I Interview Playwrights Part 342: Rachel Jendrzejewski

photo credit: Rafal Nowak

Rachel Jendrzejewski

Hometown:  Vincennes, Indiana

Current Town: Providence, Rhode Island

Q:  Tell me about Theater Masters National MFA Playwrights Festival.

A:  Theater Masters is a splendid non-profit organization based in Aspen that (among other things) supports emerging playwrights, especially in the transition from grad school into Next, through this annual festival. It's pretty extraordinary. In January, they flew us out to Aspen to see workshop productions of our short plays and meet all kinds of wonderful generous people; and then we went home and made revisions to our plays, if we wanted; and soon we'll reconvene in NYC for full productions of those pieces, plus meetings with folks in the field, gallivanting, festivity, etc. The whole experience has been quite a gift.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  Most immediately, I'm helping Erik Ehn throw some lunches and dinners centered on art and peace-building, aka the sixth annual Arts in the One World anti-conference (open to all: http://brown.edu/Departments/Theatre_Speech_Dance/grad/aow2011.html)! I'm also revising my most recent full-length play, MERONYMY, for a reading at Playwrights' Horizons in May, directed by the wonderful Kristin Marting. It's a highly visual piece, developed in collaboration with installation artists Megan & Murray McMillan and composer Peter Bussigel -- hence I'm trying to figure out how it might properly function as a 'reading' at all -- but I think it can! And I'm preparing to finish my MFA. Binding documents, ordering regalia, packing up to move.

Q:  Tell me about your time in Poland.

A:  oh I never know how to answer this question... it was wild and wonderful. I'd always been curious about Poland, both personally (family history) and artistically (Grotowski et al); and then a string of star alignments brought me to Wroclaw from 2008-2009, assisting the illustrious Joanna Klass on worldwide events for The Grotowski Year 2009. I worked long hours at the Grotowski Institute editing English texts, writing grant proposals, coordinating logistics for guests, producing all kinds of events; but I also collaborated on some independent performance projects at Galeria Entropia and Art Cafe Kalambur, as well as took part in some phenomenal workshops. And made some lifelong friends. And wandered. Saw buckets upon buckets of stunning art and performance. Dug into the country's history. Studied the language. People-watched. Had a glorious reunion with long-lost relatives. Did voiceover work and sold valentines to make ends meet. Danced like crazy. Bopped over to neighboring countries. Got lost on trains. Wrote, wrote, wrote.

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 little, I was super shy in public but made all kinds of plays, movies, and radio shows at home with my sister, Ingrid. She's six years older than me, so obviously she was always in charge. When I was 6 and she was 12, she decided we should make our own filmed version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL, casting herself as Scrooge and me as everybody else. When it came time to shoot the scene from Scrooge's past in which Belle breaks their engagement, I was so moved by the situation that I started to cry and couldn't stop. I was in kindergarten, but I remember feeling so desperately sorry for both characters that I couldn't do the scene. My mom had to intervene and we almost didn't finish the project - but eventually Ingrid made me laugh so we pushed through. Later in the film, there's a classic shot of me running through our living room with a scarf tied over my eyes, as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, gleefully yelling "woobawoobawoobawoobawooba!" and slamming straight into a chair. So I guess this story reveals that I've forever been very empathetic and very clumsy.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Too many to list! but a smattering of highlights (who may or may not identify as theatrical): Maria Abramovic, Robert Ashley, Pina Bausch, Beckett, Brook, John Cage, Laurie Carlos, Anne Carson, Caryl Churchill, Cornerstone Theater Co, E. E. Cummings, Dah, Lisa D'Amour, Derevo, Elevator Repair Service, Erik Ehn, Thalia Field, Grotowski, Uta Hagen, Coleman Hough, Ruth Margraff, Ariane Mnouchkine, Cindy Sherman, Gertrude Stein, Robert Wilson, Teatr Zar, Zeami, Guy Zimmerman... plus of course my family!

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that promotes divergent thinking and compassion through an ongoing becoming of itself -- work that's ever-pushing to get at something ineffable. Intimate immensity. Process as performance and vice versa; theater as gathering and evolution. Work that is startling and weird and hysterically funny. Work that reflects the diversity and surreality of our world.

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

A:  Take time to figure out how you like to write and pursue that, without worrying over any seeming Shoulds! Find your people and make things happen, at whatever pace works for you. Be gracious to yourself. Invest in friendships outside of the theatre/arts world. Take walks and explore. Avoid debt. Exercise. Sleep.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  If you can get to Providence this weekend, come enjoy free food and good conversation at Arts in the One World! full schedule and info at http://brown.edu/Departments/Theatre_Speech_Dance/grad/aow2011.html. Otherwise, forthcoming in NYC: BACTERIA at the Theater Masters National MFA Playwrights Festival, dir. Adam Immerwahr, May 3-7, Wild Project (http://www.theatermasters.org) + a reading of MERONYMY, presented by Brown University at Playwrights' Horizons, dir. Kristin Marting, May 13, 3pm.

I Interview Playwrights Part 341: Karen Malpede

Karen Malpede

Hometown: Evanston, Il.

Current Town: Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, New York. I say it this way because Clinton Hill is the best, best, best of all neighborhoods I’ve ever lived in.

Q: Tell me about the book Acts of War and your play Prophecy.

A: Prophecy is a play I wrote in response to America’s never-ending wars. It’s a family drama and a political drama. It’s a play that straddles realism and something older, more classical. My plays sit on a nexus between the now and then, looking forward, hopefully, into the what might be. They are hopeful in the same sense that knowledge is hopeful, that feeling is hopeful, that tragedy is hopeful. Now that the play is published in Acts of War: Iraq & Afghanistan in Seven Plays, people can read it for themselves.

I edited Acts of War because all the good plays about the wars were being damned by critics, or being found “too risky” (artistic directors said that to me) to produce. The plays that really look at the cost of these wars on the soldiers that fight them, the Iraqis and Afghans who die in them, the democracy that has yet to pay for them and is being driven so deeply into debt because of them. The book, like my play Prophecy, is an effort to guard against the deadening effect of not knowing and the moral torpor, the intellectual emptiness, the artistic vacuity of not knowing, not thinking, not wanting to experience the truth of what it means to be at war. The book contains seven smart, strong, ethical, exciting, and moving plays. Risky plays. Plays that are beautifully written and carefully constructed. Plays that matter. At least to me.

I wrote the introduction to the book because I wanted to talk about the strategies these playwrights have used when they set about to bring beauty out of the ugliness of our current wars. I wanted to discuss for others the aesthetics of plays that dare to tell the truth about war and its effects on combatants and noncombatants, alike. I link the plays in the book back to Greek tragedy because it happens that theater was created as a way for the Greeks to deal with combat trauma. Theater, war and democracy are intimately connected. The Greek democracy destroyed itself through imperial adventures. This is a cautionary tale. These modern plays address our modern traumas which are as ancient as war.

Q: What else are you working on?

A: My new play Another Life is not nice. It’s a surreal look at our complicity in the torture program, the economic collapse, the generally growing meanness of the last ten years since the attacks on the twin towers. It begins on the September 11, 2001. I was in New York and I worked with victims and survivors and I’ve written about that work. It’s a fact that most people in New York did not want to go to war. We were convinced that war was not the answer. We protested against bombing Afghanistan and invading Iraq.

Another Life has heroes. It was terrifying to write. It’s based on lots of research, interviews with lawyers who are defending detainees and torture victims and transcripts of interviews with torture victims themselves. I wrote it because I feel we need to know. We need to confront our own complicity, and also honor the best in us: those whistle blowers, like Bradley Manning, those lawyers, those doctors who take a stand against torture, who treat and respect the victims of the rather obscenely named “war on terror.”

Like all my plays, implicit in Another Life is the sense that there is another way. We didn’t need to plunge into violence and greed just because we were attacked. We might have answered with justice. We might have held trials. We might have believed in democracy. We didn’t need to “go shopping” as our then President Bush advised while he was intent upon launching an illegal invasion of a country, Iraq, that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. We didn’t need to spend ourselves into recession

So Another Life is a wacky, wild look at how our fear and our sorrow got hi-jacked and turned into revenge, greed, and small-mindedness, from which the nation is suffering now.

Another Life will premiere in Kosovo this June as part of an exchange program between my theater, Theater Three Collaborative, and the National Theater of Kosovo, funded by Theater Communications Group and the Mellon Foundation, as part of their On the Road initiative to encourage international exchange.

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

A: If there was one thing I would change about the theater it would be money. Theater doesn’t work well in capitalism; neither do health care, or education, for that matter. Theater is not a business; it is a labor intensive luxurious necessity. It is the one place where we can come together in community and breathe together with living actors while they live through in front of us what we are living through in our hopes, dreams, nightmares and desires. Theater means seeing place. And catharsis means clarity of sight.

So, the theater should be subsidized. It should be the right of citizens of a democracy to have a theater funded from tax money. It costs a million dollars to drop one laser-guided missile on the people of Afghanistan or Libya. A million dollars could fund theater for a year in a town or neighborhood. There was once a Federal Theater in this country from 1935-’39. Everyone should know the history of Federal Theater and read Hallie Flanagan’s book Arena.

Commercialism erodes the theater and erodes the audience. We are being made more stupid. We are being made more afraid. We are becoming less.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: If I don’t feel more alive at the end of a play than I felt at its beginning, it’s a failure. There is nothing quite as thrilling as a beautiful play with wonderfully committed actors. I want to be given life blood in the theater; I want to be startled awake—I mean spiritually awake. I want to feel more than I felt before.

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 child I walked into a pasture full of horses and colts who were grazing and playing in the late afternoon. I totally disrupted their harmony; they became angry, afraid, disconnected. But I knew one of the horses and I climbed onto his back. I sat completely silent and I watched as the trusting community reformed around me. I was no longer an alien. I was one of them. The late afternoon light was golden. The sound of the pasture was pure like a lute. There was nothing to fear. There was nothing do but be. Later, I walked into the farmhouse, and I remember looking at the people gathered for dinner as if they were aliens. They didn’t know about where I’d come from. They didn’t understand. There was a world of wonder, of harmony, simplicity and grace just outside the door. I suppose all children have an experience like this; that’s why so many children’s books are about secret worlds, passageways, doors, rabbit holes, hidden gardens. All children who are lucky enough to be able to find a patch of peace. All children lucky enough to be able to spend time in nature. This is why peace and nature, both so imperiled, so wounded, so undervalued and mistreated, are so important. Our imaginations live there. The theater opens the door into worlds we didn’t know existed. It lets us in. It takes us in. The theater lets us be with the mystery. When we leave we feel blessed, like initiates into a sacred trust.

Q: Plugs Please:

A: Another Life will be part of a four-play “9/11 Play Series” this September 8,9,10 at the Gerald Lynch Theater at John Jay College in Manhattan. It will run for three weeks in March 2012 at the Irondale Ensemble Theater in my neighborhood Clinton Hill/Fort Greene Brooklyn.

We’re raising money for these productions, now. Go to our website www.theaterthreecollaborative.org for information. We are about to launch a funding campaign on United States Artists website.

Join us Monday, April 25, 5:30-7pm at the Drama Book Shop 250 West 40th St., NY, NY as we Celebrate the Publication of Acts of War Iraq & Afghanistan in Seven Plays

edited by Karen Malpede, Michael Messina, Bob Shuman

Foreword by Chris Hedges Introduction by Karen Malpede

Guantanamo by Victoria Brittain & Gillian Slovo
American Tet by Lydia Stryk
The Vertical Hour by David Hare
Prophecy by Karen Malpede
9 Circles by Bill Cain
No Such Cold Thing by Naomi Wallace
A Canopy of Stars by Simon Stephens

A reading from the 7 plays begins promptly at 5:40 With:

George Bartenieff
Kathleen Chalfant
Brendan Donaldson
Najla Said
Loren Sharpe

Wine, snacks & best of all, books

I Interview Playwrights Part 340: Darcy Fowler

Darcy Fowler

Hometown: Marblehead, Massachusetts.

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m working on an as of yet untitled musical with the band The Spring Standards. www.springstandards.com. They’re such a wonderful and unique band and I’m excited about the direction we’re headed in…it’s definitely not your typical musical. We’re having our first reading June 29th at South Street Seaport as part of Youngblood’s Bloodworks.

I’m also in post production of the 5th episode of a webseries I created and co-write called “You Make My Dreams Come True,” about three girls with nothing but a dream and a Hall and Oates Band. Watch it! It’ll make you laugh. Will be out next week at: www.youmakemydreamscometrue.com.

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 watched a ton of classic movies, lots of comedies. I remember seeing Woody Allen’s “Sleeper” when I was 6 or 7, and my mind being blown. Watched tons of thrillers too, mostly Hithcock. They would scare the crap out of me and I would lay in bed at night for hours, wide awake. I loved it.

Also when I was 10 my mom pushed me to join something in my town called the Rebel Shakespeare Company, which was run by a woman named Keri Cahill, and was basically just a bunch of kids performing Shakespeare on this old fort by the ocean, during the summer. I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but it was an extraordinarily powerful program, and it changed my life. I remember playing the Nurse from Romeo and Juliet and running around hitting everyone with a fan. It was the best. Many of the kids from that program are still heavily involved in theatre or the arts in some way.

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

A:  I love how London treats theatre. It’s so sacred. I wish it was more like that here. I wish more reverence was given to off-off Broadway. I’ve seen so many gems of plays that have been overlooked in one way or another.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Well my list contains more than theatrical ones, hope that’s ok. I’m a big Aaron Sorkin fan. His dialogue’s like an Olympic ping pong match. Stephen Adly Guirgis. His plays make me feel excited and alive. The Marx Brothers, Tina Fey, Steve Martin, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks. Love all their comedy. Alison Janney. She inspires me as both an actress and a writer. I’d love to write a play for her someday. Also, it's my first year in EST's Youngblood, and it's been really incredible to hear so much new work from so many young, talented and hard working writers. I'm huge fan of everyone there.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Stuff that makes me feel full and hopeful. Productions with no budget told with just a ton of love and ferocity and care. LAByrinth Theatre. I recently got involved in their Summer Intensive, and it was inspiring and exciting to see how that community worked.

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

A:  Well, as a playwright that’s also just starting out, there’s the instinct to write and then not let your writing see the light of day. Knock on your roommate’s door, or call a friend and ask them to read what you’ve been working on. That’s been key for me. If your friends love you, they will help you. As long as you don’t ask them too much. Then they’ll tell you to simmer your shit.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Come see the Untitled Spring Standards Project

As part of EST Youngblood’s Bloodworks.
Book by Darcy Fowler, Music and Lyrics by the Spring Standards
Algonquin Seaport Theater: http://www.algonquinseaporttheater.org/
South Street Sea Port
June 29th at 7pm

And watch for the 5th episode of my webseries You Make My Dreams Come True At: www.youmakemydreamscometrue.com.

For more info about me as a writer and an actress:
www.darcyfowler.com

I Interview Playwrights Part 339: Daniel Pearle

Daniel Pearle

Hometown: Studio City, CA

Current Town: New York, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  At the end of this month Primary Stages is doing a reading of a play called Bel Canto that I started last spring. I'm very excited to hear it out loud for the first time. I'm also starting to work on a play about the kindergarten admissions process in Manhattan.

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 came to playwriting pretty late. As a kid I used to draw constantly, then around age ten I gave that up and started taking piano lessons. In middle and high school I trained as a singer and did some music composition stuff too. When I started writing it was mostly short stories; it wasn't until college that I took a playwriting course for the first time. I know that's not really a story exactly, but I think what I've always liked about theater is that it's a medium that's visual, musical, textual, and psychological. I love the freedom that comes with starting something new, knowing it can be pretty much anything I want. I guess I'm still a little ADD...

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

A:  I studied in Paris for a semester as an undergraduate and I couldn't believe how much the government there subsidized theater. As a student I could see a show for five euros. Even regular tickets weren't usually more than 30-50. I wish that was the case here.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Chekhov, Williams, John Patrick Shanley, Caryl Churchill, Craig Lucas, Christopher Shinn. Oh, and Shakespeare.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that's authentic, imaginative, and personal, whatever form that takes. Very often I feel like plays are written to try to be clever or interesting or wild, to try to impress an audience rather than to give them an experience. I think I'm most excited when I feel like a play has cost the writer something to write.

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

A:  I'm still looking for advice myself... But the best advice I've gotten is to write the play you'd write if you thought no one would ever read it.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  As part of their Primetime Reading series, Primary Stages is doing a reading of my play Bel Canto on April 25th. Details here: http://www.primarystages.org/primetime.

Also, I just saw Christopher Shinn's Picked at the Vineyard. Highly recommend it!

I Interview Playwrights Part 338: Heather Lynn MacDonald

Heather Lynn MacDonald

Hometown: Tuftonboro, NH (Lake Winnipesaukee)

Current Town: New York, NY

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I'm working on a play about the history of the neoconservatives. It's been a few years actually - I'll do a ton of research, then write, then I freeze up and put it away for a while. I've found the fact vs. fiction balance tricky - some of my characters are living public figures. I'm almost there, though.


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 12 I was cast as Oliver in my local community theater production of Oliver. 6 years later at NYU I was cast as Macbeth in a class production. Do I play a man particularly well? No. Those were accidents, but they informed my point of view when I became a writer. I started out naïvely thinking men's and women's roles could be fluid. But many of the plays I read by women felt narrow - anything domestic and I was completely turned off. The 'woman writer' stamp became a kiss of death for me. So I overcompensated and wrote plays without women at all. The few women that would appear were angry, stuck, or cried for no reason. I had a distorted view.

Now I'm in my 30's and all I can think about are women's issues. I want to see plays about them. I want to write about them. I'm no clearer on how to do it in a way that doesn't feel 'woman writer'-stamped, but I suspect that will be an ongoing question for me.

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

A: Oh this is so hard. But I'll give three.

1. I wish it wasn't so expensive to produce new plays in New York. In the early 90's when I first came to the city, you could see a show for cheap at any number of theaters downtown. If it was a hit, it might move or play for a while, and if it was a bomb, you'd just pack it up and roll out the next one. The financial stakes were lower.

2. I wish we were less precious about theater.

3. I wish theater was more integrated with visual arts and/or live music (the Sam Shepard piece at the New Group last season is one example that comes to mind).

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:

Caryl Churchill
Harold Pinter
Rich Maxwell
Fiona Shaw
Tom Stoppard

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

A: Submit your work. Find the right opportunities for you, and apply. Repeatedly. People will remember you, even if you didn't get it the first time. Or second. Or third.

The Atlantic Theater has the rejection letter they sent Tony Kushner for Angels in America up in their office. Rejection letters are not a referendum on your work.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: Mark Rylance in Jerusalem

I Interview Playwrights Part 337: Gabe McKinley

Gabe McKinley

Hometown:

I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, and also spent a lot of time in Europe, mostly in Majorca, Spain. My father was a professor and we traveled a lot, but I was in KC for high school, and my extended family is there, so I consider it home.

Current Town:

Well, as I write this, I'm in Los Angeles...being the literary equivalent of the guys who hang out in front of Lowe's waiting for work, hoping somebody will drive up, point to me, and ask me to write an episode of the Chicago Code or some such. But, that being said, I've been living in New York since coming there to study acting at NYU in the 90's.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Currently I'm writing a film for an independent producer, and I'm pretty excited about it. Theater wise, I have a new play that is making the rounds with theater companies in New York. The play, CQ/CX, is about a plagiarism scandal at a New York newspaper. We recently had a great reading for a theater company and we're waiting for someone to give the show and opportunity. Otherwise, aside from looking for television work, I've been doing sketches and working on two new plays, one is a dark comedy about a effects of a celebrity's sex tape on a couple's relationship, and the other, still in its infancy, is an epic romance...or, at least, my version of.

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've had either the honor or horror, depending on your point of view, of being surrounded by writers my entire life. My parents, who are both writers, and their friends, most of whom are writers, poets and painters, had a great effect on me from a very early age. I spent a lot of time at poetry readings and writers conferences and I'd stay up late and listen to my parents and their friends talk about the books they loved and others they were writing and I think it seeped into my brain at an early age that writing was a noble profession and that, perhaps, one day i'd like to join it. I can think of no singular moment or event that made me a writer... but, I often think about my father's typewriter in his studio, it was a big old lug of thing and he had taped a small piece of paper with the word "truth" written on it. I think of that yellowed piece of paper and it's simple message when I sit down to write and then I try to write one truthful thing after another.

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

A:  More money for artists.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  As an American playwright, I fell in love with Eugene O'Neill first, and I still hold him dear. Checkov, of course, and Georg Buchner. Mamet, Shepard, August Wilson, Lanford Wilson, Pinter, Bond, Osborne, Kushner, Kennedy, Kane and Parks.... there are a lot of great writers I steal from, I could go on and on.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Honest and brave works... and not brave in the sense of shocking, but rather, just brutally truthful. Great writing is a bloodletting, and I think great theater is the same.

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

A:  John Guare said something about never getting a job, but in this economy...that's moot. So, I'll say...read everything, not just plays, but fiction, nonfiction, newspapers, magazines, both prose and poetry. Reading is writing. Also, GO TO THE THEATER! I'm always surprised when I speak to writer who doesn't make the effort to get to the theater.

I Interview Playwrights Part 336: Keith Josef Adkins

Keith Josef Adkins

Hometown: the suburbs of Cincinnati, Ohio

Current Town: Harlem and Brooklyn.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Currently, I'm in rewrites for a play called The Final Days of Negro-ville. A darkly humorous play that examines our current recession and its impact on middle class "black America". Think Our Town meets Osage County meets a black middle class community falling apart at the seams. The play was commissioned by A.C.T. and the Hansberry Project in Seattle and I'm prepping for a July 2011 workshop. I'm also in rewrites for a play called Sugar and Needles. The play, also dark and humorous, (I obviously enjoy dark and humorous), digs into the lives of two recovering substance abusers and the woman who knocks on their door with a bag of coke (among other things). The play was inspired by the life of my oldest brother, a witty, charming, very smart man, who died in September 2010 from complications due to a lifetime of substance abuse. Sugar and Needles was commissioned by Epic Theater and will appear in their Sunshine Series, June 2011.

Q:  Tell me about The New Black Fest.

A:  The New Black Fest is a theater festival that celebrates the diverse voices, music and narratives within the global black theater canon. It is a means to challenge black theater artists and the larger theater community to think about "blackness" in a much more expansive way. It is a creative supplement to what appears to be a "whitening" of American theater. (Let's count how many plays of color were produced in this off-Broadway season). My maternal grandfather was a leader in the Cincinnati chapter of the NAACP. My paternal grandfather, a minister, was very good friends with the Civil Rights leader Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. Both of these men demonstrated if you see a void, do whatever you can to fill that void, explain later. At the end of the day, J. Holtham and I like to believe The New Black Fest is our way to provide opportunities and legitimacy to theater artists of color who spend most of their careers stuck in that stagnant waiting game.

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

A:  In the 1970s, a major Born Again movement swept through southern Indiana and southern Ohio. Families that had been historically Methodist and/or Catholic (my family) suddenly subscribed to the notion Christ would return, very very soon and with a vengeance. For me, it was like an alien invasion. Everyone morphed from humans to these three-eyed Born Again creepy things. People started using this Born Again language, performing Born Again rituals, viciously ostracizing non-Born Agains. I thought my identity (one that was beginning to take shape) would be absorbed by the Born Agains. I remember, as a kid, thinking this is the end of personal choice. I told my mom (who never subscribed to the Born Again crazy) about my concerns. I remember her laughing a little and then providing these words of encouragement: "Yes, we're surrounded by a lot of non-thinkers, Keith. It's horrible. Grow up and leave this hellhole." Or something like that. I'm not sure if this is why I write, but it's certainly why I set out, at a young age, to find an environment where I could thrive as an individual and make up my own rules. Now that I think of it, writing is my way of making up my own rules.

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

A:  Mmm... but there are so many things to change. lol. I would challenge the theater community to really be the social/cultural barometer of our nation. Literature, photography, dance, visual art and music, boldly and courageously give testament to the truth of our times. And I'm talking about the main-stream stuff. However, theater, particularly off-Broadway and the regionals, appear a little afraid to challenge their audiences with the ugly (and beautiful) truth of who and how we are. There are, of course, many exceptions, but I'd like to challenge American theater, on the whole, to be much more daring (and to please stop singling out "black plays" as these things to do during February). Every play, no matter who wrote it, is an universal story.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Alice Childress, Adrienne Kennedy, Lynn Nottage, August Wilson, William Shakespeare, Oyamo, Suzan-Lori Parks, Caryl Churchill, Tennessee Williams, Carlyle Browne, Edward Albee, and my brothers Victor and Greg ( who are/were the world's best mimics).

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that holds no punches.

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

A:  Go see every play within a ten-mile radius. Absorb the physics of a production. Listen to how language unfolds from an actor. The study of playwriting never ends. There's always room to get better. Also, don't judge other writers. Content may be challenging, but craft is craft. You could find fault in anything (and someone could certainly find fault in your work as well). Last, but not least, establish a community of fellow theater artists. Read your own work, PRODUCE your own work. Nurture and nourish each other. Don't wait for anything. In the words of Judy Dench as the character Barb in the film Notes on a Scandal, "Do, do, do!"

I Interview Playwrights Part 335: Brian Quirk

Brian Quirk

Hometown: Midland, Michigan; and Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Current Town: New York City, Hells Kitchen.

Q:  Tell me about the play you're taking to PlayPenn

A:  The play is called Nerine.

On the cusp of her adolescence, a gifted teenage girl--Nerine—moves to a housing project in Los Angeles with her mentally unstable wannabe actress mother, and her over-protective Argentine “Oma.” Unable to go to school due to her family's fear, Nerine channels her energy into creating a garden from the dust. But when her mother becomes pregnant, Nerine’s hopes for the future begin to collapse.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  Working on a book for a musical with the choreographer/director Donald Byrd. I am working on a play Summerland that is about the Fox Sisters and the spiritualist movement. I also am working on a new two-character play Warren. The play takes place in Detroit and deals with a surprising end of life relationship. I have had tons of time to work as I am in Taos, New Mexico at The Wurlitzer Foundation. I won the Robert Chesley award for 2010 and it came with a 13 week residency!

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

A:  When I was a little kid I loved to play dress up. I would take my Granny’s gold elf boots, my mothers fake pearls, and wear my father’s football shoulder pads. My parents saw that I loved to play and pretend. They bought me this box of hats. They were all plastic and bright colors. There was a cowboy hat, a fireman’s hat, a top hat, etc. They also gave me a cardboard box full of old clothes. I would go up to the attic and puts on these various hats and costumes and make believe. I would make up characters and situations. Sometimes this would involve going to the library and researching a period, say Tudor England. My poor sister had to be many of the wives of Henry the 8th! Finally when I was ten, I saw my first play, a production of Dracula at the University of Arkansas. I was mesmerized, horrified, terrified, transported and so excited that I couldn’t sleep for months. It rocked and transformed my world. I love that the theater has that power. I thought this is what I want to do with my life. I was hooked on theater for life!

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

A:  It would be that theaters would have to pick their season blind at least one play. So then a new crop of writers would come up, as the season would be chosen for the best writing not writing attached with a name.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  The late John Stix who would come to rehearsal at 83 and say “What can we learn today?”
Athol Fugard who has been a kind of mentor to me.
Craig Lucas whose work is so beautiful and who is so generous.
Daphne Rubin Vega who did a reading of Nerine last summer and inspired me to make the play better. She is a true force of nature.
I would add Tennessee Williams and Lorca. They are unique, lyrical, and both write these amazing women’s roles.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Many kinds, I love a good story. I thought August:County Ossage was amazing! I like experimental work. I really enjoyed NYTW’s The Sound and the Fury. I thought it was just brilliant. I dig the classics, their language, scope and theatricality. I admired God’s Ear -what a production! Such precision, and the use of language! I thought Being Harold Pinter had these moments of incredible simplicity, beauty and theatricality. I am also really inspired by transformational acting and great roles especially women’s. I thought Cate Blanchett’s work in Streetcar Named Desire at BAM was mind blowing.

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

A:  Write, write, write, and see everything you can. Find the stories that speak to you and tell them in your own unique way. Follow your heart and keep doing what you need to do no matter what.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I have been out of town for ten weeks so I am a bit out of but…
Go see Black Watch it’s coming back to New York.
Check out the work of directors Troy Miller and Wayne Maugans.
I’ve worked with both and they are super talented!
Head to Jimmy’s No. 43 for an id theater “sit in” www.idtheater.org
Read Bryan Charles book There’s a Road to Everywhere Except Where You Came From
Check out the work of artists Karla Wozniak , Karlawozniak.com and Lucy Kim, luckykim.com. I am always inspired by great visual art.
And come to PlayPenn this July and see my play Nerine
and the work of the other wonderful writers! www.playpenn.org

I Interview Playwrights Part 334: Israela Margalit

Israela Margalit

Hometown:  Born in Haifa, a port town in the north of Israel.

Current Town:  I’ve been a New Yorker for quite a few years.

Q:  Tell me about your upcoming show with Kef Productions.

A:  First Prize is a play about a female pianist in the cutthroat world of classical music, where passion, inspiration, and talent collide with intrigue, ruthlessness, and sexual harassment. She could just as well be a dancer, an actor, a lawyer: a young woman swimming upstream in the turbulent water of career making with all its pain and splendor. Four terrific actors play the larger-than-life characters that inhabit this world: the agents, the conductors, the entrepreneurs, the art patrons, the teachers, the aspiring performers. You don’t need to know anything about music to connect with it. I think lots of people will find a piece of themselves in the play, and hopefully will have a good laugh in the process.

Q:  Tell me about your life as a concert pianist. Has that informed your writing?

A:  There are similarities in timing, structure, building a climax, choosing your moment. Another similarity is the need for self-criticism and constant editing. There is a huge difference between the first time I’d play a new piece of music, and the time it’s ready to immortalize on a recording. You think it’s good, but is it really? Is it ever? You can say the same about a play. I cut a number of lines in rehearsal today, and that’s after some sixteen previous edits. Writing, like performance, is never quite as perfect as we want it to be. It’s a lifelong work in progress. When all the elements come together, it’s magical.

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

A:  Childhood stories are self-serving, aren’t they? When I was eight, I took part in a national writing competition. The winners, of which I was one, were hired as reporters for a year of a children’s magazine called “Our Land.” My first assignment was to cover the visit of the Israeli President to my hometown, Haifa. After my story was published, the editor told me I was not journalistic material, because “You’re a lot more into the atmosphere and the emotion of the event than the gathering of information.”

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

A:  It would be nice to write for twelve characters and still have the chance of being produced. Imagine if Shakespeare had to write his masterpieces for three and a half characters! The economy of the theater is daunting. On the other hand, creating more with less is a welcome creative challenge.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  My heroes are not playwrights but plays. A Long Day’s Journey into Night. Skylight. Time Stands Still. These are perfect plays in their own style.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Evocative, character-driven, unresolved. Plays that continue to occupy my thoughts.

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

A:  Prepare to throw out your best lines if they don’t serve the character. And don’t show your first draft to anyone who can make or break your career. It’s normally not half as good as we think it is.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My play TRIO is having a sold out run in Los Angeles, following five years of sold out halls in Moscow and throughout Russia and Ukraine.

Moritz Interviews Me for Studio 42 Blog

Interview regarding our upcoming workshop production of My Base And Scurvy Heart.

I Interview Playwrights Part 333: Kia Corthron

Kia Corthron

Hometown: Cumberland, Maryland. A working class Appalachian town, walking distance to West Virginia.

Current Town: Harlem, Manhattan, New York City.


Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  A big secret!

Q:  Tell me about your upcoming France trip.

A:  It's a colony called Dora Maar House, administered by the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. Dora Maar was an artist and photographer, and one of Picasso's lovers. Apparently he bought this house for her near a small village in the south of France. From the website it looks beautiful, and I know two people, a poet and a visual artist, who have been there and raved. They take two writers and one visual artist at a time. (There is also a piano so they must also sometimes take composers.) Your travel is paid for plus a generous meal stipend.

Colonies aren't for everyone, but I love 'em! Without the distractions of home, you feel like you have forty hours in a day, all for writing!

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

A:  It took me awhile to figure this out - I think because everything from my childhood explains who I am as a writer and a person.

The town I grew up in was at least 95% white. Very working class except all those factories that made it a booming place in the '40s were closing in the '60s and '70s, when I was growing up. My mother's cousin lost his job in the textile place after twenty years or more and was left with nothing - no pension, nada. (As an adult of course I know now all those places went internationally to hire sweatshop workers from among the desperately poor.) My father had a horrible job, but one of the very few remaining steady ones, at the paper mill. So one of his perks was to bring home pens and pencils and reams of plain white paper. And even staplers! (My mother was so delighted with the latter I remember her once stapling all over a piece of paper until she finally stapled her finger.) I made use of all those in my play - making up stories and turning them into little books.

Coming of age in such an atmosphere, there were wonderful things: running the neighborhood till we had to go in at dusk without our parents locking us up in the yard, fearing for our safety. There were also plenty of incidents of racism (and sexism). I'll name just one, though this is when I was a little older - high school. I guess I was in ninth grade. Gym class. There were about fifteen of us girls on the steps in our gym clothes, waiting for the others to get ready. I was the only black girl. One girl was standing. She said she had a joke to tell - but then she realized she couldn't tell it. Another girl begged her to tell it. She whispered it to her, and the second girl cracked up, but agreed, they couldn't tell that joke. The other girls begged for the joke. I didn't. I knew exactly what it was. And if I had any doubt that it was anything but a nigger joke, it was all clarified when the joke that could not be spoken aloud was whispered to every single girl sitting there except me. In a deliberate way, no one looked at me as the joke was passed around.

I'm not even sure why I shared that story, except that it has stuck with me all these years and that would seem significant. I would imagine it (and a thousand other youthful incidents) would speak to issues of race in many of my plays. And living in such an economically depressed area certainly influenced my writing about classism and workers' issues. Also, as someone who spent much of my young life as an outsider to a large degree, I can write about outsiders - frequently do - and am perfectly satisfied being alone. (I've gone to artist colonies where I am the only person there, and loved it! Sans socializing, even more time to write!)

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

A:  One! Okay. I wish there was more respect for the arts here, as in other countries, so that work could be exponentially more subsidized. This could allow for bigger cast plays. Not every play is a three-hander, and I think the pressure to write these small plays, that sort of self-censorship, has cost the American theater harshly in creativity. More subsidies could also provide for cheaper ticket prices, allowing for more diverse audiences and reducing the suicidal stigma of theater as art for the elite.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  This question always stresses me out cuz I know I'm going to forget somebody important! So here are just a few: Aristotle, Amiri Baraka, Augosto Boal, Bertolt Brecht, Hallie Flanagan, Adrienne Kennedy, David Rabe, Peter Sellars, Ellen Stewart, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Luis Valdez, Naomi Wallace.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like to be surprised. I like challenges to the status quo - which are surprising. I like courage on the part of the writer - which, in production, then requires courage on the part of everybody else.

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

A:  Never feel the need to take unsolicited advice; there are a lot of people out there who would love to rewrite your play for you. But do ask the opinions of those you trust, and (in the case of a post-show discussion, for example) listen to the thoughts of strangers as well. Be polite, but work hard to stay true to your own intentions. Which may mean discarding 95% of what you hear - but that usable 5% might prove to be invaluable.

I Interview Playwrights Part 332: Christina Anderson

Christina Anderson

Hometown: Kansas City, KS

Current town: New Haven, CT

Q: Tell me about your new play for one actor, HOLLOW ROOTS.

A: It's a solo piece about a young Black American woman who becomes obsessed with discovering a post-race society. The term “post-race” being a concept that caught momentum in mainstream America during Obama’s presidential campaign. The definition is two-fold: 1) Race no longer impedes a person’s ability to succeed in this country and 2) Our nation is color-blind—we don’t see race. Considering the possibility of such a society, my immediate questions are: what would we gain in such a world and what would we lose? I started writing HOLLOW ROOTS with those questions swirling in my head. Stylistically, Spalding Gray and Wallace Shawn’s theatrical presentation influenced this piece. The play is entirely direct address and the performer remains seated throughout.

Q: How is it similar to your other work? Different?

A: Well, it’s similar in that it examines a slice of Black American culture. And, like my other plays, it explores a heightened language and theatricality. The difference … hm. Probably the visual aspect. In my mind I just see a Black woman sitting in a chair, speaking to the audience. Creating that type of theater is new for me.

Q: Why theater?

A: I love the fact that adults are willing to pretend for 90 minutes. I love the magic of it. The simplicity of it. It has the power to transform the viewer. It celebrates the dexterity of a good performer. It captures the brilliance of a great storyteller. It creates community. It sparks discussion. These things don’t happen with every theater piece, but the possibility is always there.

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

A: I hate it’s so expensive to make and it costs so much to see. But I also realize the folks behind the scenes deserve to get paid.

Q: If you weren’t a playwright, you would be a …?

A:  Cool hunter. Google it—it’s real.

Q: Heroes (theatrical or otherwise):

A:  Playwrights: Harold Pinter, Maria Irene Fornes, Paula Vogel, Ntozake Shange, Quiara Hudes, Lynn Nottage and Sam Shepard. Poets: Essex Hemphill, George Elliott Clarke and Nikki Giovanni. Artists/designers: Boogie, Geoff Mcfetridge, Roy Decarava, Jeff Staple, Basquiat.

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

A:  Write, write then write some more. Challenge yourself with each play. Read any and everything. But try to get some exercise and fresh air, too.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My play BLACKTOP SKY is a part of the 2011 Carlotta Festival at The Yale School of Drama. May 6-14th. My wonderful classmates Meg Miroshnik and Dipika Guha are also featured. More info: http://drama.yale.edu/carlotta/index.html

I Interview Playwrights Part 331: Jenny Lyn Bader

Jenny Lyn Bader

Hometown: New York City

Current Town: New York City

Q: Tell me about You Are Now the Owner of This Suitcase.

A: It’s a collaboratively written play inspired by tales from different cultures. We started by collecting tales from memories and street interviews. In Jackson Heights, we asked members of the diverse community about fairy tales and folk tales they remembered from childhood. They told us stories from around the world — Burma, Iran, Ireland, Germany, Latin America, Mexico, Pakistan. Then we transformed and reimagined those tales into a contemporary story. It’s not seven one-acts but one play written by seven playwrights, melding our different styles into one voice while also trying to honor the sounds of different voices in the neighborhood.

Q: You Are Now the Owner of This Suitcase is the first premiere by a new ensemble, Theatre 167. You’re one of the founders of this company. Can you tell me how it got started?

A: A few of us worked on a show called 167 Tongues, which was premiered by Jackson Rep when our director, Ari Laura Kreith, was Artistic Director there. That show was inspired by a news story she read that said there are 167 languages spoken at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, so the hospital’s own staff had to do some translating — they’d page the janitor or the night nurse, say, if someone came in speaking a particular dialect of Slovenian or Swahili. Ari had initiated multiply authored plays before but this one was special in its scope and depth. The writers collaborated early and often. There was a word or line in a foreign language in every scene. The director and dramaturg found translators for us for anything...Tibetan, Cantonese, Urdu. We had 11 playwrights, 29 actors, 37 characters. It seemed like a madcap, impossible project.

And suddenly it came together… the show sold out, and we had people in the audience who’d never seen a play before, and international audience members— from Guatemala and Bangladesh, from all over — saying they had never seen someone like themselves in a performance before, thanking us for putting people like them in the stage.

So a few of us decided to start Theatre 167, an ensemble entirely dedicated to creating new and deeply collaborative work, investigating cultural collisions, and making theatre that brings community together. We presented 167 Tongues again at Queens Theatre in the Park, and then we created You Are Now the Owner of This Suitcase for our first world premiere because we wanted to do a play that would include the whole community, all ages as well as all cultures.

Q: Isn't that a challenge, to co-author a play with so many people?

A: It's certainly not for everyone! But some of us love it. You have to shelve your ego and sometimes one or two of your initial impulses, but in exchange you get a gigantic puzzle to solve, a huge tapestry to embroider. It feels like you are making an oversized piece of art that requires more than one person.

Q: A new play of yours just opened this weekend in Boston: Mona Lisa Speaks. Can you tell me about it?

A: Mona Lisa Speaks was commissioned by a group called Core Ensemble. They’re pioneers of chamber music theatre, doing pieces that interweave theatre performance with music, and they’ve got an intriguing process. First they decide what music they want to perform, then research the era when it was written to find a subject of interest, and then find a writer. In this case they decided they wanted to perform composers such as Stravinsky, Poulenc, and Satie. Then they looked at what was happening in Paris around 1910, and found the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre Museum in 1911, and among other improbable events Picasso was questioned by police and the avant-garde poet Apollinaire was arrested and interrogated. The painting lived in a Paris garrett for two years.

I thought it should be told entirely from the painting’s point of view when she’s been stolen — after all, the woman’s smiled quietly for over 400 years, it’s time for her to talk already. So I wrote it as a one-woman show, imagining all the complaints and insights the Mona Lisa would have. I explored the mysteries that have built up around the painting over time and then tried to solve as many as I could in the play. The Core Ensemble production premiered last week in South Carolina at a women’s and gender studies conference and at Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Q: How did they find you?

A: They read a script excerpt on my web site where I made a joke about Apollinaire. Not necessarily what you expect would land you a job.

Q: What else are you working on?

A:  Another play I’m writing is set in that same historical era: Petticoat Government begins in 1912, and is about Edith Wilson, Woodrow’s wife who famously ran the White House during his illness. When I began researching it, I had a received idea of her as a feminist heroine. So I was disappointed to learn she not only made some devastatingly bad policy decisions, she was also an opponent of women’s rights. I started thinking of her as a villain. But the more research I did, the more I realized she was neither a hero nor a villain. I think she was a woman of her time who lived vicariously through the men she was with — and then turned into them. And that’s what the play’s about.

I’m also writing book and lyrics for a new musical, an adaptation... and I'm writing the book for an original musical with four characters called Suburban Revolutionaries. It’s a coming of age story about growing up during the peace movement and making peace with your family.

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've always had a tendency to get lost in other worlds. When I was ten, a teacher saw me sitting on a fire hydrant that protruded from the school building with my coat covering it and thought I was levitating… Later that year, my friend Clarissa and I would walk home together every day. We started playing a game where she would invent a title and I would have to make up a story to go with the title. I would tell the whole thing by the time we got to my building, three blocks from school, and then she would walk a few more blocks home. Sometimes we would stand outside for an extra minute while I wrapped up. But one day, the story kept going. It was getting cold so we went into my lobby. I thought the story would end soon so we didn’t go upstairs, just sat on a bench by the elevator… but the story took on a life of its own. Two hours later I was still in the lobby telling the story, while both of our mothers were calling the school and reporting us missing. No one had thought to check the lobby. They were about to call the police. Since then I have tried to get out of the way of a story that wants to be told, while also trying to keep my loved ones informed of my whereabouts.

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

A: I would make it more central to the life of all people, as it was in ancient Athens. That means everyone goes to theatre, it’s part of what you do. I’m not just talking about federal funding. It’s more than that. It means public awareness of all that live performance can do, that audiences know to stop texting for a couple of hours and engage in an invented world, that folks from all walks of life show up to see a play. I know it can happen. It happens in Ireland, where anyone you talk to goes to see plays. It’s what we’re trying to do with Theatre 167.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Molière showing that comedy can change the way people think and even alarm the authorities, Richard Wilbur for making it possible for a small child who only speaks English to understand Molière, Peter Brook for changing what is possible onstage, Anna Deavere Smith for changing what is possible for one person onstage.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: A play with a unique voice. I don’t make false distinctions between types of theatre — the most traditional or the most experimental artist might have that voice that makes you want to gather and listen.

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

A: Don’t isolate yourself, meet other playwrights. Share theatre tickets and dramaturgical insights. So many playwrights help and mentor each other. They can also offer one another particular tips, as opposed to blanket advice for all playwrights starting out. They may know you are for instance writing an epic play involving silverware, and have just heard about a theatre with a call for large-cast scripts about forks. Fellow playwrights can also give you a sense of community. Have compassion for your characters. And have compassion for your audience. Think of the audience as another character that you need to care about. I know some writers and even some theatres have contempt for their audience, and I don’t think that’s a good idea. It’s better to understand the audience. Notice them. See when they’re fidgeting because they shouldn’t be. They shouldn’t even want to feel like texting!

Q: Plugs, please:

A: For updates & whimsy see my web site. You can read a review of You Are Now the Owner of This Suitcase, now extended through April 3rd, on NY Theatre and you can buy tickets at Brown Paper Tickets. To get involved with Theatre 167, visit our company's site. If you want to see a musical in development, there will be a reading of Suburban Revolutionaries at the JCC in NYC on May 23. In Florida? Core Ensemble will perform Mona Lisa Speaks at the Kravis Center in Palm Beach on April 21. Need a 2-hander for young actors? Read my play None of the Above about a girl and her S.A.T. tutor. Also available online at Amazon or in life at the wonderful Drama Bookshop. If you’re a female playwright you should know about New Georges, 50/50 in 2020, and the ICWP. If you’re a playwright of any gender or sensibility looking for great places to develop your work, check out the O’Neill Center and the Lark Play Development Center. They care.

I Interview Playwrights Part 330: Catherine Trieschmann

Catherine Trieschmann

Hometown:  Athens, GA

Current Town:  Hays, Kansas (also known as "Hays America" in these parts--I have no idea why). It's a small town in Western Kansas, pretty much in no man's land.

Q:  Tell me about your play coming up at Pacific Playwrights Festival.

A:  How the World Began was commissioned by Manhattan Theatre Club through the Sloan Foundation. It is about the firestorm that results when a new teacher makes an off-handed comment about the origins of the universe in a small Kansas town recently felled by a tornado. It's my first Kansas play and is, in many ways, an exploration of where I live now.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  My second Kansas play and a screenplay set in my hometown.

Q:  What's it like pursuing a professional playwriting career while living in the middle of nowhere?

A:  Challenging but also possible/rewarding. On the one hand, I love that my cultural experience is unique and that definitely stands out in my writing. I love having a big organic garden and not having to have a day job. I'm constantly amazed at what great feedback I can get from my local friends when I invite them over to sit around the fire and read my latest play. Since moving out here, my career, such as it is, has progressed slowly but surely, and I don't sense that I'd be that much further along if I lived in NY or LA (excluding TV/film opportunities, of course). On the other hand, boy, I really wish I had a writer's group. I really regret that I was never able to pursue the opportunities at Julliard, Ars Nova and the like.

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

A:  In no particular order:
Less talking about doing and more doing
I wish the Times coverage was more in depth
Rush tickets for all ages across the board
More women on Broadway--but really excited for Katori Hall and Lisa D'Amour this year!
Closer to home

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  The Irish, especially Brian Friel. Horton Foote. Naomi Wallace. Lately, I'm in love with Annie Baker, but it's unrequited. She doesn't even know I exist. *sigh*

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  When I don't know what's going to happen next. When the poetry is organic yet memorable. When characters are led astray from the PLOT, like when the son kisses the father in Albee's The Goat. I wasn't really caring for the play and then *that* happened, and I was suddenly led into deep waters. I really like being led into deep waters.

When plays are funny without being precious or quippy or whimsical. That's a very hard funny to achieve.

A really good musical can rock my world.

A really good production of Beckett can send me weeping into the void.

Just thinking about all the great new writing happening in NYC as I type this fills me with longing. Today, I wish I could find a sitter for the kids and go see Bathseba Doran's Kin and then maybe take her out for sushi afterwards, b/c there is no sushi in Hays America. We would gossip and talk shop and get drunk. (Yeah, she doesn't know me either. Do I seem like a stalker? I'm not a stalker. Really.)

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

A:  Much has been covered on this topic, but I don't think we can stress the benefits of self-production enough. I produced my play crooked at the 2004 Edinburgh Fringe Festival with my friends, and it took me to SPF, the Bush Theatre in London, Off-Broadway, and now all over the country and even abroad. I never would have written that play if I hadn't wanted to do Edinburgh with my friends.

Obviously, not all self-producing ventures have a happy ending, but you will learn tons of things along the way, even if you lose all your money, friends, and self-esteem, which has also been known to happen. In which case, you may learn that what you really want to do with your life is to go into banking or speech therapy. There are worse things, as my Mother constantly reminds me.

Secondly, while it is ever so important to master the discipline of writing daily, there is also something to be said for recognizing your own creative rhythms and allowing for gestation to take place. There may come a time when actively NOT WRITING actually helps your writing. I find fallow periods can be very productive, and I always write better plays when I allow for them. Not everyone needs to write five plays a year, and let's be frank, nobody writes five good plays a year.

And finally, everyone writes some duds along the way. Even Tennessee Williams. Even Tony Kushner. It's okay.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  How the World Began at PPF and then look for it Off-Broadway in January 2012.

Also, a film I wrote, Angel's Crest (featuring Jeremy Piven and Elizabeth McGovern, among others) is premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival: http://www.tribecafilm.com/festival/features/TFF_11_World_Narrative_Features.html

I Interview Playwrights Part 329: Oliver Mayer

Oliver Mayer

Hometown:  I'm born and bred here in LA, grew up in North Hollywood/Studio City. For awhile I lived in Echo Park and loved it.

Current Town:  Now I live at USC, where I am a resident faculty master of the Parkside International Residential College. It's amazing to live on campus where I work. I live with my wife Marlene Forte, our daughter Giselle, our dog Don Aldo, and two cats. It's a great place.

Q:  Tell me about your new play with Son of Semele.  How do you create shows together?

A:  This is my first show with SOSE. Don Boughton invited me in to work on this nearly two years ago. Usually, when I write plays I do the work at home alone, then present it to directors and actors. This time Don had me join the rehearsals with the ensemble and watch them work on improvs, exercises and story theater techniques. Then I would go home and write a scene or character based on what I learned from them. We did this a little at a time, but the piece came together organically and in record time. I still work this way, receiving notes from Don, watching the work, then going home to rewrite or create new stuff. It's addictive.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I have a play in workshop at The Blank Theatre in Hollywood of a new play called DARK MATTERS. My wife Marlene Forte is in it, along with Arye Gross and Pedro Pascal. The play is about two particle physicists trying to unmask the mysteries of dark matter via the idea of supersymmetry breaking. My wife plays the non-physicist, and gets to sing bits of Leonard Cohen and Donna Summer throughout. It was super fun to write.

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

A:  I was a bus boy at Vitiello's Italian Ristorante in Studio City for a grand total of two weeks when I was a teenager. I was a lousy bus boy, and the head bus boy was really pissed off with me. One evening with all the tables full, he came up and said rather loudly that he was going to kill me (I'll never know why). I had plates on both arms and said, "why don't you wait to kill me till I put these plates down." The diners who heard this laughed. I set the plates down in the kitchen, turned around, and the guy hit me. I was a boxer then, so I hit him back. We were pretty well matched and started going at it. The owners pulled us apart, and since he was a valuable bus boy and I wasn't, they fired me. I went home fuming, saying I would never go back to that restaurant ever again. My dad responded quietly and firmly, "Yes you are. We'll go tomorrow night." And we did. They all had to serve us. Turned out I became friends with the owners for years afterward. That was my last restaurant job.

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

A:  The best plays in town, and in the nation, are coming from smaller theaters. I'd like to see more attention paid to those of us striving to find the voice of our moment. I don't necessarily want us to move small company shows to the Taper (it's a tough space to play); rather, I want to celebrate the good work and full houses and high quality writing and acting that takes place at theaters like SOSE. I'm proud to be part of it.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Luis Valdez, William Saroyan, Tennessee Williams and Wallace Shawn are my fab four.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like total theatre -- live song and music, dance, violence, sex, humor and drama. Can't be beat.

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

A:  Open your heart and take advantage of every moment in your story to find the drama, and to ask what's really going on in your life, my life, our lives.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Plug who? SOSE? I adore them. Plug you? How shall I do so? Tell me what to plug and I'll do so.

I Interview Playwrights Part 328: Jessica Brickman

Jessica Brickman

Hometown: New York, NY

Current Town: New York, NY

Q:  Tell me about your upcoming show.

A:  An LA-based theater company is producing The Insomnia Play. It’s about how weird insomnia can be (it often has no cause and no cure) and also the ups and downs of sleeping in a bed with someone you love. My hope is that it will keep the audience awake. And then the title won’t be in vain.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I’m working on a play that takes place in a Kinkos at 2 am. There’s an old joke: A guy goes into a deli and asks for a chicken sandwich. And the guy behind the counter says: We’re out of chicken. So the guy says: Okay, make it a turkey sandwich. And the guy behind the counter says: Listen, if we had turkey we’d have chicken. In a way that sums up what the play’s about. Right now it’s about ritual, the perversion of the ritual – and imitating and copying in all senses. And it’s a love story. It started out as a play about the monks who were scribes and mis-copied the bible (i.e. Oh! That was celibRate not celibate. Damn.) so who knows what it will be about next month.

I just finished writing a screenplay for hire. And this past year I directed two short films. Never had so much fun in my life. The plan for this summer is to use this new-fangled digital technology to make a feature on the fly in NY.

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

A:  In second grade we did a play about the sun rising and setting and I guess to go along with it there were a few lessons about theater. On the way home from school Nina Pike (the gorgeous babysitter/struggling artist) asked what I had learned in “drama class” and I announced that “Every good story has a cornflake” Without dropping a beat my younger sister, Sophie, chimed in disgusted with “Conflict”. (Sophie is four years younger but four inches taller – probably by force of will.) I guess that story says more about who my second grade teacher is as a person. But, I’m still looking for good cornflakes.

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

A:  As in Ancient Greece: in order to be a citizen and run for office you gotta go to the theater. Also: Tickets to every show, no matter where it is, are 10 bucks. Every revival produced has to be coupled with a new play. And if you own a theater and you don’t produce a new show every three months it is taken away from you.

It seems like everyone’s always saying: The theater is dying. But no matter how hard they try they can’t seem to kill it off. So, maybe it should just keep going on as it has.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Actors. And I think Bill Goldman said that the thing that interests writers most is how other writers do it. So, too many writer heroes to mention.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I get unbelievably excited every time a theater gets dark before a show. Can’t help it. Always have. What that means I guess is that I can be unnecessarily furious a few minutes later if it’s not as good as I’d hoped. (I suppose if I’m gonna be a cliché of something I’d rather be a cliché theatery person then say, a cliché of a Republican Nazi Comptroller.) At this point a well-structured story excites me. Probably because I’m not sure how to create one and I’m constantly trying to figure that out. That said, I don’t like it when everything is tied up with a nice bow. A good absurdist play has, at its heart, a clear story that can be explained in a few un-absurd sentences. I suppose for me a good piece of theater starts with a question and ends with another one that lingers.

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

A:  I feel that I’m just starting out so I’m not sure I would take my advice. I’d say: Follow your instincts (harder than you think). Find some good friends who you believe in and who believe in you. And if you get stuck take a walk, it’s not a faucet. You can sit in front of a computer for hours struggling and then get up to brush your teeth and as the water’s running you realize – oh! That’s what I’m trying to do. I guess you can only have the tooth brushing moment if you have the struggle first. Glenn Gould said in an interview that when he couldn’t get a phrase right he’d turn on seven radios and then just play through the section without listening to what he was playing. He said it allowed his sub-or-unconscious to absorb what he was doing. Kind of like a misdirection in a magic trick. Look over here, but the real thing is happening over there. And usually when he turned the radios off whatever he was practicing had gotten into his fingers. So, hold on tightly, let go lightly.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Come see The Insomnia Play at the Lyric Hyperion Theater in LA. March 18-April 10. Link here:

http://vitality.publishpath.com/

And you, Adam S. I’ve always loved your writing and I’m very excited to be part of this.

I Interview Playwrights Part 327: Kari Bentley-Quinn

Kari Bentley-Quinn

Hometown: Stratford, CT

Current Town: Astoria, Queens, NYC

Q:  Tell me about Paper Cranes.

A:  PAPER CRANES follows five people in a modern American town who are connected through a chain of surprising relationships. Maddie, a rebellious and precocious young woman, is balancing the social implications of her burgeoning sexuality with the responsibility of supporting her bereft mother, a woman who finds solace in the folding of origami paper cranes. Maddie escapes the confines of her stifling home-life by entering into a tumultuous relationship with Julie, an older woman. Julie's best friend and one-time lover Amy, in a renewed search for acceptance and love, enters into a dangerous S&M relationship with a mysterious man protecting a dark secret. Each character is desperate to break away from their haunted pasts to embrace a better future.

PAPER CRANES was partially inspired by a book I read when I was little called Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr. The book tells the story of Sadako Sasaki, a twelve year old Japanese girl who lived in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped, and ten years later died of leukemia as a result of the radiation. Sadako wanted to fold a thousand paper cranes (called senbazuru; once completed, it is supposed to grant a wish to the person who folded it), but passed away before she could finish them. Her friends and family finished them for her after she died. The story has stayed with me ever since. I think loss and death have always fascinated and terrified me (with love and sex on the other side of that coin, two things that definitely come into play in the piece), and I'd always dealt with loss on some level in all of my work. PAPER CRANES is the play where I finally addressed it head on.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I'm currently working on writing the book for a musical, which is a brand-new and scary thing to do for me. It's a comedy about a Christian MMA Fight Club (yes, they exist!). I'm working with my friend Jason Loffredo, who is an amazing composer and songwriter. I've been friends with his wife, the uber-talented Melanie Kann, for many years. It's really fun to work with good friends, but writing a musical is incredibly challenging. It is stretching me as a writer in a huge way.

I also just started a new full length play about a flight attendant who is the sole survivor of a plane crash. It is (very) loosely based on this woman named Vesna Vulovic who was a flight attendant in the 70's from the former Yugoslavia. She was the sole survivor of a mid-air bombing of the plane she was on and fell something like 30,000 feet. They found her alive in the rear section of the plane, and she became a national hero. I wanted to explore what her story would be like if it happened in modern day America and our crazed celebrity/political culture.

I was commissioned to write some ten minute plays last year, and they were a lot of fun, so I'm doing more of those. I just started writing my first spec script for television. I'm also joining up with some cool folks to start a collective of Queens theater artists. Oy. I need an assistant.

Q:  Tell me about the PACK. How did it come about?

A:  The Pack was started by Scott Ebersold and Alejandro Morales. They came up with this idea to have an offshoot of Packawallop Productions, their theater company, that gave a space to actors, directors, and writers to meet once a month and develop new work. Alejandro is a dear friend of mine, and we were always talking about how writers groups kept us focused, and how cool it would be to make theater with people we liked. I'm so glad they did it. Since the inception of The Pack, I have had a public reading of my play UNBLESSED as part of The Lounge Series, and I wrote the entirety of PAPER CRANES through working with The Pack. I have met so many ridiculously talented artists and have made wonderful friends. We have almost doubled in size since our first meeting. It's truly a once in a lifetime type of group. It is so easy to feel free and create in such a mutually supportive environment. I am so proud to be a part of it. It makes me really happy.

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 seven or eight, my grandmother and my mom pitched in to buy me an electronic typewriter. We couldn't afford a computer, so this was the next best thing. You couldn't keep me away from it. I used to sit in a huge wooden chair at our huge dining room table and just click click click away at the keys. I loved the tactile feedback from it, the instant gratification of words on a page, the bell that indicated the end of a line. I wrote a book of poems about endangered species affected by the Exxon oil spill in the 80's. I am, to this day, obsessed with humpback whales.

When I told my mom years later that I didn't want to write anymore, she showed me a box of stuff I'd written as a kid and said "This is who you are. You've been doing this since you were old enough to pick up a pen". It's the most loving and selfless thing my mother has ever done for me, because I know she would have much rather I quit writing to do something sensible like be a lawyer or doctor. I bet she still has that box. One day I want to go back and read all of it.

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

A:  The stodgy elitism of it all, the inaccessibility both culturally and financially. We need more revivals of dead playwrights like we need a hole in the head. I know it's important stuff, but come on, it's 2011. There are amazing contemporary playwrights (without MFA's, even!) doing great work. New plays should be the focus. If you can't find one great new play to do, you just haven't been looking hard enough.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Tony Kushner, first and foremost. ANGELS IN AMERICA made me want to be a playwright. His work is such a gorgeous hybrid of intellect and emotion. The man is a genius. Then - Lillian Hellman, Edward Albee, Caryl Churchill, August Strindberg, Eugene O'Neill. Right now there are so many playwrights making amazing work that I can't possibly name them all, but I will say that Sheila Callaghan is a big hero of mine at present. THAT PRETTY PRETTY spoke to me so much as a female playwright and theater artist. It inspired me and made me want to take bigger risks. I stood up and cheered my face off at the end of that play.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I love big, emotional, poetic, messy plays and I don't think there are enough of them. I feel like sometimes plays get overdeveloped and the soul of the work gets whitewashed. While there is no question that pristine, polished shows have their place, I'd rather see something with rough edges and a whole lot of heart than see something pretty that leaves me feeling like I just spent two hours staring at the equivalent of a Faberge egg in a glass cabinet. When I'm at the theater, I want to be ALIVE. I want theater to smash the hell out of that precious glass cabinet, and have the bloody hands to prove it. I want to feel, to think, to hyperventilate, to cry, to laugh, and to feel connected to humanity.

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

A:  Find your people. Submit to everything. Make new friends in real life and on the internet (get on Twitter, people, seriously) who love theater as much as you do. Read everything you can get your hands on. Luxuriate in your aesthetic obsessions. See as many shows as you can. Take care of your mental and physical health. Do not be afraid to introduce yourself to people. Take as many classes and workshops as you can afford. Make sure you have an income doing something, preferably something with health insurance. Nothing will kill your creativity more than poverty, and it's not super likely you're going to get paid for writing for a long, long time.

Most of all, write. Write what you like. Write what scares the crap out of you.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  PAPER CRANES will be at the Access Theater in NYC, directed by Scott Ebersold, April 15-May 8. Tickets can be purchased at www.packawallop.org.

Also, I have a website: http://kbquinn.wordpress.com

I Interview Playwrights Part 326: John Kolvenbach

John Kolvenbach

Hometown: Mount Kisco, NY

Current Town: New York, NY

Q:  Tell me about Love Song.

A:  The show was produced at Steppenwolf, originally, in 2006. Then a West End production under John Crowley's direction. It's been many places since then (Rome, Aukland, Melbourne, Seoul, Tel Aviv among many others) but never in New York. The original idea was to write a love song, something tuneful and romantic, an adult fable that sneaks in under your radar to access something deep in you. It's about a very lonely guy who finds love.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I just wrote a new one, a backstage comedy about a veteran actor trying to hold his marriage together.

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 interested in how people select stories from their lives to explain themselves. (explain themselves to themselves or to others.) We choose our biography. The idea that your character was formed by some event, by this event, and not that one, is usually false, I find. The stories we select excuse us, or explain us, or hide us. Playwrights especially love to burnish their myths. Then they hide behind them, especially in the press. I've also heard the following: playwrights hide their secrets in public. (By writing plays.) I say all this to avoid the question.

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

A:  More legroom.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  David Rabe. Arthur Miller. I like Beckektt. Checkov. Feydeau.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I want to be owned. I want the writer to take possession of me, I want to be at his/her mercy. I'm not picky about form, or style, anything good is good, but I want to have the music of the play infect me.

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

A:  oh boy. Write. I would try to identify your mission and then break that down into practicable parts. Then do those all the time. I find that swimming and talking help. write.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  We're doing Love Song at 59e59 starting April 5th. Tickets are on sale at 59e59.org.

About the interviews

Many times I thought I was going to stop doing these interviews.  The thing is, I'm not running out of playwrights.  There are scores of exciting, interesting and intelligent people writing plays right now.  I'm constantly overwhelmed by it and I continue to learn a lot.  So the series goes on.   But while we're at a stopping point,  (number 325, whooo!),  I wanted to take a minute to talk to you about something.

I have been working hard trying to interview a balance of playwrights.  It continues to be heavy on New York playwrights and there are probably still too many white people but I'm doing my best to show a snapshot of the playwriting world right now.  One thing that continues to be a challenge is keeping a 50/50 balance of men and women.  I felt like this is an important thing to do because there are an even number of men and women writing plays right now, but it's getting harder and harder for me to do this.  Let me tell you why.

Women are not getting back to me with their interviews in the same numbers men are.  I understand that playwrights are a busy people.  If you didn't get back to me this is not me chastising you.  It's just something I noticed.  Also, when people approach me to suggest playwrights to interview, I get two male playwright suggestions for every one woman. 

This is all to say that apocryphally I'm noticing women are not advocating for themselves as well as I wish they were and people of both sexes are not advocating for women as much as I wish they were.

If you want to tell me about some awesome playwright I haven't interviewed yet, by all means, please do.  I have a long list of names already but I can always add to it.  This is all I ask--try to give me two women for every one man you give me.  Just try.  And just in general, make a conscious effort to advocate for women.  Thanks.