I Interview Playwrights Part 597: Morgan Gould

Morgan Gould

Hometown: Falmouth, MA (Cape Cod)

Current Town: NYC

Q:  Tell me about Dog Eat Dog.

A:  I started DOG EAT DOG at a residency at Brooklyn Arts Exchange. I had the residency before I knew what I was going to write about, so about 2 weeks before a showing, I was flipping out because I had no idea what to write or what I wanted to say about anything. I had missed a bunch of marketing deadlines, and in a fit of guilt, I called Marya Warshaw, the Executive Director and was like, "HELPIHAVENOTHING" and she was like, find the scary place. What would you never tell you best friend? Now TELL EVERYONE. So that's DOG EAT DOG. It's a play about being fat. Because I am. It's part Neil LaBute rip, part mean afterschool special, part love story, part hungry. We don't serve snacks though, so bring your own.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm writing a play that is called TOTALLY GIRLS. My friend Kara-Lynn gave me this idea to write a traditional teenagey coming of age story that ends up with everyone in a mental institution. And they might switch bodies too. But I want 30/40 somethings to play the girls.

I'm also writing a 3 act play that will be 60 minutes where there's a family and it's 3 different thanksgivings 20 years apart. The first line of each act is "I'm HOME!" and the last line is "another thanksgiving come and gone! Another Thanksgiving come. and. gone." There's an alcoholic Dad and a Mom who may or may not be bipolar. Lots of skeletons in the closet.

Also, I'm that girl. I just started a blog. It's called DID HE JUST CALL ME FAT? and it's not the story of my trip to Europe or what I ate for breakfast. It's just little dialogues I overhear around the city. I'm also learning to tweet. It's hard, but I'm improving, I think?

Q:  Tell me about your day job.

A:  Currently on the hunt for a day job. Preferably one that requires me to watch reality TV, talk on the phone, google people I know, and endlessly use facebook. If anyone has any leads, please let me know.

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 used to watch Mrs. Doubtfire on repeat. That's all you need to know about me. I feel like it contexts EVERYTHING.

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

A:  It would all be site specifically located in my living room, free, and not boring. And it wouldn't be rude to text during it. Like, no one would take that personally.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I have never really done an interview where they asked this so is this might be stupid. Maybe. I'll risk it. But. Honestly, the people who inspire me most on a daily basis are my company members. They solve things I think are unsolvable. They make hard things easy. They make easy things more complex and interesting. I have made them do some of the craziest stuff. I've handed them a new scene or even act the day before a showing and they just MAKE IT HAPPEN. It's unreal. I honestly have no idea why they put up with me. I don't even bring snacks to rehearsal anymore. Adam Blodgett is always game. When others are skeptics, he's like "let's try it before we nay say." Ronan Babbitt is the epic jokester. If there's a stupidly hilarious gag, that was probably Ronan. If there's a skateboard, that's DEFINITELY Ronan. He always reminds me of what the audience wants, and he reminds me to put that first. Anna O'Donoghue is the smartest actress in the universe and possibly the most supportive person on the planet. She plays my evil women so beautifully. Tom Pecinka is so funny it hurts. And he can do anything. Just anything. If it's ridiculous, he can do it to a level beyond my wildest imaginings. Chris Geary is my rock in rehearsal. He's consistent, he's hilarious, he's easy to work with, and he taught me my favorite phrase of all time which is "deliver the pizza"...like if an actor is asking too many questions and I just need them to try it and stop asking me stuff, I say "can we just deliver the pizza and then figure it out". Amir Wachterman is the life blood of our work. He's been in almost everything I've ever directed in my life and he's my muse. If you know him, you know how funny he is. If you REALLY know him, you know how twisted he is, and if you REALLY REALLY know him, you know what a smart, hardworking, committed artist he is. Sometimes when something isn't working, I just look at him and he furrows his bald little brow and gives me all the answers. Other times he just goes out for a cigarette. Either way, he's essential. Also because he has the cigarettes. And I can't even talk about my designers. They are just...the sickest, most hilarious, most absurd people. Ryan Seelig does my lights and Chris Barlow does sound. My main goal in LIFE is to get them to laugh in rehearsal. Because they are the toughest critics. But you will never find two more talented evil geniuses in existence. And our design meetings are always less than 7 minutes. That's the shorthand. It's a beautiful thing. And when I remember that I have all these people supporting me, I'm ready to dig in and do more.

I also want to recognize some peers working in the theater right now who inspire me to go deeper and think harder. I love Leah Nanako Winkler and her work. (And her group Everywhere Theater-- formed with Lindsay Mack and Teddy Nicholas and Chase Voorhees). It's really ballsy and fresh and doesn't hold back. And it's SO funny. Hilary Bettis writes gritty, sexy, terrifying plays...she just writes one awesome play after the other. My dear friend Peter Gil-Sheridan has many plays that I adore, but his two most recent COCKFIGHT and RITU COMES HOME are so lovely and painful and full of his very specific humor. And he's got this play about Rafael Nadal that is going to blow everyone's mind when it's done. Joshua Conkel has every single one of his fingers on the pulse of everything I think about pop culture and why it's amazing and horrible. It's like he's reading the secret blog of my mind. Erin Markey BLEW MY GODDAMN MIND in May at Joe's Pub. She's a genius of epic proportions. John Early. Just. Everything he does. Why are his showgasm videos for Ars Nova so amazing? Stop it, John. STOP. And I have so many actors that give me a theater boner. I dream of a world where all plays star Michael Cyril Creighton, Becca Blackwell, Megan Hill, Geneva Carr, Eliza Bent...and on and on. This is embarrassing because some of the people on this list don't know I'm obsessed with them. But I am. Also, I left people out. Because there are SO MANY killer artists who inspire me to be better and not be lazy and rely on things that have already been done.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that shows me something I've never seen. Theater that isn't pretentious. Theater that's funny. Theater that isn't about an early 19th century family losing all their money and wondering how they will recover. Yes to gender bending. Yes to gags. Yes to singing and dancing. Yes to funny things in all forms.

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

A:  I'm going to actually turn this question into a question for writers who aren't just starting out, since I sort of am just starting to make my own work. Every time I sit down to write I feel this wave of sickness and anxiety. Like, every other time I sat down to write and was able to, it must have been some weird fluke. And this time, my mind will be broken and I won't be able to make anything work. Is that normal? Will it ever go away? The only thing that helps me is playing the same episode of Dance Moms in the background and drinking red bull. Is there a healthier alternative? (Please don't say yoga. Just...I can't...)


Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Come see Morgan Gould & Friends' DOG EAT DOG! It's August 1-4 at 7pm at HERE. Like MORGAN GOULD & FRIENDS on facebook. And check out our mission statement on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGY4UDaR8Z8

If you're that type, you can also check out my blog: didhejustcallmefat.blogspot.com. Also, please watch the shows from the early 2000s KID NATION. It's on youtube. It doesn't help me, but you definitely should...it's the best reality show ever made.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 596: Lisa Milinazzo

Lisa Milinazzo

Hometown: Waltham Massachussettes

Current Town: New York City

Q:  Tell me about Slain In The Spirit.

A:  Inspired by the Andrea Yates* story, “Slain In the Spirit” is an expressionistic play, with dark comedic overtones. Set in the Bible belt, it tells the story of Molly, a devout young Christian who, with the birth of each child spirals into post partum psychosis. Told in reverse order, the play begins with the catastrophic drowning of her children (who are played symbolically with sacks and the voices of adult actors), traces her life back to its earliest days of childhood, courtship with her husband, Danny, births of 4 children; and reconnecting to the day of the drownings. Her psychotic inner world is portrayed by a group of actors who also double in various other colorful characters in Molly’s life. The same group is also known as the 'angel & demon chorus'; who represent Molly’s spiritual battle. The play examines the deadly combination of religious fundamentalism and psychosis.

*In the Spring of 2001, Andrea Yates, a young mother of 5 and a fundamentalist Christian woman from Texas, drowned each of her children in the bathtub of their home. A loving mother, she home schooled all of her children, but suffered repeated bouts of post-partum psychosis. She was found guilty and was currently serving several life sentences until 2005 the case was reopened and she was retried and found not guilty by reason of insanity. She was finally put in a mental institution for the criminally insane. I was drawn to the story for many reasons, some clear and some subterranean. I myself worked for 7 years as a therapist in a psychiatric hospital. I had also spent several years worshipping in a fundamentalist Pentecostal church and being a member of that community. I am sure that my own set of complex feelings about these tumultuous things in my own history pulled me toward the story.

The piece is not a biography. It is a contemplation of psychosis and of our very personal and very real yearning for God connection and the deadly effects of fundamentalism and narrow mindedness on human lives. I want to reveal the slow and methodical stealing of a woman’s spirit life, through fear-based, harsh, masochistic religious teachings, culminating in the destruction of my main character Molly and her kids. I wanted to bring to light the multitude of conflicting religious and societal signals which were operating on this character and the conflicting impulses that could drive a woman in this most extreme case to kill her own children. I also want to reveal that so many of these acts of violence against children in particular, is preventable; for example, some of the latest tabloid tragedies like Sandyhook, Connecticut.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I have a couple of upcoming film projects I’m focusing on. One is a film version of the short play “Motel Story” by Alexandra Gersten-Vasillaros with Director of Photography, Walter McGrady. And, I’ve been collaborating with playwright C.S. Hanson on one of her new plays.

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 am Sicilian and grew up with a blue collar background. My dad had a huge influence over my road to being a director and writer as well as my work ethic. He was a cop and a mechanic, but was also a sort of passionate, articulate, elegant man who loved other cultures and ethnicities. He had a mythic sense of right and wrong, and both my folks had enormous heart for the underdog, the disenfranchised. We had colorful characters parading in and out of our lower middle class home growing up---people from both sides of the tracks. My mom’s best friend from across the street came over every morning at 7am, in her bathrobe and slippers and started brewing the coffee that she and my mom would drink!! It was so lively and good fodder for the embryonic writer/director that was secretly growing inside me.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Joan Littlewood; Stanislavski; Phil Hoffman.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I loved BLACKWATCH—it seemed to reinvent the medium. I am excited by material which teeters on the edge of comedy and tragedy. I like depicting extreme worlds. My vision is to create a cauldron of peculiar, lively and desperate personalities and circumstances that I want to bring to vibrant life. I often like characters that are dark and able to set in motion horrific consequences, but who also possess theatrical and comedic elements. People who are larger than life. Writers like Tracy Letts, Rebecca Lenkowitz, Alexandra Gersten, Lucy Gough, Eve Ensler seem to embody the nature and landscape that I love to work within. I want to create theater which blends penetrating, truthful moments with gorgeous lyrical theatricality.

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

A:  Pay attention to all the inner proddings of story or event that break your heart, excite and inspire. No idea is too little--- they are all little seedlings.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Slain in the Spirit is playing at the Midtown International Theatre Festival, July 16th – August 3rd. www.midtownfestival.org

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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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