and created a purely theatrical reality. I don’t think every play should be direct address, but it’s a good way to cut the distance audiences seem to feel now between themselves and new plays. I’m excited by theater that engages the audience in the theatricality of the play and asks them to participate one way or another.

Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A:  As this interview series makes clear there’s a lot of competition out there. It also seems there are fewer and fewer opportunities. So you have to be unbelievably prolific. And you have to create your own opportunities.

Q:  Plugs, please:


A:  Our resident company of playwrights here in Minneapolis: www.workhauscollective.org


In June, we’re doing a workshop of Deborah Stein’s collaboration with Suli Holum, Chimera.


And our entire next season is exciting: Carson Kreitzer’s Freakshow directed by Ben McGovern in the fall. My play, Little Eyes directed by an awesome director Jeremy Wilhelm (http://jeremywilhelm.com) in February. And Christina Ham’s Glyph directed by one of the best directors in the Twin Cities Marion Mcclinton in April.


My wife, Victoria Stewart has a production of Hardball at Seattle’s Live Girls Theater in October.


And fellow Workhaus-er Dominic Orlando has two productions of Danny Casalaro Died for You at Next Theater in Chicago and Well Fleet Harbor Actor’s Theater both happening in the fall.


And I would love to see Greg Moss’ new play opening at Soho Rep in the fall, or his House of Gold at Woolly Mammoth.

May 25, 2010

I Interview Playwrights Part 178: Stefanie Zadravec



Stefanie Zadravec

Hometown: Chevy Chase, MD

Current Town:Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about The Electric Baby.

A:  The play follows a group of fractured souls who, after a young man is killed in a car accident, are brought together to care for a magical dying baby. It's about the stories we create for our lives in order to find meaning in tragedy. As each character comes in contact with the baby, they begin to recreate themselves. I use traditional African and Romanian folklore, as well as my own invented modern folk tales, to explain the circumstances of the strange baby that mysteriously glows in the dark. As in a fairy tale, the characters connect with an unquestioned immediacy, they make mistakes, they reach clarity. Did I mention there's a baby that glows in the dark?

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  There will be developmental reading of The Electric Baby at The Working Theater on May 24th, directed by Daniella Topol. In June, I will be in D.C. to workshop The Electric Baby in the First Light Discovery Program at Theater of the First Amendment. I'm revising Colony Collapse, a play set on a California almond farm against phenomenon of the disappearing bees, a young girl disappears. I'm also starting work on a new comedy, as well as a TV pilot I've had in the back of my mind for a while now.

Q:  Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A:  I'm the youngest of six. For the most part, my home was filled with immense humor and love, but there was also mental illness, alcoholism, drug addiction, as well as my mom's battle with cancer for 13 years before she died; the basic 1970s domestic potpourri. When I was very little, there were times that we would be called out of bed in the middle of the night and made to participate in a terrifying kind of kangaroo court. Sometimes my mother would announce that she was leaving, and we would beg her to stay. Sometimes we were made to "testify" against one of our siblings. The next day everything would return to normal, and no one would talk about it.

Years later I asked my brother, who is ten years older than me, about those nights. He said, "I was a teenager, so I saw the drinks being poured at dinner and knew what we were in store for. Since you were so young, it must've been scary not to know where it was coming from." It was, and thankfully at some point it stopped. Elements of those nights inhabit my writing: themes of despair and redemption; forceful anger erupting out of some seemingly minor moments; bad language; cutting humor; children in peril; and the circus atmosphere of madness. At least, that's what my husband says!

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A:  I'd get rid of the sexism and the ageism that playwrights face. The idea that the next great play can only come from a 25-year-old male baffles me. Why? In fact, we could solve a host of problems by producing the work of a greater diversity of emerging playwrights.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  One of my first acting jobs in New York was in the original Off-Broadway production of Charles Mee's Orestes. It was directed by Tina Landau and was produced by En Garde Arts, a company that used to produce site-specific plays in fabulous abandoned spaces all over Manhattan (probably all luxury condos by now). This show turned everything I knew about theater on its ear and made it exciting again. We performed on the waterfront at West 59th Street where the iron frame of a Parthenon-shaped pier tilted and fell into the Hudson. Jefferson Mays, who played Orestes, climbed the frail structure every night and somehow managed to avoid getting tetanus.

I came in late, so my first day of rehearsal was on day two of a Viewpoints workshop. I didn't actually know what we were doing, yet I loved it and viscerally it made complete sense. There were 30 or so actors in the show, and there were rewrites, rainstorms, and technical glitches…yet everyone had a great time, including the audience. It was an extraordinary collaboration. At the time I didn't know I would ever find myself a playwright, but I remember inspiring conversations I had with Chuck about his approach to writing. I was in awe of Tina's vision, humor, and humble leadership. Anne Hamburger had an amazing ability to make things happen. For those reasons and this amazing experience, Chuck, Tina, and Anne are my heroes.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I'm excited by plays that really use the medium of theater, pushing the bounds of realism through language or the physical elements of storytelling. Jason Grote's 1001 did that for me. Something that can only happen live. As an audience member, I like being caught off-guard. But I also love plain old good acting and well-crafted plays of any kind.

Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A:  Write and be generous with your peers.

I also suggest becoming familiar with Liz Lerman's Critical Response Format (http://www.facebook.com/l/ccfeb;www.danceexchange.org/performance/criticalresponse.html). Use it when responding to the work of others, and insist people use it during talk-backs about your work. It will allow you to see your work objectively and help silence the disruptive types who can ruin a feedback session.

Also, seek out directors at all levels whose work you admire. You want to have people whose taste and vision you trust bringing your plays to life. Directors can help get your work read by the right people and, ultimately, produced.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  167 Tongues at Jackson Rep. It runs through May 28th. I was one of the contributing writers on this project and it was an amazing collaborative experience.
http://www.facebook.com/l/ccfeb;www.jacksonrep.org/JacksonRepertoryTheatre.html

If you're in D.C. on June 12th at 3 pm, please come see The Electric Baby at Theater of the First Amendment. It will be directed by the talented Jessica Lefkow, and it's free!
http://www.facebook.com/l/ccfeb;www.theaterofthefirstamendment.org/events.php

I'm looking forward to seeing Jack's Precious Moment, This Wide Night; and the entire Clubbed Thumb Summerworks season.

I've also been following The Civilian's, You Better Sit Down — Tales from my Parents Divorce on Brian Lehrer. The submitted stories are great.

May 24, 2010

I Interview Playwrights Part 177: Michael Mitnick



Michael Mitnick

Hometown: Pittsburgh

Current Town: Brooklyn

Q:  You have a play coming up with Studio 42 in June. Can you tell me about that?

A:  The title is: “SPACEBAR: A BROADWAY PLAY BY KYLE SUGARMAN”

It’s about a disgruntled 16-year-old boy named Kyle from Fort Collins who has written a 259-page play set 7,000 years in the future – SPACEBAR (which is not about the space key on the keyboard, but is, instead, about a bar in outer space). He knows in his heart that it is the best play ever written. And he won’t stop submitting copies to Broadway until he hits it big.

We move in-and-out of Kyle’s real life, his imagination, and the play-within-the-play. It’s a satire on the current state of American non-profit and commercial theatre. It’s also about how loss affects children and about the universal need to be taken seriously when you’re a teenager.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  In July there’s a workshop at the Kennedy Center of my play SEX LIVES OF OUR PARENTS, which is about all the things our parents will never tell us under any circumstances which are mostly the things we wouldn’t want to hear anyway.

In August there’s going to be a developmental production in California of a new indie-rock musical I co-wrote with Kim Rosenstock and Will Connolly. It’s about to be announced.

Also, Simon Rich and I just finished the first draft of a musical for tweens called PENCILS DOWN. It’s about the awkward, humiliating cruelty / beauty that is high school.

Q:  Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A:  I wanted to be a professional magician all the way up until I was 15. This pretty much explains why I turned out the way I turned out.

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A:  SPACEBAR goes too deeply into this question. I mostly wish theater tickets cost the same as movie tickets.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  At the moment (and in no order): Stephen Sondheim, Caryl Churchill, Paula Vogel, Kaufman & Hart, August Wilson, Tennessee Williams, Richard Nelson, John Guare, Frank Loesser, Richard Greenberg, Henrik Ibsen, Adam Guettel, Nicky Silver, Ken Prestininzi, Gregory Mosher, Hal Prince, Naomi Wallace, Ahrens & Flaherty, Peter Shaffer, Michael Korie, Wallace Shawn

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that isn’t boring or unintentionally confusing

Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A:  Write a lot

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Come see SPACEBAR @ Studio 42. There may be anti-gravity. There will be free drinks.

May 23, 2010

I Interview Playwrights Part 176: Jordan Seavey


Jordan Seavey
Hometown: Brooklyn, NY

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about the play you're doing a reading of at Rattlestick.

A:  My play THE TRUTH WILL OUT is having a reading this Sunday (tomorrow, as of this writing) at Rattlestick. It's a "100% non-fiction anti-fantasia" about a closeted celebrity cable news journalist and an out 15 year old who's the victim of a hate crime (inspired by the murder of Lawrence King in 2008), and how their stories intersect. I think it's sort of gotten this reputation, in a way, for being a bit "epic" and challenging due to it's subject matter, themes, and bulk. It also has a tricky tone to balance, I think, and there's one actor who plays eight roles, including a fifteen year old girl and Edward R. Murrow. If something isn't challenging, I'm not really into it frankly. And I do pack my plays with a lot -- a lot of thoughts and ideas, characters, times, scenes -- I tend toward episodic structures, and TTWO in particular jumps around a lot chronologically. I don't enjoy safe theatre so I attempt not to make safe theatre. It's our job to remind theatres that challenge is good! Anyway, it's received development at the Old Vic in London (which was fun and fascinating), the New York Theatre Workshop (awesome), the hotINK Festival (which I highly recommend all playwrights apply to -- great, great people there), and Orlando Shakespeare's new play festival, Playfest (which was incredible in that I watched a non-NYC-based audience respond unbelievably strongly to the piece). And was a finalist for the O'Neill's National Playwrights Conference this year. Soooo. I guess you could say it's been making the reading rounds. I'm hoping workshop and production will follow.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I am also co-artistic director of the theatre company CollaborationTown. We've been in rehearsals workshopping a new play called THE PLAY ABOUT MY DAD by another company member, fantastically gifted playwright/performer Boo Killebrew. And then we'll be developing and mounting (in NYC Fringe this August) a piece we began co-creating at Robert Wilson's Watermill Center in February. It's a comedic, collage-like look at The Momentum, a fictional self-help movement inspired by The Secret and also Abraham Hicks -- if you don't know them, look them up -- it's some pretty crazy shit.) Self-help is a nearly 10 billion dollar industry in America right now, so we're going to taking a look into the why's and wherefore's of that.

Q:  Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A:  I grew up watching my mother perform. She was a professional clown, Ringling Brothers trained, and an actress/singer prior to that. And mime...she actually has a Fulbright in mime, which she used to study with Marcel Marceau's teacher in Paris. I think this sort of explains a lot. Everything? Hahaha. I also became obsessed with the movie JAWS when I was 4, and watched a lot of horror films and Stanley Kubrick growing up. Yeah.

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A:  Larger non-profit theatre companies' fear of risky plays. Semi-related note: Great article in this week's Village Voice about New York needing to cherish its artists. http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-05-18/theater/welcome-to-nyc-s-hidden-golden-age-of-theater/

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Caryl Churchill and Robert Wilson come immediately to mind -- she's just such a brilliant writer (I wrote her a love letter while studying abroad in London and as I write this am looking at the framed note she wrote back), and he's so unafraid of theatricality and insane choices and fucking with time and what time is in a theatrical space. But I also love Ludlam and Albee and Durang and Vogel...maybe I'm a little all over.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Dark and funny theatre about unfunny things. Preferably things that are pertinent to us as a society right NOW and/or things that are personally pertinent to the artist(s) creating the work.

Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A:  Oh boy. Hm. If something makes you angry or scared, write about it.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:   www.collaborationtown.org, and if you're in NYC and this gets published in time, come to THE TRUTH WILL OUT at Rattlestick tomorrow!

May 22, 2010

175 Playwrights

Andrew Rosendorf 

Don Nigro 

Barton Bishop

Peter Parnell 

Gary Sunshine

Emily DeVoti

Kenny Finkle 

Kate Moira Ryan

Sam Hunter 

Johnna Adams

Katharine Clark Gray

Laura Eason

David Caudle 

Jacqueline Goldfinger

Christopher Chen

Craig Pospisil

Jessica Provenz 

Deron Bos

Sarah Sander

Zakiyyah Alexander

Kate E. Ryan 

Susan Bernfield

Karla Jennings

Jami Brandli

Kenneth Lin

Heidi Darchuk

Kathleen Warnock

Beau Willimon

Greg Keller

Les Hunter

Anton Dudley

Aaron Carter

Jerrod Bogard

Emily Schwend

Courtney Baron

Craig  "muMs" Grant

Amy Herzog

Stacey Luftig

Vincent Delaney

Kathryn Walat

Paul Mullin



Derek Ahonen

Francine Volpe

Julie Marie  Myatt

Lauren Yee

Richard Martin Hirsch

Ed Cardona, Jr.

Terence Anthony

Alena Smith

Gabriel Jason Dean

Sharr White

Michael Lew

Craig Wright

Laura Jacqmin

Stanton Wood

Jamie Pachino

Boo Killebrew

Daniel Reitz

Alan Berks

Erik Ehn

Krista Knight

Steve Yockey

Desi Moreno-Penson

Andrea Stolowitz

Clay McLeod Chapman

Kelly Younger

Lisa Dillman

Ellen Margolis

Claire Willett

Lucy Alibar

Nick Jones

Dylan Dawson

Pia Wilson

Theresa Rebeck

Me

Arlene Hutton

Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas 

Lucas Hnath

Enrique Urueta

Tarell Alvin McCraney

Anne Washburn 

Julia Jarcho

Lisa D'Amour

Rajiv Joseph

Carly Mensch

Marielle Heller

Larry Kunofsky

Edith Freni

Tommy Smith 

Jeremy Kareken 

Rob Handel

Stephen Adly Guirgis

Kara Manning 

Libby Emmons

Adam Bock 

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Liz Duffy Adams

Winter Miller

Jenny Schwartz

Kristen Palmer

Patrick Gabridge 

Mike Batistick  

Mariah MacCarthy

Jay Bernzweig  

Gina Gionfriddo

Darren Canady

Alejandro Morales

Ann Marie Healy

Christopher Shinn

Sam Forman 

Erin Courtney

Gary Winter

J. Holtham

Caridad Svich

Samuel Brett Williams

Trista Baldwin

Mat Smart

Bathsheba Doran

August Schulenburg

Jeff Lewonczyk

Rehana Mirza

Peter Sinn Nachtrieb

David Johnston

Dan Dietz

Mark Schultz

Lucy Thurber

George Brant

Brooke Berman

Julia Jordan

Joshua Conkel

Kyle Jarrow

Christina Ham

Rachel Axler

Laura Lynn MacDonald

Steve Patterson

Erin Browne

Annie Baker

Crystal Skillman

Blair Singer

Daniel Goldfarb

Heidi Schreck

Itamar Moses

EM Lewis

Bekah Brunstetter

Mac Rogers

Cusi Cram

Michael Puzzo

Megan Mostyn-Brown

Andrea Ciannavei

Sarah Gubbins

Kim Rosenstock

Tim Braun

Rachel Shukert

Kristoffer Diaz

Jason Grote

Dan Trujillo

Marisa Wegrzyn

Ken Urban

Callie Kimball

Deborah Stein

Qui Nguyen

Victoria Stewart

Malachy Walsh

Jessica Dickey

Kara Lee Corthron

Zayd Dohrn

Madeleine George

Sheila Callaghan

Daniel Talbott

David Adjmi

Dominic Orlando

Matthew Freeman

Anna Ziegler

James Comtois

I Interview Playwrights Part 175: Andrew Rosendorf


Andrew Rosendorf

Hometown: McLean, VA.

Current Town: West Palm Beach, FL.

Q:  Word on the street is you have a play at Florida Stage in the fall. Tell me about that.

A:  That street is all about getting the word out. I have to be careful what I tell it.

Last May, Florida Stage commissioned me to examine the water shortage in South Florida. I’m not from Florida so I knew very little about its history. Essentially, I had to go from being an ignorant American to someone who understands the complexity of the political and environmental issues that face Florida, the United States, and the world. The result is Cane – a play that examines how a state that was once drowning in water is now so dry. If I’ve done my job, the issues all take a backseat to a very specific human story i.e. no talking heads. And, I’m using Florida as a microcosm for the issues involving water that are currently facing the world.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  There are a few things I’ve been kicking around at various stages. I’ve worked at a sleep-away summer camp for more than half my life, so I (like many) have a camp play in me. I do feel summer camp has been romanticized while the truth of the situation gets lost. I’m getting close to being finally able to write my version.

I’ve also become fascinated by social media. I’m interested in how it affects the way we now are touching one another. Is it bringing us closer together or actually isolating us further?

Lastly, I’m bandying about a short film that I haven’t found the right way to describe yet. It has to do with how we derive pleasure from pain...I know how that sounds... It scares me...on many levels...why I feel I have to write this...

Q:  Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A:  Oh man. My childhood. Does that mean I can no longer claim that I’m a child? You know, I’ll share this because I think it is my way of answering this question: I don’t remember much of my childhood. I had thought that this was common for most people, but only within the last five years have I learned that it’s not. I remember images or get flashes of moments when I see something or hear something or smell something that reminds me of a moment, but as quickly as it appeared it disappears. I think this inherently influences – consciously & subconsciously – why writing was the way I had to go.

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A:  The worry of producibility. I understand it. I get it. I wish it wasn’t there.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  This is going to be an uncreative list: Arthur Miller, Eugene Ionesco, Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, Samuel Beckett, Sarah Kane, Tony Kushner, Sarah Ruhl, & Aaron Sorkin

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Playwrights that have a handle on their story and find the best theatrical way to tell it. Knowing that the story could be told no other way. That the structure is influenced by the story. And theater that uses everything at its disposal – not for spectacle but because it’s in support of the emotion.

Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A:  Two things. The first is to emotionally risk in your work. When this was first told to me, it seemed as if I was stupid. Why hadn’t I figured that out? The more vulnerable you are in your writing the more it will connect with an audience. The more it will set your writing apart.

The other is not to preplan. Do your character work. Know what you want to explore. Research when you need. Have some plot ideas and signposts. But as soon as you start writing trust the subconscious. Just be there with the characters. Don’t impose or impede them. It’s worrisome, exhilarating, frightening. Inevitably your characters will take over and say something or do something that is a hundred times better than if I had their every moment planned out.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Jack’s Precious Moment by Sam Hunter which is now being produced through P73. I’ve only just begun to get to know his work and man am I blown away and inspired by what he’s doing. And Janine Nabers. Full disclosure – she and I went to grad school together. She’s sorta been all over the place this year from the Soho Writer/Director Lab to a Dramatists Guild Fellowship to Sundance. Amazing writer...taught me so much. I’m a wee bit in awe, but don’t tell her I said so.

May 21, 2010

I Interview Playwrights Part 174: Don Nigro



Don Nigro

Q: Hometown, Current Town:

A: I was born in Canton, Ohio (I think where the hospital used to be there's a theatre now) and now live by the woods just outside Malvern, a small town in east Ohio where my father was born. His parents were Italian immigrants. My mother's family were pioneer folk and I think at least one Delaware or Wyandot lady is also in there somewhere. I hope so, anyway.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I've found it's bad luck for me to talk about what I'm writing until I'm almost done. Hemingway said that if you talk about it, you kill it, and that's the case with me, although perhaps it's different with sane people. I'm not superstitious about it, but somehow talking about a play while I'm right in the middle of writing it seems to shut the door that leads to that bizarre subterranean place where all the good stuff comes from. I just finished a play called Mysterium in which Freud and Jung are on a boat in the middle of the ocean at night having an increasingly shrill disagreement about which one of them is hysterical when the Nazis start manning the life boats.

Q: How many plays have you written? If my count is correct, you have 48 plays published by Sam French. Does anyone else come close to that? Is it possible that you have written more plays than anyone else ever has?

A: You're correct that Samuel French has published 48 volumes of my plays so far---but some of these are collections, so the total number of published plays is more like 135, I think. But French has also recently added all the as yet unpublished ones to its online catalogue, so the total number available for leasing through them is now at 322, I think. I know that sounds like a lot, but you have to take into consideration that I have nothing else to do here but watch the squirrels. Lope de Vega wrote about 1800 plays, so I don't think I'm going to catch up. In fact, I don't write all that quickly. It's taken me ten or fifteen years to finish some plays. If they don't feel right I put them aside and pick them up again next week or next year or whenever. It doesn't really matter how much you write, as long as you're completely immersed in it while you're writing it. You just sort of trust the voices and see what comes out. It's the way I investigate the world.

Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A: I wrote about this in a play called The Dark. I'm four years old, helping to dust my books and toys in my room when suddenly my brain just goes to this other place, and I realize, this isn't me, I'm not this child with this name living in this house, I'm actually somebody else entirely. I'm---and then my mother is shaking me and saying, Hey, where were you? and I'm sitting there with the dust rag in my hand trying to remember where I just was, what my real name is, only I can't. I had those experiences, gradually less and less intense, all through my childhood, that sensation of having come from another place, of almost being able to remember who I really was. Some years later, I took a wrong turn in a building and stumbled into an empty theatre, and suddenly had this intensely eerie feeling that I was back there, in that other place before I was born. It still feels like that to me.

Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A: I think the American confusion of a thing's value with its ability to generate capital is tragic, and has always crippled and polluted the theatre here. Hit and flop are code words for profit and loss. This is an enormously short-sighted way of looking at art, which is an investigation into possible truths through imagination. The imagination comes first. Everything else in civilization follows from that. Theatre is the imagination made flesh. A society that sees art as trivial makes itself systematically stupid and ultimately destroys itself.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Shakespeare and the Jacobeans, Chekhov, and a lot of British and Irish drama from about 1950: Beckett and Pinter, early Bond and Arden, Peter Barnes, Stoppard. Non-dramatic work that's been important to me: Yeats, Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, T. S. Eliot, Faulkner, Proust, Borges, and that masterpiece of surrealism, the King James Bible. Also Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: You can find sudden, numinous, stunning, riveting theatre in the oddest places, often not where you're expecting it at all. It can happen just about anywhere. And even when it's misguided and inept, there's often something weirdly holy about it, in odd moments, if you just look, and give yourself to it. As Yogi Berra said, You can see a lot if you observe.

Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A: Don't take my advice.

May 20, 2010

I Interview Playwrights Part 173: Barton Bishop



Barton Bishop

Hometown: Tampa, FL.

Current Town: Astoria, Queens, NY.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’ve got a new play going up in the fall here in NYC, via the good and wonderful people at the New York Theatre Experiment. It’s called Up Up Down Down. The title’s a video game thing, a reference to the Konami cheat code from the original Nintendo days, but it’s also a reference to bipolar disorder (well, lookit that, that there works on TWO levels!). It’s about geeks and terrorism and video games and family and paranoia. And it’s a love story. It should be great!

And I recently(ish) finished a play trilogy I was working on for quite some time. That was cathartic in all sorts of ways. I originally thought they were three separate pieces, but, I’ve decided to insist that (and I may be shooting myself in the foot here..) – whatever happens, wherever, whenever, however – the plays receive their world premiere as a whole, as a trilogy, in rep.

With the initial writing of those scripts sort of wrapped up (for now), I’m tinkering away on several new projects. One is a play about a socially impossible Southern blogger, a fanboy of all things geek who finally finds the love of his life only to lose her to a small zombie uprising. So now the uprising is over, the zombies are quarantined on an island, things are back to normal, and our guy’s got her chained up in the basement and he’s trying to keep her a secret and keep her alive, hoping they find a cure. It’s a whole letting go thing, playing with how the inability to move forward after a loss can devour you and those around you. Literally. And – as of now – I’m playing with having it move back and forth between “before” and “after,” so we can see the reality of their relationship contrasted with how he’s romanticizing it now that she’s (sort of) gone, forgetting all the things that weren’t working, etc.

I’m also working on a new play about a hipster high-school music teacher who discovers her existence is an accident in the space-time continuum and that she has to be “deleted” in order to stop the universe from tearing apart. Pardon the pitchtastic way of talking about it, but I’ve been thinking of it as a kind of It’s A Wonderful Life and Our Town meets LOST thing.

So yeah... I’m hoping to have a readable draft of one of these projects wrapped up by the end of the summer.

You know, it’s the ongoing tug-of-war, though, the day jobs, the side gigs, etc, finding that balance, trying to figure out which hands to bet on… I mean – I’ve held down my financial fort for the last 7 years by adapting anime into English. I don’t speak Japanese, I get rough (and usually hysterical) translations and I rework the dialogue / adapt it. Depending on the company and the project, I sometimes end up rewriting the material entirely, tweaking the narratives, characters, backstories, changing stuff around… It’s kinda fun because I have to work with the pre-existing animation so it’s an exercise in working within strict limitations. I often say it feels like doing that New Yorker caption contest at 30 frames per second. The work has actually taught me a lot about dialogue structure. But – you know, this was one of those gigs that I fell into after grad school and I thought, “cool, I’ll do this for a while.” ….and then somehow it’s 7 years later and I’m working on what MIGHT be my 400th episode…

I’m also writing for a video game company right now, which is a geek dream come true, I won’t lie. I’m actually incredibly excited about the gig. I’ve always been passionate about the medium and where it can go. I’ve been a lifelong gamer, owned almost every console since the Atari 2600… In a lot of weird ways, I feel this deep personal connection to gaming, it’s like - We were childhood friends. We took our first baby steps together. We grew up together. We matured together (though both of our maturations are arguable). We had sex with an alien hooker while driving an Ice Cream truck 95 miles an hour against freeway traffic in order to escape the Zombie Pig Cops From Mars together. So many memories.

But – so yes – to try to bring it all back – I sometimes (and I think a lot of writers I know feel this way) find myself trying to figure out what to focus on, how to divide my creative energies, etc… You know – “in this crazy modern world of ours.”

I’ll admit it, the question “what are you working on now?” can actually send me into a neurotic panic, within seconds I’m going “I don’t KNOW! I can’t DECIDE, I don’t know WHO I AM, I don’t know what I should BE DOING!! WAAAAH! GIVE ME BEER AND ICE CREAM”

….But then I calm down and remind myself that I’m one of those people who thinks variety is a good thing. Especially for writers. It’s good to hop around, step away, come back… It’s that whole breathe in / breathe out thing. Everything can inform everything. And there’s no rush.

Um.

Did I answer the question?

Q:  Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A:  I ran away from home once. But I wasn’t allowed to cross the street, so I just wandered around my block until I got hungry. Then I went home.

Wait, no. I’m not sure I like what that says about me.

I’ll tell you another one – In fifth grade, this dickhead in my class walked up to me and said “Hey, did you know that if you put an F in front of your name, it would spell fart!?” And I informed him that, “No, actually, it would spell FBart.” The kids around us laughed. At the dickhead. It was in this moment that I realized the true power of the wit. It was great. And then the dickhead beat the hell out of me.

I had no idea what was cool when I was a kid. Here’s another story – When I was in, like, fourth grade, I committed my first theft. I stole a cassette copy of Phil Collins’ No Jacket Required album from a friend’s dad. I think I was hoping it would have “In The Air Tonight” on it. It didn’t. Either way, I thought it was the best thing ever. I even asked my mom if I could get my hair cut like Phil’s. She informed me that Phil’s “haircut” was called a receding hairline bordering on baldness and that I didn’t want that. I didn’t care, I thought Phil was a badass. He looked so intense and awesome. Fortunately, I soon went on to discover R.E.M. and Zeppelin and New Order and straightened myself out.

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A:  I would magically find a way for theatre companies to not have to rely on the failing not-for-profit model.

Oh! - ..and I’d make directors and actors and artistic directors and producers subject to ongoing talkback and feedback sessions in which me and my playwright friends (and an audience, of course, free admission!) can tell them how we think they can fix their work and better do their jobs.

No, no, I’m kidding, I’m kidding, I’m kidding! …Calm down, YOU! It was a joke!

But really – less development crap. Edward Albee once said “The best way to support a young playwright is to produce her first five plays.” That’s as true as it gets. A reading can only get you so far. But I think most plays reach that point – and I think this happens relatively early on in the process – where they need more than a reading. A play needs a director and some designers and some actors, all of whom are coming together and giving the play more than just a few quick hours trying to figure out where to put the music stands and whether or not there’s going to be bottled water. Everyone involved needs to get to know the play as intimately as the playwright knows it, to give it the same respect and consideration, and, really, to have something at stake. Just like the writer has something at stake. The best rewrites I make are the ones I make during rehearsal. Because a trust system starts to form, I don’t know – something kinetic and binding happens during rehearsal that just can’t happen in a reading. The conversation stops being “We might do this play if you make it more like this,” and it becomes “Shit, we’re ALL in this, this thing is happening, let’s do what we can to make it rock.”

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Anyone who made it happen or is making it happen or is gonna make it happen someday.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Live nude theatre!!

..No…

….Um…

You know, I imagine I might’ve – at one point had a list of prerequisites. Rules For Enjoyment. I don’t know anymore, I honestly don’t. It’s on an “I know it when I experience it” basis. I will say that honesty is nice. And I tend to respond to sincerity of heart in whatever form it takes. I’m definitely a heart guy. I don’t really respond to intellectual or aesthetical exercises if there’s no heart beating at the center of it all. I feel like real heart is the one thing you can’t fake. Everything else is wallpaper.

Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A:  Find a creative home. Find the people who know you and who get you and who get what you’re going for. They can’t be Yes People, though. They have to challenge you. But the most important thing is that they know you and they get you. Don’t bother too much with the people who don’t. If you do and you’re not careful, they’ll turn you into something you’re not.