I Interview Playwrights Part 912: Brian Parks

Brian Parks

Hometown:  Birmingham, Michigan. Or Ann Arbor, if you want to start at the very beginning.

Current Town: Brooklyn, New York

Q:  Tell me about your upcoming show.

A:  “Enterprise” is a fast-paced, somewhat surreal comedy about four businesspeople trying to save their large company overnight. Aside from a stock price crisis, the company might have an imp eating the office supplies. “Enterprise”is 75 minutes long and told in many, many short scenes. The show, which is produced by Gemini CollisionWorks and happening at the Brick, reunites the team that did my play there last year, “The Golfer.” We were fortunate to win five Innovative Theatre Awards for that one. So we’re giving it all a whirl again. The piece is performed by Fred Backus, Adam Files, Derrick Peterson, and Alyssa Simon, and directed and designed by Ian W. Hill, assisted by Berit Johnson. Kaitlyn Day, who did the fun costumes for “The Golfer,” is suiting up this cast.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I’m looking forward to a new production of my play “The House” at the Human Race Theatre in Dayton. It premiered in 2014 at the Kitchen Theatre in Ithaca, where it was a big success, and it’s also had a German-language production in Frankfurt. Plus a small production in London. Sitting around my apartment are the usual stack of two or three new pieces awaiting their next draft. Not sure which I’ll get back to first after “Enterprise.”

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 childhood has no real relevance to my writing today. The biggest inspiration for my own plays are the pleasure I’ve taken from writers like Preston Sturges and Tom Stoppard. The first play I ever saw and loved was “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” which may explain a few things.

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

A:  Ticket prices.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  “Heroes” is too fraught a word. How about writers I’ve liked? Mac Wellman, Richard Foreman, Maria Irene Fornes, Stoppard. Among contempo folks, people like Richard Maxwell and Will Eno. The two Philippe Quesne shows I’ve seen in recent years have been pretty great. Most of the Ivo van Hove shows I’ve seen.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The weird or funny stuff. Especially when combined, which is sort of what I do.

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

A:  Just don’t be boring. Also, you can’t sit back and wait for things to happen with your script. Find some collaborators and get the pieces up on their feet, even in a modest way. Also, prepare to drink alcohol on a regular basis.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  "Enterprise" runs February 2 -18. The Brick is located at 579 Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, between Union and Lorimer, close to the G and L subway lines. Tickets are $18, and available at the door, bricktheater.com, or at 866-811-4111.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 911: Zachary Fernebok

Zachary Fernebok

Hometown: Darnestown, Maryland

Current Town: Atlanta, Georgia

Q:  Tell me about the Pirate Laureate series.

A:  In the world of Ephrata, the power of poetry trumps that of any sword, pistol, cannon, or cutlass. That’s why the Pirate Laureate is the most important member on any pirate crew!

My plays (The Pirate Laureate of Port Town and The Pirate Laureate and the King of the Sea) follow the story of Finn, the Pirate Laureate of The Chartreuse. Under the leadership of the bombastic Captain Grayscale, and with Finn’s brilliant poetry, the Chartreuse is one of the most powerful and notorious ships to ever sail the Ocean Ephrata. Also on board are first-mate Hue, Sandy the engineer, navigator Opal, and Ruby the lookout. The crew is a big family, and they get into equally big adventures together. They often have to out-smart the devilishly fancy pirate Captain Robin LeReif.

The Pirate Laureate series started off as a one-act play that I was writing for a Playwriting 101 class I took in college. Three years later, when I was the Playwright-in-Residence at American Ensemble Theatre, I dusted it off and expanded it. My longtime friend and collaborator, Jason Schlafstein, directed the first reading and I think he fell in love with the story and characters as much as I had. I think a lot of people have been warmed by the story and the characters.

The truth is, there's a lot I could say about the series as I've lived with it for much longer than I ever anticipated. The first play was a side-story of a much larger world I was creating. Now the Pirate Laureate universe is bigger than the original epic it was spun off from.

And after the first show closed, I never thought there would be a staged sequel. I had the story in mind--I even teased it at the end of Port Town. But it happened! Which was amazing. Few playwrights get the chance to see their characters evolve from one adventure to the next, and even fewer get to see those characters be re-interpreted by new and returning actors. That was one of the coolest things that ever happened to me as a playwright.

My life has been greatly enriched by the family I've made working on this series--and I'm pretty sure others in the cast and crew would say the same.

Q:  What's next for the Pirate Laureate series?

A:  Well, I have a few ideas floating around for a third installment, to make it a proper trilogy. I also have a prequel story in mind (no pirate ship racing). Most likely, I will try to tell the story of the first play in a different medium, whether that be in a comic book, in clay, or even a video game only time will tell. Maybe a movie. As you can see, I'm clearly not done with the series.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm actually not doing much writing these days. The various stories in my head are fighting each other to be written next. In the meantime, I've returned to sculpting, which was my art of choice before I found theatre. I'm currently enrolled in a figure sculpting class and thinking of future ways to combine storytelling with my clay creations. I don't think there'd be many objections to some claymation Pirate Laureate films!

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 was obsessed with X-Men, and I'm still a huge fan. I read the comics, watched the cartoon, and--most of all--collected the ToyBiz action figures. I would say I currently have around 350-400 living in several boxes at my dad's house. When I found the comics boring and I couldn't watch "Pryde of the X-Men" on VHS one more time, I would make up adventures with my toys. That's when I first started telling stories and developing characters. I know this not very rare behavior for a little boy, but the memories have stuck with me. And I think I played with my toys until I was far too old. In fact, I still am. So I think that's me as a writer: I create characters that are familiar to people and put them in new adventures.

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

A:  I think plays inspired by Asian stories, people, and culture are too few and far between. I would love to see more of those stories on stage.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I would say anyone who pursues writing, acting, directing, or designing for theatre as their full-time profession is my theatrical hero. Other than that, I think I have creative/story telling heroes more than specifically theatrical ones: Stan Lee, Chris Claremont, Daniel Handler, and Eiichiro Oda immediately come to mind.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like plays that are bigger than the pages they're written on. Original adventures excite me, good jokes excite me. I also love shows with puppets. I am turned off by family dramas and becoming increasingly annoyed by intermissions.

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

A:  You have to write, and you have to workshop what you write. But at the very least you have to write. Just commit to ten minutes a day, at least. And take classes, even if you studied playwriting. And finally, don't hold on too tightly to your work because the warm fuzzy feelings come when you let it into the hands of directors, designers, and actors.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I got nothin' to plug, other than support Flying V--see their next show!

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I Interview Playwrights Part 910: Laura Neill

Laura Neill

Hometown: Wrentham, MA

Current Town: Brighton, MA

Q:  Tell me about Don't Give Up the Ship.

A: Don't Give Up the Ship goes up at the Boston Center for the Arts with Fresh Ink Theatre from February 10-25, directed by Joshua Glenn-Kayden. It's a funky feminist drama that centers on Diana, a middle-aged mother, as she takes on the identity of an 1812 war hero to explore her identity and sexuality. A few years back I did a lot of research on Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry for the Dartmouth Digital Library Program, and I started to wonder what would happen if I mapped that incredibly structured, masculine world of the 1800s Navy onto 2017. "Diana" is actually the name of one of the ships that Perry captured in the war... I thought, what if Diana captured Perry? And the result is this crazy romp that mounts the Battle of Lake Erie in a bedroom, transforms awkward meetings into sweeping waltzes, and involves swashbuckling with a Swiffer sword. I'm incredibly lucky to be working with Fresh Ink on this piece--Josh and I are having a lot of fun with it, and I'm absolutely in love with my cast and team. Shout-out to Wilbury Theatre Group in Providence and the Norwood and Watertown libraries for hosting readings of the piece as it grew.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  LOTS. My play Cap, or, El Limite peels off the rhetoric hiding the U.S. education system and tells the stories of four students and teachers over one unusual school day. It's a nine-character behemoth with an exuberant chorus that tackles the phenomenon of charter school expansion. (You can read my current draft on NPX here.)

My youngest play is The End Will Hurt, which tracks three generations of women through their digital lives on Facebook, on the Food Network, and in video games, respectively, as they deal with the matriarch's upcoming death. The youngest daughter blurs the lines between her video games and her real life, with dangerous consequences.

I've also been commissioned by OperaHub to write the book of TRUNK SHOW!: A Fashionable Fantasia of Women on the World Stage, a pastiche play with opera that weaves together the lives of past opera divas with questions that are crucial to our society in 2017. Stay tuned--TRUNK SHOW! premieres in Fall 2017.

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

A:  I basically grew up in the town library as a kid. This has had the effect of shifting my ideas of geography to center entirely around libraries. Any town or city I visit, I'll find the library--and anyplace I live, if someone asks me for directions, I'll probably use the library as a reference point. Free books call my soul.

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

A:  Representation and the need for gender parity. Seriously, if playwrights and actors of color had more space and audience to tell stories--and if at least 50% of all stories on our stages were coming from female playwrights--this country would be in a better place.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Caryl Churchill, David Henry Hwang, Lila Rose Kaplan, Charise Castro Smith

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I love theater that is ambitious--plays that make the audience embrace suspension of disbelief. I'm intrigued by plays that contain multiple worlds, whether that's magical realism or parallel timelines. I'm also a huge fan of woman-driven stories, plays that include multiracial families, and plays that utterly defy stereotype or genre.

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

A:  Ask for what you want. Nicely, of course. There are so many fantastic theater makers out there who are looking for their next collaborators and/or are happy to give you a leg up. Outline your goals for yourself and then take specific actions to achieve them, whether that's getting coffee with a friendly artistic director or hosting a reading of your own new script.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Playwrights who live in New England: submit to Fresh Ink Theatre! They're brilliant (but they only take subs once a year in January, so put it on your calendar for 2018). Come see Don't Give Up the Ship this February and I'll introduce you to the excellent artistic team.
Also, for folks who are trying to figure out the giant ongoing performance that is our political state right now, I'm grateful to the new site The 65 for a different sort of script.

Websites:
NPX: https://newplayexchange.org/users/1933/laura-neill

Home site: http://laurajneill.wixsite.com/home

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I Interview Playwrights Part 909: Augie Praley

Augie Praley

Hometown: Annapolis, Maryland

Current Town: New York City

Q:  Tell me about Looking Back.

A:  Looking Back, It May Not Have Been Ridgefield High’s Best Production of Our Town is a play that chronicles the memories of a high school gymnatorium—very much based on my own high school’s gymnatorium—on the eve of its destruction. I am personally a character in the show that guides the audience through the many different events that seemed important to the building. The play becomes this exploration of memory, significance and worth and what it means to be human.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I’ve got a couple of different television projects that I’m working on--an animated pilot and two pilots based on previous web series I’ve created.

We’re hoping that Looking Back… has life after this production as well. We’re still developing and honing the stories within it and have been getting closer and closer to where I want the show to get to. We took huge steps forward with this production—including defining the generations of people that are all interconnected at this school—and I’m eager to see what steps we might take next for the development of the play.

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

A:  My dad and my brother were both sailors growing up—we lived in Annapolis—they were competitive racers, but I didn’t have the same athletic or competitive impulse. I was also just pretty bad at sailing.

Eager to find a way to connect, my dad would take me to the movies every week, just me and him, and we’d see basically whatever we pleased. He took me to see Rushmore when I was 11 and probably too young to see that movie, but we went anyways, and I’d never seen him laugh like that. There was something that had him rocking the whole aisle of seats with this deep bellowing laugh that turned into a whinny as he lost breath… it was surreal.

I remember thinking: I want to make my dad laugh that hard. That’s why I started really goofing off on old VHS cameras and writing little sketches and plays—to make my dad laugh.

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

A:  I think the cost of theater makes it seem like an elitist craft and the cost of producing makes it difficult for shows to gestate and become what they need to be.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Thornton Wilder—that one’s probably obvious, Chuck Mee, Sarah Ruhl, Mickle Maher, Suzan-Lori Parks, Paula Vogel, The Neo-Futurists and countless other Chicago theatres that do it for the love of play.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like theater that brings everyone into the same place, that reaches out and engages with the audience and doesn’t ignore them. That’s the most exciting thing to me, to sit in the audience of a play and feel like I am integral to its creation—like I need to be present for the story to exist at all. I like theatre that makes the ephemeral moment we’re seeing feel all that much more fleeting and important.

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

A:  Oh, boy, that’s tough because I kind of feel like I’m also just starting out and it’s tough to give advice to someone you’re in the trenches with, but I think it’s just to keep writing. It’s important not to get too precious with everything you’re writing and know that you will have more ideas.

Keep writing, you have stories in you, it’s why you’re a writer.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Looking Back… still has shows at the PIT Sundays at 8:30 through February 12th, with a Monday show on February 6th.

You could check out my web series Augie, Alone at www.augiealone.com and you can also check out my Super Deluxe web series FUTURE YOU here http://bit.ly/2jPWslP.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 908: Dennis Staroselsky

Dennis Staroselsky

Hometown: Brookline, MA

Current Town: Norwood, MA

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Like everyone, just throwing a lot of stuff against the wall and hoping something sticks. Just finished 5 Minutes Alone, a two hander set in an alternative reality, where the loved ones of murder victims get to sentence the convicted—it's hilarious! Waiting to hear if I get a grant to fund a production of my play The Cuts, in Boston, at the same time I'm turning it into a pilot, also just finished potty training! My daughter ...I still have some work to get to her level.

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

A:  Tough question! The only one that sticks out, and it's only in retrospect that it seems applicable, is when I was a sophomore in high school. I was so obsessed with being liked by everyone, that I betrayed a lot of real friends by having a big mouth and easily gossiping about things that were told to me in confidence, and I just couldn't stop. Once I made new friends I'd do the same. By the end of the year a lot of people hated me—for good reason. I was in a production of Doctor Faustus, and there were posters all over the school with a drawing of me in it, one day I showed and noticed that I had been torn out of one, and then another, and another. I had been ripped out of every poster in school. It was a feeling of humiliation and loneliness that I had never experienced before. I think the influence of that day was the realization that all the energy I put into getting people to like me, just repulsed them... and hurt me. As an artist, I battle with creating work that is honest, and still hoping that everyone likes it, but I never create something with the impetus of impressing...maybe only my real friends.

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

A:  The audience. A lot of people talk about cultivating great artists, but what about audiences? If people in this country went to the theater a third of the amount they went to the movies...that would be something. We need to cultivate audiences.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Bill Camp, Mark Rylance, Rory Kinnear, David Rabe and Adam Bock

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The kind that isn't "Paint by numbers." Something that surprises me. Why Rabe and Bock resonate with me is they're ability to beautifully examine the mundane and uneventful, because those are the that moments make up the vast majority of our lives.Visiting Edna and A Life are amazing examples of that.

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

A:  Same advice I give myself. Your work isn't precious, you have permission to suck!

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Laura Neil's Don't Give up the Ship at Fresh Ink. Boston. She's really good. Feb 10 -25 BCA Plaza Black Box

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I Interview Playwrights Part 907: Mark Jackson

Mark Jackson

Hometown: Placerville, California.

Current Town: San Francisco.

Q:  Tell me about Messenger 1.

A:  It’s a play close to my heart. Art Street Theatre had a great success with it when we produced it in 2000, which was such a weighty historical year given the turn of the millennium and the play spoke to anxieties people were having then about the internet and media. The Catamounts, in Denver, had a good time with it in 2012 and my old EXIT Theatre buddy, Meridith Crosley Grundei, played M#3, which delights me. A professor at William & Mary University used it in her curriculum for a Feminist Theater history class, and I really enjoyed reading the papers students wrote on it. I’m very taken by the inner struggles of the messenger characters, their conflicted feelings about class and what defines their personal sense of integrity. And I think Electra is a very interesting character. She has the potential to open her heart but is afraid and protects herself with violence. I think the play gives actors a lot to do, something passionate to say and an opportunity to work in a really physical way that marries humor and emotion. When actors enjoy material it's infectious for an audience. I really look forward to what Hunger & Thirst do with it, and am tickled that Emily Kitchens, whom I worked with at A.C.T., is now taking up the M#3 role. She’s perfect for it, really tough and passionate and open and honest.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m in pre-production for THE BLACK RIDER, the musical by Waits and Burroughs, at Shotgun Players. Also I’m writing a book about the 2016 Shotgun Players HAMLET production, in which the actors learned all the roles and found out who they were to play on a given night in a drawing held before the audience five minutes before curtain.

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 don’t have such a story… I think I was making theatre in the womb and birth was my first opening night. Or, morning rather. I was born at 9:04 in the morning.

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

A:  About the American theater I presume? That it be better understood and also better supported financially in this country. That might require magic powers at this point... In the meantime I try to change theater slowly, one show at a time, by changing how I work myself in order to up the odds of my helping the group involved to make something together that is fresh and alive and provocative in some useful way. “Useful” to me means an audience goes away thinking anew about what they experienced and what they felt. If I could change one thing about the American theater it would be that it was more consistently useful.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Ariane Mnouchkine. Vsevelod Meyerhold. Beth Wilmurt.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Many kinds! I’m most excited by theater and performances that embrace the metaphorical nature of theater and performance, and that exploit all its aspects and artists to impact audiences. I’m excited by theater that offers something to see, something to hear, something to feel, a LOT to think about, and that changes my body temperature. I’m excited by theater that compels me to keep thinking about it for weeks, months or years. Whether I “like” it or “don’t like it” matters less to me than what I take from it that stays with me and continues to feed my imagination and thinking.

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

A:  Write a LOT. See a LOT. Do other jobs in the theater too. Do things that have nothing to do with theater. Seek out real news and information and read it.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I’m excited by the entire 2017 season at The Shotgun Players. Other than that I’d like to plug the idea that we all be extremely conscious as citizens of this country in the coming four years and thereafter, and that we endeavor to eradicate the narcissism we’ve embraced and replace it wholesale with as much empathy as possible.

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