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1100 Playwright Interviews

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Dec 30, 2012

My 2012 In Review

I had 11 productions of my plays this year, including Hearts Like Fists in LA and NYC which were both without a doubt the best received productions I've had.  Most recently I had 2 plays in NYC at the same time which was exhausting but good.  Four of my plays premiered this year and each of my published plays had at least one production.  At the moment, there are 5, maybe 6 productions scheduled for 2013, including Clown Bar with Pipeline in March and perhaps two plays in Lima, Peru, both in Spanish.

This year I wrote a screenplay in the spring and a play in the fall.

I'm sad to say my web series Compulsive Love isn't out yet but I think it will be out soon.  I can't wait for you to see it.  I started writing a new web series I'll be excited to tell you about soon.

One ongoing project is making My Base and Scurvy Heart into a musical with Dan Moses Schreier and Matt Sherwin.  As part of my 2 month residency at the Inge Center this fall, we did a workshop and we were able to try some stuff out.  Cady Huffman, Nellie McKay and Sean McDermott came to Kansas to help us out with it along with some other cool people.

I taught playwriting to freshmen high school students in a tiny town in Kansas for two months and wrote a new play while I was there.

Also spent the year writing an animated pilot and bible with Ruben Carbajal and Larry Kunofsky, a half hour comedy called supersomethings about a group of D-list superheroes living in a city overrun with superheroes.  We'll start pitching that soon.

I was fortunate to go to the Orchard Project where I did some revisions of existing plays and plotted another with Bradford Louryk.

What else?  The playwright interviews continue.  There were 126 new interviews this year bringing the total up to 542.

Kristen and I took a mini vacation last winter in Cap Cod.  That was nice.  Were able to spend a little time in CT in summer on a lake.  Was at Little Pond with Flux at their annual retreat.  I started consulting for Broadway producers and took on a volunteer lit mgr position.  Also read a bunch of scripts for various things for money.  Probably read 140 scripts or so.  Went to Roanoke VA to see student readings at Hollins.  Was in LA for a bit.  Christmas in St. Louis and Charlottesville. 

Whew.  Looks like it was actually a busy year for me.  Wonder what the next will hold.  Glad the world didn't end.

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Dec 22, 2012

Press quotes from LA and NYC productions of Hearts Like Fists

 Critic’s Pick; “Parody and punches fly in Adam Szymkowicz’s “Hearts Like Fists,” the Flux Theater Ensemble’s comic hybrid at the Secret Theater in Long Island City, Queens. The combination is madcap. Pretty hysterical too… Hurting for a laugh? These Crimefighters should save the day.”  --New York Times

“Hearts Like Fists . . . is a silly, over-the-top, and adventurous comic book-style play that offers a fun, twisted exploration of what it means when someone Hulk-smashes your heart on the ground into a million pieces… Fists argues that the most important moments in life are the ones directly in front of us, and that we shouldn't let being hurt in the past affect our decisions moving forward. It's goofy. It's absurd. But it hits hard where it counts—right in the ticker.” –Village Voice



Critic’s Choice; “A trio of buxom superhero babes is taking names and kicking butt in “Hearts Like Fists,” Adam Szymkowicz’s graphic novel come to irresistible life at Theatre of NOTE… Staged for what is surely less than Christopher Nolan’s weekly tea budget, Hearts Like Fists is the perfect summer date show: exhilarating, nerdy-sexy, and silly-smart. Try finding that on Fandango.”  --LA Times

Pick Of The Week; “Fun well done neatly sums up this brazenly silly and irresistibly funny show… Love unrequited is the recurring motif in this gender-bent spoof; it fuels the dastardly doctor's crime spree; inspires Peter, a dedicated physician with a damaged heart, to design an artificial one; and plagues the peace of mind of all and sundry, even the staunch and sturdy Amazonian crusaders and the hitherto dazzlingly invulnerable Lisa.”  --LA Weekly


“In Hearts Like Fists, Szymkowicz has written a play that is both campy and clever, but also full of heart and hope, another notch on the prolific young playwright’s belt . . . one of this summer’s most exciting thrill ride-like treats.” --Stage Scene LA



“…Szymkowicz is a wistful wit with a broken-romantic’s ear for the big Urban Lonesome.”—NY Magazine

“It's hard to imagine a better night at the theater… Like the best comic books, the story has a bright, action-packed surface with deeper complexities at work beneath. "Hearts Like Fists" delivers an enviable double blow: humorous and profound at once, it demonstrates that the boundaries of what can be done with speculative storytelling onstage are limitless, and always have the capacity to astonish.”  --io9



“… Adam Szymkowicz, one of the leading theatrical voices of his generation, intertwines themes both humorous and mature together… Szymkowicz provides plenty of sugar to make his complicated medicine about crooked hearts go down smoothly. His dialogue comes riddled with memorably arch lines … that aren’t just hysterical, they’re psychologically accurate. He has created a fun show that refuses to be dumbed down.”—NY Press

“Hearts Like Fists is a charming, light-hearted comedy about love, gallantry, and the endless human propensity to fall for the wrong person. Adam Szymkowicz’s script is a comic book hero inspired romp from lights up to lights down. He goes to great lengths to twist and torture the heart — the metaphor of the heart I mean — contorting it between mechanical tool and symbol of the pulse that through the green fuse drives the flower. The result is a gently absurdist send up of the romantic calculus that informs most of the present day mythology of love and dating… An accomplished playwright, Mr. Szymkowicz’s play has no rough edges and no obtuse angles.” –Cultural Capitol



“Although Adam Szymkowicz’s hilarious new play Hearts Like Fists is ostensibly a play about comic book-style Superheros and Supervillains, deep down it’s an utterly charming and goofy romantic comedy. Which is not to say it’s not a hilarious sendup of superhero tropes, because it is that as well. The comedy fires on all cylinders from the beginning and almost never lets up.” –Broadway World

“Playwright Adam Szymkowicz has constructed this story like a sandwich: knife-fulls of surprise and suspense are smeared across meaty gymnastic fight sequences, with all of it packed between the twin slices of our desire for connection and our fear of what that connection might do to us.  It’s a tasty concoction.”—New York Theater Review



“…the play, written by Adam Szymkowicz … is, in all probability, unlike anything most theatergoers have ever seen. Running some 90 intermissionless minutes, it flies by, scarcely leaving time for the actors or the audience to catch their breath. The innovative play, which questions the purposes and passions each individual has in life, has come up with situations and lines that are at once ludicrous and hilarious.”  --Queens Chronicle

“Right now, it feels as if Adam Szymkowicz has cornered the market on shows that feature figuratively and literally broken hearts…”  --That Sounds Cool



“If you have one aorta of desire to know what love is, you will enjoy Flux Theatre Ensemble's production of Hearts Like Fists by Adam Szymkowicz.” –nytheater.com

“Author Adam Szymkowicz has written an extremely funny script that alternates long lyrical monologues with staccato noir-ish one-liners. It's both poignant and hysterical… All in all Hearts Like Fists is fabulous and smart fun.” –Show Showdown




“A chop-socky cartoon on stage, Hearts Like Fists, written by Adam Szymkowicz, is an action-packed adventure romance set in the surreal world of female crime-fighting superheroes. Nurses by day, skilled warriors by night, a band of ferocious and feisty femmes battle the dastardly and elusive Dr. X and his deadly war against romance … Don’t miss this show!”  --Arts Beat LA

“Hearts Like Fists by Adam Szymkowicz is an homage to Film Noir and Marvel Comics and when blended together produces a hilarious theatrical experience! You won't want to miss this truly fun production!” --Hettie Lynn Hurtes of NPR Station KPCC






“Pow! Hearts Like Fists connects. Adam Szymkowicz's crowd-pleaser is a smashingly funny mash-up of action comics and rom-coms.”  --CurtainUp

6 StageSceneLA Scenie Awards including one of the “Best World Premiere Plays of 2012”


Dec 20, 2012

I Interview Playwrights Part 542: Chelsea Sutton



Chelsea Sutton

Hometown: Murrieta, CA

Current Town: North Hollywood, CA

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Oh, it feels like a million things! I’ve started three different plays with three different writers groups I’m involved with in Los Angeles. With The Vagrancy, I’m writing a post-apocalyptic play called H.A.P. about a trunk that might have magical powers and a group of people who worship it. With The Eclectic Company Theatre, I’m writing The Many Deaths of Kassie McGreevy about a girl who quite literally dies all the time. And with the Katselas Playlab I’m writing The Sudden Urge to Jump – a love story in a video store. In January I’m also doing an eight-day intensive workshop with The Vagrancy of my play The Dead Woman – so I’ll be busy with rewrites. Oh, and I’m working on finishing a novel and a short story collection too, with another novel and novella in the docket.

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 was a painfully shy child and even had trouble speaking early on – I couldn’t even pronounce my name in first grade and had to go to speech therapy. But I was always writing stories. That’s how I communicated. And I was always reading. Mostly ghost stories like the Goosebumps series for quite a long time, which is probably why there’s death in just about everything I write. As cliché as it sounds, becoming a dancer in elementary school and then an actor in high school helped me break out of this – it was easy to play out stories on stage, first with movement then with speech, because I didn’t have to be myself. So somehow I started out as a shy reclusive kid with a mild speech impediment and became the girl who gave a speech at her high school graduation in front of thousands of people and made half of them cry. And I’m still struggling between those two people almost every day. That’s how most people are, I think – struggling with at least two different versions of themselves at any one time.

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

A:  I wish we could redefine what “producible” means for a play. It seems almost impossible to get a play produced if it has more than four characters and runs longer than 90 minutes. Producers and fellow writers have told me this many times, in fact. If it has a big cast it better be a musical – and one with a built in fan base. If the writer is unknown and a woman, producers seem even less inclined to seriously tackle the material – the studies done in Los Angeles alone by the LA Female Playwrights Initiative show that women playwrights are produced at a lower rate than their male counterparts. And if you do get a production, getting the second or third is hard because everyone wants the world premiere – because a world premiere is marketable. I hope that if the next Great American Play came along that happened to have twelve characters, there would be a producer willing to put it out into the world. But I can’t help be cynical about it. Even our mid-size and large theaters in LA produce small cast and one person shows more often than anything else. It’s just a financial reality right now.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Sarah Ruhl, Paula Vogel, Naomi Iizuka, Edward Albee, Anne Garcia-Romero, Howard Ashman, Caryl Churchill, Tom Stoppard, Luis Alfaro, Sheila Callaghan, Samuel Beckett…I could go on.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?
A:  This is going to sound simplistic – but I like theater that really creates an emotional reaction in me. And that doesn’t happen often. I’ve seen so much theater that has an interesting plot or a beautiful design or a big Hollywood star – but I just don’t care about the characters and end up feeling nothing in the end. It’s really the most important thing for me – even if I know where the plot may be heading, tragedy or otherwise, if I really care about the characters and the stakes, I’ll hoping against the inevitable and my heart will still break even if I saw the storm coming from the first scene. And that feels so good, sitting in an audience, holding your breath. That being said, I love magical realism, puppets, dark/macabre themes and designs, sci-fi theater, dance and anything that really pushes the boundaries of the two-people-in-a-living-room-in-NY-talking-about-their-love-lives-drama/comedy mold.

So basically theater that makes me hold my breath…with dancing puppets.

Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A:  Write. A lot. Take every opportunity that comes your way. Meet people. Learn how to do all the other jobs in a theater – direct something, do the marketing for a show, stage manage, get on stage and do a monologue, design costumes. Do it all! Write. Find your tribe, people you can create with and fail with. Produce your own work at least once. Write something outside of your comfort zone. Listen to the critics, glean what you can from their reviews, politely thank them for spending quite a bit of time thinking about your work, and quickly throw out all those negative thoughts that will otherwise haunt you. Submit everywhere, to everything. Write.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I’m directing a new play called Low Tech by Jeff Folschinsky at The Eclectic Company Theatre in North Hollywood, CA. It will have dances and masks and funny things. It opens April 12, 2013. I’m a staff writer for an online fiction magazine called Fictionade:  http://www.fictionade.com/ You can also check out my website for readings and things that should happen in the near future:  http://withcoffeespoons.com/

Dec 14, 2012

I Interview Playwrights Part 541: Laura Marks



Laura Marks

Hometown: Lexington, KY

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about Bethany.

A:  I wrote this play in early 2009 right after I’d been laid off. It’s a darkly funny study of desperate people in desperate times, set in a community that’s been decimated by the foreclosure crisis. Since writing it, I’ll confess that I’ve been anxiously watching the news for signs of economic recovery, worrying that my play would stop feeling relevant. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I don’t think that’s been the case…

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I have a spooky play called Mine that’s getting its Chicago premiere at the Gift Theater this summer, and I’m working on a new play called Gather at the River which is about religion, morality and the extreme ends of the blue-state vs. red-state divide. It draws on my Kentucky roots.

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 can’t think of a truly definitive story, but there’s a character in Bethany who’s a wilderness survival enthusiast, among other things; and working on that play reminds me that one of my favorite childhood books was the US Air Force Combat Survival Manual. I don’t even know why we had this in the house. My dad must have bought it at some Army-Navy store around the same time when he started keeping canisters of freeze-dried eggs and sausage in the garage, just in case of nuclear winter. He’s a thoroughly rational guy, a doctor —not your typical doomsday prepper. But I have a bunch of his love letters to my mom when they were in college, and even as a young man he had this strain of concern that I find very moving: he was already worrying about protecting my mom and their as-yet-unborn children.

So anyway, we had this insane book. And it was about the stuff every kid wants to know: how to stay alive after you’ve been shot down in enemy territory. You didn’t just learn the basics like how to build a lean-to or ensnare wild animals. There was crazy shit in there, like how to distill your own urine if you couldn’t find clean water. And there was a first-person account from a guy in a Vietnamese POW camp who had performed a hemorrhoidectomy using the sharpened steel arch support from his combat boot. He described the postoperative patient as “living in considerably greater comfort.” I mean, you can’t read that as a kid and not have it etched in your brain.

I have two little girls of my own now, and I’m often surprised at the extreme scenarios they’re drawn to in their make-believe games. But it seems utterly normal and healthy for them to work a few things out this way. Marsha Norman once said, “Plays are about survival.” And I think that’s true, whether the plays are being done with LEGOs in the living room or on a professional stage. We all like to imagine how we’d act under different types and levels of duress, how we’d function and survive.

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

A:  I wish it wasn’t just for the rarefied few. I wish that audiences—and the people who make theater—were more representative of the whole community.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  For sheer pluck and doggedness, I’d say Helene Hanff and Moss Hart. They’re not heroes in the Olympian sense. They feel accessible. Hanff wrote a book called Underfoot in Show Business—I believe it’s out of print now, but it’s this wonderful, humble memoir of her time as a young playwright trying to get produced in the 1940’s and 50’s. It’s the perfect antidote to self-pity. And Moss Hart’s memoir, Act One, has the most epic account of a rewrite that I’ve ever read.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  “To see deep difficulty braved is at any time, for the really addicted artist, to feel almost even as a pang the beautiful incentive, and to feel it verily in such sort as to wish the danger intensified. The difficulty most worth tackling can only be… the greatest the case permits of.” – Henry James

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

A:  Apply to the Emerging Writers’ Group at the Public. Apply to Juilliard’s playwriting program. Send your stuff to the Lark Play Development Center. Apply to New Dramatists. Join the Dramatists Guild.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  This spring, I can’t wait to see Dominique Morisseau’s Detroit ’67 at the Public and Tanya Barfield’s The Call at Playwrights Horizons.

And my play Bethany will be at City Center Stage II, running January 11-February 17, 2013. The Women’s Project is producing it, Gaye Taylor Upchurch is directing it, and the cast and creative team are an absolute joy.

Dec 9, 2012

I Interview Playwrights Part 540: Don Zolidis


Don Zolidis

Hometown: Janesville, Wisconsin. 



Current Town: Austin, Texas and Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. 



Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’ve got about 800 new projects. I just finished a new play, TRUE BELIEVERS, about a disgraced Astrophysicist who teams up with fundamentalist Christians to write a biblically-based Astronomy Textbook. 



Q:  Tell me about the Edgerton Foundation New American Play Awards and the two plays you are having produced as part of them.

A:  The Edgerton New American Play Awards are grants given to theatres to help with producing new work. The theatres apply for them, and then the Foundation selects the winners. They’ve had a pretty good track record for picking the most-heralded plays of the year. Unbeknownst to me, both of the theatres producing my plays in 2012, The Purple Rose Theatre in Michigan and The Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis, applied for awards independently. Both of them won, which was quite a shock to me.

The plays I had selected really couldn’t be more different. WHITE BUFFALO, which ran in the spring at The Purple Rose, is the story of a miracle birth on a small farm in Wisconsin. CURRENT ECONOMIC CONDITIONS, which is a comedy about a 20-something returning to live at home after losing her job, played at the Phoenix.

I was honored to receive both awards, but I only learned about it from Google alerts! Funny. 



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


A:  Like most children of the eighties, I spent a great deal of time in front of the television watching cartoons. Most of that time I was violently annoyed that the heroes always seemed to win and the villains were always morons. I was usually yelling at the screen for the villains to simply get their entire gang together (why did Skeletor only choose one of his henchmen for a task? Send everybody!) and then pick off the heroes one by one. I spent a lot of time diagramming how this would happen, and playing out scenarios in my mind where the good guys were captured and murdered and the bad guys won. I don’t think I was really an evil kid, but without getting too pretentious about it, I think I was striving for narrative complexity and actual danger. The preordained happy ending drained the drama out of everything. I guess that’s why I like writing plays, where the outcome is often in doubt and not always happy, and probably why I also like Game of Thrones.

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


A:  Just one thing? I’d like to confront the mindset of New York City as not only the center of the theatrical world, but the only place where important theatre happens. There are many great regional theatres in America producing outstanding work (Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis, DC, etc…) and there are certain publishers who won’t even look at plays that didn’t play in New York. This may seem like a small thing, but it undercuts a play’s ability to live after its first production, if it premiered in a smaller market. It’s hard enough making a living as a playwright, but when your career seems arbitrarily defined by your ability to land a New York production, it makes it even harder. I don’t like to whine, but there is excellent theater being done outside of New York, and making it unpublishable and unproduceable is a shame.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?


A:  David Lindsay-Abaire, Christopher Durang, Eugene O’Neill, Shakespeare, Paula Vogel, Sarah Ruhl, I could go on and on…

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?


A:  I like theatre where the situation is clear but the outcome is in doubt and the path is surprising. I know that’s vague, but it’s hard to be specific about this entirely. I think a lot of theatre out there now is intentionally obscure and atmospheric rather than dramatic.

I also like huge theatre. Theatre that takes risks, that has twenty people on the stage, and deals with enormous, world-shaking themes. You know, the kind of stuff that’s almost impossible to get done.

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


A:  Hook in with a theatre group of your peers. It’s so hard to be sitting alone somewhere, emailing out stuff for eternity and listening to silence. You need to be part of a community of like-minded individuals. Get together with your friends and produce your own work. It’s not that expensive to rent a miserable little dive, charge a few bucks at the door, and put on a show.

Q:  Plugs, please:


A:  My newest play, MILES AND ELLIE, will open June 20th at the Purple Rose Theatre in Chelsea, Michigan and run through August 31st. (a 77-performance run for a world premiere! It’s such a joy to work with them. From there, it will move to the Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis and then the Montgomery Theatre outside of Philadelphia. Playscripts will be publishing my 48th play, A BRIGHT SWARM OF BEETLES, about the life of Soviet playwright Mikhail Bulgakov, early next year. Also you can check out my website at www.donzolidis.com

Dec 8, 2012

Entrevisto a Dramaturgos: Concepción León Mora


Concepción León Mora

¿De qué estás trabajando ahora?

En un texto que cuestione la pertinencia del ritual en una sociedad tan confundida y egoísta como la actual. La “particular” interpretación del fín del mundo en el calendario Maya ha sido uno de los grandes temas tocados por mucha gente, como Yucateca, creo que es un buen momento para ponerlo a tela teatral. Escribo la historia de un anciano sabio que debe preparar la bebida sagrada para salvar al pueblo. Esta bebida incluye alcohol, el sabio fue alcohólico, omnubildado por el alcohol mató a su hijo a golpes. Ahora debe elegir entre rechazar su sabiduría o volver a beber.

Dime, si se quiere, una historia de su infancia que explica quién es usted como escritor o como persona.

La relación con mi abuela es mi motor de escritura, ella era una narradora nata, plena de sabiduría y amor, escribo como parte de aquel ritual nuestro que nos mantenía la boca llena de historias y el espíritu asombrado.

Si pudieras cambiar algo de teatro, ¿qué sería?

Las formas de producir y las estrategias de publicidad.

¿Quiénes son o fueron sus héroes de teatro?

No creo en héroes, en todo caso eso sirve para las taquillas del cine, al teatro le sirven los seres humanos, sin capacidades fantásticas e omnipotentes pero con finitas cualidades humanas. En ese sentido admiro a todos los que hacen teatro sin estar persiguiendo o arañando tal o cual beca.

¿Qué tipo de teatro te excita?

El que no tiene una producción apabullante y confía en la capacidad de los actores para llenar el espacio vacío.

Plugs, Por Favor 

Mis más recientes colaboraciones con “Teatro de ciertos habitantes” y “Carretera 45” son obras que recuperan la memoria convocando algunos miedos de infancia y poniendo en primer plano la identidad de los que estamos en escena.

I Interview Playwrights Part 539: Concepción León Mora

Translated by Andrea Thome and Lily Padilla
Concepción León Mora

Q:  What are you working on now?


A:  A text which questions the relevance of ritual in a society as confused and selfish as our present one. Many people have been making their own strange interpretations of the Mayan calendar’s supposed “end of the world.” As a Yucatecan myself, I think now is a good moment to address this this on stage. I’m writing the story of an old wise man who is supposed to prepare a sacred drink in order to save his town. This drink contains alcohol, but the old man had been an alcoholic before and, possessed by alcohol, had beaten his son to death. Now he must choose between rejecting his own knowledge or having to drink again.

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 relationship with my grandmother is my fuel as a writer. She was a born storyteller, full of wisdom and love. I write as part of that ritual of ours that kept out mouths mouth full of stories and our spirits amazed.

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


A:  Forms of production and publicity strategies. 


Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  
I don’t believe in heroes; in any case, those are useful to movie theater box offices. What’s useful to theater is human beings without fantastic or omnipotent abilities but with finite human qualities. In that sense, I admire everyone who makes theater without chasing or grabbing for this or that grant.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?


A:  That which doesn’t have overwhelming production values and which believes in the ability of the actors to fill the empty space.


Q:  Plugs, please:


A:  My most recent collaborations with “Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes” and “Carretera 45” are works which recover memory, drawing on certain childhood fears and highlighting the identitites of those of us who are onstage.

Sunday 7pm at the Lark, reading of Mestiza Power, translated by Virginia Grise and directed by Daniel Jáquez

Dec 7, 2012

I Interview Playwrights Part 538: Saúl Enríquez



Translated by Andrea Thome and Lily Padilla

Saúl Enríquez

Hometown: I’m from Cardel, Veracruz, a beautiful town in the Gulf of Mexico, but I grew up in a magnificent valley in Orizaba, Veracruz.

Current City: Cancún, Quintana Roo, Mexico



Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m creating a play about the reckless side of teenagers. It is part of a three play series on adolescence that I’m working on.

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 in a place where people are used to creating stories; talking about legends that are constantly breaking down and being reconstructed. I remember one time when people swore they had found a werewolf on a mountain and that he had been captured by soldiers. I was a child, but to me the story seemed implausible. I was more fascinated by the fact that people believed this story than by the story itself.

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


A:  The theater is a rare animal without rules…I like this. 


Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?


A:  I don’t know about heroes, but playwrights that I have always admired are Shakespeare, Racine, Moliere, Beckett, Chekhov, Strindberg, Mamet, Albee, Miller, Kane. And the Mexicans: Liera, Gonzales Dávila y Olguìn, Leñero, Berman. Directors and actors are another list.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?


A:  All theater that creates a new universe and stays true to its own invented logic.

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

A:  I am beginning. But I like to focus on substance over form.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My theater company’s facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nuncamerlot-Teatro/336899535544?fref=ts



Reading of Schnauzer Duck at the Lark in New York this Sunday at 3 translated by Mariana Carreño King and directed by May Adrales.

Entrevisto a Dramaturgos: Saúl Enríquez



Saúl Enríquez

Procedencia: Soy de Cardel Veracruz, un pueblito hermoso del golfo de México, pero crecí en Orizaba Veracruz un valle magifico.

Ciudad Actual:
Cancún, Quintana Roo, Mexico


¿En qué estás trabajando ahora?


Estoy construyendo una obra sobre el lado temerario de los adolescentes, pretendo escribir 3 obras sobre adolescentes.

Dime, si se quiere, una historia de su infancia que explica quién es usted como escritor o como persona.



Crecí en un sitio donde la gente tiene por costumbre crear historias, platicar leyendas que se están quebrando y construyendo todo el tiempo. Recuerdo una vez que, la gente juraba que habían encontrado un hombre lobo en una montaña y que lo había sido apresado por los soldados. Yo era un niño, pero la historia me parecía inverosimil, encontraba mas fascinación en que la gente creyera esta historia más que en la historia misma.

Si pudieras cambiar algo de teatro, ¿qué sería?

El teatro es un animal raro y sin reglas... eso me gusta

¿Quiénes son o fueron sus héroes de teatro?¿Qué tipo de teatro te excita?

No sé si héroes pero dramaturgos que siempre he admirado: Es Shakespeare, Racine. Molliere, Beckett, Chejov, Strindberg, Mamet, Albee, Miller, Kane... y mexicanos: Liera, Gonzales Dávila y Olguìn, Leñero, Berman. Directores y Actores esa es otra lista.

¿Qué tipo de teatro te excita?

Todo aquel que crea un universo nuevo y se sostiene sobre sus propias reglas.

 ¿Qué consejo le darías a los dramaturgos acaba de empezar?

Yo voy empezando. Pero me gusta ponderar en el fondo sobre la forma.

Plugs, Por Favor


La pagina de mi grupo: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nuncamerlot-Teatro/336899535544?fref=ts

Dec 6, 2012

Entrevisto a Dramaturgos: Bárbara Colio



Bárbara Colio

Procedencia: Mexicali, Baja California, México.

Ciudad actual: Ciudad de México.

¿En qué estás trabajando ahora?:

Estoy trabajando con tres estupendos actores mexicanos, mi obra "vuelve cuando hayas ganado la guerra" ésta obra la terminé de escribir hace poco, pero esta vez, como no lo hacía desde hace varios años, la quiero dirigir yo misma, como una extensión de la escritura. Volver a meterme a la escena viva para aprender de ella. La estrenaremos en abril del 2013 en un espacio alternativo.

También estoy ansiosa por asistir al estreno de  mi obra "Cuerdas" en Madrid, en febrero 2013, la misma obra que estoy trabajando en esta residencia con Lark Play Development Center.

Dime, si se quiere, una historia de su infancia que explica quién es usted como escritor o como persona.

Cuando era niña, cada domingo, mi papá me llevaba a lo que se llamaba "el bosque de la ciudad" en mi ciudad natal. Mientras yo me divertía en los juegos y con los animales del pequeño zoológico que había ahí, mi papá practicaba su hobby favorito: la fotografía. Tengo cientos de fotos mí, en ese bosque, de cada domingo. Mi favorita, una donde estoy con cara de susto, cargando a un pequeño tigre, que mi papá hizo que sacaran de su jaula, solo para que posara conmigo.

Si esa foto no existiera, yo hubiera olvidado que un día, abracé a un tigre.

Si pudieras cambiar algo de teatro, ¿qué sería?


En Mexico, que existieran más facilidades para producir teatro.

¿Qué tipo de teatro te excita?


El que no me da respuestas, sino que me deja pensando en más de una pregunta.

¿Qué consejo le darías a los dramaturgos acaba de empezar?

Que lean, que vean, que escuchen, que vivan, que se detengan un momento a contemplar lo excepcional.

I Interview Playwrights Part 537: Bárbara Colio



translated by Andrea Thome and Lily Padilla


Bárbara Colio

Hometown:  Mexicali, Baja California, México.

Current Town: Mexico City

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I am working with three stupendous Mexican actors on my play “come back when you have won the war”. I recently finished writing it and this time, as I have not done in a many years, I am going to direct it myself as an extension of the writing. I’d like to immerse myself in the live, active scene to learn from it. The premiere is in April 2013 in an alternative space, a building in Mexico City’s historical center.

Also, I’m eager to attend the premiere of my play “Ropes” in Madrid in February 2013, the same play I’m working on in my residency at the Lark Play Development Center.

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 a little girl, every Sunday my father would take me to a park called “The City Forest” in my hometown. While I was playing on the playground and looking at zoo animals, my father practiced his favorite hobby: photography. I have hundreds of photos of myself; my favorite one is of me looking terrified, holding a baby tiger that my father asked the zookeepers to take out of his cage, only for the photograph.

If this photo didn’t exist, I would have forgotten that one day, I held a tiger.

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

A:  That in Mexico, there would be more support for producing theater.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  That which doesn’t give me answers, but which leaves me thinking about more than one question.

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

A: Read, observe, listen, live and pause a moment to contemplate the exceptional.

Q: Plugs?

A: Reading at the Lark of Ropes, translated by Maria Alexandria Beech and directed by Lou Moreno. Saturday at 7.

I Interview Playwrights Part 536: Liza Birkenmeier



Liza Birkenmeier

Hometown: St. Louis, MO

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q: What are you working on now?

A:  I am working with collaborator-director-friend Katherine Brook on a piece that uses archival audio from interviews I recorded at a coffee house in Missouri. We are in the process of chopping up recordings of young transgender and queer people in the Midwest and gluing them to the structure of Arthur Miller’s ALL MY SONS. It follows a piece that we collaborated on called AMERICAN REALISM that used congressional archive recordings from the Dust Bowl. (We recently traveled with it to the San Diego Museum of art and LACE in Los Angeles). Also…I’m drafting some commissioned pieces—one is musical collaboration with Christopher Limber and Shakespeare Festival St. Louis, another is collaboration with Washington University and a large PR2 robot, and the third is a site-specific play that will premiere at a Laundromat next summer.

I'm also writing a play called INFIRMARY SHAKES about the Kentucky Narcotics Farm and the invention of gunpowder.

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 had an extremely blue time shortly before I turned twelve. I became spontaneously terrified of everything. In this painful, pre-pubescent era, I found incredible comfort in fantasizing that I was personally chosen as this planet’s primary liaison. Alien families were sent to me to learn about earth when they arrived. I would imagine taking them to my house, explaining the purpose of carpet, cooking them meals (they may never have seen food), telling them about how grass grew, showing them why humans had knees, and witnessing their first experience of hearing a song or drinking an orange soda. It made the world (even my small suburban-chain-link-fence- Wonderbread one) an incomprehensibly beautiful living museum, crammed with oddities and wonder.

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

A:  Everyone, EVERYONE, everyone, all people from all places in all income brackets with all interests, would get really excited to see it. More excited than for scratch-off lotto tickets, Christmas, the Oscars, a PBR bucket special, low gas prices, or seeing a celebrity at the airport.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Some people who have changed/influenced my brain chemistry in the past couple of years: Rob Handel, Madeleine George, and the rest of 13P, Sid Vicious, Carter W. Lewis, Marisa Wegrzyn, RN Healey, Stefanie Zadravec, Will Eno, Lisa D’Amour, Gregory S Moss, Andy Warhol, Tennessee Williams, Katherine Brook, Daniel Fish, Karen O, Len Jenkin, Mac Wellman, Son House.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Many kinds. Quiet plays, epic plays, short plays, violent plays, operas, musicals, the circus, rodeos, elementary school holiday pageants, confrontational bathroom graffiti, rock concerts, intimate and public cell phone conversations, drunk arguments on the L train, debutante balls, family gatherings, laboratory experiments, sidewalk preaching, glass blowing…excite me very much.

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

A:  I either AM or at least FEEL like a playwright just starting out…I will share this one thing I'm in the process of learning: The perfect, healthy day with no obligation or worry, with no “other work” or family need, with no sleepiness or social plans, with only the ideal, sunny room or quiet dark—isn’t really on its way. The plan to have spontaneous and concurrent freedom and genius is a myth. Write the entire play now, in the hour you have in the hotel lobby, in the two-hour plane ride, in your bed when you wake. Write it on the living room floor and finish it. Don’t let anyone read it until you are finished. Their criticisms/questions will be confusing or even insulting when they are guiding what the rest of the play will be. They will only make the “end” farther from you. Don’t rewrite th first act forty times before you start the second. Finish it. The ache that says tomorrow/next week/next month will be a better time is the fear that the end won’t be as “good” as your initial spark. It won’t be! It’s the inertia of work. It isn’t always going to be hayrides, petunias, and muses. Parts will suck. PARTS OF YOUR PLAY WILL SUCK, MAYBE TERRIBLY. Just write them down, regardless. Usually, after a first draft, I’m pretty sure my ENTIRE PLAY SUCKS TERRIBLY. This doesn’t have to be scary. Writing forward and deleting things can be acts that are not precious or spiritual. Truth/beauty/brilliance aren’t waiting in some corner/time you haven’t yet discovered. Allow your play to suck today instead of waiting for it to be perfect next winter. Most of the work will be repairing it, anyway. SO. Finish it now. Shaping it into the glory-genius-potential you once imagined won’t actually begin until it is written. Trusted voices can comment on the whole journey. Take notes, start again, do what you will to fill the gaps and sculpt the world/words. Today…finish the play.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Look out for Katherine Brook’s LADY HAN in February at Incubator Arts. Stefanie Zadravec’s THE ELECTRIC BABY will be in Chicago and New Jersey in 2013. I’m excited to see I HATE FUCKING MEXICANS, now extended at The Flea.


Dec 5, 2012

I Interview Playwrights Part 535: David Gaitán


David Gaitán

Hometown: Mexico City


Current Town: Mexico City

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I'm writing a play for a specific group of actors; the peculiar thing (for me, at least) is that their average age is 75. I've always worked with people around my age... I’m writing a play based on the idea of randomness; I’ve seen this done on stage many times, but not often as an experiment that departs from the script itself. 


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 was born with a deformity in my legs. I had two surgeries in order to correct this; later on, I used special shoes until I turned 6. During that time, my parents would make sure that my special shoes (up to the knees) were not seen (by me or the rest of the kids), so that nobody could identify me as handicapped. Along with this, I was encouraged to do everything... walk, run, jump, play soccer, dance... 
Eat the whole cake.
  Now, I work as an actor, playwright, and director.  Many times, simultaneously.


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


A:  I would make it for free.
 Always.
 And somehow manage to pay everybody in the play.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  They've been changing lately.
I began with the obvious, classic ones: Shakespeare, etc.
Then it changed to my direct teachers.
Now, I don't know.
I would think that my heroes are my closest friends, those who are trying to understand theater in a different way.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?


A:  That which that suggests a different way of doing things.  Given that theater is a system in itself, I admire those who manipulate the system in order to create something new, to make the spectator's experience evolve.

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

A:  Learn the technique.
Then, go against it.
But first, learn it.


Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  In New York, at The Lark, Saturday, December 8, a reading of Leakages and Anticoagulants, translated by Julián Mesri and directed by Mallory Catlett.


In Mexico City I will be acting in Disertaciones Sobre Un Charco, written by Edgar Chías, directed by David Jiménez. I will also be acting in El Camino del Insecto, which I wrote, also directed by David Jiménez. Both these plays are produced and performed by our company, Ocho Metros Cúbicos.

I Interview Playwrights Part 534: Stephen Spotswood


Stephen Spotswood

Hometown: North East, MD (it's not a compass point; it's the name of an actual town)

Current Town: Washington, D.C.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I have a tendency to work on multiple projects at once so, in an effort to keep myself from rambling, I'm going to keep this to work I'm doing on the actual day I filled out this interview (Nov. 27th--happy birthday to me!). I spent the morning working on a short play for the HeyDay Players--a troupe of senior citizens who take classes at Round House Theatre's Education Center and tour readings of short plays to nearby nursing homes and senior centers. I've been lucky to write for them for three years now, and it's a joy to write for an age group that you rarely see on stage.

I'll be spending the first half of the afternoon at Woolly Mammoth Theatre recording a podcast play I was commissioned to write for the National New Play Network's Showcase which, in my timestream, is this coming weekend. I'm one of four D.C. playwrights commissioned by NNPN to craft short audio plays that people will listen to on iPods as they walk in one of four directions from the theatre. My play will be taking folks South to the National Mall. The Washington Monument? Best set piece ever.

And this evening, prior to celebrating my 35th, I'll be (hopefully) finishing the tweaks on new marketing art for WE TIRESIAS, which won Best Drama at the 2012 Capital Fringe, and is being remounted courtesy of Forum Theatre.

Then there will be drinking.

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 a kid I used to go to church with my parents on Sunday evening services. When it let out, I would run right to the car to turn on the radio, because on Sunday evenings 1210 AM ran recordings of old radio shows. So while my parents were talking with their friends in the church parking lot, I was sitting in a dark car, radio glowing, listening to stories of The Shadow, Jack Benny, The Green Hornet, The Outer Limits, etc. Does this explain me as a writer or a person? Not entirely. But a lot of my work is heavily narrative, with as much direct storytelling as dialogue. And the topic of religion and people coming to terms with/struggling against it comes up more times than I can count.

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

A:  I would take everyone’s definition of theatre (even my own), throw it in an oil barrel, and set it on fire.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  A lot of my theatrical heroes create work at that intersection of traditional theatre, music, performance, and storytelling. Amanda Palmer, Taylor Mac, Mike Daisey and Eric Ehn to name a few.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I love theatre that takes chances—where actors, writers, designers, whole companies are trying things they don’t know they’re capable of. Punching above their weight class, so to speak. I like to walk out of a show not wanting to ever write another word because I could never do something that brilliant. And then, a few hours later, wanting to outdo it.

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

A:  See all the theatre you possibly can. Meet the people that make it—the actors, the directors, the designers, the other writers. Take them out for coffee or beer or wine or whiskey. Find out about them; tell them about yourself; see their work; show them yours if they ask. Write a play. Then write another one. Then write another one. And if you can’t find somebody to produce the first three, write a fourth and produce it yourself. Ask the other artists you’ve befriended to help. Invite everyone you know and everyone they know and as many strangers to come and see it. Then do it all over again. And if people like your work and like working with you, things begin to move of their own volition.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  WE TIRESIAS opens at Round House Silver Spring on January 3. It’s a story about the future and doomed love and old tragedies told from the point of view of a boy who becomes a woman who becomes the old, blind man destined to give Oedipus the bad news.

Dec 1, 2012

I Interview Playwrights Part 533: Erica Saleh



Erica Saleh

Hometown: Dryden, NY

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I'm deep into rewrites on a play I wrote earlier this year, The Morning After, about a young woman who is, rather suddenly, forced to confront the ways in which her politics and theory and feminism do or do not line up with her personal desires and private life. It's also very concerned with the semantics of the word rape, Austin Texas, and pop culture.

I'm also just starting work on a commission from Dramatics Magazine to write a play for a large cast of high schoolers, which is fun and messy and a really good antidote to wrestling with revisions and incessantly thinking about feminism and rape.

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

A: Ah. Ok. I usually claim that I wasn't really a theater kid, but then I remember this embarrassing story and wonder if I'm lying to myself about not having been a theater kid...

When I was in middle school my friends all suddenly revealed themselves to be really good athletes and decided that playing pick up basketball after school was a really fun thing to do. I, on the other hand, was scrawny and uncoordinated and thought playing basketball after school was significantly less fun than being in school. But I obviously played anyway, because that's what you do. One day the game wasn't going very well, I don't remember why or what that even means, I just remember everyone was frustrated. And one of the girls stopped and said "do you guys want to stop and make up plays?" And I got SO excited, and felt SO relieved, and blurted out "Yeah! Or like, dances or something?!" and everyone stared at me and I quickly realized that she had meant basketball plays, not play plays. And it was the kind of embarrassing moment that just sort of burns into your being because you've accidentally revealed yourself? The kind that you think about for months afterward and feel ashamed? And then don't think about for years because you were so embarrassed and then 17 years later remember and realize it's not actually embarrassing at all but a confirmation of the person you've become.

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

A: I would shift the dialogue between theatermakers to one of positivity. It is so easy to talk about what we don't like. It is so easy to say that things are unfair. And that's not wrong. There is inequity, there is unfairness, and it is, of course, worth talking about constructively and working to change. But there is also so much to be celebrated. There is so much that is exciting and fortunate and good about what we do. There is so much good theater being made. I would challenge all of us to talk about that. To go into plays with an open heart and and optimistic mind and look for things to admire and respect rather than things to criticize. I would challenge all of us to realize that we have picked a life that is difficult, but also a life that is awesome, and to remind ourselves and each other of why we do it. To call out the magic when we see it. And if we don't see it enough, to actively look for it, because it's there.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Caryl Churchill. Sara Kane. Gina Gionfriddo. Tennessee Williams. And all of my former teachers, but I want to specifically call out Daniel Alexander Jones for his beautiful work but also for his generous spirit and inspirational relationship with his art and community; and Sherry Kramer for her wonderful work but also for her humor and honesty and kindness. These two taught me not only how to be a better playwright but how to be a better person and community member.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Something that excites me about theater that excites me is that the only pattern I can find is that it excites me. Plays that have knocked me over in the past few years have been wildly different form one another. Some of these, in no particular order, were: Becky Shaw, Banana Bag and Bodice's Beowulf, Hand to God, Circle Mirror Transformation, The Select(The Sun Also Rises), The Whale, Milk Milk Lemonade, Rapture Blister Burn... I could keep going and going, see above about how there is SO much good theater being made. But the point is that these plays are all really really different form each other. That said, I think, the common thread that triggers the excitement for me, is that they are all honest, and in that honesty they are simultaneously heartbreaking and hopeful. So I guess the short answer to what excites me is theater that breaks my heart but leaves me hopeful.

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

A: Be kind to yourself. Be honest in your work. Be generous to your community.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: Three Graces will be hosting reading of my play The Morning After at The Gin Mill on January 22nd, and I have a play in an evening of short plays written for teenagers (and written by a whole slew of awesome playwrights) at the 52nd street project in early February.