I Interview Playwrights Part 638: Dipika Guha

Dipika Guha

Hometown: I don’t really have one. Although I’ve lived in several places that have pieces of my heart-Calcutta, London and New Haven to name three.

Current Town: New York

Q:  Tell me about Blown Youth.

A:  Blown Youth is the result of a commission from the ever amazing New Georges and the New Plays initiative at Barnard College. The commission was a result of director Alice Reagan’s vision for Barnard to be a real home for playwrights to develop new plays and the appetite New Georges have for adventurous, theatrical plays. I’ve had the opportunity to nurture Blown Youth with Alice who is a wonderful director and the super undergrads at Barnard. And of course the support of New Georges who are such a beacon of hope for new plays that go out on a limb in a generally risk averse theatrical culture.

The play is a response to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It was borne out of my desire to challenge to the notion that Hamlet (the character) is the embodiment of human consciousness when he is, in fact, a man. Where Hamlet’s madness smacks of genius, would a woman in his shoes be seen as just as stunningly witty and seductive-or just a pain in the ass hysteric? Trying to write the play with this question in mind was like staring at the sun. I was at my wits end trying to write this play when I threw in Irene Fornes’ Fefu and her Friends into the mix and the play blossomed into a story tracking the lives of seven women in the decade after they leave college. We enter through the eyes of one in particular, Celia, a struggling actress intent on playing a great role. Fornes describes women as ‘live wires’ and says ‘if women should recognize each other-the world will be blown apart’. I was interested in what this meant-and whether it was good or bad and how as women we might be able to live in the world without electrocuting each other!

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  A new play called I Enter the Valley about the life of a legendary poet who at the end of his life has writer’s block. It was inspired by the life of Pablo Neruda. I read his memoir and it fuelled an age old love/hate relationship I have with the Casanova character (I have a Don Juan type in almost all of my plays!). This idea of your past being like a foreign country is also central to the play. That as you get older, you look back and who you were at different points of your life starts to seem utterly foreign to you. It’s an oddly Chekhovian play. Lots of coming and going and feeling very strongly about things! We’re doing a reading of it at The Women’s Project in March.

And a piece called Architecture of Becoming also at The Women’s Project with four wonderful playwrights-Lauren Yee, Vick Grise, Sarah Gancher and Kara Corthron. It’s a piece about the impulse to create in characters who don’t necessarily call themselves artists, a present day response to orientalism and the struggle to tell your story in a way that’s authentic to you. We thought ‘becoming’ was a much nicer word than ‘process’ which, in an intensely collaborative venture like this, is the only thing we are perhaps qualified to talk about.

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 painfully shy child displaced from Calcutta to East London, no one at my kindergarten had heard my voice. Then they put me on stage in a production of Chicken Licken. I distinctly remember one dress rehearsal (I was maybe four or five) when I stood in my costume and opened my mouth. I remember the eyes of the teachers turning wide. It turned out I’d taken everybody’s lines! I was quite sure that on stage I was invisible (which maybe I was in an oversized animal costume) I liked that feeling a lot. I also liked taking everybody’s lines.

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

A:  Longer rehearsal periods, more breaking bread and drinking with audiences, cheaper tickets, cheaper rent, state subsidized theatre, new forms, new forms, new forms!!!!

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Irene Fornes, Friedrich Durrenmatt, Tennessee Williams, Beckett, Caryl Churchill, Chekhov, Harold Pinter, Sarah Ruhl, Doug Wright, Diana Son, my eternal classmates Christina Anderson and Meg Miroshnik and my uber-hero, Paula Vogel.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I’ll answer this question in two ways: first of all not to cop out, I am still incredibly excited by Robert Wilson, Robert Lepage and that kind of epic, heightened, visually arresting storytelling where things that don’t normally touch, touch. I’m also excited by the re-invention of language through simplicity (where the ordinary turns extraordinary) and where alchemy or the logic of metamorphosis is at play.

I also see theatricality as a mode of being. We sometimes encounter it when we go to the theatre but it’s bigger than that. India, where I grew up, is a tremendously theatrical place. I think this is in part because there’s an awareness of the sacred in the everyday. I think that when you notice this quality about life and you engage in the desire to create ritual however big or small, you are a part of a kind of theatricality. The quality of your attention meeting the everyday can create an elemental force. Theatricality as a mode is accessible because it’s part of our lives-you don’t need to be at the theatre to touch this chord.

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

A:  That longing is everything. You don’t need to have written a play to know that you want to write one. Your yearning is all you need-it sets your course.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:
Blown Youth at Barnard directed by the wonderful Alice Reagan:
http://barnard.edu/events/blown-youth
Come see Architecture of Becoming at Women’s Project
http://wptheater.org/show/the-architecture-of-becoming/
And a part of a play called Mechanics of Love at Ladies Night at INTAR in a few weeks
https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/932049
Meg Miroshnik’s play The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls at Yale Rep

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I Interview Playwrights Part 637: Nandita Shenoy

Nandita Shenoy

Hometown: Buffalo, NY

Current Town: New York, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I've got a workshop of my latest full-length play, "Washer/Dryer" coming up, and so I'm taking another look at that. I've also been working on a commission from Ma-Yi Theatre and the Flea, adapting a play from the Yuan period of Chinese history into a modern one-act.

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

A:  I'm the oldest child of Indian immigrants, so when I was growing up, my parents were kind of figuring out the culture along with me. For instance, when I was about 3 or 4, my mom noticed that in October, everyone put pumpkins out on their porches, so she put one out on ours. She didn't know how to carve one, so she drew a face on the pumpkin so that it would look like the other ones. And I really liked the pumpkin. So one day, she heard me yelling "My pumpkin, my pumpkin!" and looked out the front window to see me running down the sidewalk after a big kid who apparently had taken our pumpkin off of our porch. She said she started to worry because I was a tiny little Indian girl chasing after this big American boy. I have no recollection of this incident, but a few minutes later, my mom told me that she saw me coming back with the pumpkin in my arms. She says that this is when she knew that I would always take care of myself, because I was able to get my pumpkin back. As an adult, my version of getting my pumpkin back is pretty much putting anyone who crosses me into my plays, although I did hit the teenage boy who tried to take my iPhone on the L train once to recover my "electronic pumpkin." I haven't put him in a play. Yet.

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

A:  Just one? Fine. The ethnic make-up of the industry from the actors on stage to the creative teams to the producers. We need more diversity.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  13P because they made it happen.

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

A:  Write short plays first so that you get the satisfaction of finishing one under your belt.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  The workshop of "Washer/Dryer" is coming soon! Public readings will be held on February 25th and 26th at 7:30pm at the Ma-Yi Writers Room, 260 West 35th Street, 2nd floor. Admission is free. "Washer/Dryer" shares an evening with newlyweds Sonya and Michael as they negotiate their living situation with some strange obstacles. It asks the age-old New York question - can love conquer Manhattan real estate? There is also a figurative pumpkin in this play.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 636: Maggie Bofill

Maggie Bofill

Hometown: I was a beach baby. In Indiana. Grew up on Lake Michigan on the Indiana Dunes.

Current Town:New York City.

Q: Tell me about your upcoming reading.

A: WINNERS - crazy play. It's been a blast! It's the culmination of two weeks of workshops (..and
two years of writing it) First workshop is at EST two weeks ago, and then my theater company,
Labyrinth, gave me a fifteen hour workshop. This reading is the final result. My cast and
director, Pam Berlin, is delicious. WINNERS is a wild roller coaster ride about a modern family
dealing with the recession. Dad's been out of work, daughter has gotten weird...the dog and cat
speak up and have scenes.... just all kinds of messiness, that is also beautiful, and real and
poignant...one hopes.... It has eight characters and is huge. For me. biggest play I've ever
written.

Q: What else are you working on now?

A: A nice light romantic comedy called THE HATE INSIDE...well - maybe not that light. Ha!

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

A: My second grade teacher, Mrs. Schoffield, let me put on a play after much begging. So my best
friend San, her life size rag doll Myrtle, and myself, went into rehearsals. I wrote the script and
songs, and in the playground, we perfected my first play - with music - "You Will Be a Queen In
a Palace Ball". it was a hit. Due to popular demand, we performed a different play once a year
after that. Until fourth Grade, when Ms. Lesch said there was no room in the schedule due to the science projects.

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

A: Make it cheaper so more people could see it.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Beckett. Pinter. Carol Churchill, Every writer of every piece I see that carries me away.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: New work that takes risks. Old work that breaks my heart. Again and again. Anything that makes
me laugh for real. Comedy is INCREDIBLY HARD. Brutal honesty makes me want to dance and
make love. So.... whatever is honest.....that's it.

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

A: DEADLINES ARE LIFELINES. Sheer terror is incredibly motivating. Set deadlines so you will be so terrified as it approaches that you will actually write.... Become the train that doesn't stop no
matter what gets thrown in the tracks....and discipline. As Martha Graham always posted
anywhere she rehearsed, "Discipline is freedom". So be free baby - and do what you told
yourself you would.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: WINNERS is CRAZY TERRIFYING for me. In a great way. Would love to have peeps in the
audience to accompany me on the ride. Please come if you like. Weird time - but we are there.
Hope you will be too. Tomorrow, Fri. Jan, 24th, LABYRINTH Bank Street Theater, 155 Bank
Street, 4 p,m. DIRECTED BY PAM BERLIN with Florencia Lozano, Grant Shaud, Dave Gelles,
Lucy DeVito, Jonathan Silver, Paula Pizzi.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 635: Christina Masciotti

Christina Masciotti

Hometown: Reading, PA

Current Town: New York

Q:  Tell me about Adult.

A:  ADULT is a father daughter story that takes place in a gunshop. It’s based on a real place called The Shooting Cellar – which was a rowhouse converted into a 20 yard shooting range, in the heart of center city Reading, PA.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  Several plays in various stages of development (including SOCIAL SECURITY which was recently read at The Bushwick Starr) and a television series called WAYS AND MEANS that I am co-writing with Meghan Falvey.

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 have a pitiful scrap of paper from my childhood with misshapen kid-letters desperately scrawling in brown marker: “Come to see The Mixst Up Mareg Play!” Based on the date, I was four, and paying attention to way more than I should have been able to at that developmental age. But that first invitation, misspellings and all, turned out to be an odd, little, tattered touchstone for me – for all my work. Because the “mixedupness” in my parents’ relationship was mostly a function of language – one spoke more Greek than English, the other spoke only English. Their interactions exposed things about language, especially spoken language, that may not have been so readily apparent otherwise – like how unreliable language can be – with people regularly saying things they don’t mean, or completely misinterpreting what’s been said. And also how elastic language can be, how it can be stretched and reinvented. For example, when I was last home, my mom looked out the window and said, “The snow came and left.” Obviously, “went” would have been the right word there, but “left” struck me as much more poignant – or at least potentially more so, depending on the context. So I developed an appreciation for these unexpected slips in speech, and what they can bring to light. For better or worse, my ears are permanently tuned to the quirks of misspeaking and I celebrate them in my writing.

In ADULT, for instance – which is a two-character play – neither character has much interest in reading. There’re a lot of words they’ve heard, but never seen in print. That doesn’t stop them from trying to use those words in sentences – really what they end up saying is a slightly off approximation. If you listen closely, you’ll hear a lot of strange things. This is my experience of the world in general.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  It’s nice to be surprised in some way. Whether by a feeling, a character’s mind, an actor’s performance, or a writer disappearing into the story.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  ADULT opens at Abrons Art Center on January 30th and runs through February 15th. For tickets and information: http://www.abronsartscenter.org/performances/adult.html

And look for SOCIAL SECURITY at The Bushwick Starr in the Spring of 2015.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 634: Jake Jeppson

Jake Jeppson

Hometown: Washington, DC

Current Town: Minneapolis, MN for a bit.

Q:  Tell me about the Clearing.

A:  The Clearing opens Jan 19th at the Theater at St. Clements. Josh Hecht is directing. It tells the story of a family frozen by grief and a buried secret. Things start to thaw when a new love interest enters the picture. Yup, it’s one of those. The first act of the play moves backwards in time. The second act moves forwards. In the script, there’s a lot of wondering where God is, so it’s fun to look around the old churchy space at the exposed brick walls and boarded up stained glass windows. Oh, and it takes place in the clearing at the top of a mountain. We’ve got trees in the theater!

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I’m working on a play about a group of women in west Texas in the 1930’s when electricity was introduced to the area. There's a prophecy, music, and representatives of the federal government. We are workshopping it at the Playwrights Center in March.

Q:  You just got back from Latvia?

A:  I did! Through an odd series of events, my play Turtle wound up being translated and produced in a theater in Latvia. I went over there to see the play and teach a series of workshops. I recommend Latvia. Check out Latvia.

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

A:  Eudora Welty talked about how kids listen for stories: "When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole." I am the baby of a gaggle of half-siblings, step-siblings, and ex-step-siblings, as well as cousins, family friends, etc. As the youngest, I think I developed a keen relationship to grief. Not because I grieved more than anyone else, but because as the littlest one in the room, I watched the landscape of my family change as they made choices, experienced change, celebrated life events, and came home to talk about it. I remember sitting silently at dining room tables and watching big people tell their stories. When you're little, you want to help people, but you don't always know how.

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

A:  People act illogically. I think characters can too. So I'd reduce the sometimes gripping need we feel to explain actions and events on stage.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Teachers who work in non-prescriptive ways. Especially: Paula Vogel, Ken Prestininzi, and Donna Dinovelli. My playwriting sisters: Caroline V. McGraw and Martyna Majok. And writers who fill their work with an emotional charge of understanding: Fornes, Chekhov, Churchill, T. Williams.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Playful, spontaneous work that invites us, the audience, to make believe.

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

A:  Get in rooms and listen. It doesn’t matter what label you have – be infected (inspired?) by being part of it. Apprenticeship has value. And then later, when you're an "emerging artist" you'll have a crew of elders to counsel you.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  The Clearing at the Theater at St. Clements. Jan 15-Feb 9.  http://www.TheClearingPlayNYC.com  Come visit the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, where I’m a Jerome Fellow. They have a pretty great online presence with workshops, etc. available via Skype. And if in Latvia in 2014, check out my play Turtle (Rupucis) at the New Riga Theater.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 633: Will Arbery

Will Arbery

Hometown: Dallas, TX

Current Town: Evanston, IL

Q:  Tell me about We Were Nothing!

A:  We Were Nothing! is a play about a friendship that I developed for two actresses in their early twenties. Part of its "setting" is different modes of communication-- phone, text, facebook, email, voicemail, skype. It's sort of a comedy, it's sort of a academic deconstruction of the theatrical formula, and it's mostly just kind of embarrassing and devastating. It's site-specifically performed in an apartment near Union Square. It's a little over an hour long. It's about two girls but I wrote it thinking about my own friendships. It's immersed in a kind of banality and friendly evasion. It has a surprising second act.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm trying to finish my play You're Sadder Than You Realize, which is about Justin Bieber and a cannibal named Tarrare and a Belgian super-fan on the internet. I'm also making a short documentary about my sister, and I'm developing a couple of short films. I'm working on two other full-length plays, but they're in very early stages.

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

A:  I grew up the only boy with seven sisters, which actually ended up being a pretty lonely experience. I had a lot of toys, not because my parents bought a lot for me. Mostly I would find or collect or inherit them. I loved the broken weird ones. I had this "game" where I would put every single toy on my bed, and go around talking to them, one by one, checking in with them, discussing their weird fragmented evolving personal lives. Most of them were really angry, embarrassed, frustrated souls.

The other story from my childhood would probably be the time I peed my friend's bed in the middle of the night, and then stuffed his mom's sheets into my backpack, snuck into their linen closet, remade the bed, and went home the next morning with the soaked sheets.

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

A:  High ticket prices. Old subscribers who don't want to be challenged. Plays about rich people complaining. (Those all count as one.)

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Young Jean Lee. Richard Maxwell. Chekhov. Annie Baker. Maria Irene Fornes. Caryl Churchill.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Embarrassing theater, stuff that makes you afraid to be in the same room as what's happening. Also theater that plays with form, theater with frivolity, hyper-serious messy theater.

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

A:  Well definitely don't take advice from me. A year ago I was trolling this website religiously, trying to get inspired by my playwriting heroes. And I'm not really sure why I'm suddenly in the position to give advice. And I also gotta say that any of this advice should be read with the understanding that I don't follow this advice most of the time. My work habits are pretty erratic. But I think I would say: write on your feet, remember that you have a body, remember that theater is a physical art; listen to people, listen to everyone, don't worry about whether you can use everything for a play; just keep trucking; produce your own stuff; be your own agent; go to the New Dramatists library and read as much as you can; write for specific actors you trust with a goal towards production.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I did the text for boomerang dance's upcoming show Shred at FLICfest. I just made a music video for a great band called Poor Remy. I'll also be in Aspen at the end of the month (and back in NYC in January) representing Northwestern at the Theater Masters MFA Festival.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 632: Graham Farrow

Graham Farrow

Hometown: Middlesbrough, Yorkshire, England

Current Town: Yarm-on-Tees, Yorkshire, England

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I've just finished the screenplay for my own stageplay Talk about the Passion, which is in advanced development as a motion picture with a film company in London; am about to adapt my stageplay Rattlesnakes for another London film company and am currently playing around with a new stageplay. Busy times... ha ha!!

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 remember being at school and it wasn't particularly cool to be good at English or Maths (or any subject to be honest!) and I was praised by my English teacher for a particularly good story which I had written and she wanted to nominate me for a school merit award. Goaded by some friends, I declined, and was pulled aside by the teacher at the end of the lesson. She told me, in no uncertain terms, to stop acting like a two year old, ignore the idiots in the class and accept that I had a talent for writing and that I should embrace it. I did embrace it and I owe my teacher a huge debt of gratitude. I have never forgotten her. She believed in me!

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

A: Less Shakespeare, Jacobean etc etc theatre and focus on the now and the relevant. And more money.. ha ha!!

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: I've always loved American playwrights; Arthur Miller (who is name checked in Talk about the Passion), Albee, Shepard, La Bute and especially Mamet. He is the man! Exciting, visceral, challenging. American theatre is great and constantly evolving.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Relevant, modern day theatre excites me. Theatre that's not scared to go down, dark and dirty, that's not scared to let other companies produce Shakespeare and go with some lesser known, exciting new voices. There's nothing like theatre when its done well. It's so involving. When you see the spit flying, the blood spurting and the sweat dripping you are really part of something, an experience which is like no other. It's electric!

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

A: Advice? Stick at it! Do your research. Look for companies who produce the sort of work you are writing and who interest you. Approach them, get a rapport going. And see as much theatre as you can to get the feel of it, read plays to understand the structure. Theatre is not like film, it's a totally different medium and needs to be reflected in how you set about initially writing your play. And finally, write, write, write, write, write and write! It took many years for my first production and I never gave up. Now, thankfully, I have a career because I believed in myself. Believe in yourself!

Q: Plugs, please:

A: A busy, exciting twelve months coming up. Looking forward to going to Kansas City in July to see a production of Talk about the Passion and a production of Rattlesnakes by the terrific Springs Ensemble Theatre Company in Colorado Springs. I think that's going to be a top production which I'm really looking forward to. There are a few things in incubation which are very exciting which will mean working with some really great theatre companies and top actors on both sides of the Atlantic.

 

 

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I Interview Playwrights Part 631: Monica Bauer

Monica Bauer

Hometown: Omaha, Nebraska

Current town: Derby, CT

Q:  Tell me about upcoming solo shows:

A:  Made for Each Other is a play for one actor playing four parts, about a gay marriage that may or may not happen. I wrote it for an actor I knew well, John Fico. I melded some of his own experiences with my experience watching my mother in law die from Alzheimer's, then fictionalized it all. It's not a typical solo show, it's a real play.

The Year I Was Gifted is an autobiographical show I perform myself, about my year as a scholarship student at the Interlochen Arts Academy, where I met my first gay friend. I had to decide whether or not to put my scholarship at risk to stand up for gay rights. I call it a gay-straight love story.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  Doing revisions of Porter's Will. It was done recently as a staged reading at the Planet Connections Theater Festivity, and won for Best Overall Production of a Staged Reading, but that doesn't mean I'm done with it!

Q:  Tell me a story about your childhood that explains who you are as an artist or as a person.

A: I got kicked out of Catholic school in the 6th grade for heresy. Enough said...

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

A:  I'd make it easier to get second productions of good plays after the premiere!

Q:  Who are your theatrical heroes?

A:  Kate Snodgrass and Gary Garrison. I love Arthur Miller and Martin McDonough equally; go figure.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I need a real story with a beginning, middle, and an end. I describe myself as Aristotle's Bitch when it comes to structure, but I also need to be moved emotionally.

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

A:  Write the play that only you can write.And don't forget the funny; especially when you're writing characters with big needs and big stakes, make the audience comfortable enough to follow your characters all the way.

Q:  Plugs:

A:  Both solo shows are running at Stage Left Studio Off-Off Broadway in a double bill we are calling "The Gifted Series". You can see one or both. Gifted is on at 7pm, Made for Each Other is on at 9pm, every Friday night beginning February 7th's preview, with a special talkback moderated by Martin Denton of Indie Theater Now.Running every Friday night from Feb. 7th through the end of March. Tickets and discounts at http://www.stageleftstudio.net/

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I Interview Playwrights Part 630: Chris Van Strander

Chris Van Strander

Hometown:  West Catasauqua, PA

Current Town:  New York City, NY

Q:  Tell me about Edison's Elephant.

A:  Edison’s Elephant is a play, co-written by David Koteles and myself, about the January 4th, 1903 public execution (by electrocution) of Topsy, a former circus elephant, on Coney Island. The electrocution was engineered by Thomas Edison, and filmed by his Edison Studios. The play examines this event from several viewpoints: that of Edison himself; Whitey, Topsy’s keeper; and various spectators (including a young boy). The play moves around in time, detailing the events leading up to the electrocution, as well as its future ramifications.

David and I had chatted about the Topsy story over brunch last summer (he thought there was a play in it). Soon after, David asked if I had anything to pitch to Metropolitan Playhouse for their Gilded Stage Festival. I said no, and asked him if he was pitching anything; he said no. So I suggested we collaborate. We decided to write about Topsy. I staked out the portions of the story which I most connected with, and David did the same. We eventually wedded our material into Edison’s Elephant.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  This summer I’m going to Minneapolis to workshop Retrospective, a play about the art world. In it, a curator dismantles the shack of a reclusive outsider artist, then reassembles it for display inside her museum.

I’m also working on another play I can’t talk about. It’s called The Revenger’s Tragedy.

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

A:  The Swiss Family Robinson was a story from my childhood which deeply affected me. This section in particular explains a lot about who I am as a writer and as a person:

“The ship had sailed for the purpose of supplying a young colony, she had therefore on board every conceivable article we could desire in our present situation; our only difficulty, indeed, was to make a wise selection. A large quantity of powder and shot we first secured, and as Fritz considered that we could not have too many weapons, we added three excellent guns, and a whole armful of swords, daggers, and knives. We remembered that knives and forks were necessary, we therefore laid in a large stock of them, and kitchen utensils of all sorts. Exploring the captain's cabin, we discovered a service of silver plate and a cellaret of good old wine; we then went over the stores, and supplied ourselves with potted meats, portable soups, Westphalian hams, sausages, a bag of maize and wheat, and a quantity of other seeds and vegetables. I then added a barrel of sulphur for matches, and as much cordage as I could find. All this—with nails, tools, and agricultural implements—completed our cargo, and sank our boat so low that I should have been obliged to lighten her had not the sea been calm.”

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

A:  It would pay its artists a living wage.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Playwrights I admire and learn from include: Caryl Churchill, Chuck Mee, Irene Fornes, Mac Wellman, Jeff Jones, August Wilson, Naomi Wallace, Franz Xavier Kroetz, William Shakespeare, Edward Bond, Eric Overmyer, W. David Hancock, Witkacy, Thornton Wilder, and Samuel Beckett.

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

A:  Cut.

Don’t write what you know. Expand what you know.

Be the most ruthless critic of your own work.

Submit everywhere—but never before the play’s ready.

Great actors are gold; hang tight to them: I’ve been waiting to write a role for a certain actor in Edison’s Elephant for 15 years.

Be a genuinely nice person—not false-nice, party-nice. If you talk shit about someone/their play behind their back, it WILL get back to them. Then they’ll know you’re just a big fake.

Others’ advice which has helped me:

Jose Rivera’s Assumption 6: “Each line of dialogue is like a piece of DNA, potentially containing the entire play and its thesis.”

Fornes: “The presence of the Author violates the life of the Character. Your characters need autonomy; let them do and say what they wish. Manipulate them ONLY once they have life.”

Fornes again: “The meandering, ‘useless’ place has great value. It’s better to explore too much than to be too rigid.”

Wellman: “Avoid at all costs the horrible Swamp of the Already Known.”

Lynn Nottage: “Don't waste your time; get to the real thing. Sure, what's ‘real?’ Still, try to get to it.”

Bill Withers: “On your way to wonderful, you're gonna hafta pass through all right.”

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  

 

EDISON’S ELEPHANT by Chris Van Strander & David Koteles
Directed by: David Elliott
Performances: January 16th-25th, as part of Metropolitan Playhouse's Gilded Stage Festival
Tickets: http://metropolitanplayhouse.org/edisonselephanttickets

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I Interview Playwrights Part 629: Christian Durso

Christian Durso

Hometown:  Los Angeles, CA

Current Town:  At this moment I don't even know... Los Angeles I think?


Q: Tell me about SHINER.

A: SHINER is a grunge rock teen love story within a suicide pact. It's set in 1994 and these two outcast kids meet and start to bond over their crappy home lives and grunge rock and Nirvana and the release that the music gives them that young people so desperately need. Then one spirals faster into the negative side effects of that subculture and the other begins to pull out of the suicide pact. Then Kurt Cobain beats them to the punch.

I'd always wanted to write a play about Kurt Cobain. He was my first idol that I'd found outside of my parents' guidance. Nevermind was the first tape I ever purchased. When I first listened to that album the world just opened up for me. I was also going through puberty and trying to figure out who I was IN that world. Then my idol goes and blows his brains out. And I was like, "okay, so is that what we're all doing here?"

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I'm writing a six part mini series for HBO Asia that chronicles the rise and fall of two prominent families in Singapore between World War II and present day.

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 played soccer for nine years and I was not good at the sport. In nine years I think I only scored two goals. It wasn't until all my soccer friends made the high school Varsity team and I didn't that I really understood the athletic discrepancy between myself and the others. I went on to the drama club instead. Looking back, I often wish I'd been in some theatre or art camp rather than at soccer practice, but I think it was helpful to do something for so long because I liked it and not because I got any recognition for it.

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

A: Ticket prices. It's prohibitively expensive to cultivate new audiences. Broadway is already out of control. But even the retail ticket price of an off-off house can be north of fifty bucks. It's hard to get new audiences to come out for that when they can stay home, turn on Netflix for ten bucks a month and watch TV shows that some of America's best playwrights are writing for anyway.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: All of the dead guys, of course: Shakespeare, Chekhov, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill. I also adore Tracy Letts, Adam Rapp, Sarah Ruhl. They've all made me cry in dark theatres or in my room reading their work. So has Leslye Headland, Dan LeFranc, Halley Feiffer, Rajiv Joseph.

The whole early 90's grunge movement in Seattle, too. Seriously. Those bands made music the way I think theatre artists should make theatre. They were just nuts for it and no one was thinking about their career. They rehearsed in basements and played shows in parking lots when they couldn't book even tiny venues. It was all about the music. They were theatrical, they literally lit stages on fire (not exactly pyrotechnics either, closer to arson). The kind of energy in that movement changed rock and roll forever. The bands from that era are definitely among my theatrical heroes.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Theatre that really goes to the end of the line and then a little further. I love it when I can't believe I'm witnessing what I'm witnessing. Bold actions make strong characters. "She's not about to... no... no!" Those kinds of moments really turn me on. Unlike film or tv where we are kind of desensitized to action, it really carries in the theatre.

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

A: First of all, advice isn't worth much. Everyone has their own backgrounds, resources, ways of working, tastes, their own luck and timing. And full disclosure, I still feel like I'm just starting out myself. But I think it is worth mentioning that you're better off writing about that really ugly secret inside of you that you're so sure no one is going to want to see on stage. You already know what that subject or topic or event is. You've thought about it a thousand times and probably experienced shame or regret whenever it comes up. And that thing that pulls at you in those moments...? ...that's your voice. Tame that motherfucker and trap it on the page. Let it scream on that blank white paper. Because whatever it is, your secret is far more universal that you probably think. Dress it in solid dramatic action and a bit of structure and you'll connect people into feeling less alone with their own secrets.

Also: The Pandora Ambient station is bad ass writing music.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: FaultLine is doing a run of SHINER at San Francisco's new Piano Fight theater in April 2014 to mark the 20 year anniversary of Cobain's death.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 628: Louise Munson

Louise Munson

Hometown: Princeton, NJ

Current Town: Los Angeles, CA

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I'm just starting to work on a new full-length that's inspired by a one-act I wrote that went up last June called Montana. I wrote the one-act for three amazing actresses: Melissa Stephens, Katie Lowes, and Amy Rosoff. The play is about three women in their early 30's and their last night, their graduation night from an MFA program, in the middle of nowhere. They're about to go their separate ways for forever, and it's about storytelling, the complications and joys of female friendships and being really smart at certain things while having no clue how to do certain adult things that, unfortunately, are necessary to learn in order to grow up.

I'm also writing a lot of notes (procrastinating) for a rewrite I'm gathering up the strength to do for my play called Luigi, which will have its premiere with L.A.'s Inkwell Theatre Co. in July. It sounds like a long time away, but a lot of the play is in Italian, and I just got back from visiting my family there, so I feel like I should do it before I forget everything they said and more importantly how they said it. They're all great storytellers, and just being around them is exciting as a writer. I'm pretty sure they're the reason I'm so attracted to being around actors, because, well, every single one is a performer in their own way.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Chekhov. I spent two years at Bennington just reading and rereading his stories and plays. I had these long reading lists with all these gaps in my education, and instead of filling those gaps, I would just keep going back to him. I don't think I'm wrong, either. I read his stuff anytime I'm feeling petty or small; he's the best bullshit detector I know of. Also, actors. I love great actors, I think it's good for a playwright to fall in love with actors. The actors I write for make me a million times better. They're the reason I can be so hard on my work and not be precious about it. I cut, rewrite mercilessly because I know if my work is not as good as they are, it's not as fun for them or for me. And there's nothing more fun or joyful than being in a rehearsal room where the writer, director and actors are working at their best.

But my real heroes are writers, always have been, only most of them are not playwrights. There's Deborah Eisenberg, Grace Paley (her short stories are an amazing study in dialogue), Tillie Olsen, Louis C.K., Joan Didion, John Cage, Salinger, George Saunders (as a writer and human being), Nabokov, Beckett, Pirandello, Calvino, Woody Allen, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop. That's a lot, and there's more, but finding those writers that tug on something inside of you are the best mentors you can have. I remember when I was little my brother told me that the best mentors are dead, so I better start reading. I always think of that. The best thing you can do is get permission to write from your heroes, permission to get out of your own way, and then give that permission to others as well as you can with your own work.

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

A:  I wish I had better advice than just keep writing, keep doing it, keep getting better and truer and closer to your own voice. Good work does get noticed, I've seen it happen to others and experienced it myself, and it takes a long time to make good work, so be okay with that, push hard but be patient. Try to get produced, and if necessary produce your stuff yourself. You'll be exhausted and broke but you'll learn more sitting in the back of an actual audience watching your words than you will any other way. Try your best to put blinders on and find the joy in making stuff and find people you love to create with and be loyal to them while widening your circle at the same time. Be kind, while learning to protect your work (this can sometimes be a difficult balance, but it's worth the effort to try to get it right). After a production or project is done, give yourself the space and time to be alone with yourself and your work, even if the work means daydreaming.

Trust your imagination and protect it from your impatience. Also, this seems obvious but READ! Read everything--fiction, poetry, non-fiction, plays--that you're even remotely curious about, you have no idea how it might influence your work or hit you in a certain way that may end up influencing your work in that magical, unexpected way that can make a piece of work sing. I have to remind myself of this stuff everyday, I think it's part of the deal no matter where you are on the road. Avoid people who just say, "Wow that's really hard," or whatever. I've seen people become totally discouraged because of the people they choose to surround themselves with. Try to be selective and generous at once. Life is hard, might as well find something worthwhile that's bigger than you and devote yourself to it. In short: No matter what, keep going.

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