I Interview Playwrights Part 595: Sheri Graubert

Sheri Graubert

Hometown: This is a weird one for me. I was born in NYC, spent my formative years there, then spent the rest of my childhood raised in London. I am a true transatlantian and I think of both cities as my 'hometown,' although neither of them are a town.

Current Town: The Big Apple, baby.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Well, I already wrote two plays which had productions this year – Tesla, which had a sold-out run at Theatre 80 at the end of May, and my short play, Humanogram, which was produced by LoNyLa at the Innovation Warehouse in London and streamed all over the world, in June. I, also, devised a theatre piece about gender with a bunch of talented high schoolers from JKO, courtesy of the Roundabout Theatre. They performed their piece at the American Airlines theatre in May.

So, right now? I am having a rest before I play Margaret in Richard III. Yes, I am also an actress. After that, I go up to Connecticut to workshop my new play, Milk A Cow’s Tail, with a view to production next season. The cast is fantastic and I am very excited.
And, I am going to write a non-fiction book.
And, I have started up my food blog, again. I kept bumping into people asking me to start it up again. Who am I to say no?
Experimenting with food gives my mind a break from writing plays.
Like a great manure on a fallow field.
I'll know I'm ready to write a play again when ideas start to bubble up from the mud. Actually, it already has.

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 know this is a cliché, but I was a very shy child. I grew up in an explosive household - lots of drinking and dysfunction - so my defense was to turn inward and not trust anyone. This made me a great observer of people and relationships.

I have a tape recording of my first ever play, which I wrote at the tender age of ten. It was set on Mount Olympus amongst the Greek Gods, but in my story, they have an interloper - Pan and his exploding, magic flute. I gathered all the friends on my street to act it out, like a radio play.
I cast myself as Aphrodite (director’s prerogative).

There is a cast change half way through the recording because some friends had to go home for their dinner. I still remember the crushing disappointment. Didn't they know? The show must always go on! Sod dinner!

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

A:  The cost of producing theatre in New York. It limits risks in production. I would make space available at low cost for writers and directors to experiment in. That would be a wonderful experiment, wouldn’t it? Hear that, Bloomburg?

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Arther Miller and Tennessee Williams. Caryl Churchill. William Shakespeare. Moliere. All writer/managers. And I am a total James Graham groupie. Kristoffer Diaz – LOVE his work. Miro Gavran. He is a Croatian playwright who has a festival dedicated entirely to his work called Gavranfest. Imagine that!

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Fantastic story-telling, combined with politics and theatricality. I am a huge fan of Punch Drunk and Kneehigh. I particularly love theatre which is theatre, and not TV disguised as theatre. I loved This House by James Graham. I, also, loved Andrew Upton’s version of The White Guard a few years ago. I do have a soft spot for Gorky and the Russians. Anything Eastern European and I’m a sucker.

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

A:  Write, write, write. Don't stop writing!
And, once you have written your play, contact everyone you know who has any connection in the industry and ask if you can send them your work.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I am winning an award! For Tesla. From the Tesla Science Foundation. Very exciting. Tesla looks like it is going to London next year. I have already been asked for copies of the script by someone in Peru and in South Africa, so there may be productions out there, too.

My theatre blog, theatrpreneurs.com, for now, via my personal website, sherigraubert.com.

My food blog, for you foodies, is rootgroupie.com. It follows me as I experiment with raw and vegan food.

Oh, did I mention? - I love social media! I am excited to see how technology will impact theatre in the future, which is why it was particularly thrilling to be asked into the Timewave festival. LoNyLa are doing some very interesting work.

And keep an eye out for my book.

I was just asked to be interviewed for the Swiss-Serbian blog, Pufnica.com, for their 'English corner' section. Check it out. And I have been interviewed in the new Tesla magazine. I will be in the first edition, which was just advertised on Facebook, so that must be coming out, soon.

In August come to see Richard III for Shakespeare in the Parking Lot – voted one of the fifty things to do in theatre by New York Magazine – and FUH-REE!!! (Bring a blanket or beach chair. And a fan)

Is that shameless enough?

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I Interview Playwrights Part 594: Meghan Deans

Meghan Deans

Hometown: Lansing, New York

Current Town: New York, New York

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Three plays? Three plays! ASHORE: a supernatural play about Theodosia Burr, Aaron Burr's daughter, who disappeared at sea in 1813. THE HUNDRED YEAR FLOOD: a romantic comedy about hometowns and floodplain management. And something I haven't named yet, which thus far is about pop music and women.

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

A: As a child I never, ever missed an opportunity to mug, and I absolutely never missed an opportunity to push dramatic structure on a situation that had none. There are many examples of this, but the most embarrassing is: when I was in first grade, my family moved, mid-school-year, to a new house in a new school district. I was pretty convinced that this would be a great opportunity for personal triumph. I would be the new kid in town and I would make so, so, so many friends. When new friends did not immediately materialize, I was depressed--until I realized that this was yet another stop on my heroine's journey. On some spring day, I followed my father around while he did yard work, explaining all of this to him. This explanation culminated in a song that I made up on the spot, a song that was about having no friends and how I wanted friends and how I hoped some friends would find me, etc. The song needed to happen, you know? Because once a heroine has stated her wants in song, those wants pretty much show up at her door.

Anyway, eventually I made friends. But not because of the song.

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

A: Increased diversity, support, and access, all of which I believe could get an assist from amplification. I don't mean microphones. I mean cultural amplification. I mean a change in the way theater is positioned in most peoples' lives. I mean: I think there is so much that's going on in theater right now that is really incredible. I see great shows regularly, I see other writers working hard, I see people making sacrifices, I see people opening up conversations and speaking their minds. And yet I know that most of that takes up a very small slice of the public consciousness, that theater itself takes up a very small slice of the public consciousness. A slice that gets smaller as the other mediums get more and more accessible.

I could be crazy, I could be wrong, but I think that this fix starts in schools. In teaching theater beyond the high school's production of The Music Man, beyond the three Shakespeare and one Arthur Miller play you've got to read (nb. I pretty much love The Music Man, Shakespeare, and Artie Miller). Encourage kids to act, to write, to direct. Encourage community support. Make it clear that theater is not something that ended half a decade ago. Make it clear that this is a current, exciting art. Because it is.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: In college I was lucky enough to take a class taught by Brooke Berman. After college I was lucky enough to take a class taught by Lucy Thurber. The two of them taught me playwriting, and fearlessness. I'm still working on both things, but I can't thank them enough for putting me on the path.

Also if a writing group can be a theatrical hero, then Youngblood at Ensemble Studio Theatre gets the nod. Graeme Gillis and RJ Tolan do so much for so many people; it is actually impossible to do the amount of work that they do. Youngblood was one of the first things I got to put on my resume, and I'm incredibly grateful for the three years I got to spend in the group.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: The smart stuff. The funny stuff. The stuff that is created in joy and gratitude. The stuff that stubbornly believes in goodness. The stuff that investigates the failures of humanity with an eye to the potential of humanity. It's not all cheerful, and it doesn't always have a happy ending. But nothing bums me out faster than theater that hates me as much as it hates itself.

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

A: Challenge yourself to see, read, hear, and experience other kinds of art. Go to national parks and historic sites. Watch a sport you've never watched. Cook something complex. Ask questions and listen to the answers. Go to your friend's reading on Wednesday night. Give yourself time.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 593: Robert Caisley

Robert Caisley

Hometown: Born in Rotherham, U.K.

Current Town: Moscow, Idaho

Q: Tell me about Happy.

A:  Happy is about a guy called Alfred Rehm. Alfred is happy about his life. Really happy. He’s happy with his job teaching French Literature. He’s happy with his fourteen year marriage to Melinda. He’s even happy raising his special needs daughter, Claire, who’s confined to a wheelchair. In fact, Alfred seems to be happy with everything and everyone in his life. But when his bohemian artist best friend Eduardo invites him to dinner to meet the latest woman in his life, Eva, a dour twenty-two year-old art student suspicious of anything ‘upbeat,’ things spin out of control.

Alfred begins to doubt the authenticity of his happiness, and in turn, makes everyone’s lives utterly miserable. The dinner party ends in disaster when Alfred and Melinda are forced to reassess their marriage, indeed, their entire life. Happy is a play about how vicious and enviable we can be of people possessed with a natural joie de vivre.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I just finished the first draft of a new play called LUCKY ME. I’m excited about it because it’s so much more comic and romantic than my last play, which was a darker and cynical, so it’s been so much fun writing it. I just did a first table read with the folks at NJ Rep and I’m not getting into revisions. Here’s the brief premise for LUCKY ME: Sara Fine’s having a bad week. The light bulbs in her apartment keep burning out; the aquarium is perpetually full of dead fish; the cat’s gone AWOL, again, and her blind, elderly father -- who chased off her last beau -- is immediately suspicious of Tom, the new neighbor, a TSA agent who just brought his daughter home from the emergency room on New Year’s Eve with a fractured 5th meta-tarsal. As Tom’s attraction to Sara increases, he learns of an increasingly bizarre streak of bad luck that’s been haunting Sara for years – twenty two years to be precise. LUCKY ME is a funny and whimsical drama about love, aging, bad luck and airport security.

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

A:  The ticket prices. The economics. I’d make smaller theatres charge a little more so theatre artists could quit living life with this “beggar’s mentality” and show that what we do has real value, and I’d make the big theatres charge less in order to democratize the theatre.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  My dad has been an actor as long as I can remember. He was always “going to rehearsal” even when he had a full-time job and taking care of the family. He’s still acting today, and he, more than any one person, lured me into the theatre. He convinced me to audition for a local theatre’s production of O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness! when I was 16 and I haven’t left the theatre since.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Nothing excites me more than going to a theatre where the seats are all full – where a theatre is serving a particularly community, a particular demographic. If the theatre is full, they must be doing something right and I respect that more than being passionate about any one kind of theatre.

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

A:  Write something every day, even if it’s just a couple of words. You’d be amazed how those words add up. And words get lonely – they don’t like sitting there on the page all by their lonesome, so they’ll start arguing, begging, flirting with you to find them some friends, and then you’ve got a scene going. The other thing I find really helpful: sit down and type a really bizarre and curious stage direction that completely confounds you and you have no idea what it means or why it belongs in the play … then figure it out. This is how HAPPY started.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 592: Eric Dufault

Eric Dufault

Hometown: Pepperell, Massachusetts

Current Town: Astoria, Queens

Q: What are you working on now?

A: My best friend Jake tells me that whenever I describe my plays they all sound really unbearable.

THE TOMB OF KING TOT
A cartoonist vying for a coveted award. A child pharaoh journeying through the afterlife. Inspired by Richie Rich cartoons and the Egyptian Book of the Dead. There’s a reading of this occurring about 24 hours from now, and I just read that in some British museum an Egyptian statue is spinning in its display case.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/lifestyle/2013/06/ancient-egyptian-statue-mysteriously-rotates-at-museum/

AMERICAN GIRLS
Teenage girls smuggling cocaine over the Canadian border inside American Girl dolls. Told partially through the perspective of the dolls. Inspired by NYC public schools and, you know, American Girl dolls. I think American Girl dolls are very strange and interesting.

CHATTERBOTS
This thing is in like ten different word documents currently obscuring my computer’s background. It’s about computer chat-programs. Think Smarterchild. Or Siri, I guess. But it’s really about the internet and loneliness.

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 been thinking a lot about autobiographical plays due to some fantastic recent readings by fellow playwrights Alex Borinsky and Clare Barron.

But I think I’m working towards childhood stories, so instead, here are some fragmentary things I remember vividly from youth:

Once, there was a snow storm, and my brother and I could climb to the limb of a tree we’d never had access to previously. And we jumped off, and I think we landed on the hood of my dad’s car, but I’m not totally sure about that last part.

When driving to Nashua, NH, we would pass by a farm with an enormous, somewhat misshapen, paper-mache cow head mounted on the barn. Very disconcerting.

There was also a farm with two very, very woolly bulls. But then it closed down, and I have no idea what happened to the bulls.

I went to a charter school stationed on an army base. And once, during soccer practice, Joseph Ursch (not his real name) found an old hand grenade, pulled the pin, and threw it into the woods. But nothing happened.

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

A:  I’m still figuring some of this stuff out. It's all pretty messy and complex.

So I’m going to refer you to playwright/man-about-town Mike Lew’s theater blog, which I really enjoy reading and addresses a slew of theatrical issues/ideas.

http://www.mikelew.com/thoughts-on-the-theater.html

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  The first play I ever remember reading and thinking: ‘this is really fucking cool’ was Happy Birthday, Wanda June by Kurt Vonnegut. Which is about a big game hunter and a Nazi ghost and a little girl or something like that. I’ve since reread it and it’s really not that fucking cool.

But I’m not sure I’d be writing plays if it wasn’t for Wanda June. So I owe her.

I’m really inspired by Stephen Adly Guirgis. Particularly his play In Arabia We’d All Be Kings. There are a few sections that I’ve reread dozens of times trying to figure out how he does what he does. There’s a strange kindness in his plays that I really like.

I do the same rereading-thing with Annie Baker’s plays. Especially Aliens. Doesn’t everyone do that? Doesn’t everyone have like pages of Aliens under their sheet so they can absorb the writing through osmosis? I’m pretty sure everyone does that with Annie Baker.

And even though they’re not theater:
George Saunders. Christopher Guest. Miranda July. The Coen Bros.

But oh! Wait! I realized the right answer to this question!

You know who are Beowulf-Ajax type heroes?

Graeme Gillis and RJ Tolan. Heads of the Youngblood playwriting group. Stationed out of Ensemble Studio Theatre. They are both titans striding the Earth with their long, powerful legs.

Forget Wanda June. I owe those guys/that group more.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Earnest plays.

Plays that are really tough to translate over into film/television.

Then I have my own predilections for:
Talking animals. Folktales. Crude jokes. Stupid subcultures. Mean people that are also nice. A lack of self-awareness. Class diversity.

But the horrible, boring truth is that I guess I’m something of a traditionalist and just terribly fond of a well-constructed story where someone wants something and there are obstacles and I feel moved.

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

A:  Write so, so much. Get up early in the morning, put the same song/album on repeat, and just write so, so much.

And have fun while you do it. Right? Right.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A: 

The Tomb of King Tot- A Reading
Wednesday, June 26th
7 PM
The Ma Yi Rehearsal Space (260 West 35th St, 2nd Fl.)

I’m also writing in:

The 24 Hour Plays: Nationals
August 7-10
www.24hourplays.com

and:

The 52nd St. Project One-on-Ones
August 12-18
www.52project.org

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I Interview Playwrights Part 591: Matthew-Lee Erlbach

Matthew-Lee Erlbach
 
Hometown: Chicago (Rogers Park to be exact)

Current Town: NYC

Q:  Tell me about your upcoming shows.

A:  Two shows, so very opposite:

My play HANDBOOK FOR AN AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY, going up Off-Broadway at GYM at Judson in July is a play I've been working on for a few years. I spent some time traveling around the country meeting and/or being embedded with/ chased by some incredible people: migrant workers, white nationalists, green anarchists, Mennonites, soldiers, lobbyists, and then some. So, the play is inspired by these ordinary citizens in extraordinary circumstances, these Davids vs Goliaths whose battles are reshaping this nation today. Basically, if VICE were to do a play, it would be something like this. And while it might sound political, it's actually very personal. And funny. Also, it's directed by the amazing Tony Speciale who's just a great collaborator. The whole team around this couldn't more hard-working and supportive.

My other play, EAGER TO LOSE, is a burlesque farce in rhyming verse, which opens at Ars Nova in October. It's a sexy, fun, and exciting romp starring Tansy (who if you don't know yet, you'll soon fall in love with) and directed by Wes Grantom and Portia Krieger. It is a very unique theatrical experience about love, lust, and loyalty, that weaves a lot of rich textures from heightened language and rhyming verse to burlesque to some vaudeville to live music to let's see what else we discover before opening. There's incredible talent involved and we're all looking forward to getting it in front of an audience. We've been developing it for the past couple years (man, time flies) at Ars Nova, who have been so smart, generous, just plain awesome throughout our development.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I'm working on some fun new stuff at Nickelodeon; I created a fun retro-techno adult overnight block that will be premiering sometime in the summer or fall. The date keeps getting pushed so I'm hoping it happens soon because it's burning a hole in my pocket right now. Beyond that, I'm developing a half-hour comedy with Locomotive Film, starring Carrie Preston and a one-hour drama with Cineflix, which I'm very excited about. Theatre-wise, I'm revising a new play directed by Michael Berresse and am currently working on a two-part dark comedy verse play called KING GEORGE, III, Parts One and Two. It has some haunting and forgotten African slave music and Mohawk music.

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

A:  When I was in high school--if theatre, music, and being the soft-spoken white member of an African liberation group on the South Side of Chicago weren't already enough--I started an SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) chapter. I learned that Sodexho Marriott, who serviced our cafeteria, was also a major investor in private prisons. I had just learned about the for-profit private prison industry and was pretty shocked that such a thing even existed. So, naturally, we initiated a boycott of the cafeteria and we handed out information on their connection with private prisons. But even more naturally, we carried around watermelons to all our classes. Sure, let me explain--and keep in mind I was in high school: the watermelon symbolized the for-profit prison industry: the striped green skin represented the economic prison bars/ money, the delicious flesh was the prison industry, and the seeds were all the minor offense prisoners stuck inside…yeah, I know. Anyway, the point was to invite conversation about the watermelon, tell our classmates about the issue, and get the offenders out of our school. At the end of our week of action, we served the watermelon to everyone. And there you have the Great Watermelon Rebellion of 2001. I still want the same things. I just don't use watermelons anymore.

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

A:  Access.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Ed Bullins, Chekhov, Moliere, Odets, Shakespeare, Geroge C Wolfe. And separately, Tracey Letts. I grew up watching him as an actor and playwright and it's an understatement to say how much he's influenced me.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Man, I love theatre that grips my heart. I get excited when I'm struck emotionally because now I have to deal with something. Now if that theatre can strike my brain equally as hard, then call it a night, I'm done for. I've only been left speechless a few times in the theatre, Fiona Shaw's MEDEA, Steppenwolf's PILLOWMAN, and the recent NORMAL HEART revival. Also, Jackie Sibblies Drury's amazing play We are Proud to Present…(for short), left you sitting there with all this shit. And it was awesome. And brave. And surprising. And provocative. And that whole experience was all just so well-crafted. I am a big fan of hers and the way she thinks and collaborates. She really excites me.

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

A:  Well, being a playwright just starting out myself, all I can offer is to keep writing, do everything you can that has nothing to do with theatre, and get your work up by any means necessary.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My friend Isaac Oliver is a brilliant writer working on a new book. He performs his show at Ars Nova and you should find out when and go see it. And then buy his book.

Also, the Amoralists are doing some pretty exciting work this summer, very much worth seeing.

As for me, come see my plays. I'd love to share my work with you.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 590: Larissa FastHorse

Larissa FastHorse

Hometown: Pierre SD

Current town: Santa Monica CA, although I’m hardly there

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  This actual moment I am looking at the Grand Tetons while on break from choreographing a new musical in Jackson WY. (I was a professional ballet dancer before I become a writer.) Next I turn back into playwright and head to Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor program to workshop one of my plays and then to AlterTheater in San Raphael CA to read the first draft of my commission with them. I’m also working on a re-write for my commission with Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis, developing a park show for Disney and by the end of the year starting the community engagement process for my commission with Cornerstone Theatre Company in LA. I’m hoping to get one more project rolling by fall. You gotta keep a lot of balls in the air to make a living at this!

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 spent my childhood desperately wanting to be a ballet dancer against a lot of odds. So, I am very self motivated and love collaborating with a group of fellow artists every day. However, my parents both value reading and writing highly. A vacation for our family meant we’d go to the Black Hills of South Dakota, hike into the woods, find a rock to climb and sit outside reading, writing and eating a picnic together. So books and paper (now screens) are comforting and feel like home to me as much as a dance studio. (Which is just a rehearsal hall without furniture and tape.)

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

A:  I would love for everyone to focus more on gratitude. In the regular world, tons of people work really crappy jobs day after day for their whole lives. We get to be artists and make theatre AS OUR JOB. Even if it is only part time, we are so privileged. (This is coming from a minority female in the American theatre.) Yes, we can be paid more and diversity can be better and we can be funded as well as sports, etc. etc., but my husband (a sculptor, which is a far more difficult field than theatre) constantly quotes Dennis Quaid's character in The Rookie, “Today we get to play baseball.” Today I got to make art. That’s a true gift. The day I am no longer grateful for that is the day I need to work a road crew in one hundred degree, mosquito filled air and get back to grateful again.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Until very recently I would freak out and get all insecure when people asked me this question (or who my favorite playwrights are). I started as a dancer and didn’t have time to go to college, so I felt like I didn’t have a proper theatrical background. The truth is I’m a passion junkie. I am inspired by passion in work, any work; dance, music, theatre performance, books, scripts, sculpture, paintings, TV shows, culture, fashion, street performance, and anything else that makes me stop and feel. I was just watching my dance captain teach a Zumba class. She was gloriously in her element, wearing her favorite outfit with a fantastic hat and pouring her whole body and soul into this “exercise class”. Her passion and confidence and joy brought tears to my eyes. Tonight, she’s my hero.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I can appreciate really intelligent plays that are super smart, but I’m easy, if you make me FEEL something real or have a new experience, I’m all in. People asked me why I loved Sleep No More so much. (I went alone and stayed three hours.) I remember chasing a soaking wet, nude Lady Macbeth up three flights of stairs and thinking, this is the most fun I’ve ever had in the theatre. On the other side of the spectrum, there was a moment with Raul Esparza in the last scene Speed the Plow where out of a whirlwind of words, he turned his back to the audience and whispered the word “No.” That one perfectly placed word was devastating and still gives me chills. So, I guess it’s back to passion.

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

A:  Believe in yourself and your voice. I talk to playwrights who are beautifully trained and spend all their time comparing themselves to another writer or style or whatever. There’s only one you. If you can capture that essence and point of view on paper, you’re set.

Dance taught me the most valuable lesson; I’m not for everyone but I’m for someone. I’m a tall girl with a certain style of movement that not everyone likes. In fact, the majority doesn’t like it so much. But I kept auditioning for companies until I found the ones that liked what I had to give. Same with writing. I’m not right for every theatre, and that’s totally cool. It’s their money and their time away from their kids and personal goals that built their theatre, so if they don’t dig what I’ve got, I move on. There’s someone else who will get me, and it’s a waste of everyone’s time and energy to try to force my work somewhere it doesn’t belong. This is true of people who are personal friends and love me and my work, but professionally we aren’t a good fit. Don’t take it personal.

Q:  Plugs, please.

A:  The only thing coming up this summer will be a public reading of What Would Crazy Horse Do? at Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor the last week of June. Not sure of the exact time yet, but check it out and give me some feedback. I honestly want to hear it!

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I Interview Playwrights Part 589: Migdalia Cruz

Migdalia Cruz


Hometown: Bronx, NY

Current Town: Irvington, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I'm working on three new projects: TWO ROBERTS: a pirate-blues project, loosely based one the lives of Roberto Cofresî—a Puerto Rican pirate from the 1820s, and Robert Johnson—the Delta blues master of the 1930s, and the tale of each man selling his soul to the Devil; A new play based on Chekhov's THREE SISTERS, entitled TO DIE IN MOSCOW, more about how and why it was written than about the actual play; & lastly a re-imagining of Petronius' Satyricon of 69a.d. and Fellini's 1968 film adaptation, about the fall of 21st C. America as it relates to the fall of Rome using the politicized reggaeton/rap/hip-hop of groups like Calle 13 and the movie music of Nino Rota, entitled SATYRICOÑO.

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 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, I was in kindergarten. I remember running home after it was announced over the loudspeaker that our President had been shot— to tell my father that I knew who the killer was—"Pop, it was Johnson! He took his job and now he's the President." It was my first journey into the dark waters of conspiracy theory and the human psyche. And murder.

I thought it was the end of the world. How could the most important person in the country be murdered? I thought that only happened in my neighborhood in the Tremont section of the Bronx. I am still in mourning...


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

A:  Move it from the middle of the safety zone smack into the middle of oncoming traffic—
that is, I would like theater to take more risks—be less safe.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Maria Irene Fornés, my mentor and the greatest living playwright.
Samuel Beckett, the world's greatest curmudgeon playwright
Robert LePage, an amazing re-imagineer of theater

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A: Brave, inventive work that dares to make the ugly beautiful.

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

A: Be true to your voice, don't listen to too many people, and allow your morality to guide your business choices.

And always be present for your first production of a play and keep writing until that play opens.

Don't be lazy or passive when it comes to Art.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I am one of the judges for Pregones LBGT Asunción Festival of New Plays in June 2013.
I'm at the Goodman Theater's Festival Latino in collaboration with the Lark's Translation Project sponsored by the 16th Street Theatre with my translation of Gibran Portela's ALASKA, July 11-15, 2013.

I'll be teaching at the ATHE Conference in Orlando, FL, August 2013.

EL GRITO DEL BRONX will be performed at Brown University, Providence, RI, directed by Ken Prestininzi, Spring 2014.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 588: Richard Hellesen

Richard Hellesen
 
Hometown: Orange, California

Current Town: Sacramento, California

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  On being America’s oldest most-promising playwright.....Nah. As you know, things go in cycles--some years you plant, some years you harvest. Last year (2012) I had a couple productions and readings. This year so far has just been about the writing. Recently finished two scripts which have hung around for awhile--a dark comedy about the theatre (is there any other kind?), and a drama about marriage (is there any other kind?)--and then made the mistake of opening a computer file with 26 pages of something else I started years ago and would like to complete. Also have a lot of work to do this summer on a long-aborning project for Peter Ellenstein and the Inge Center, which will keep me from fixing an even longer-aborning script that has sat idle since a reading last December. None of these are getting productions, you understand--not yet anyway--but staying busy is the 50% I can control. You have to realize that I’m very much a regional theatre writer--that’s where all my work has been done, plus I don’t live in a place with a huge theatre community, and while I’d love to talk about my play over coffee on Eighth Avenue, the airfare is prohibitive--so whatever my network is, it’s far-flung and for the most part electronically-personal. That can make it difficult to stay motivated, let alone get work on stage, and I always say I’m about 6 months away from giving it up. The fact that I’ve been saying that every 6 months since late in the Reagan administration is thanks to that small-but-choice network that keeps asking “What are you working on now?”...., Anyway, because they won’t let me off the hook, and because I keep getting ideas (damn it), I’m starting to feel like I might finally know what I’m doing, and should probably shut up and get on with it. But only for another 6 months, and then I’m 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:  Sometimes I want a program bio that reads, “Richard Hellesen was not born into a family of struggling yet determined artists, who did not take him to Broadway shows as a child where a chance meeting with Arthur Miller did not lead to his graduate study at Yale School of Drama not.” I was merely a small, shy, red-haired, middle-class kid living in a California suburb, with a good childhood, a state college education, who never even saw a professional play until I was in high school. The only hint of my future was a love of words--lots of them--and an inclination to pretend, which were the refuge and eventual release from my shyness, and are still about the only skills I have now that I’m a small, less-shy, grey-haired, middle-class kid living in a California suburb. That and the fact that nobody--nobody--works harder than me (nobody!) in rehearsal. Probably out of fear. OK--love and fear--there’s the story: in junior-high I was the guy that somebody would engage in conversation, while unbeknownst to me somebody else was crawling behind me. And then the first guy would push me over backwards. Writing is engaging in the conversation--which, thank God, I had teachers encouraging (to the point of producing early efforts), and I learned to love being in a room with actors and in the back of the theatre with an audience, which is the only reason to write plays. But I’m also pretty sure while I’m standing there that somebody is crawling behind me....

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

A:  I’m guessing the other 500+ people have covered many of the things I’d change, but OK. This will sound self-serving, being (as I am) in my incredibly late 30s--but since all playwrights are somewhat self-serving anyway (“produce anybody else but me!”, said no playwright ever), here goes. It’s the same thing I’d change about American popular culture in general: its tendency to overpraise the new, the young, the “hot” as the salvation of the art, at the expense of artists who are none of the above--and then repeat the process about every half-generation. Which is not at all to denigrate young talent; merely to say that if art is a lifelong journey--and I believe it is--then there are things you do not know, questions you cannot ask, abilities you haven’t yet refined, until you’ve hiked a pretty good distance up the mountain. It’s no challenge, in my opinion, to find people who want to write plays when they’re 17 or 27--they’re always there, and they’re happy to get the theatrical equivalent of pats on the head and doggy treats. The challenge is to make sure they (and I mean any writer willing to walk the walk) are still wanting and eager and able to write for the theatre when they’re 37, 47, 57--the decades when the very life that’s giving you something more and deeper to write about runs repeatedly into abundant reasons to quit. By all means, we absolutely have to nurture a younger generation of artists--that is indeed the future, and certainly why many of us teach. (OK, pay and benefits too, but I digress...or not...) And I know that professional theatre is always about who gets to play ball and who doesn’t, and who decides. But some great works only come with time, and I would regret our losing--or neglecting--the means to make them happen. (Let’s see, “The Vikings at Helgeland” or “Hedda Gabler”? Anyone? Anyone?)

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Strangely, since I think I’m fairly conventional, I admire playwrights with a vision of their own--who kept after it, often imperfectly, regardless of the opinion of others, regardless of success or failure, over their entire lives, struggling to create what they had to create because that’s who they were. And while I know this applies to many of my contemporaries, for some reason I have a hard time thinking of them as heroes just yet, though I do love and admire them. Maybe because my degree was in theatre history, I lean toward the past--and that includes writers whose end of the theatre I might be lumped into, those who are about as far away from what I write as you can get, and in both cases people who wrote some things I don’t even like. Ibsen. Chekhov. O’Neill. Beckett. In my adult lifetime, August Wilson above all. I’ll never get closer to them than sitting at a very great remove from their feet, but they remind me of the highest aspirations in a craft that I’m swamping around in--and that’s plenty.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Funny: I don’t think in terms of being Excited! about theatre anymore--I think in terms of being moved. Which I’m sure says more about me than either theatre or excitement, and anyway I suppose being moved is a form of excitement, so.....I enjoy anything that moves me, intellectually and/or emotionally--I don’t care if it’s classical, contemporary, word-based, movement-based, drama, comedy, musical, realism, non-realism, intensely kinetic or intensely literary. Whatever, and by whomsoever made--as long as it’s truthful. Sometimes I think we get so amped up about form that we’re willing to give content a pass. I did literary management for a number of years, and the most irritating plays I read (as with any number I’ve seen produced) were the ones that were basically very slick and well-written lies--either something somebody wrote because they were trying to show how clever or cool they were, or because they had a Point to Make and were going to By-God Make It even if it meant pitching honesty in characters and action over the side. (And there’s no shortage of people in the theatre happy to abet both.) For me, given the abundance (willing! reveling in it!) of falsity in our world, I simply want to witness engrossing moments of recognizable human truth, things I knew were true but forgot until the play reminded me--and if possible to be allowed to feel genuine emotion in doing so. And that is not the property of any age, race, gender, or theatrical form--but by the same token, no age, race, gender or theatrical form is absolved of the obligation to provide it. But that’s just me.

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

A:  Assuming you’ve exhausted all other possibilities for a healthy and happy life:

Take an acting class. Take another one.

Crew a show.

Read every play you can, and go to every production you can--they all have something to teach you, even (especially?) the bad ones.

And for every play you read, read something that isn’t a play.

Find a significant other who, when asking why you’re staring out a window, believes you when you say “I’m working.” Then reward their belief.

Live in a place with an actual theatre community. If you can’t, start one. If you can’t, be one.

And then don’t sequester yourself with nothing but artists for friends. Live in the world.

What Mom said about writing even though it was about broccoli: you won’t know if you don’t try it.

Sorry, but the real work starts with the rewrite. Might as well get there as quickly as you can.

Yes, you can stop for a muffin.

The work of others is a gift beyond measure. Learn to collaborate or go home.

That said: tell the truth as you understand it, and stick up for it.

And if you do stay for awhile: get over yourself as soon as you can. Your job, in the end, is to disappear, and leave a piece of charged life behind.

Trust the audience above all. But only in performance--never in a post-show discussion...

Don’t judge the road--of your play or your career--by the part of it you can see today; both are a long walk through all kinds of weather. Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe.

And rejoice. You get to write!

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Nothing to plug. Just a bio. But if you want to do any of my work...!

http://www.dramatistsguild.com/memberdirectory/getmembership.aspx?cid=2338

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I Interview Playwrights Part 587: Sara Farrington

 
Sara Farrington

Hometown: East Hampton, NY

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about Requiem For Black Marie.

A:  I’m so proud and scared of it. I read this book about the inner workings of the Brecht Machine called Brecht & Co., by John Fuegi. Much of the book is shockingly personal stuff about Brecht, which I love finding out about. I love being reminded that adored, historical figures were gross and weird and sexual. Fuegi claims that Brecht’s female lovers were more than just contributors, but that they actually wrote some of his best plays for him, in their entirety, never getting credit or money. True or not, I saw such tragedy in this. I also related to falling in love with a charismatic theater guy, (which has happened to every woman and man in the theater. They’re the most exciting relationships, but often the most dangerous and destructive.) So I focused my playwriting on two of the women I most related to, Elisabeth “Bess” Hauptmann and Margarete Steffin. Requiem For Black Marie is about them. It’s told in seventeen quick, tense, darkly funny scenes directed skillfully by Shannon Sindelar. There’s also a musical score running under the whole play by a live band. The play exists in what I see as one of the most exciting eras for theater, the Weimar Republic in Germany, those few years before Hitler took power in 1933 and right before the Brecht team (some of them) fled to America. So there’s a sense of impending doom shrouded around the playwriting, staging and characters. The Brecht team and community made theater under threat of death, constantly searched by police. Some were executed, some died in camps, some simply disappeared. But yet, making theater was still the priority for them. It was a compulsion, as it is for us now. That’s what this play is about.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I’m really excited for the play I’m going to write this summer after Requiem closes, which is a Civil War play inspired by a lingering fact I learned while in Mexico: Ancient Mayan women who died in childbirth were buried with the same ceremony as Mayan warriors who died in battle. So I’m exploring this ancient parallel between death in childbirth and death in war. Key to the play’s structure is the fact that it took a letter three weeks to be delivered during the worst years of the war. This lag time in information I hope will lend itself to a distorted narrative, which I’ve never really played with. I’m going to attempt to write this using the broken and sometimes indecipherable language of real Civil War letters, fictionalized between a husband and wife. I tried writing this play a few months ago and it was really bad (I often, unknowingly, write a terrible version of a play first, realize it’s terrible, get really depressed about it, then start over months or even years later. Requiem for Black Marie was, back in 2009, a clunky, soap opera-ish, unwieldy and pretty terrible thing. I discarded like 98% of it). Hopefully going to have the Civil War play up in the fall or winter, be it self-produced or not.

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 might actually be one of my first memories: I was in preschool, maybe 4 or 5 years old. I must have been staring into space, deep in thought. All I remember is Karen, my preschool teacher, gently shaking my shoulder saying, “Sara, Sara, come back to us.” And I suddenly snapped out of my daydream and was back in the classroom. I remember feeling really embarrassed and bad that my teacher had caught me absorbed like that. I’ve never thought about this until just now as I write this, but that, in a nutshell, is how I am. I’ll lose myself a lot in daydreams, fantasy, romance, rehearsal, performance, writing, anything for a long stretch of time, but then I always somehow end up with a rude awakening. Thank God the theater allows for this. Personal life definitely does not.

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

A:  Probably excuses. That kind of covers all of it for me. Excuses from actors, playwrights, theaters, etc… it’s really just fear, I guess. Our time is so short! You ( I ) must stop making excuses why things can’t happen and remember: Theater artists are supposedly to be the wily ones, the ones who steal and don’t get caught, the ones brave enough to embarrass themselves, the ones who don’t take “no” for an answer ever, in any regard, about anything. I can’t believe it when theater artists play by anyone’s rules, institutionally, professionally, artistically. Or when they think there’s a science or a specific route to having a successful career in the theater or--- well, believe anything anyone tells them. I’d change people’s excuse-y attitudes. But I’m a victim of it too.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Firstly, my husband Reid Farrington, my ultimate theatrical hero, who, years ago, taught me to “make it work” no matter what it is, in both theater and life. Secondly, (and these I list in random order and for a wide variety of reasons): Mac Wellman, Constance Congdon, Erik Ehn, Eugene O’Neill, Antje Oegel, The Wooster Group, Samuel Beckett, Jeff Jones, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Megan Emery Gaffney, Frank Boudreaux, Erin Mallon, Alexandra Collier, Shannon Sindelar, Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Harold Pinter, Lisa D’Amour, David Jaffe, Michael Cadman, Marya Ursin, Rachel Jett.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  If it’s rigorous, thoughtful, funny and moving and doesn’t involve audience participation, I’m excited. It doesn’t matter what kind of theater it is as long as it’s got that stuff.

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

A:  I would say: I truly believe that making theater in the USA is privilege and not a right. Everything I do as a playwright, I “get” to do. This, I think will make you a happier artist. Something I heard once from a fellow playwright, “No one cares about your play.” Yep. So self-produce, self-promote, max out credit cards if you have to, rehearse/produce in your apartment, anything to make them care. (They still might not care, but at least they saw your play.) I would say: don’t decide to start a theater company, rather, decide to produce your play. I would say: don’t worry about being good, just strive to be good. This involves accepting your bad plays, big time. You can’t get better without failing, making terrible artistic moves and disappointing people. There’s a line from Slings and Arrows from the senior actors Frank and Cyril: “Don’t fret! You have lots of talent, you’ll have loads of success and a very long career. But at the end of it all you’ve got to have some spectacular cock-ups. Because then you’ll have stories! And then… you’ve had a life.” This line makes me tear up. Makes everything okay, makes everything worth it. I’d also say: Start a family at some point. Being an artist doesn’t exclude you from the big, cosmic parts of life. Don’t let financially stable people be the only ones allowing themselves to have kids. That’s not fair to the evolution of the human race. Finally I would say: Don’t ever be late to anything, don’t flake out, check and double check the calendar, say yes a lot, prioritize theater, see theater, spend money on theater even if you don’t have it, write from a personal place and, perhaps the most inspirational thing I heard recently from my dear agent, “Just keep doing what you do.”

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Get tickets online for my upcoming show, Requiem For Black Marie, (aka the Brecht play) which, for me, is about everything. DETAILS: June 13, 14, 15, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, all shows at 8pm, Incubator Arts Project. Tickets at incubatorarts.org. It’s written by me, directed by Shannon Sindelar and features: Megan Emery Gaffney, Erin Mallon, Caleb Hammond, Jocelyn Kuritsky, Wil Petre, Yuki Kawahisa, Natalie Mack, Tatiana Gomberg, Gavin Price, John Gasper. With set/lighting design by Cecilia R. Durbin, costume design by M. Meriwether Snipes, stage management by, R. S. Buck, video design by Reid Farrington, asst. diected by John Moriarty.

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Sunday and Monday

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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