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1100 Playwright Interviews

1100 Playwright Interviews A Sean Abley Rob Ackerman E.E. Adams Johnna Adams Liz Duffy Adams Tony Adams David Adjmi Keith Josef Adkins Nicc...

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Jul 23, 2011

Places I have visited or lived since leaving NYC in '08

Minneapolis, MN
Independence, KS
Tulsa, OK
New York, NY
Atlanta, GA
Outer Banks, NC
Charleston, SC
Asheville, NC
Savannah, GA
Las Vegas, NV
East Haddam, CT
Little Pond, PA
Anaheim/Yorba Linda, CA
London, England
Philadelphia, PA
North Dartmouth, MA
San Francisco, CA
Chicago, IL
New Orleans, LA
Bloomington, IN
Lewisburg, WV
Croton On Hudson, NY
Boston, MA
Los Angeles, CA
Charlottesville, VA
Cape Girardeau, MO
Maynardville, TN
St. Louis, MO
Montreal, Quebec
Seattle, WA

Next: Ft. Myers, FL
Los Angeles/Big Bear, CA
Philadelphia again
and we are moving back to Brooklyn in Aug

Jul 15, 2011

I Interview Playwrights Part 370: Monica Byrne


Monica Byrne

Hometown:  Annville, Pennsylvania. A sweet little college town.

Current Town:  Durham, North Carolina. A young artist’s paradise.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I'm working on What Every Girl Should Know, a commission for Little Green Pig. I'm taking an oblique approach to Margaret Sanger, the birth control pioneer--telling how her (badass) exploits inspire five young women imprisoned in a reformatory. They start making up an elaborate fantasy life where they travel the world, take lovers at will, and assassinate their enemies; all of which is a defense against their feelings of bleakness and helplessness. I keep trying to wrap my head around what life was like for women before birth control. They just didn't have any control over their bodies, short of total abstinence, which itself was not completely under their control. Who could blame them for wanting to escape? Or even die?

Recently, I was so inspired by the touring production of Black Watch, because it used so many media: gesture, song, music, dance, image, text. So What Every Girl Should Know will be very multi-channel in that way. We're going to shoot silent movies, hire a modern dance choreographer, and use music from the Los Angeles rock scene, circa 1989. I chose that genre because I started listening to Jane's Addiction right around age 13--the age of my characters--and their music conveys that adolescent feeling of urgency.

After that, I have collaborations with Jeff McIntyre and Lori Mannette, a screenplay about the first human mission to Mars, and whatever else I dream up in the meantime. I’m thrilled!

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 fourteen, I was cast in my high school’s production of Godspell. There was one moment during the production--lying flat on my back, staring up into a red light--when I would “check in” with myself every night: “How am I?” And every night the answer was, “I am so happy!” It was this conviction that steered me back to art after a decade-long detour into science. Research didn’t make me happy. Art did. To this day, there’s nothing else I’d rather do.

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

A:  I wish the American theater community had a more international orientation. There is so much to learn from other cultures’ conceptions of performance. But, like with literature, it seems like we’re only in conversation with ourselves, and the signs of inbreeding are showing.

Q:  
Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  First, one you all know: Martin McDonagh. When I read a play of his, I can tell he had a blast writing it. That's a quality I always look for. Is the author enjoying herself? I think it's a hugely underrated quality. And that doesn't mean the work is shallow; The Pillowman is very dark and profound. But yet, it's an absolute joy to watch. I love that paradox.

Second, two you probably don't know, but should: Jay O'Berski and Dana Marks. They're the Co-Directors of  Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern, a small company in Durham that’s been doing white-hot theater for years. LGP brings in artists from every field--productions regularly feature singers, painters, dancers and filmmakers. They always take big, interesting risks--nontraditional spaces, new play commissions, sharp experimental scripts. Looking over their season is like being seated at an exotic buffet. Even if you don’t enjoy every dish, you will most assuredly enjoy trying every dish. And that’s the kind of theater that excites me: the kind that makes me scream and laugh and screw up my face in total bafflement. LGP does that to me every time.

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

A:  It’s really simple, which means it’s the hardest advice of all: write every day and read every day. I find so many playwrights are looking for silver bullets. But it really just comes down to practice--Art Tatum’s 30,000 hours, John and Paul in Hamburg, and all that.

Also, consume everything. Not just theater. I recently made a list of my top hundred artistic influences, and only four-and-a-half of them were playwrights. (The half, Aaron Sorkin, only sort of counts as a playwright.) Inspiration comes from everywhere, and it will only make your work richer.

Q:  Plugs:

A:  My site is here, which also links to my blog. Come say hello!

Jul 14, 2011

I Interview Playwrights Part 369: Don Nguyen


Don Nguyen

Hometown: Lincoln, Nebraska

Current Town: Astoria, Queens Baby!

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  What am I working on now?

I just finished a first draft of my sign language play called SOUND for the Civilian's R&D group. It's about a deaf couple dealing with the difficult decision of getting a cochlear implant and Alexander Graham Bell's struggle to find a cure for deafness.

This summer I've got three projects I'm working on. I'm one of the writers (along with Josh Koenisberg and Sarah Burgess) for The Living Newspaper, and we'll be up at the Tofte Lake retreat in July working on a new show. I'm also working on rewrites for RED FLAMBOYANT, a play about Vietnamese women living with AIDS, who summon ancient female warriors from the past. I'll be developing that play at the Ojai Playwrights Conference in August. I'm also working on a play about my father's life in Vietnam. It's called THE MAN FROM SAIGON, and I'll have a reading of that sometime in the fall hopefully for Naked Angels. I say hopefully because I've had to postpone the reading several times already. It's my one play that I just can't seem to ever finish. No one else has that problem, right?

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

A:  The summer after my freshman year in college, I took a poetry class for easy credits. I wrote about my friends farting in my car. It was titled "The Shitless Echo." When I shared it in class, my professor, after a very long pause, said "If I were a foreigner and I came to this country and I had never read any poetry before in my life, and I read this piece, I would in fact...consider this poetry." It was a strange compliment and it made me want to write even more because I can accept strange compliments so much easier than I can regular compliments.

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

A:  We need to find a way to make theater a basic human need. Like if you don't go see at least three plays a month, you die.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Tony Kushner for his audacious writing, Martin McDonagh for his cutting humor, dialogue and good ol' yarn spinning (Pillowman, Lt. of Inishmore), Christopher Durang for writing The Marriage of Bette and Boo, the funniest saddest play ever. Robert Schenkkan for writing The Kentucky Cycle, epic yet intimate. David Henry Hwang for writing M. Butterfly, Yellowface and the upcoming Chinglish. Elevator Repair Service for doing Gatz. It was the longest and one of the most rewarding times I've spent in a theatre. Annie Baker for writing Circle Mirror Transformation and The Aliens. She says so much with the minimum amount of text. Sarah Ruhl for writing Eurydice. I saw that show twice. Kristoffer Diaz for writing The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Diety. I saw that show three times! Rajiv Joseph for writing Huck and Holden and Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo. Arthur Miller for writing After the Fall. Bertie Brecht for Caucasian Chalk Circle and Good Woman of Szechaun. Horton Foote for his deceptively simple yet elegant plays. The Orphans' Home Cycle at the Signature was a theatrical masterpiece. David Mamet for writing Glengarry Glen Ross. Richard Nash for writing The Rainmaker. Also anyone who works in Literary departments of theaters, because of the way they champion playwrights. Liz Frankel from The Public and Annah Feinberg from LCT3 and The Civilians, just to name a few. Sadly I'm leaving out a lot of other heroes.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The kind that tries new things and isn't afraid of falling on it's face. I'm talking about Spider-Man the Musical of course. Seriously though, I admire anyone who has the audacity to do something that's never been done before, and you cannot deny the fact that the creators of Spider-Man did just that on many different levels. Or maybe I just like things that fly on stage? Like Angels in America and Peter Pan. Come to think of it, even my own play Red Flamboyant has flying in it. Yeah, I like flying.

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

A:  I love this question because I'm just starting out myself, so fair warning, whatever advice I give could be deemed haphazard by anyone who takes it. That being said, wiser men and women on this blog have spoken about the importance of relationships. My agent uses the term "Grow your garden." I absolutely agree with them. These relationships that you will build throughout your career just might be the most important thing you do. It may even save your life one day. I give you exhibit A:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A042J0IDQK4

Read this if you were too lazy to click on the link:
It was an amazing video of a colony of fire ants in a flood, who learned to lock their legs together to form a makeshift life raft in order to survive. It was amazing...and you missed it.

Read this if you watched the video:

Wasn't that an amazing video? I know, I'm glad I didn't skip over the video too! Wow, my life is so full right now.

This video proves my point that you need a team/tribe/circle of champions that believe in each other and are willing to lock legs and help each other get to the next moment in what will hopefully be a long and fruitful journey.

Also, go see shows. If not to support other artists, then for entirely selfish reasons. I can't tell you how many times I've sat in a theater and worked out my own story problems while watching a show. Something about sitting in a theater and having a visceral reaction to what's going on, it really does jolt all the hundred monkeys and typewriters sitting in your frontal lobe.

Also, don't be afraid to use...the ellipses. It is awesome and will make your actors super happy because they'll take it as a sign to really emote or think...longer...before speaking. Also, literary managers love this and will consider you a true pro for using it in your scripts.

My last piece of advice is probably the most important. Be genuinely happy for your fellow artists. It is not a competition. It's a journey for all of us. Champion each other. Advocate for each other. And for God's sake man...clap for each other!

Q:  Plugs

A:  If there's anyone in the LA area, my play RED FLAMBOYANT will have a reading up at Ojai on August 12th. You can find all pertinent info here: http://ojaiplays.com.

Also, friend and fellow playwright Josh Koenigsberg's play Herman Kline's Midlife Crisis will go into production August 14.

Also check out The Public Theater Emerging Writers Group, The Civilians, The Ma-Yi Writers Lab, The Pack, the 52nd Street Project, and PigPen Theatre Co.

Jul 7, 2011

I Interview Playwrights Part 368: Dana Lynn Formby



Dana Lynn Formby

Hometown: Cheyenne Wyoming

Current Town: Chicago Illinois



Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I am currently working on rewrites for Corazón de Manzana that will be starting previews August 20th of this year. I am also working on a rewrite of my play American Beauty Shop. 


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 brother and I pulled our bow and arrows on each other in our shooting range in the back yard. We were about four feet from each other. Dad had to talk us down. I guess this memory explains a lot about my writing because we were laughing together a few seconds before and ready to kill each other in that next moment. Dad took the shooting range down that afternoon.


Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Charles Smith for being my mentor, and for writing such palpable disturbing images in his plays. Lynn Nottage for her ability to find beauty in dark places.



Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A;  Inexpensive and down to earth. I come from a Blue Collar Background and was not raised to go to the theatre. When I see a show my folks would love, that makes me happy.



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


A:  You have to tell the critic in your brain to go get a bag of chips while you write. He can come back later and tell you stuff, but he shouldn’t be there while you are creating. 


Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My play Corazón de Manzana opens at the DCA Store Front theatre on August 26th and runs through September 26th. Here is a link
http://www.dcatheater.org/shows/show/corazon_de_manzana/


Jul 6, 2011

I Interview Playwrights Part 367: Dennis Miles


Dennis Miles

Hometown: Santiago, Cuba

Current Town: Silverlake (a neighborhood west of Downtown Los Angeles)

Q:  What are you working on now? 


A:  I have a play idea about a woman whose lover will not marry her and she plots an elaborate revenge.

Q:  How would you characterize the LA theater scene? 


A:  Hit and Miss, mostly miss.  The acting, I find, is almost always good because LA attracts the best theater actors from throughout the country. They come here hoping to act commercially. While they wait, they theater act and that's just great for LA audiences.  The writing is very poor, although  I love Justin Tanner.  Better to see some dusty jewel from Europe or something revived that has survived the test of time, than risk our homegrown crop of scribes.  I often think that exceptional playwrighting is a rare gift indeed.  I love our storefront theaters, and that's what I support.  I stay away from "professional" theater. Leaves me cold. I don't want my art to be ironed out and polished and small theater in LA certainly gives me that a lot.   We have some really great companies, among them:  Anteus, Noise Within, Theater of Note (though not currently), Rude Gorilla Theater, though I haven't seen anything of theirs for a while.  A lot of the time, because of lack of money, I would guess, the set designs and custumes are rudimentary, and attention to the detail is rare.  Still and all, small theater is my art form and, as long as it's not a one person show, I'll go see almost anything that catches my interest and often, theater in LA rewards me handsomely. 

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 11 or so a boy born in Panama moved into my neighborhood.  He was the most aware person I've ever met and he woke me up.  He had enormous curiosity and would see EVERYTHING in town and he'd drag me along.  I learn about theater, movies, music, poetry and literature from him.  His name is Joaquin Baquero. He started a literary club that he called Club Minerva and gave us all, there were 3 of us besides him originally, the names of Greek gods!  I was Mercury.  We would give one another assignments for writing and at the next Saturday meeting we would read what we had come up with.  I started writing then and haven't stopped, pretty much, until now.

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


A:  Those awful announcements at the beginning of the performance.  No, seriously, I'd forbid friends from laughing too loudly, and inapropriately,  when they come see their friends. Ah, I don't know.  I'd encourage writers not to come up with stuff that's obtuse for obtuseness sake.  (You can't do Godot again, no matter how well you try to disguise it)  I'd also insist that time not be broken up unless it makes the story more interesting, which usually, always, is not the case.  Well, that's several things.  But I don't have one huge complaint about theater.  One thing I would like to change about LA theater is to make more of us attend our theaters. I always thought that if small theaters advertised at all our community colleges and high schools, let's say, we could get more people to come see our work.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes? 


A:  Shakespeare, Chekov, Ionesco, Albee, (Virginia Wolf only), Whoever wrote The Apollo of Bellac, Brecht (Mother Courage and Galileo), Lorca (The House of Bernarda Alba).  Beckett. 

Q:  What kind of theater excites you? 


A:  Simple, clear, focus on the emotional human, great language, great images, subtle acting (no screaming).

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


A:  I don't have any.  I don't listen to advice myself, so I do my best not to tell people what might work for them.  Artistic writing is an organic endeavor, it is one's life, there's no advice for living out your life, artistic writing is a natural emanation of one's experiences and one's singular mind. 


Jul 3, 2011

I Interview Playwrights Part 366: Marco Ramirez


Marco Ramirez

Hometown:   Miami, FL

Current Town:  Los Angeles, CA (don't hate)

Q:  Tell me about your play at Dahlia.

A:  Broadsword is a play about a heavy metal band that broke up years ago and is forced to come together because one of their own has died/mysteriously disappeared. It's part funeral-play, part mystery-play. On a good day, I like to think it's one a little Agatha Christie and a little Stephen Adly Guirgis, as filtered through an episode of The X-Files. If that sounds odd, it should - the whole thing takes place in New Jersey.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I'm on the writer's staff for my second season of FX's Sons of Anarchy. That's my very fun day job. Other than that, I'm working on a new play about people who make horror movies in the 1940s (Mister Moonlight, coming to a Literary-Manager's-enormous-pile-of-scripts near you).

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

A:  Not sure if this is an answer, but there's an episode of Batman: The Animated Series that still makes me cry.

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

A:  I'd shift our focus to building new audiences. As storytellers, theatre-makers are two or three generations away from becoming totally obsolete, going the way of the brick-layer, the alchemist and the dinosaur. We're competing with streaming media and Transformers movies. Oedipus Rex is losing the battle to Optimus Prime. If we want to stay relevant, we have to keep pushing the form forward and work at getting audiences enamored with the incomparable experience of watching a play.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I caught a production of Point Break: Live in LA that was probably the most theatrical thing I've ever seen (seriously - second only to The Piano Lesson) and the crowd was about 200 wasted Frat boys in DMB T-shirts. In the American theatre, anything ANYONE is doing that brings in the under-50 crowd is worth thinking about, and talking about. I'm not saying Point Break: Live is high art, but it's certainly theatre, and the gentlemen of Sigma Phi were eating it up.

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

A:  See plays, any way you can. Usher for free tickets, sneak in at intermission, punch an old lady in the lobby, I don't care how. See plays you don't expect to like. Let yourself be surprised. A great playwriting teacher once told me, "There's nothing really to learn from watching a masterpiece. There's plenty to learn from watching something imperfect." Take notes, think about what you'd do differently. Don't blame the-state-of-American-theatre for why no one's doing your plays, American theatre is too busy blaming the-state-of-the-American-economy for why they shouldn't be doing plays to begin with. It's your battle. Give them no choice but to say yes. Read more August Wilson. Re-read August Wilson. Read comic books. Listen to old records. Spend too much time on Wikipedia. Talk to old people on the train. Find inspiration in unexpected places.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Broadsword at The Black Dahlia,
http://www.thedahlia.com/

Jul 2, 2011

I Interview Playwrights Part 365: Warren Manzi



Warren Manzi

Hometown: Methuen, MA

Q:  Tell me about Perfect Crime.   The play is celebrating 24 years and almost 10,000 performances in New York. Did you ever suspect that would be the case when you wrote it?

A:  I always wanted Perfect Crime to be a commercial thriller but I didn’t know it would take off the way it did. I knew that all the rewrites when it first opened strengthened the core of the play. We’ve gained a lot by all the work we’ve done along the way.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Several things at once. Two new stage thrillers are finished and several screenplays are being shopped.

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 mother is my greatest influence because when I was very young she used to read all kinds of mysteries. There were always mystery books around the house. At a young age I read Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, Perry Mason, Sherlock Holmes. I became interested in drama in high school and decided to put the two of those things together.

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

A:  Lately there’s too much emphasis on commerciality which has a tendency to create superficiality. I’m very interested in substance. Over the past fifteen or twenty years, maybe even longer, the emphasis has been on flash instead of substance.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Shakespeare is number one. Chekhov, Moliere, Ibsen, Strindberg. Pinter, Tennessee Williams and Pirandello. I’m a huge fan of John Osborne and Tom Stoppard is a genius.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that challenges and never panders to the audience yet doesn’t leave them behind. I like plays that take you through a story and keep you on the edge of your seat and on your toes. That’s the most exciting kind of theater to me. For instance, I’ve seen and read King Lear a million times. If I were to re-read it or see a good production of it, I’d still be thrilled by it. It’ll still be as though I’m reading it or seeing it for the first time.

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

A:  It’s a combination of discipline for the writing process and an ability to speak from your heart, from what you feel – of developing a story from what you feel, your past experiences, but at the same time having discipline. Go back to the classics and study them. Why do the plays we consider classic still work? What about them excites you?

I taught high school seniors once and I gave them several plays to choose from as an assignment. They chose Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard. We spent the first two months discussing Hamlet, which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is based on, and by the time we got to the Stoppard play they were already excited by Hamlet. They became very excited and very successful for that reason. So, look to the classics.

Q:  Plugs, please.

A:  Go see Perfect Crime!