I Interview Playwrights Part 1011: Anna O'Donoghue

Anna O'Donoghue

Hometown: Brooklyn, NY. Then briefly Washington, D.C. Then the upper west side. Then Brooklyn a little more. Then Manhattan again. Very New Yorky.

Current Town: Harlem, NY. My bodega is better than your bodega.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I am working on a play called Gap Years which is about two sisters who have just had some big life events -- the younger one just made it through cancer treatment (she's okay, we think), and the older has just gotten fired from her celebrity babysitting job (which is to say, she babysits for the children of celebrities, she's not like, a famous babysitter, that's not a thing) -- and take a trip to the Rwandan genocide memorials. Cause that's how the younger sister wants to celebrate remission. No one said she was psychologically healthy.

The play is an exploration of dark tourism, which is this industry based on people traveling to sites of horrible moments in human history. It's also more generally examining the ways we conceptualize and commodify trauma, both in our own self-narratives and in our larger historical ones. Particularly about the body and illness/abuse/disease. And what we talk about when we talk about pain.

I think it's about those things anyway, I'm like barely halfway through it so who knows. But that's what I'm researching/immersing in.

I am also working on some audio fiction/drama projects, cause isn't it nifty to talk to people from inside ear buds, aka speak to them from inside their own heads aka take over/become their thoughts? So fun. I'm collaborating with the very brilliant composer/sound designer Daniel Kluger on a piece called Offense about a woman who comes home from a bad date, cooks some squid, and then plucks out her own eye. So, you know, look out for that one. It's really inspirational and peppy.

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

A:  Oh god. Well I was an overachiever as a kid who would like, make up my own extra-credit projects for classes I was already getting A's in (I got that out of my system and am now Extremely lazy) so as an homage to that long-dead extra-credit seeker self, I will give you not one but TWO childhood episodes, pick one:

First. When I was about eight I used to play Shakespeare with my friend Lydia. What "playing Shakespeare" meant is that we would go into the backyard and improvise histrionic scenes that involved queens and deaths and mistaken identities and a lot of "forsooths." We didn't really know Shakespeare plots but we just kinda riffed on our general understanding of the tropes; when we felt the other one had done a particularly good showing of Shakespeareness we would award her with an Academy Award. I remember Lydia got one for a particularly spirited death in which her dying words were railing against her husband, who had been a "stuffed cabbage."
Lydia eventually got bored of this game. I tried to give her more Academy Awards to keep her interested but it didn't work. She moved on. I never did.

Second. I was super into those children's books that involved wishing. Matilda, where she just concentrated enough and she could move objects. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, where you just get yourself in the right mental state to walk into a closet and you can find Narnia. Freaky Friday, where you just have the strong enough thought at the right time, and you can switch bodies with another person. I tried All of these techniques. I would sit on my bed for hours and try to will myself into Matilda-ness. I walked into every closet in a new house and immersed myself in the clothes, hoping I'd take my face out of a coat and see a snowy fairyland with talking lions and formidable queens. I was/am deeply drawn to the notion of the powerful imagination: the will to believe, and the notion that by believing we can make something so.

And that's theater, right? An exercise in collective believing-into-being.

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

A:  I'd topple the tyranny of the New York Times. This answer feels largely New York focused, but the Times' totally undue influence bleeds outwards into what gets published and produced regionally and celebrated and emulated and perpetuated so it's a national disease. Take away their reviewing credentials and force the industry to figure out new heuristics and rubrics.
I just refuse to believe there is not a better way to curate/cull/create our national conversation about the theatrical form. Also of course lower ticket prices but I wonder if one might follow the other because catering to this status-badge system affects who audiences are and what price points are possible and it’s a whole interconnected mess.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Richard Nelson; Anthony Minghella; Tina Landau; David Hare; Simon Stephens; Ellen McLaughlin; Elaine May; Elizabeth Swados; Chris Durang; Mark Nelson; Brian Mertes; Taylor Mac; Stephen Sondheim; she's-not-theatrical-necessarily-but-she-is-a-theatrical-inspiration: Maggie Nelson; same-deal: Miranda July

Also my very very brilliant peers with whom I get to repeat-collaborate and who keep inspiring me: Morgan Gould, Leah Nanako Winkler, Emily Schwend; Molly Carden; Tommy Heleringer; Brian Watkins; Polly Lee; Nat Cassidy; Diana Stahl; Claire Siebers. I think a lot about how amazing it is that I get to be alive at the same time as and in the same room with those-these people. Like. The chances are cosmically slim and so the outcome is cosmically lucky.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that changes the air, that makes the space charged and electric and like anything could happen. Because it can, but most of the time we forget that.
Theater that teaches you how to watch it.

Theater that is kinetic and the strange -- events that feel visceral and body related and elemental are always exciting to me.

I think the essential crux of theater is watching something change in front of you. Whether that's just a thought, or a heart, or a relationship, or a world, it kind of doesn't matter, as long as it's really actually happening. It's really nice when it's actually happening.
In general I'm really inspired by both hyperattention to detail and cosmic themes; I like when the micro meets the macro and how they flip over and under each other.

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

A:  Well I'm barely a writer so wearing that hat while answering this question feels weird, so I am going to pull on some other hats too (actor/dramaturg/literary manager/reader):

Ruthlessly pursue your own taste.
Cultivate what moves/excites/intrigues/incites You -- fight your way towards that, and then once you find it, fight for it.
Taste is an expression of values, and as a playwright, you invent the value system of the world you are writing. It's awesome. But it's actually a lot of responsibility, inventing the world. God needed to rest after only six days of it.
So figure out what matters to you as an artist, and then make that. And know that if something winds up in your world, it's because you put it there and it's because you want that species of animal on your planet.
But please never worry about what other people like or say is "good."
Make what you believe in.

Also, work with actual actors in rooms. Plays don't exist on pages, and you can't practice being a playwright unless you're engaging with your work in three dimensions, with voices and bodies and space and time and audience.
Find ways to do that, any way you can.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Well, I am not going to promote any of my own things here because they're either not announced yet or not not good enough for internet promotion, but I'll use this space to talk about some things that I Like. I have no personal stake in the following projects, except that they are my taste and I believe in them:
1. Go see The Waverly Gallery on Broadway. Elaine May is giving the most expertly layered, technically proficient and soulful performance I have ever seen. And Lila Neugebauer has directed a truly gorgeous production. Rush tickets are forty dollars; the seats are amazing and the experience is devastatingly beautiful.
2. Any literary managers/artistic directors who are reading this, produce Ryan Spahn's play Blessed and Highly Favored. It's so good. Get your hands on it and put it on its feet.
3. I've recently been listening to this podcast called "OK But Who Cares," by Anna Ladd, who has this whimsical, self-expositional, art-project vigor about her voice and her work and I just love it.
https://mytuner-radio.com/podcasts/ok-but-who-cares-podcast-anna-ladd-1262594451

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I Interview Playwrights Part 1010: Dorian Palumbo

Dorian Palumbo

Hometown: Woodbridge, New Jersey

Current Town: New York, New York

Q:  Tell me about Divination. 

A: Divination takes place in a crystal shop somewhere down on the Jersey shore. It’s a cast of six women, and the characters some from all sorts of backgrounds and stages of life, all getting together to take a class in “Psychic Mediumship”. Each one of them is battling something personal, whether it’s disease in the family, racial attacks from the neighbors, coming out – they all need to take their power back, in some way, when they’re joined by a new classmate who’s really had life smack her in the face and needs to find her tribe. It’s about the supernatural, and psychic phenomena, and new age philosophy, but, ultimately, it’s about female friendships.

And, if I can get on a soapbox here for a second, it’s not about a bunch of women getting together to complain about how they’re treated, or not treated, by men. It has virtually nothing to do with men. This is the second of two ensemble female shows I’ve written, and not having any male characters on the stage to throw their weight around and drive plot is a very freeing experience.

Q:  What else are you working on now? 

A:  Like a lot of writers, I have a queue of things that I’ve sketched out, and things that are half-finished – and I’m likely to ignore all of them and keep working on a screenplay I’ve just started to break story on. You have things you doodle on until something else catches fire and you get obsessed with that new thing. I can already tell this new screenplay’s going to be a big lift, because it’s a period piece and a comedy, but I don’t really care because it’s making me happy to work on it. I also plan another play that’s kind of in the research phase right now.

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

A:  When I was in sixth grade, I decided to write a play about Santa Claus. Don’t ask me what the story was – I’m old, this was probably 1972 or something, so I don’t remember – but I remember there was this kid in my class that was kind of bigger than all the other kids, and a bit awkward, and the other kids used to give him kind of a hard time, so I made him the star of my play and asked if we could rehearse it a little bit and present it to the rest of the class. Everything was going fine, and then one day when we were supposed to rehearse the play, Paul, the kid playing Santa was sick, so this other kid, called Patrick, tried to bully his way into the lead part. I let him read, and then Patrick spent an hour trying to convince me that he was better in the part, and that I should kick Paul to the curb. Well, of course Patrick was better in the part – he could read better, was way smarter, and he was a total ham. And he was also an asshole, so I said “no.”

When we did the play for the class, Paul’s Mom had made him a really cool Santa costume, and even though he couldn’t stand still and never got “off book”, he had a great time, and so did the class. And it made being at school suck just a little less for Paul, so I was happy about that.

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

A: I think this idea of talkbacks has to be applied a little more judiciously. I’m not going to go all Mamet or anything like that. But it’s one thing for me to do a staged reading for a room full of theatre professionals who ask incisive questions and take me to task; it’s kind of another to have some rando stand up in the audience and yell at me for putting too many curse words in my play. Yes, that really happened. If a play has controversial subject matter, like Bryony Lavery’s “Frozen”, for example, it’s perfectly appropriate to do a moderated talkback afterward with the cast if people are into it. Honestly, one of the best parts about theatre for me is having a drink afterward with a friend and talking about what we just saw, so if the show is over, I’m not hanging around to listen to strangers “process” the experience together. I’m pretty much going to the bar.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes? 

A: Theresa Rebeck, Samuel Beckett, Alan Bennett, Paula Vogel, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Harvey Fierstein, Thornton Wilder, Wendy Wasserstein

Q:  What kind of theater excites you? 

A:  I love to see a really masterful actor at the top of their game, like Fiona Shaw, or Janet McTeer. Laurie Metcalf. I saw Alan Rickman a few times and was mesmerized. I once saw Jerry Ohrbach walk out onto a stage that was miles away and I could still feel that star-powered prana out in the cheap seats. And when really terrific actors are supported by an outstanding play and really artful direction, that’s the triple-threat of course. “Indecent”, for example, had me absolutely gobsmacked. But something else I really love, love most of all in theatre in fact, is when a playwright takes me into a world I’ve never peered into before – not in documentaries, not in the news – and makes me take on a perspective that’s brand new to me. Broaden my perspective without lecturing me or, god forbid, boring me, and I’m yours for life.

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

A: Find your trusted readers. Whenever you finish something new, you’re going to need to be able to solicit feedback from people who know how to give it. They can’t be competitive with you, they have to know the form you’re working in inside-and-out, and they have to be honest without being snarky.

I have four trusted readers in my life now, and even though two of them are personal friends, I always pay them a fee when I ask them to give me notes because, hey, we’re all broke, and we can all use a little cash now and then. Nobody’s that much of a genius that they don’t need notes. Maybe Tom Stoppard doesn’t need notes. Everybody else needs them. When you’re starting out, you’re going to get lots, so start getting used to getting them from people whose opinions you respect.

Q:  Plugs, please: 

A:   “Divination” will be opening on Hallowe’en night, Wednesday, 10/31, 2018, at 8 PM, at the American Theatre of Actors (americantheatreofactors.org) and running Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8 PM (10/31, 11/1, 11/2, 11/3 and 11/7, 11/8, 11/8, 11/10), and Sundays (11/4 and 11/11 @ 3PM) Tickets are available at smarttix.com (https://smarttix.com/Modules/Sales/SalesMainTabsPage.aspx?SalesEventId=8348)

If you come on Sundays, we’ll have a guest Q&A from actual psychic intuitive Veronica Moya. Or you can come on the weekdays, and you come early, you might be able to get a quick Tarot card reading from me before the show. It calms my nerves.
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I Interview Playwrights Part 1009: Caroline Macon

Caroline (Caro) Macon

Hometown: Carrollton, Texas

Current Town: Chicago, Illinois

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  A few things!

A children's play called How to Grow a Dandelion. It was commissioned through the Cunningham Commission for the Playworks children's series at my Alma mater, DePaul. It's very much a work in progress, but the gist is: it's spring break and Chicago, but the kids are gloom and doom because it's still SO COLD! They want beaches and Popsicles, but are stuck with frozen feet and sadness. To overcome, they bring pots of boiling water to their community garden. When they pour the water over the garden, something magical happens--and the whole city turns to spring. The play explores a lot of things, but some are seasonal depression, imagination and pretend, self-sustainability, and the value of urban community garden.

Two: a novel, which is weird. I'm almost, almost done with the first draft. It's called The Garage Sale and tracks a woman named Beverly who is an empty-nester at 32. When Beverly has a garage sale to clear her home of her son's old playthings, a pair of snoopy teenagers discovers Beverly's personal diaries from being pregnant and raising a child at 14.

Last: I'm starting a Masters program in January--back at DePaul--in Journalism, funny enough. I've enjoyed the ways my storytelling has evolved to arts reporting and reviews, so I want to finesse those skills and learn more about multimedia.

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

A:  Oh jeez... I was such a weirdo. I'm very physically active, and always was. I loved biking, rollerblading, swimming, wandering around the woods. But in these times, I'd become engulfed by a strange pretend world. Like, sometimes I imagined the forest by my house was another universe, accessible only by an abandoned railroad track. Or, I remember doing flips in the pool and pretending I was a spy moving through booby traps in slow-mo. Sometimes I watched my hair moving through the water and pretended I was Kim Possible. A person in my neighborhood had this bird bath and bench setup. It was really beautiful. I used to sit around it and imagine I was a part of a musical or some epic story. One I invented was called "The Summer After Fifth Grade" and I would sing ballads quietly to myself, thinking sixth graders were so grown. Such private, strange things.

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

A:  A billion things, like how a lot of theatres think they are inclusive but aren't.

Or the frustrating cycle of theatres that need income from subscribers and ticket sales, so aren't able to open seats for more affirmative acts of audience inclusion. As someone who works in arts admin but also lives paycheck to paycheck, I see both sides: theatres have to sell tickets. But even I am not able to go out and see shows that much because of financial restrictions. And most people have bigger barriers than I do. Because theatres are inaccessible, or can't accommodate a range of abilities. Or people don't even hear about the shows, or worst of all, they don't feel welcome.

I have a very hands-on, socialist political output. So I try and be like, what are the ways we can actually reach in and finagle things to be able to empower more people to get involved? Childcare, audience accessibility, outreach, visiting neighborhoods and town outside the stupid bubble, facilitating talk backs. In my dream palace theatre, half the tickets would go to subscribers and the other half would go to traveling people in for free. It's crappy to be so optimistic.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  So many. I'll just list three: Sarah DeLappe (like so many people, The Wolves rocked me), Maria Irene Fornés (I go back and read Fefu and Her Friends every time I don't know what I'm doing with my life), and nonverbal storytellers like burlesque dancers, circus folks, mimes, and any un-traditional mover that takes a risk.

And most recently, I met J. Nicole Brooks about two years ago and am just flabbergasted by everything she does. She writes, acts, directs, and is like a social media political hero. Her Instagram stories are always relevant, sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, and she's just the warmest woman ever. She's been working on this play about Mayor Jane Byrne, Activist Marion Stamps, and the Democratic machine of Chicago. From the very first draft, I fell in love.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Oh, I'm a sucker for anything that grips me, no matter what the topic. I'm a little old fashioned in the sense that I love to track and root for a central character on some Greek-ish quest. Also I love that horrible great feeling of being happy and sad at the same time. So painful ha ha but I like live for it.

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

A:  Work your ass off and know that everyone feels like a failure. And don't stop writing when you don't have opportunities lined up, because that just makes you a sore loser.

I feel a little silly answering this anyway because I also feel I've just started.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Read my essay on juggling the bittersweet work-life balance for parent artists in American Theatre magazine. Print issue comes out November.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 1008: Daryl Lisa Fazio

Daryl Lisa Fazio

Hometown: Starkville, Mississippi 

Current Town: Atlanta, Georgia

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Two projects. One is LADY OF THE HOUSE, a play for one actor (the audience is the other character; this isn’t a monologue or memoir play—it unfolds in real time, and the audience is critical in that unfolding, not because they have dialogue or duties, but because they are present in the room). It’ll have a developmental workshop at Actor’s Express in the spring. It’s set in the future. It’s mysterious and theatrical and funny. It’s about revolution. But mostly it’s about life and death and female rage and empathy and the transcending power of art. Just, you know, the easy, everyday stuff. It’s my soul response—rather than a political one—to what’s going on the country at the moment. Not in a didactic way, but more of a visceral one. Geez, that sounds pretentious.

And the other play is SAFETY NET—it’s what I’m working on in my residency at the Alliance Theatre this year. It features three women in small-town Alabama coping with the opioid crisis. The main character is a fire chief and first responder. The others are her mother, who is in chronic pain, and a friend from her childhood, who is in recovery from heroin. I’m a strong believer in putting-ourselves-in-someone-else’s-shoes as a way to fix, well, pretty much everything. So this play sets out to educate in some ways, but mostly to create empathy for people struggling with addiction.

In both cases, I’m working on the plays as an actor 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:  Lordy, I don’t think I’ve got one tidy little story. It’s such a piling on of little moments I’m STILL recognizing. But it’s all about the south. It’s all about being a woman in a place where family and femininity are paramount. Where high expectations come from within because they’re not really coming from without. And I’m talking about the cultural landscape, not my home. Both my parents were college professors (big formative factor for me as writer/human), and they made sure I knew there weren’t any limits.

So my plays all feature strong women bucking systems while also trying to find connection. Using humor where maybe it’s not considered appropriate (I mean, as far as I’m concerned, it’s ALWAYS appropriate). Being “non-feminine,” whatever the hell that means. Not necessarily having traditional relationships or female family roles. But making their OWN families and roles in ways that are truthful to who they are.

Also, many of my plays are set in the south because I’m still trying to figure out what that place is. The wondrous things about it, and also the things that made me run away from there as soon as I graduated high school. Its bull-headed conservatism and lyrical language and kindness and passive-aggression and air thick with religion and heat and beauty and song and food and complicated-as-hell race relations. Its literary ghosts. Its real ones. And how the world outside of the Deep South thinks they understand what they never can.

Notice that, though I ran away at 18, in my 30s, I came back. And I ain’t left since.

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

A:  To have it be more inclusive of “the masses.” Theatre has such a capacity to change hearts and minds. To introduce complicated ideas in a way that makes us not shut down but actually run out and want to learn more. To show us all how similar we are, rather than different. But audiences are a tiny percentage of the make-up of the country. The world. I wish we could tell our stories to EVERYONE.

I know plenty of theatres are working with their own ideas on how to make that happen—lowering prices, creating community engagement, trying to use hip marketing platforms and throw theme nights and events.

How do we make theatre not feel like this separate, exclusive thing, though? I don’t think it’s with gimmicks. I think we have to do even better at telling stories that show ALL people we SEE them and VALUE them. And to have more people in the plays AND the audience who look like them.

And also, you know, we need to prove to them that theatre’s funny and wild and accessible and relevant and inclusive and different from both Netflix AND old-timey Shakespeare.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you? 

A:  The THEATRICAL kind. That’s number one. Take advantage of the medium, the space, the magic, the immediacy.

But AWESOME STORYTELLING also excites me, and that can be in a living room.

Ultimately, though, I just feel like a piece in the theatre should ONLY be able to happen in the theatre.

Magical realism has gained popularity in recent years, and when that’s done well, that is f**king life-changing. I saw the theatricalized version of Brief Encounter at St. Ann’s Warehouse back in 2010, and here we are going along rather naturalistically, a man and a woman meet, and there’s a connection and attraction. And then THE MAN SUDDENLY IS LIFTED OFF THE GROUND AND FLIES INTO THE AIR as a physical expression of his soul. Honestly, it changed so many things for me as a writer, that moment.

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

A:  

* There are no shortcuts for hard work. If you don’t love spending time with yourself and words, find something else to do. Because Lawd knows you aren’t going to get rich from it. And there will be a lot more heartache and disappointment along the way than there will be success and fulfillment. But if you can fulfilled simply from solving a tough moment in a script, and there’s no one but the cat to celebrate with you in that instant, and you still feel a rush and giddy sense of artistic growth and accomplishment, this is the life for you. If you can’t NOT write plays, this is the life for you.

* I have made playwriting my side hustle. My main hustle is graphic design for professional theatre. That’s how I’ve made 90% of my contacts and how I got three of my plays produced and how I pull all this off without an agent. I feel having playwriting as my side gig also keeps me from hating it when it’s hard or punishing or I get a bad review. Because I can take a psychic break from it.

* TAKE BREAKS.

* SEE THEATRE OF ALL KINDS.

* MAKE FRIENDS WITH ACTORS AND HAVE THEM OVER FOR TACOS AND TO READ YOUR DRAFTS ALOUD.

* BUILD RELATIONSHIPS with theatres. Get to know their missions, their audiences, their successes and failures, their tendencies, their artistic staff (even if that’s not personally, but just in terms of who they are and where they’re coming from). Then choose places you feel like you and your work could thrive. Then write plays with those places in mind.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Public reading of LADY OF THE HOUSE is in April. That’s all that’s officially on the docket at the moment. Expecting at least one production in the 2019-2020 season. God, those dates just made me feel the weight of the end of the world. Or is it the beginning?
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I Interview Playwrights Part 1007: Marilynn Barner Anselmi

Marilynn Barner Anselmi 

Hometown: I grew up in Holt, Michigan 

Current Town: Rocky Mount, NC 

Q:  What are you working on now? 

A:  My newest full length script, Seven Bridges Road— based on the true stories of the murders/disappearances of ten black women and the killing of a leading white woman in a small, southern city. 

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 summer, my family visited my dad’s childhood home in rural, western Tennessee. There his many kin gathered in the evenings and, after dinner, the women told the most fascinating, boisterous tales us kids weren’t allowed to hear. I discovered if I scooted under the huge dining room table early enough, I could stay, knees hugged close to my chest, silently eavesdropping on their outrageous tales and thundering laughter. It was there I learned the music of dialect, the flavor of accent, the entrancing magic of story telling.

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

A:  Accessibility, definitely. 

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes? 

A:  So many: Margaret Edson, Henrik Ibsen, August Wilson, Doug Wright, Lorrainne Hansberry, Lynn Nottage, Tony Kushner, Marsha Norman, Paula Vogel, Edward Albee, etc. 

Q:  What kind of theater excites you? 

A:  Theater that makes me forget I’m watching a play. Theatre I wish I’d written. 

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

A:  How do you plan to support yourself while you chase this demon? 

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  American Bard Theater is the rare, essential theater that truly supports new playwriting. Though many companies claim to offer that opportunity, look closely at the work they produce. Most of it comes from playwrights with extensive writing backgrounds and the requisite MFA. Does this mean writers from smaller areas, with less formal training have nothing worthy to say? ABT has the artistic courage and vision to offer this type of (almost nonexistent) production opportunity.  

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