Sunday afternoon I'm participating in Rattlestick's Theatre Jam with my short play, Sleep.
Then on Monday I have a reading for MCC Theater of Mercy, the play which was the first runner up for Yale's Horn Prize this year.
Details below.
THEATREJAM: Rattlestick Playwrights
Theater presents its fourth annual TheaterJam, a one-day festival
featuring the work of many of the company’s favorite playwrights, actors
and directors.
New works by Knud Adams, David Cale, Emily
Daly, Steve DiUbaldo, Halley Feiffer, Mira Gibson, Kathryn Hathaway,
Refiloe Lepere, Jonathan Libman, Mariah MacCarthy, Dael Orlandersmith,
José Rivera, Ren Santiago, Crystal Skillman, Adam Szymkowicz, Daniel
Talbott, Lucy Thurber, Torrey Townsend, Ken Urban, and more!
SUNDAY, JUNE 2nd, 2013 From 2PM to 10PM. At Rattlestick Playwrights Theater (224 Waverly Pl.)
FREE to the public! $10 suggested donation (cash only) includes a FREE BEER! All proceeds will benefit Rattlestick’s upcoming 2013-14 season!
Drink deep.
And long live the JAM!
1:30pm Doors open. Raffle tickets and beer on sale.
2pm Sleep by Adam Szymkowicz, directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel
Featuring: Emma Galvin, Pico Jogalla, Emily Perkins, and Marie Polizzano
2:15pm Pocketful of Favors by Emily Daly, directed by Jenna Worsham
Featuring: Lisa Jill Anderson, Brian Edelman and Elle Malan
2:30pm Old Flame by Mira Gibson, directed by Kel Haney Julie Fitzpatrick and Briana Posner, and others TBA
3pm FOREVER, written and performed by Dael Orlandersmith
3:30pm Sometime After Dinner by Daniel Talbott, directed by Sheri Barber
Featuring: Julie Kline and others TBA
4pm heading out, written and performed by Refiloe Lepere, directed by Dael Orlandersmith
4:15pm Accidents Waiting to Happen by Jonathan Libman, directed by Francisco Solorzano
Featuring: Carlo Alban, Nelson Avidon, and Audrey Esparza
4:30pm He's Enlightened by Ren Santiago, directed by Jenna Worsham
Featuring: Alexander Lambie and Lisa Purrone
5pm The Film Makers by Torrey Townsend, directed by Knud Adams.
Featuring: Neil D'Astolfo, Alex Herrald, and Laura Lassy
5:15pm Under the Water Tower by Steve DiUbaldo, directed by Jenna Worsham
Featuring: George West Carruth, Mikaela Feely-Lehmann, Brian Miskell, and Ren Santiago
5:30pm Dinner break.
6pm The Venting Room, written and directed by Kathryn Hathaway
Featuring: Emma Hathaway and Kathryn Hathaway
6:30pm “The Dolphins” from Deep in a Dream of You and “Where?” from The History of Kisses, written and performed by David Cale
6:45pm A piece by Crystal Skillman. Cast and director TBA.
7pm But Enough About Me by David Parr, directed by Dael Orlandersmith Featuring: Patrice Bell
7:30pm Edgar and Patrick by Ken Urban, directed by Jaclyn Biskup
Featuring: Andy Phelan and Gayton Scott
8pm A piece by Lucy Thurber. Cast and director TBA.
8:15pm The Avenging of Kruppcake by Mariah MacCarthy, directed by Christina Roussos
Featuring: Chet Siegel and Miranda Wilson
8:30pm The Highwayman, written and directed by Knud Adams
Music by Kate Hamilton and Nick Lerangis; Lyrics by Alfred Noyes
Featuring: Kate Hamilton and Nick Lerangis
9pm Another Word for Beauty written and directed by José Rivera
Featuring: Carlo Alban, Veracity Butcher, Danielle Davenport, and Vaishnavi Sharma
9:30pm Frank Amends by Halley Feiffer, directed by Brian Roff
Featuring: Robert Sella and Matt Stadelmann
MERCY:
MCC Theater in New York presents Mercy as part of Playlabs. Ethan McSweeney directs. Starring Susan Louise O'Connor, Greg Keller, Patch Darragh and TBA.
June 3
7pm
Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street).
The series is offered free of charge, but reservations are recommended. Reservations can be made by visiting www.mcctheater.org.
synopsis of Mercy:
Orville is grieving the vehicular manslaughter of his beloved
wife. When by chance he faces the driver who killed her, he begins an
agonizing conflict between revenge and forgiveness.
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Hometown: Falls Church, Virginia, a Washington, DC suburb.
Current Town: Summit, NJ, after living in NYC for 24 years.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I just finished a working draft of a new two-character comedy I'll be developing via a week's workshop at the Adirondack Theatre Festival in July. It's called The Bailey's Crossroads Opportunity School, and set in December 1959. A couple is teaching their first night school class on household finance as various calamities ensue. It's a challenge, not only because stylistically the material is almost all presentational, addressed to unseen students. But atypical of my work, it's gentle in tone, with a marriage at its center that has issues but isn't the usual proto-feminist Doll's House model, i.e. a husband threatened by a wife's intellect or prowess. I wanted to write about happy (enough) people, and like most period pieces I tackle, the script uses another era as a prism to look at some origins of current phenomena. The wife, the focus, is a kind of driven, entirely self-educated Suze Orman/Martha Stewart before her time, and for a change the husband is the supportive man behind the woman rather than the reverse.
Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: Though I'd like to conjure up an anecdote with humor and suspense, a specific snapshot is more defining. A vivid one, with me seemingly the observer. When I was maybe 8, my father took me to the barbershop on a spring Saturday for a pre-Easter trim. Waiting my turn in the crowd, I watched a mentally handicapped teenager there with his dad. The young man seemed to be getting his first adult haircut, the back of his neck coated with thick shaving cream, the barber suddenly brandishing a traditional straight razor. The boy gripped the armrests and froze. I remember how the hyper-protective father tried hard not to be excessively vigilant or instruct the barber. Of course he couldn't resist, and fretted visibly that his son might be terrified to feel the cold, sharp blade. He couldn't stop himself from reaching out, grabbing his son's hand. Yet within seconds, the boy demonstrated the opposite of the father's fear: rather than wince, still holding his dad's hand tightly, he blushed with pride; his whole face lit up. I couldn't stop watching what was a turning point, an overdue rite of passage exacerbated by the father's anxiety that his son couldn't handle a new experience. Yet it ended up a personal triumph for both men. On the sidelines, I was flooded with a powerful sense of heightened perception, but also an ineffable sadness, maybe for the first time hit with the knowledge that growing up would be about detaching, finding my own way some day. When I got home, I burst into tears, and sobbing, hid under my bed until my mother coaxed me out to learn what had so upset me. All through Easter the next day, a favorite holiday, I was unable to explain to baffled parents why a positive ritual observed between total strangers had so shaken me. If memory serves, I finally said "because they looked like poor people." Perhaps a quantifiable chasm between haves and have-nots seemed more tears-inspiring than an acute awareness of a subtle shift in a family dynamic. A couple of decades later, I smugly recalled this incident as a yardstick of my emotional IQ, empathetic antennae revealed at an early age. Look how I picked up all those vibes in other people! Now, I know better. The playwright in me is ultimately not interested in the unknown father and son. The story is the boy who had to hide under his bed. In my writing (and indeed my life) I've repeatedly, though at times unconsciously, explored that impulse -- what it means to be overwhelmed by unbidden emotion, sometimes burdened by it, and then to retreat from the weight of feelings. It's probably not only what I write but also why I write.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: I wish we practitioners would give up some of our cynicism about the audience. We parse material for its expected commercial vs. artistic appeal, pitched to "tourists" vs. these odd Others, learned aficionados who will "get" scripts because they're more savvy. In truth, many plays attract a diverse demographic. (Full disclosure: I recall a bus emptying on 45th Street, and after rudely assuming that that its riders were Lion King bound, watched them march eagerly into Other Desert Cities.) I was taught early on that "the audience is always right." I'm not sure I completely agree with that adage, but I have learned it's never always wrong. We too readily judge its members, and their supposedly homogeneous taste in a given venue. In the end they're entitled consumers. They want to embrace what they buy, whether on TDF the night before or a premium seat purchased months ahead. And we playwrights who've been through years of script development and weathered countless talkbacks can grow defensive. Yet we must never see those we seek to entertain as the enemy. I've made theater friends angry, but I say, if you don't trust and like the audience, don't try to write, act, design or direct for them.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Two writers spring to mind who have zero in common, never discussed in the same paragraph: William Inge and David Hare. Inge because he's a singular post-war American voice, a man unafraid to find drama in circumstances I once heard described as "the quotidian awfulness of things." He could draw powerful, loving portraits of people overwhelmed by that awfulness. A kitchen sink naturalist, he's usually maligned these days (though a brilliant director of the moment, David Cromer, made a persuasive case for deconstructing Inge's world in Chicago); yet I always feel his influence. And David Hare just inspires awe. He's fearless, scarily prolific, and writes about sociopolitical issues without sacrificing character and storytelling or reverting to agitprop, in plays operatic and epic in shape and scope. I remember seeing Plenty, stunned by the troubled woman's journey without initially understanding some of the stops along the way. His work nails the tangibles of history yet is filled with mystery about human responses to them. And the Stuff Happens production at the Public was to me a masterful staging of an under appreciated play, one that I hope is revived periodically over the next century to remind us what the hell happened in the early days of this decade.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: Wildly different types, as my choosing Inge and Hare might suggest.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Don't be afraid to dig deeply into your own experiences, to excavate them fully. Not so much to write autobiographically, but to learn exactly how you respond to things. A Virginia Woolf quote comes to mind: “If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
Q: Plugs, please
A: June 6 - 15, Dolor, Flush Ink, Asphalt Jungle Shorts IX, Waterloo, Ontario June 12 - 23, Deflating, Stageworks/Hudson Play-by-Play, Hudson, NY June 13 - 23, Stalking Pollyanna, Theatre Artists Studio Summer Shorts, Phoenix, AZ June 20 - 22, The D Word, Theatre Madness, NYC July 28-29, The Bailey's Crossroads Opportunity School, Workshop, Adirondack Theatre Festival, Glens Falls, NY
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Current Town: I've moved around a lot, but I consider Dallas, TX my home base currently.
Q: Tell me about Dinosaur and Robot Stop a Train:
A: I have lately become really interested in old-school Theatre of the Absurd. You know, from the 1950s, with all those post-WWII playwrights like Beckett and Ionesco. They have been on my radar for years, but at the beginning of this year I had kind of a confluence happen. I finally sat down and read Martin Esslin's book. I also started reading some of Ionesco's book Notes and Counternotes (man, Ionesco originally did not dig theatre at all). I also saw a production of THE CHAIRS for the first time.
My good friend and colleague, and great local actor, Jeff Swearingen, performs in a longform improv duo with me. We've been kicking around ideas for a while to do some sort of two-hander together. These things all came together and I sat down over a two-week period and wrote DINOSAUR AND ROBOT STOP A TRAIN. It is my sort of contemporary take on Theatre of the Absurd with broad comedy, a bit of vaudeville, weird situations, that tinge of the tragic and most of all a flat-out dismissal of realism.
I use a dinosaur from the past and a robot from the future to explore the nature and wonder of purpose. It fits in nicely with the rest of my work, which always kind of touches on misfit characters who are totally out of place.
Q: Tell me about your comics.
A: Oh, thanks for asking about that. I used to draw comics when I was a kid. I wanted to grow up and make comics like Charles Schultz or Gary Larson, having them appear in newspapers through a syndicate. But I got into theatre in high school and the drawing sort of fizzled out. Besides a handful of comic strips published while I was in college, I let it totally fall by the wayside. Then in 2010, after reading a bunch of webcomics, I realized I could just self-publish on the internet. So, I launched a series called DONNIE ROCKET TOASTER-FACE. It is about a sort of Every Man character who, inexplicably, has a toaster for a face and rocket pack on his back.
I was doing a comic a week for the first year, but it has slowed to about one a month. I also recently began an experiment I'm calling an improvised comic. I sit down and just draw directly on the paper without any pencil roughs and without knowing where the story is going. It has been pretty fun so far. I think, indirectly, they have both helped my playwriting.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: I'm ramping up for DINOSAUR AND ROBOT STOP A TRAIN. I'm producing it myself with my company Audacity Theatre Lab. I've also started writing a new solo show I hope to perform at fringe festivals next year. It is about this guy with anger issues who is haunted by a mysterious, eternal goldfish. I'm super excited about it.
I've also just started really trying to get my stuff out into world lately. I've been writing for years, but I'm just starting to dip my toe into things like fellowships, residencies, publication and all those other business things playwrights do in this country to get their work out there and part of the national conversation. I'm attending the TCG National Conference this year for the first time. It is here in Dallas and I'm excited about that.
Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: This is a surprisingly difficult question. I can't remember stuff for crap. Oh hey, I was a birthday party clown when I was in my early teens. I called myself Frump. I only did a few parties and then some shows at the public library, but looking back on it, it combined a bunch of things I use all the time now... creating original material, producing the show myself, taking into consideration the playing space and audience, even performing solo.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: I'd like to see a lot more self-initiation. More creative rather than strictly interpretive artists. I had lunch with an actress friend a few years ago. She was pretty experienced and was talking about going on a slew of unsuccessful auditions. I asked her what she wanted as an actor and she said "to get jobs." I asked her if she considered herself an artist. She did. Then I asked what she wanted to say as an artist. She stared at me. What I meant was artists are people who express themselves in the world and as an actor she did this by choosing what roles she played, what themes and stories she championed. It was the first time she thought about her acting in that light.
I don't think playwrights should have a monopoly as the only creative, instigating artists in the theatre. I think directors, designers, actors and so on should create first hand. By that token, I also think playwrights should take full responsibility for their work from time to time and see it through all the way from idea to completion, rather than handing it off for others to do and interpret.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Peter Brook. Samuel Beckett. Ruth Draper. Shakespeare. Oh, can Walt Disney count? As far as contemporaries, I really dig the works of playwright Dan Dietz and monologuist Martin Dockery. Also Mickle Maher of Chicago's Theatre Oobleck.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I dig theatre that pushes the form, but doesn't take itself too seriously. I also get excited when I see really full-throated, super-committed, leave-it-all-on-the-floor theatre that has something genuine to say.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: I'm kind of just starting out myself. Here are a few that have proven useful to me: Keep a notebook and don't let any idea - great or not so great - get away. Instead of writing what you know, which you'll do anyway since you are you, write the kind of theatre you want to see and experience. Take responsibility for your own work and produce it yourself from time to time. Get interested in the history and theory of theatre. See more theatre than you read. See a lot. Surround yourself with kick-ass collaborators. Don't be discouraged when the realization hits that it is really hard work to create theatre from scratch.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: DINOSAUR AND ROBOT STOP A TRAIN premieres at the 2013 Festival of Independent Theatres, June 7-22. Info HERE. DONNIE ROCKET TOASTER-FACE and other comics at DribbleFunkComics.com And, my website is a good gateway to what I'm up to at any given time... www.BradMcEntire.com
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A: My dad was a police officer for the city of St. Louis for forty-plus years, much of it spent either as a district detective, undercover in Narcotics, or heading up the Street Corner Apprehension Team (S.C.A.T.), a unit that targeted drug dealers and gangs in the city’s worst neighborhoods. So we always had cops coming in and out of the house. A colorful way to grow up. In this particular telling, a stranger, a civilian, walks into a bar on a night dedicated solely to police officers and their friends. Half-priced drinks, three or four dollar pitchers, that sort of thing. Trouble ensues. Cops and Friends of Cops takes place in real-time, so the audience is right there in it with the actors. A true ensemble piece, you could make the case it’s any one of the five characters’ play, a mash-up of genre storytelling: thriller, western, morality play, classic tragedy. Plus it’s visceral. Very visceral. There will be blood. At the end of the day, what I hope most is that it’s a meditation on what it means to be a good man.
Q: What else are you working on?
A: I just finished a play called You Must Be Certain of the Devil, but it sucks, so it’s getting shoe-boxed. There’s an old acting truism, “Don’t play a mood.” You’ll hear it, “Mood spelled backwards is doom.” Well, don’t write a mood either. Sometimes, it takes you eighty-three pages to learn what you already knew. I’m about one for three with plays working out. I admire playwrights who write something fantastic, or seem to, every time out, but for me, I’m happy (“happy” being a relative term) with the end product about a third of the time. That’s okay. A lot of them turn into pretty good one-acts. I’m a big fan of the short story writer George Saunders and he talks about intending to write a novel and then somehow two hundred pages winds up as a workable ten or twenty. No problem. Not if you’re committed to the process. Beckett said it best: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” I just started a kind of crabby love story called Nobody Wants A Lonely Heart. Got my fingers crossed it’ll work out.
Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: I grew up in a pretty diverse neighborhood in North St. Louis County: black, white, burnouts, good ol’ boys, skaters, punks, skinheads, wanna be gangstas -- I kinda floated from group to group, hanging out with everybody. Nobody had a lotta money, or they would’ve probably lived somewhere else, but you couldn’t’ve asked for a better to place to spend your formative years….I was about six. First grade. Had to walk to school. Lusher Elementary. Mile or so from my house. Far enough, you’d never let a six-year old do it by themselves now. Anyway, this third grader D’Ron would wait for me at the intersection, and try to beat me up. Sometimes, he’d catch me in the morning, sometimes the afternoon, but he’d always catch me. Unless he skipped school or something. I’m sure if I could see him now, I’d see D’Ron for what he probably was: this sweet-faced little boy. But he might as well’ve been Ray Lewis or Mike Tyson to my first grade self….Today, I’m going to win. I’d view it as a challenge. Today’ll be different. Why it didn’t occur to me just to take an alternative route, I have no idea. I’m not sure why I didn’t tell my parents either. But everyday we’d battle it out and, gradually, I’d do a little better, the next day a little better maybe. Crowds would gather. A time or two, I swear I almost won. That’s how I choose to remember it….Until…one day…D’Ron had me on the ground, pounding me, and some lady pulls up in her beat-to-shit-Chevette, wearing pink plastic curlers – this is three o’clock in the afternoon – engine running, traffic’s stopped, she gets out, stands on the grassy boulevard, screams, “Get Off Him, You Nigger!” I remember feeling momentary relief. Thank God someone was helping me. Then I looked up and saw D’Ron, crying. His tears falling on my face. Running down my cheeks like they were mine. Had this look, too -- I’ll never forget it – like he’d been scooped out from the inside. D’Ron took off. Bolted. I was devastated. Never saw him again. When I think about that, I consider how much power words have and the concept of communion and how sometimes the same exact moment you get your life saved can also break your heart, and that’s what I’m after, I guess, in my work. That.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: Folks bemoan the high cost of ticket prices as being the main reason why people don’t wanna go to the theater, and that’s a big part of it obviously, the economics, but I think the real problem runs deeper. The fact is you see a bad movie, and it’s just not that bad, or rarely that bad, particularly if you exercise any degree of selectivity before you buy your tickets. The editing, the music, the performances, usually they add up to some sort of emotional experience, even if it’s fleeting. You see a bad play, it’s like a piece of your soul has been ripped outta your body wholesale. You’re held hostage in that theater, no way out, and you wanna be polite, supportive, but the whole time you’re dying inside. Too often, even with good productions the experience ends up more of an intellectual one than an emotional one, and it’s emotion that’s at the core of all decent storytelling, all art for that matter. Which brings us to acting. Theater is an actor’s medium, more so even than a playwright’s, and yet, I can’t tell you how many directors, playwrights, artistic directors I know who expect the actors to just fend for themselves, that’s “their” thing. Cast well and you’re done. Worse, they rarely create an environment that’s loving and supportive, where an actor is encouraged to do their best work. Many of them even actively despise actors, or at least distrust them, and if you don’t love actors – I mean, they can frustrate you as individuals, sure, but if you don’t love actors and acting in general -- then do everybody a favor, and get the hell outta theater. I mean it. For a play to be great, I don’t care if it’s a world premiere or a chestnut, the actors hafta be willing to put themselves through the ringer. Fight the good fight. Again and again. I see too many productions where the actors live through it once, and then the next night, the next ten nights, become a representation of that first night, dress rehearsal, whatever. When it worked. An approximation. The actors act the “idea.” They don’t always know it either. If life could be so easy. Rarely, does anybody walk out on stage intending to go through the motions. It’s usually a gradual creep to mediocrity and listlessness and nobody does anything to stop it. Every production needs chemistry. A play isn’t a film. You’re gonna see these people, work closely with them, depend on them every night, for however many nights. It’s not about the “take.” I’m not saying you have to love them, but you have to trust them, know they got your back. Collaboration’s not just a touchy-feely word to throw around until it loses its meaning. Anybody that’s drawn to the theater has been damaged in some profound way, whether they realize it or not, and yet I can’t tell you how many toxic production environments I’ve witnessed over the years. The opposite should be the case. The theater should be a safe haven. A place to experiment. To seek our truest selves. Why do you think some of the best work is being done by small collectives rather than institutions? Clearly, they don’t have a monopoly on the best actors or material or money. Far from it. It’s because they’ve created an environment akin to a fairly functional family, or a championship-contending sports team, where people feel supported, they know their roles, and they can call each other out on their bullshit, driving one another to new heights nightly. They’re invested. 100%. They bleed for their art and all of us can feel it out there in the dark somewhere and it’s awesome.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: I think heroes are important, and I have lots of’em. I mean, I like who everybody else likes: Eugene O’Neill, August Wilson, David Mamet, Sam Shepard, Wallace Shawn, Arthur Miller, David Rabe, Caryl Churchill, Christopher Durang, John Osborne, Kopit, Chekhov, Beckett, Pinter, Strindberg, Ibsen, Odets, Inge, Tennessee Williams, Maria Irene Fornes, etc., etc…all the big dogs….But I’m also inspired by a ton of contemporary playwrights whose new works I look forward to reading the minute I can get my hands on’em: Annie Baker, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Tracy Letts, Adam Rapp, Neil LaBute, Bruce Norris, Theresa Rebeck, Kenneth Lonnergan, Leslye Headland, Rebecca Gilman, Jez Butterworth, Martin McDonagh, John Kolvenbach, Brett Neveu, Bekah Brunstetter, Amy Herzog, Stephen Belber, Will Eno, Itamar Moses, Melissa James Gibson, Sarah Ruhl, Thomas Bradshaw, Suzan Lori-Parks, Sheila Callaghan, Steve Yockey, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, John Pollono, Rajiv Joseph, Blair Singer, Yasmina Reza, etc., etc. By the way, that list includes you, too, Adam….I do most of my work with the Vs. Theatre in Los Angeles, so I’m also indebted to theater companies, past and present, whose work evolved from a committed ensemble -- the Group Theatre, of course, the early days of Steppenwolf, LAByrinth, Naked Angels, Rattlestick, etc. Companies I’ve, unfortunately, had to admire from afar.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I like theater that allows actors to act. What I call the magic of sustained performance. Fewer blackouts. The less interruptions the better. Where I feel like the actors’re out there on a high wire, risking emotional life and limb. A giant master shot. There’s nothing better. The flipside is that on the rough nights, where the acting’s heady or overly crafted, it’s tough to think of a whole lot worse places to be. I’m not a big fan of the prevalence of direct address either. I understand narratively it works, and can work really well, in fact, when used judiciously, I just prefer to have the story happening in front of me rather than recounted. But you do what you want.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Read everything you can get your hands on. Write a lot. Check. Check. But the single most important thing a playwright can do – and this took me a long time to realize -- is find a community. As a Literary Manager, I can tell you your odds of getting pulled off the slush pile are practically nil. You need to create your own opportunities. Seek out people who excite you. Join a playwriting group. Most theaters need help. Especially smaller theaters. Offer to work in the literary department, or as a dramaturg, an assistant director, whatever. Stage manage. If you’re at all handy help build the sets. Get out of your shell. Even if you’re shy, just do it. See where it takes you. Don’t wait for validation from an institution. Create art with your friends. At the same time, don’t rush a production either. I know so many writers who finish a rough draft of a play and then right away wanna schedule a public reading. Remember what Nabokov said, “Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts.” Take the time to get it right. Nabokov again: “My pencils outlast their erasers.” If you don’t take the music of your play seriously, then how can you expect anybody else to, particularly your actors. Write plays that can expand and become something bigger than they are on the page with the help of your collaborators. Learn to write for actors. Do yourself a favor, and assume they’re great actors. Two, three, four Daniel-Day Lewises and Meryl Streeps. Write parts that will challenge them, scare the hell outta them, parts they’ll crawl through fiery broken glass to play, even if it’s for free, and that they’ll still be talking about ten years after your play’s closed. Let your stories spin out of the characters, not the other way around. If you got the cojones, take an acting class. I’m not an actor, but I’ve taken several. It’s no coincidence that some of our best playwrights were actors first. Some of them very good ones. The better you understand the actor’s process, the better you’ll be as a dramatist. Then, when somebody finally blesses you with a production, and you’re invited into the rehearsal room for the first time, shut your mouth. Fight the urge to spout result-oriented, panicked nonsense, understanding that people need to be bad for a while before they can be amazing. After all, nobody was sitting over your shoulder chiming in when you were writing the thing. Allow them the same freedom. Unless the director sucks. Then good luck.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: If you’re in the Los Angeles area, please check out Cops and Friends of Cops at the Vs. Theatre Company. It runs Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8pm thru June 1st. The plan, then, is to extend it Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8pm thru June 29th. Tickets available at www.vstheatre.org. Now that Cops is up and running and I got a little more time on my hands, I’m also looking forward to seeing Annapurna by Sharr White at the Odyssey, The North Plan by Jason Wells at the Elephant Theatre, Neil LaBute’s take on Miss Julie over at the Geffen, and The Size of Pike by Lee Wochner at Moving Arts Theatre, all of which I’ve heard wonderful things about.
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Current Town: New York City (uptown, baby! 207th st)
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Besides my play PINKOLANDIA which recently opened at INTAR, I'm working on a new play called THE NECKLACE OF THE DOVE, which integrates text, music and movement. It tells interwoven stories and moves between 2 eras: the world of 21st-century immigrant, transsexual women who gather at an underground club in Queens, and the 11th-century love stories of Arabic-Spanish philosopher Ibn Hazm. These refugees from different eras travel between languages, genders and ways of loving – enacting their own Reconquista and reclaiming a pluralistic world. My collaborators are composer Amir Khosrowpour and director Lisa Rothe, and a kickass group of performers including David Anzuelo, Mariana Carreño, Maria Christina Oliveras and more wonderful artists. We all worked on our feet over several months and shared an initial version through Mabou Mines' Resident Artist Program in January. It's not something that I want to (or can) write alone in a room and then just hand a script to actors -- it needs to come into being on its feet, in time and space, and the writing process integrates what we all discover there.
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 so bad at remembering stories! But here are some random details: I did get into a big fight with my whole 7th grade Social Studies class (and teacher) about Ronald Reagan, like the character Beny in my play Pinkolandia. This was in Madison, Wisconsin in the 1980's, and even though there's big progressive university there, in a public middle school the atmosphere wasn't quite the same. I used to get really fired up about Latin American politics, which other kids thought was weird and unpatriotic. My Dad took me to a march against the invasion of Granada and frat boys threw beer cans at us and called us commie pinkos. I thought it was fun. That's in the play too. Besides the politics, I was kind of a dreamer and loved, loved to read..the crossing guard used to yell at me because I'd cross the street reading books. When I was eleven I tried to invent a contraption that would let me read in the shower without getting the book wet. Nerd!
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: Oh man. I think the following is the result of a limited kind of thinking in our field: lack of access, low presence of artists and audiences of color and less economic privilege, too-high ticket prices (should be no more than the cost of a movie)... Corporate thinking has been embraced too far, to the point where many so-called 'artistic' decisions are made based on what will sell, and even organizational hierarchies and payscales mirror corporate stratification (where often low-paid playwrights and other artists are subsidizing much higher salaries). This can veil an insidious colonialist kind of thinking, where stories by and about people who don't inhabit the 'usual' places of power (or cultural dominance) in our society aren't produced because they're 'unsellable,' or their stories are used to demonstrate a theater's 'diversity' on a superficial level. That's why...we have to keep producing ourselves! And why we still need theaters like INTAR that nourish Latino/a artists, places where we can be our full artistic selves. We can't just wait for people to get a clue. As Patricia Araiza, brilliant Colombian theater artist, once said, if we 'on the margins' keep doing what we're doing, then eventually the center of gravity will move, and the margins will become the center.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Maria Irene Fornes is still my theatrical hero -- even now, with Alzheimer's, when I go see her in the nursing home, her creative spirit. mischievousness, and sensitivity to life are still so present. I never stop learning from her. Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas, Migdalia Cruz, Emily Morse, Deb Margolin, Jose Rivera...these and many more are also heroes of mine, as theater artists and as human beings.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: Theater that doesn't just let us stay in our heads, removed, comfortable sitting on our asses (either metaphorically or literally) and which instead affects us viscerally or opens up our emotional and sensory receptors, and connects us more deeply to our whole selves -- which reminds us that we're part of a human community too. Sometimes we need to be surprised into this, to take a ride off the logical path and to have to trust other ways of making sense of things. Like how satire uses laughter to get us to open up on a gut level, so we're more receptive to the suckerpunch of the truth.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Just MAKE SHIT! Nourish your relationships with collaborators and create your own work together. Don't just send your plays off to people you've never met and wait for someone to produce you. The best theater education I ever got was running our tiny theater with 4 friends in San Francisco: we each took turns writing or creating the next show, and the rest helped make that person's vision a reality. We did everything from cleaning toilets to building sets out of cast-off construction palettes to acting to writing. We had to have a new play up almost every month in order to pay the rent on the space, and we gave each other complete freedom to make whatever kind of play we wanted -- the rest of us would help. We were very broke and all working other jobs, but in 5 years we created 22 original pieces, grew a wonderful community, and learned the stuff you only learn when an audience is showing up in 5 days and you're still trying to finish the play. This is how I started playwriting (I had been an actor mostly). This was back in the late 90's...13P has done something similar more recently here, which also was a great model. Like them, we decided to end it when we were done and go out with a bang. So please, please, keep making stuff!
Q: Plugs, please:
A: My play PINKOLANDIA is currently playing at INTAR Theatre (through May 26), directed by José Zayas. It's about 2 young sisters, daughters of Chilean exiles, who are growing up in 1980's Wisconsin and who create fantastical worlds to make sense of their parents' experiences and figure out their own story. There are talking bears, Nazis and satirical takes on political figures like Reagan and Kissinger. They just added a special matinee on Saturday May 25 at 3pm, for which all tickets are just $15!
A: When I was a freshman in college, if you would have asked me who my biggest inspirations were, I would have said four names. Muhammad Ali. Jim Brown. Malcolm X. And Sam Cooke. So, when I found out as a young man that these four were actually friends, my mind was blown. It's the equivalent of accidentally stumbling upon a black Justice League of America. Only the thing bonding these four at the time wasn't their collective status as heroes, but as outlaws. One night was especially fascinating to me. February 25, 1964. That was the night Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston to become heavyweight champion of the world at only 22 years of age. Everyone knows this. Many people also know the very next morning, he announced that he was a member of the Nation of Islam, a group personified by its fiery minister, Malcolm X. But what hardly anyone knows is that between the end of that fight and the announcement the next morning, the new champ spent the night in a tiny motel room with his friends Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown. One night and four not-yet-legendary men seemed like too juicy a setting for me not to explore in a play, and that seed became the basis of One Night in Miami..., where I imagine all of the many things these men could have discussed, disputed and possibly resolved when left alone in a room for one revelatory evening.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: I'm putting the finishing touches on a new play, The Two Reds. Another fun exploration into history that finishes my little "cycle" that began with One Night in Miami... Though this story takes place much earlier. When Malcolm X was still a young hustler named "Detroit Red," he worked in the kitchen at a jazz club alongside another, more outspoken young redheaded black guy called "Chicago Red." Of course, this person would go on to be known as the great comedian Redd Foxx. My play takes place in the kitchen of that jazz club, and includes a greater cross-section of characters, races and personalities from the time. It explores issues of class and race that, though historical, I feel are quite relevant in a contemporary setting as well. But the central protagonists are definitely the two reds, though at no point do we ever call them by their actual names (Malcolm and John). I'm also very excited about this one, and hope to start having some staged readings by the end of this year.
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 started writing more out of necessity than desire as a young man. My buddies and I would create little comic books in our spiral notebooks, and I was always tasked with writing the stories. I guess I was just the best at articulating an idea within our little group of neighborhood kids. I guess you could say that skill has served me well throughout life, as I ended up becoming a journalist and having to give a voice to many people who can't quite put into words what's going on in their world.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: I'd change the perception that great theater can only originate from a couple of key "theater cities" around the world. It can come from anywhere.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: August Wilson. Sam Shepherd. My fellow Rogue Machine Theatre resident playwrights, such as John Pollono and Henry Murray. It's great to be in a community of playwrights. They are an invaluable sounding board.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I love seeing new plays. And I feel lucky to be in a city where so many writers are taking risks and creating new works on a regular basis. It also gives me a window into the issues that are important to writers of different age, sex and background.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Above all else, hone your craft. I participated in so many short-play and 24-hour playwriting programs at Rogue Machine before I had the confidence to begin writing full-length plays. And even then, the painful process of rewriting ends up being how I spend most of my time. It's always wonderful to have a great idea for a play, but it is so much more important to have the skill and craft to execute it. I'd rather see a well-executed play based on a subject I'm less interested in than a poorly-executed play based on something about which I'm passionate.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: One Night in Miami... has its world premiere on June 8 at Rogue Machine Theatre in Los Angeles. The play will be running June 8-July 28, and tickets can be purchased here: http://roguemachinetheatre.com/wordpress/show-info/one-night-in-miami/ I'm very proud of it, and so many people have poured their hearts and souls into this production, so I really hope as many people as possible have an opportunity to see it. It will be a fun night of theater!
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Then The Asylum Theatre in Las Vegas is flying me in for their reading
June 22
7:30 pm
The Art Square Theatre
synopsis of Mercy:
Orville is grieving the vehicular manslaughter of his beloved wife. When by chance he faces the driver who killed her, he begins an agonizing conflict between revenge and forgiveness.
A: Right this very, absolute-minute, I am adapting My Father's Dragon
- a children's book I came across this winter that enchanted me. All of
a sudden I started seeing puppets. Crocodile puppets... monkey puppets.
That's new for me!
And I am slogging away editing my "Russian-explorer-Otto-Schmidt-North-Pole-Universe-Physics" play And the Universe Didn't Blink. It's about a young girl coming to terms with her father's death. And all that other stuff in quotes.
Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: Grandma
Gresio and I played "make-a-believe" from the time I could speak. I
probably was about 9 years old when I found out it was "make-believe"
and only "make-a-believe" if you had an Italian accent! But you know, I
still play "make-a-believe." Every time I sit down at my desk and
write.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: Getting down to basics - the ticket prices. For someone who has been in
theatre for many decades, I have missed many shows because I could not
afford to go. In New York City, there were more opportunities to see
shows at reduced prices (or free if you were in the biz) than there are
in Minnesota. Although it has gotten better.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: You are speaking to someone who has had AARP on her tail for a number of years! I have gone through stages.
In
my teens and twenties, I did the "soup to nuts" routine of seeing every
play I could ... the plays of Shakespeare, O'Neill, Miller, Simon,
Albee, Wasserstein, Durang, Wilson, etc. Growing up in New York City
was a playground for a teen who was head-over-heels, wildly in love with
theatre. And for $5 - you could sit in the back row of any Broadway or
Off-Broadway show or musical! Can you imagine? I'd babysit on Saturday and take my money and go to a show on Sunday.
Almost every week. Who can do that today? I was a sponge and those
years were invaluable in helping me create works for young audiences.
Anything is possible in this field. My exposure to so many types of
theatre gave me permission to play with my work.
The work of playwrights in the youth theatre field
is astounding. The care, the risks, the breadth of the genre just gives
me sweet tingles.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I'm
a theatre slut. I am as spellbound by a grand tap-dancing number as I
am by six actors in t-shirts and jeans spinning a tale in a black box.
If you're making theatrical magic, I'm there.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting
out?
A: Be kind. It takes a lot of people to bring you work to life. Be kind.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: An excerpt of And the Universe Didn't Blink will be part of The Twin Cities Playwright Tease on June 29th.
It's an evening designed to bring local playwrights in touch with local
theatres. Conceived by Victoria Pyan and Erin Denman, the idea of one
night of showcasing local playwrights to local theatres is an idea that
should go viral.
La Bella Cinderella will be part of the Minnesota Fringe FestivalAugust 1-11, 2013. Pure clowning and silliness for the younger set - Cinderella and pasta - in Italy. Grandma Gresio - she's a-smiling.
And my first booked 2014 production: Cap o' Rushes will be produced by East Valley Children's Theatre
in Mesa, Az. I am doubly excited about this because I will be going
there ... in February 2014. As someone who lives in Minnesota, you can
understand why February in Arizona holds great appeal.
