A: The play was first commissioned in the early 2000s by Woolly Mammoth Theater Company and the New Play Network. Possum Carcass is a “cover” of The Seagull. I’ve always been a huge Chekov fan, and I wanted to see what I could learn by compressing the play to six characters and relocating it to New York City. Ultimately the goal was to write a play that let a theater audience see The Seagull in a new way and a non-theater audience to enjoy a this dark-comedy without being alienated by the distant time and location in which it is set. In the ten years since I first wrote the play, it’s been read or work-shopped at Woolly Mammoth (DC), Clubbed Thumb (NY), University of Maryland, Kitchen Dog Theater (Dallas), Knitting Factory (NY), and Annex Theatre (Seattle).
Q: What else are you working on now? I hear you have retired from playwriting. What is that like and how has it changed your perspective?
A: These days my main creative project is my band. I started playing music and writing plays at about the same time, but I’ve always been much more passionate about music than theater. Playing music allows me to write, direct, and perform in a much more nimble creative unit than a traditional play production, and it allows for more concrete documents of the work (recordings and videos). In my experience, music draws a much more varied audience than theater. I was disappointed by how few working class or non-theater artists seemed to attend plays in New York.
Since moving to Seattle in 2007, I’ve been able see a lot of strange and provocative performance work at On the Boards, who host wide variety of national and international artists. I’ve worked as a sound designer, musician, dramaturg, and performer in some short works at OtB, but that is about the extent of my theater work these days. As far as writing goes, I’ve been focusing on short fiction, comic strips, and screenplays.
Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a artist or as a person.
A: My very first memory is of a music class my mother brought me to when I was five. The class was in the form of a puppet show about classical music. Apparently I was transfixed.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: The audience.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: “Heroes” is strong word. But I’ve been most inspired by Chekov, Brecht, Sam Shepard, Paula Vogel, Mac Wellman, and Ruth Margraff.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I’m more excited by broken narratives and performance art than conventional theater productions these days. Last year I got see Kristen Kosmas’ “There There” at OtB and it was amazing. OtB is bringing Richard Maxwell this season, and I’m excited to see some of his work again.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: #1 Be born into a wealthy family. Use that privilege to pay for housing, food, and health insurance.
#2 Go to an obscenely expensive private east coast college. Use that network to find collaborators and funders for your work.
A: Colorado is the third and final play to be produced in my trilogy, "The Honor and Glory of Whaling", that deals with opiate addiction in the commercial fishing industry. It is actually the first play in the chronology. The previous two plays—The Honor and Glory of Whaling and UltraLight were produced at La MaMa. UltraLight had an extensive New England tour following its premier at La MaMa. In style, Colorado is kind of a cross between the first two plays. It combines imagery and music with physical storytelling to create both a realsitic and a mythical realm. In watching rehearsals, it seems to me that the play, and the direction that Director David Bennett has taken it in, has taken on an almost primitive Irish quality. Dave has chosen to have all the actors play instruments, in addition to having recorded music as well as two live accompanying musicians. Watching and listening to some of the scenes reminds me a great Irish session. There have been times when I've closed my eyes just to listen to the performance. That said, the play is very physical and gets quite raucous—the action is set on a commercial construction site in New Bedford, Massachusetts, a major and historical fishing port. The action of work—the actors actually employ construction tools—and the punk/progressive rock music era and attitude of the characters contrasts sharply with the mythical moods created by the music. The shifting energy allows us to flow back and forth between time periods easily. It just feels like a great story is starting to take shape. One that I think Melville couldn't help but enjoy.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: The biggest thing that I am working on now is getting all three of my plays—the full trilogy— to the next level to be performed in repertory. All three plays stand on their own but it would be quite an epic production to see them performed together. That's our goal at La MaMa and we've been working cooperatively with other theaters both regionally and in NYC to make that a reality. I feel a sense of destiny with these plays that's been pushing me for some time to see them complete their full journey as a trilogy. It will be both interesting and exciting to see where and when the full trilogy ends up and where I end up as a consequence. I fully intend to "get to the next level" with these plays, whatever that means.
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 recently had the opportunity to publish a bunch of my plays with Martin Denton of indietheaternow and through the process I found myself looking back and going through a lot of old archival stuff to glean information that I needed to include with publication of the plays: time and place of the premier production, actor credits, etc.. In the process, I came across a really early childhood essay that I wrote called "The Path". It was something that my mother had saved and tucked away for me—a habit of hers that used to slightly irritate me as I found my adolescent writing quite embarrassing. But in re-reading the essay, which was hand-written in red ink on white lined paper, I started to feel a sense of pride at the courage of this little kid who used to walk out alone into the woods (on the Path) with his pen and paper and try to capture, above all things, POETRY, and a connection to nature. And in re-reading that little essay I discovered that all the threads of my writing ever since were contained in it. At a little later point in my publishing excavation, I came across another essay entitled "Fishing" that I was actually able to incorporate into my new play, which was pretty exciting. The actors seem to be very impressed and quite touched by this bit of writing, even before they knew that I had actually written it as a kid.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: I would get rid of a lot of the show-business business, the noise of fame and over-emphasis on marketing. It interferes with the directness of theater and the encouragement of people to think for themselves and see with their own two eyes. Theater is such an amazing, deeply seeking process. There's nothing like it, and there is no end to the things you can discover through the dedication of working with a creative group. Outside distractions with results which can only come from a completion of the process itself can be very frustrating and ultimately ruin the joy. That is not to say that reviews and marketing aren't good and necessary. It just means that these things need to be kept in balance. The most important thing is the work and sometiimes it doesn't feel that way.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: My theatrical heroes WERE J.M. Synge, Samuel Beckett, all the absurdists, Sam Shepard, Ellen Stewart … My theatrtical heroes ARE the wonderful and courageous people who have undertaken this production with me, from the director and actors to the designers, stage manager, marketing and graphic designer … honest to God, that these people have the generosity, trust and faith to follow me down this PATH, amazes me and touches me very deeply. We have to accomplish something amazing. What are the other options?
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I like physical theater with a strong story but I don't really like straight or traditional theater. In fact, Ellen Stewart wouldn't allow it in her theater. I guess that's where my fascination with myth and the altered logic of the absurdists comes in. I like language and dialogue but I often use it to other purposes. I do like the presence of the physical story-teller, like the old Irish Shanachies who used to practice their gestures by watching their shadows on the white-washed wall of a sunlit cottage. I like to feel that the storyteller is in the same room as us and can reach out and grab us by the collar if we're not paying attention. I've actually adopted the mythical name Michael Seamus O'Gorman in my letter-writing correspondences and alter ego text messaging. Seamus is both a good and bad influence on me. He's fond of a pint or three and a bit loose lipped with the women but a willing scapegoat for my failings.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Get your hands on a old GMC pick-up truck with a rack and an eleven foot long wooden whaling boat. That appears to be what a playwright needs from my experience with this play. In lieu of that, write a play, if that's what you're inspired to do, and put it on. Don't wait for someone else to do it if you feel strongly about it. You learn everything by doing, and the sooner the better. David Mamet once said that the one thing he remembered from his first play is that he knew that he had written a play. He didn't know how good it was, but it was indeed a play. No small accomplishment. If you can build a boat that floats, you're on your way. As you master certain things you can craft a beauty that really starts to "sit on her lines".
Q: Plugs, please
A: I would like to give a big shout out to La MaMa, Martin Denton and Indietheaternow and the thriving culture of original independent theater.
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A: My colleague Nicole Pandolfo and I are working on a documentary play on acquaintance rape called A Bad Night that will have a reading at the Dramatist Guild on February 20th.
I was also super grateful to have just received a 2014-2015 LAUNCH Commission from The Atlantic Theatre company which will have a reading in August.
My 10-minute play Planted, inspired by the The Lotus Eaters from The Odyssey will be included in ReLeaf Theatre companies spring one-act festival.
Lots of wonderful creative collaborations!
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 recently went through boxes of my childhood writing at my parent's house and was surprised by the existential pieces I was writing in elementary school. I have always been fascinated by the unseen. I think that shows up a lot in my writing now. When I was eleven my grandmother died and I sang a solo in the choir the day after which I insisted on doing. I remember it helping me with the overwhelming feelings of grief. I've always been turning to art to express the feelings that are hard to articulate in words. Usually it's in relationship to those mysteries of life.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: I would continue to push for producing more work by women and artists of color.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: My theatrical heroes are all the artists that continue to work in the theatre with passion and love. It's a business that is easy to give up on and harder to stick with. But how wonderful is it when you watch the magic of the theatre and see words you have written leap off the page and into the hands of talented creative collaborators. I think everyone that continues to do theatre from the love of creating are heroes. I'm constantly meeting new and inspiring artists that continue to make the theatre an exciting on-going conversation that I'm grateful to be a part of.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: Honesty in both writing and performance. Pieces that spark genuine conversation and allow audience members to engage in something outside of their comfort zone.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: I think that we are all here to support one another. So seek out artists who have a little more time in the business and ask them out for coffee. Pick their brain and in return say yes when someone with less time in the business asks you for coffee. All we can do is share our own experience and writing is such a solitary profession we need each other to continue to create exciting new pieces of theatre.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: You can keep up with on-going news at amywitting.com my website which was created by another fabulous playwright - Daniel John Kelley!
I'm also on twitter - @wittywitting
February 20th - A Bad Night - Friday Night Footlights @ The Dramatist Guild
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Hometown: Lansing, New York. Population: More cows than people.
Current Town: New York, New York
Q: Tell me about your adaptation of Sense and Sensibility.
A: The world premiere just opened off-Broadway, produced by Bedlam (www.theatrebedlam.org) and directed by Eric Tucker. I started working on the script in 2010; it's been more-or-less finished since 2012. This production is 10 actors, but it can be done with as few as 7-8; it's running in rep with a new version of The Seagull from Anya Reiss. I'm also playing Marianne Dashwood in S&S, as well as Polina in The Seagull.
Q: What else are you working on?
A: Sense and Sensibility is headed to a big regional theatre in the spring after this run; it should be officially announced soon! I recently finished The Little Fellow, which is a play about Harriette Wilson, the major courtesan of late 18th c. England, and I'm talking to people about workshopping that. I'm also finishing up a tryptich of plays with music based in Greek myths, as well as a modern two-hander about a high school student who ends up in a relationship with an older man. And I'm about halfway through a Mansfield Park adaptation; Austen isn't quite out of my system, yet! I have some future stuff in the works with Bedlam, as well.
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 this wonderful teacher when I was growing up: Cynthia Howell. She ran the music program K-12 in our little rural school system, as well as all of the school plays and musicals. She introduced me to theater, and it proved to be my lifeline - my road out of dysfunction, out of farm country. She used to say to us (and we were really young kids at the time) "you girls shouldn't just be actors; you have to write plays, you have to be directors; the theatre needs strong women" - and that really stuck with me. I owe her such an enormous debt; I grew up in an environment where I saw a lot of injustice perpetrated every day, and she really gave me an avenue to tell the stories of misfits, of dismissed people, of underdogs, of less-than-perfectly-sympathetic-protagonists, of crazy people, of have-nots. She gave me a creative outlet that saved me.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: I'd eliminate pay-for-play internships and auditions. It's creating more and more of a system where only privileged young people can even aspire to work in the theater. It's even worse now than it was 10 years ago, in my experience.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I love playful, passionate stuff that doesn't take itself too seriously but which tackles big scary issues. I like language-driven work and I like a willingness to go profane. I like stuff that embraces theatricality and includes the audience.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: I feel like my biggest heroes are people I know and collaborate with. The entire team on Bedlam's shows right now is so amazing - really so so talented and playful and whip-smart and creative. Actors I adore include: Mark Rylance, Janet McTeer, Fiona Shaw. In terms of playwrights, I do love the classics: Shakespeare, O'Neill, Miller, etc. - and modern playwrights I really emulate tend to, again, be people I know and have seen work and re-work things until they're shining. There are a lot of them out there, but three of my favorite writers working now are: Janine Nabers, Jose Rivera, and Meghan Deans.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: I feel a bit pretentious giving advice, but I think anyone who wants to write plays should take an acting class. Or two. Or three. Maybe even go on some auditions. My background as an actor has really given me utmost sympathy for anyone who may have to muscle through an awkward line. I also can say what I say to myself when writing a play, which is heck, try crazy ideas - if doesn't work, you can always re-write. Even bad drafts teach you something.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: Come and see Bedlam's fall rep, running until Dec. 21st! Tickets are available at www.theatrebedlam.org. You can also catch up with where my plays are going next at www.katehamill.com.
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Hometown:
Childhood: Turnersville, NJ. Adulthood: New York, NY
Current Town:
Los Angeles, CA
Q: What are you working on now?
A: OK, let’s see:
I just finished a draft of a play with songs about quantum physicist Hugh Everett III and his wife Nancy called WHERE EVER IT MAY BE.
I just started a musical with Anna Ziegler about 1950s quiz show prodigy Lenny Ross.
I have a commission from a Broadway producer to write a musical about hip-hop in early 1980s NYC that I should probably get started on. But she doesn’t want me to write the music (just the book and lyrics) so we need to find a composer first…
Also, some TV stuff. But who fucking cares about 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 “flunked” the third grade and had to repeat it. It was hard, but I used it as an opportunity to sort of reinvent myself.
Since then, I’ve tried to use all my flunkings as reinvention opportunities. And I am constantly flunking.
Also, when I was a teenager, my family had to move and I had to get rid of my dog, who I am certain was shortly thereafter destroyed. So now, I love everyone very much, but am emotionless when they leave me or when I leave them. My dog’s name was Wolfgang.
Also, from a very young age, I have been obsessed with the film Amadeus.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: No more adaptations.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Here’s some heroes, not all theater types:
Frank Loesser, Sheldon Harnick, Yip Harburg, Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Fields, Martin McDonough, Adler and Ross, Amy Sherman-Palladino, Mike Leigh, Nicole Holofcener, George Bernard Shaw, the Cohen Brothers, Noah Baumbach, William Goldman, Peter Shaffer, Kurt Vonnegut, Phillip Roth, Paula Vogel, Kanye West, Billy Bragg, Regina Spektor, Stephin Merritt, David Mamet, Woody Allen, Allan Sherman, Allen Iverson, and all of my playwright, musical theater writing, songwriting and screenwriting friends who inspire me with bitterness and bitter me with inspiration.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: Theater that is inexpensive and short. Or theater that is so exciting, surprising, entertaining, funny and/or heartbreaking that I didn’t even notice how long or expensive it was.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Try to live in New York. At least for a little while. Its not-worth-it-ness is totally worth it. Also, when you’re there don’t see too many plays. Its worth-it-ness is totally not worth it.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: My aforementioned play with songs WHERE EVER IT MAY BE is having its first and maybe only reading at the Ensemble Studio Theatre (549 West 52nd Street) as part of the First Light Festival on Monday, November 24th at 7PM. It is free and short and we have an amazing cast, a brilliant director and I will be playing the guitar and piano. Come! You don’t even gotta RSVP.
A: R Culture is a carnival sketch comedy with a Ringmaster and two clowns. It’s a Satire about Our Culture and Rape Culture, where those two things collide. It’s funny and scary. I started the project a year ago and in the last year rape on campus has exploded in the media. It feels like we’ve hit a tipping point where women in particular are fed up with rape. I mean, when a Frat at Yale chants, “No means yes, yes mean anal!” as they walk down the street in a group it’s really a call for us to take a hard look at ourselves. I used comedy because I thought that’s the only way we could get through it. Also, Oscar Wilde said, “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.” Considering all the death threats lobbed against FemFrequency’s Anita Sarkeesian for her serious video exposing the misogyny in video games it seems that Wilde was right.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: I’m rewriting my Sci-Fi play Biolife for a production at The Chain in their Minor Variations Festival where writers do rewrites and as the title suggests, minor variations on their plays. That also opens in November. I’m working on another Sci-Fi Fantasy play “Atlantis Unearthed”, which deals with the end of the world, mass shootings, a mermaid-fairy cross species, mental illness, and Atlantis coming through another dimension in the floor. I’m also working on a new play called “The Box”, an intergenerational two hander about money, class, marriage and hypocrisy.
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 going to start in high school, but then transition back to childhood because they’re related in this story. I was going to Rocky Horror picture show for the first time and I was about seventeen. I was a definitely the kind of kid in high school who floated. I was a floater. I mean, I was a goth kid and I was in swing choir. I was in theater productions and I was a cheerleader. Most of my friends didn’t like each other, but I liked them. That was weird… but anyway as I was getting ready to go to Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time I was getting dressed and trying to figure out what to wear. If you’ve been to Rocky Horror you know that people go dressed as the characters. Because I was a Rocky Virgin my friend was explaining to me that I needed to pick a character. She was telling me about the different characters and suddenly a light went off in my mind. I went up to my mom and said, “Hey mom, can I borrow that French Maid’s outfit of yours?” and she got this really shocked look on her face and said, “What French Maid’s outfit?” So I said, “The one in your special lingerie drawer.” She asked, “How do you know about that?” And I said, “Because when I used to play dress up in your clothes when I was little I used always play dress up with the stuff in that drawer. ” Okay, so that’s a story that tells you a bit about me as a kid and a lot about me as a writer…
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: I would like all of the higher paying theaters have a 50/50 season with male/female writers in all programming. Right now most of the low paying theaters are close to 50/50, but the glass curtain at the higher levels really sucks, so I would like that to be different.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: It’s really hard to say because the writers who were my heroes are now human beings to me. This isn’t to say that I don’t still see myself as influenced by having read them and deeply inspired by them, but Maria Irene Fornes who was a hero to me is indeed a human being. She lives in a special care situation on the upper west side. I contributed some small effort along with many other people to see to it that she went from a bad living situation where she almost died due to lack of care into a place where she has a much better quality of life. She’s still a literary giant, but she’s so very human to me now. The same is true of the others, Sarah Ruhl who I met and got to do a workshop with while I was interning at New Dramatists years ago, Sheila Callaghan who I quasi met via the Kilroys all of whom I deeply admire. They are all heroes to me, but they’re also flesh and blood people.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I love work that keeps me awake. I’m not being sarcastic at all. As a playwright with a full time day job trying squeeze in time to write and running my theater company, New York Madness, most of my days are between 15-17 hours long. I like work that has big stakes, that moves a good pace, that has characters I either make me laugh or I love or I hate and ideally a mixture of all of them. I like really smart and fun plays that keep me on the edge of my seat.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Work hard and care about excellence.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: RCulture opens November 7th at IRT Theatre and my sci-fi play Biolife opens on Nov 14th at The Chain! Also, I’ll be doing the One Minute Play Fest at INTAR this month on the 22nd and 23rd!
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A: I just finished a new play Cousins Table that's set in a post-war suburban home in Sleepy Hollow, New York. Members of a multicultural family (black, white, latino) who have not gotten together since falling out over 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, re-convene over Thanksgiving weekend in order to visit with a dying relative and determine the distribution of the family estate. The disputes between family members mirror the current divisions in the U.S. The issues of disintegration and secession -- are on the table.
I'm now turning to research and outline work on a piece about Thomas Dixon and W.E.B. DuBois and their confrontation in the first half of the last century. Dixon was the author of the novel The Klansman that was adapted for the screen as Birth of a Nation. The noted scholar and civil rights activist DuBois was also the author of a huge pageant play (cast of 100s) The Star of Ethiopia that was meant to be a counterpoint and response to Dixon's inflammatory work. Johns Hopkins and Columbia University will also factor into the narrative, as centers of intellectual thought (the Dunning School) that reinforced racist interpretations of sociology and history. And Margaret Mitchell will be in there, too, since she modeled Gone With the Wind on Birth of a Nation, sans Klan outfits, but as a child, actually donned (and sewed!) the dreaded hoods when she staged her own adaptation of one of Dixon's Klan-loving novels, in her living room. All true.
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 in the Boy Scouts in the late 1970s and I was exposed to two racist incidents. My dad is black and my mom is white and I look white -- so the racists who were mouthing off (no violence) had no idea that they were talking to anyone other than white people. I came away from those moments with a better understanding of the insidious and hidden nature of racism in contemporary America. As a writer, I am fascinated with moments that transpire behind the scenes, that are not meant for public consumption, but reveal the truth about a particular issue or character. In my play Bedfellows, I took the audience behind the scenes at a local political convention and in the HBO Film Boycott, we revealed the internecine battles that Dr. King had to deal with during the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: The business model. The not for profit corporation does not work as a sustainable economic model for the vast majority of theater artists, notably, actors, directors, designers and playwrights. That's a plain old undisputed fact. Now, there are two elements at work here: 1) not for profit; 2) corporation. The not for profit element was meant to discourage commercialism but that objective has been jettisoned by most NPC theatre organizations over the past two decades. So why not lose the idea completely and return to a for-profit model that includes profit sharing amongst the artists? It worked for Shakespeare's and Moliere's companies and many theatre producing organizations across the globe well into the 19th century. And the corporate structure should also be rejected in favor of partnerships (it works for doctors and lawyers!) or cooperatives. Again, returning governance and decision-making to artists, working together collectively.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Eugene O'Neill, Hallie Flanagan, Paul Robeson, Lorraine Hansberry, Joe Papp, August Wilson, Lloyd Richards, Max Wilk, Tommy Hollis, Sarah Kane, Howard Stein, Ed Vassallo.
Among the living: Reed Birney, James McDaniel, Kevin Geer, Phyllis Somerville, Lori Tan Chinn, Joe Urla, Amy Saltz, Tom Aberger, Alice Haining, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Doug Wright, Joe DiPietro, Doug Post, Peter Jay Fernandez, Lucy Thurber, Paula Vogel, Chris Durang, Chuck Mee, Catherine Filloux, Arthur French, David Margulies, Kia Corthron, Lynn Cohen, Akili Prince, Willie Reale, Todd London, John Steber, Emily Morse, Joel Ruark, Ron Riley, Casey Childs, Woody King, Jr., Chris Fields, Douglas Turner Ward, Jim Nicola, Jim Simpson, I'm probably missing a dozen more.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: Anything I haven't seen already. But also anything old made new again. Most of all, I love moments that can only happen in the theater -- humans on stage connecting to humans in the audience, that moment of grace.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Read plays and go to plays. When you like a play you saw, go get a copy of the play and read it to figure it out, on your own, how the playwright constructed the work. You can and should be your best teacher. That in mind: never, no matter how far you come along, think: "I got this." Be ever curious and humble. Every good playwright I've ever met says: "I'm still figuring this out."
Send plays out, but don't wait around for the response, write the next one, self-produce or form a playwrights collective.
A: Columbus Day was originally written as a one act play back in 2006. In that version it was more of an experiment in tone and rhythm, a sort of language piece that explored two separate plot lines with a very strong lyric prose element. The first story; a History/English teacher at the end of his rope decides to hold his classroom hostage with a shotgun. The second story; a young woman with a history of physical, sexual and drug abuse fights for her unborn child. The stories were meant to move independently of each other in opposite directions but also maintain oddly familiar courses of action.
I had always felt that there was more to the play than just a pretty piece of prose so I recently built in a second act connecting the stories. The play now follows the young woman’s journey as she fights for custody of her unborn child against the father as well as Child Protective Services in the state of Texas. In the second act it is revealed that the teacher from the first act was her lover and that she is the reason he walked into the classroom with a shotgun.
The theme of the piece is very much “The inevitability of the human condition and that people never really change”
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: I am currently writing the book for a new musical called “LEATHERFACE, the Texas Chainsaw Musical” due to open late spring if legal can get their act together. I also have a piece on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder entitled “Little Atlas”
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 small town in East Texas. My family consisted of blue collar workers and white collar government contractors. So my youth was inundated with hauling hay in the summer or afternoon classes with my grandmother drilling the benefits of social etiquette into my rambunctious brain. During my years at school I never really sat at the same lunch table, I didn’t have a set group of friends. So even though I stood out among my peers, I was very much an observer. I feel this is where my need to tell other peoples stories came from.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: I feel the establishment of the regional theatre in this country hurts us more than helps us. I feel we need to find a way to franchise the smaller venues so that live art is more accessible to the masses. It would employ more artist and drive ticket prices down to a more affordable cost.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: DEAD AND GONE I have to go with Cliff Odets, August Wilson, Romulus Linney ALIVE AND KICKING I would say Will Eno, Albee, McNally
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I have become a fan of the “found” theatre spaces. Don’t get me wrong, I still like comfortable chairs and cocktails, but there is something very exciting and voyeuristic about watching a story unfold behind a gas station or in the basement of an old warehouse.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Playwriting is an exercise in patience, from the time an idea is born to the time it hits the stage may seem like an eternity. But I have learned things in this profession are exactly as long as they need to be. That goes for your work too; if you can describe your play in a paragraph, then it only needs to be a paragraph long.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: “Columbus Day” is premiering at The Living Room Theatre though the month of October in Kansas City MO Check out the website Thelivingroomkc.com
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Hometown: Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma but raised in Oklahoma and Kansas at-large. My father was an oil field worker, so I was always the new kid in school, sometimes more than once a year.
Current Town: My husband, Gerry Mooney and I, have lived in Dobbs Ferry since 1986. It a lovely village on the Hudson River with great access to NYC.
Q: Tell me about Broken Heart Land.
A: Broken Heart Land (in Cherokee: Uyotsohi Adanvdo Gadohi) is set in Tulsa, Indian Territory, 1903. It is the story of Alma Wimsey, the 13-year-old daughter of a Cherokee father and white mother who rebels against an arranged marriage and reclaims her Cherokee heritage.
Although I wrote Broken Heart Land first, it is the second play chronologically in the Broken Heart Land Trilogy. The first play of the Trilogy is Hoop Jumper (1900), the second is Broken Heart Land (1903), and the third will be Thicker Than Oil (1920). The Trilogy explores the period beginning in the late 1880’s with the enactment of The Dawes Act* the largest land grab of Native territory in US history.
In early Tulsa the Creek, Cherokee, and Osage nations intersected at the Arkansas River. Both full bloods and mixed bloods of all the tribes lived and worked together, worshipped in the same churches, and were buried side-by-side in unsegregated graveyards. All that began to change when the railroad came to town. After the railroad came the promise of statehood and with that came the first and only census based on blood quantum, namely the Dawes Rolls. All the stories reflect the truth and struggles of the native people living in that time. Although he family in the “Broken Heart Land” Trilogy is based, in part, on family history it is fictional because I wanted to explore the larger social and political issues in play in the years leading up to statehood and beyond.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: I have two projects in progress now, both of which I am writing with Eagle Project members in mind. “Tartan Thread” is the story of a young Scot who is transported to America in 1747 for the political crime of wearing his clan tartan after the Proscription Act. He marries a Cherokee woman and introduces her clan to literacy, which in turn, spreads like wildfire and is avidly adopted by the tribe.
The second project will be Thicker Than Oil (in Cherokee: Sidonelahi: My Whole Family) which is the third play in the “Broken Heart Land” Trilogy. It will be set in Tulsa, 1920, after the oil boom but before the infamous “Greenwood Massacre,” recorded by history until just recently as the “Tulsa Race Riots” in which the Black Wall Street was bombed and burned to the ground.
Thicker Than Oil is still a work-in-progress, but it will look at the expectations that people, both white and native, had of the Dawes Rolls at the time. There was a big difference between the benefits being promoted and what they actually received.
I will also be going to Oklahoma in May, 2015 for Hoop Jumper which was selected for full production in the 2014 Native American New Play Festival at the Oklahoma City Theatre Company in Oklahoma City, OK, this year. Hoop Jumper, the first play in the Broken Heart Land Trilogy, is set in 1900. It is the story of Alma’s Cherokee father (Weli) who, by going against the full-blood culture in which he was raised and signing up for the Dawes Roll at the insistence of his white wife, loses respect in the native community.
Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: Every person in my family is a storyteller. Some are just flat-out liars, but we all can tell a good story. We would sit around in the evening, often on the porch to catch the breeze, and everyone would share a story. My great-uncle Austin played guitar and harmonica at the same time and everyone joined in singing. How that affected me as a writer is that I have a good feel for structure in telling a story.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: More accessibility and more opportunity, please, for everyone everywhere!
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Early influences were Tennessee Williams, Lillian Hellman, William Inge, Eugene O’Neill, Frank D. Gilroy – I could go on….
My theatrical heroes today are the men and women who are working hard to bring voices to American Theatre that are almost never heard. Through Eagle Project readings, it is evident that there is a hunger to know more about Native Americans. I’ve been a supporter of the Eagle Project since the day I met Ryan Victor Pierce (Founder and Artistic Director). The reason is in their mission:
“It is the goal of Eagle Project to use the performing arts to engage America in dialogue about what it consists of and what it stands for. Having been largely based on the democratic ideals of its indigenous people, the US has inspired people from all over the globe to call its shores home. It is this unique mixture of culture, and how that defines the intersection of class and race, that Eagle Project seeks to investigate. All the while, however, making sure to pay homage and respect to Native Americans of all tribes, our fellow citizens, who started it all.”
The Eagle Project’s first production, Wood Bones by William S. YellowRobe, Jr., was a beautiful first realization of the Eagle Project mission. My hope is that Broken Heart Land will help them take another step forward.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: Recently, everything Native American, especially plays by my sister playwrights, Mary Kathryn Nagle, Vicki Ramirez, Larissa FastHorse but I am inspired every time I hear native voices in the theatre. I always learn something new.
The shows that stand out for me are everything I’ve ever seen by Girl Be Heard (Jessica Greer Morris and Ashley Marinaccio, co-founders). GBH is an amazing troupe of young women who write their personal stories and then perform all over the world. Dominique Fishback (GBH alumna) and her one-woman show, Subverted, will next appear in 2014 ABC New Talent Showcase on October 7, 2014. Manahatta by Mary Kathryn Nagle at The Public. The work of Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj (Little Rock, Salome: Da Voodoo Princess of Nawlins, and The Removal Project) with his highly polished Rebel Theatre Group and outstanding choreography by David Norwood. King of the Hobos by multi-talented Jara Michael Jones just recently closed but reopen in 2015. And of course, the Amerinda premiere of PowWow Highway adapted by William S. YellowRobe, Jr., from David Seals novel of the same name, currently playing at HERE!
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Write what fascinates you, write what means the most to you, and don’t give up no matter what. Keep writing! The only thing that will defeat you for sure is if you quit.
* The Dawes Act Started the Last and Largest U.S. Land-Grab of Native Territory Senator Henry Dawes of Massachusetts (1816–1903) was a firm believer in the civilizing power of private property. He once said that to be civilized one must “wear civilized clothes, cultivate the ground, live in houses, ride in Studebaker wagons, send children to school, drink whiskey [and] own property.”
His faith in that premise was so strong that he sponsored federal legislation in the 1880s to “civilize” Indians by giving them individual allotments of land. The consequences were disastrous. His legislation broke up communally owned tribal land that had guaranteed every tribal member a home and almost destroyed Indian communities, traditions and culture. It dispossessed Indian nations of almost a million acres of the land that had sustained them since time immemorial. It also opened up Indian land for white European settlers eager to fulfill the mandates of Manifest Destiny—a 19th century belief rooted in the Christian Doctrine of Discovery that American citizens had a God-given right (and obligation) to possess all the land between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
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A: Currently I'm writing a new play called Reservations that follows the story of Tom, a young gay man in New York, who goes on a series of first dates in attempt to connect with others and himself. It covers a lot of topics including pop culture, family, identity, suicide, drug abuse and mental illness. I am writing a scene a week and debuting each scene at Crazytown Blog.
I'm also working on a horror play called Found Footage. It's about undergraduate theater students who disappear doing site-specific research at an abandoned mental institution in upstate New York and seven years later, their research materials are found and staged by an emerging theater company in New York.
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 eight years old, I was throwing garbage out in the incinerator room in our apartment building in Queens. The door to the incinerator room had a sharp jagged edge at the bottom of it and when I turned to leave the room, the sharp edge tore straight through my left achilles heel. When I looked down and saw the red of blood, the yellow of fat and the crisp white of bone, I blacked out immediately. When I woke up, I watched in horror as a doctor was stitching me up. My mom and a nurse had to hold me down because I began to scream and freak out. Now there's this scar where you can see the imprint of stitches. A few days later, when I came back to school, my teacher told me the Greek story about Achilles and how he was the great warrior but he had this one tiny weakness which was the same spot that my wound was. And I felt like I had this strange connection to the past but I was able to survive my wounds. And whenever I think about how I am a vulnerable human being with flaws and weaknesses like everyone else, I think about that scar and how I carry this survival instinct with me always.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: The lack of diversity on stage and in stories, particularly the lack of female playwrights on Broadway.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Young Jean Lee is hands down my hero. I had the honor of stage managing The Shipment for a year-and-a-half, and I learned more from this experience than I did in my entire college career. Also, my sister Leah Nanako Winkler who continues to nurture, inspire and challenge me since we met eight years ago.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: Theater that is adventurous, experimental, challenging. For instance, I will see anything 600 Highwaymen does. They are my favorite theater company right now; their color-blind/cross-gender casting should be the standard of every theater. I also love everything I've seen by Toshiki Okada, Morgan Gould & Friends, Dave Malloy, Hoi Polloi,
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: I'm just starting out myself really. I've only self-produced my own work; no one has (yet) produced my work. So my advice would be to not wait for anyone to come knocking on your door to do your plays. Do them yourself. Who cares if they're not perfect or if you think they suck or if they're not ready? Just do it. You'll learn so much from failing than you will from doing absolutely nothing. And see as much theater as you can--and all kinds of theater. Go downtown. Go uptown. Go to Brooklyn, Queens. Get out of New York. Take writing workshops if you can afford it like the Flea's Pataphysics workshops, or if anyone ever offers free ones. I've taken two free workshops at Soho Rep that were really great; and Prelude just had one that was maybe the best workshop I ever had. And, of course, just write and write and keep writing even if you don't have time or you don't think it's any good or you don't have any inspiration because as long as you keep writing, it'll stay in your muscles and you'll work them out until they're strong as hell.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: I have nothing upcoming (*but I totally could make a show like tomorrow at any theater hint hint wink wink) so I'll just plug shows I'm excited to see or ones I've seen and loved: 600 Highwaymen's Employee of the Year at FIAF; Young Jean Lee's Straight White Men at the Public; Dave Malloy's Ghost Quartet at Bushwick Starr (so good, seriously); Ivo van Hove's Scenes from a Marriage at New York Theatre Workshop and anything at Under the Radar Festival, COIL. Also, omg, I just realized there won't be an Other Forces festival this year because Incubator Arts Project closed (RIP) and now I am filled with sadness.
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