I Interview Playwrights Part 289: Jen Silverman

Jen Silverman

Hometown: I was born in Simsbury, CT & went to high school there later. Between being born and being officially educated, I lived in Europe, Asia, and Scandinavia, returning to Simsbury from time to time to learn how to be American. Let me know if it paid off.

Current Town: Iowa City, Iowa. Finishing up my MFA at the Iowa Playwrights Workshop.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  A few different things, all at once, including trying to type this, pack a suitcase, make a sandwich, and drink a mason jar full of coffee without spilling it everywhere. Oh, you mean theatre?

I’m working on a final draft of my play “Gilgamesh’s Game” that I workshopped at Seven Devils Playwrights Conference this summer (playwrights, these people are gold, apply!), and on a second draft of a new play called “Still,” which came from a series of conversations with writer and professor Lisa Heineman about stillbirth and homebirth. Until this project I’d never thought much about the kind of reverberations (both personal and political) that the loss of a newborn sends through a family and a community. Lisa is currently working on a book about her experience of stillbirth, and our conversations have been quite a learning experience for me as a person and also as a writer—how to interrogate questions of loss, choice, and community in a way that is new and fresh while also being honest.

I’m also starting work on a new play for which I got a research grant this summer. As a kid I lived in Tokyo for a bit, then after undergrad I moved back to live in the rural south, in Okayama. I’ve been back to Japan every year since I moved away from Okayama, and this past summer I came back specifically to conduct interviews in the small but vibrant community of South Africans living and working in Japan. Many of the interviews have to do with their reasons for coming to Japan, the lives they’ve created there, the ones they’ve left behind, and the intricate balancing act of positioning themselves between worlds.

The impetus for the research and the play came from conversations I’ve had for the past four years with my close friend, South African photographer and writer Marilu Snyders. In some ways this project is a continuation of the conversations we started in 2006 when we were kicking around the mountains of Okayama together, drinking terrible vending-machine coffee and talking about identity, culture, place, roots.

Marilu and a number of other friends have been telling me that incredible things are happening in South Africa right now—musically, artistically, in terms of creativity and self-expression, despite (or in response to) violence and poverty and political corruption. So for them there’s this thing of, “Do I have the responsibility to go back and be part of that? Or do I want to stay in this life I’ve built for myself here?” And for me—I feel like I’ve spent maybe 95% of my adult life asking myself that specific question: Do I stay or do I go, where do I belong, how does the life I’m building in this particular country/ state fit into the one I left and the one I’m moving toward. I have a complicated relationship with my nationality—as, perhaps, do most American artists—and embedded in that are questions about my responsibility to America as an artist, as a citizen, as someone who has had ample opportunities to cut ties and run, but keeps coming back.

Which is all to say: I’m starting work on the first draft of the play now. It feels harder to write and larger than almost anything I’ve worked on recently. Which means I’m looking forward to it.
Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A:  I was homeschooled until high school, which meant that upon completing the requisite lessons in the morning, I spent a lot of afternoons running around the streets of various towns, cities, and countries, improving my language skills by talking to strangers. Almost without fail, they would ask if I was cutting school, and I’d explain that I was homeschooled, and then all hell would break loose. They’d want to know if I was locked in the basement every morning with stale bread and Bible verses, if my parents believed in electricity, and if they needed to call the cops to rescue me. Some of the more enterprising ones (particularly in English-speaking countries, and almost invariably in the US) would administer impromptu reading tests, or assign me math problems. Their shock at my ability to read and do math was always a mixture of gratifying and insulting. As a kid I became very stubborn about knowing how to do things that I knew I wasn’t expected to know how to do.

I still find moments as an adult in which I recognize this. When I first moved to Okayama I started training martial arts there. The moment that clinched my absolute determination to train was the moment in which a group of extremely well-intentioned town ladies asked me if I wouldn’t rather learn how to arrange flowers, as young women aren’t conditioned to be able to fight. (I said No thank you, I'd rather fight, and for a precarious moment we all balanced on the edge of an international incident.)

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

A:  More affordable for audiences. While lucrative enough to sustain the lives of playwrights. Oops, that’s two.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Sarah Kane—I find her fearless and angry and hopeful, and I take comfort in seeing those things coexist in her work. Naomi Wallace, who taught me that politics onstage can be a visceral, personal, impact on flesh. Caryl Churchill, Jose Rivera, Martin McDonagh. Sherry Kramer, who has been a wonderful and generous teacher. The class about to graduate from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop: Kevin Artigue, Jess Foster, Andrew Saito, and dramaturg Christine Scarfuto—all four have had a deep impact on my work and my hopes for theatre over the past almost-three years. Finally, the novelist Haruki Murakami and the film directors Takashi Miike and Wong Kar-Wei have had a huge influence on what I find compelling, beautiful and exciting.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theatre of hunger & desire. Theatre that tells driving difficult stories. Theatre that is visceral, that leaves bruises—you don’t walk out the way you walked in. Theatre of fluid lines and easily crossed boundaries— multilingual, multi-national, multi-mythic. Anything that surprises me, that plays with or complicates its structure in a way that feeds its content. Theatre that feels like a shared secret.

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

A:  Be bold. Write all the plays you’re scared to write because you think they’ll cause trouble or offend people. BUT: take responsibility for your choices—don’t be provocative because it’s stylish, be provocative in response to something, to interrogate something, to accomplish something.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you should not write genders, ethnicities, or cultures that are not your own—BUT (and this is a big BUT) do your research. Listen to authentic voices coming from the communities you’re trying to write. Let those voices tell you when you’re offbase. Make sure at all moments that you are writing with integrity and not clinging to a preconceived story you want to tell. The minute you write outside of your identity, it isn’t about you anymore, it’s about a responsibility you have to the community you’re portraying.

Finally, advocate for each other. We’re in this crazy world together. That pretty much makes us family.


Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Check out Counterpoint Theatre Co (counterpointtheatre.org/), a new international US/UK group based out of New York. They just produced a short play of mine called “Love In the Time of Dolores” in their festival called What’s Love Got To Do With It?—my play was about cannibalism, as one might expect. Also, I have a reading of a new full-length play coming up March 21 with id Theatre’s NYC Sit In reading series (http://www.idtheater.org/). And if you're in New Mexico, check out FUSION Theatre Co (http://fusionabq.com/)— they've been a creative home for me for some time, and I've been in residence there on and off since 2008, developing a trilogy of plays based in Albuquerque. Lastly, these are two groups that I love more than hot chocolate (with a splash of rum) on a cold winter day: larktheatre.org/ and http://newgeorges.org/

A last plug— My brother is a graphic designer and visual artist who's designed a number of posters for shows of mine. I've always found his work unusual, quirky, and inspiring. Check him out at csilverman.com/.

I Interview Playwrights Part 288: Lally Katz

Lally Katz

Hometown:
I was born in Trenton New Jersey. But we moved to Miami when I was three, and then to Australia when I was eight and three quarters.

Current Town:
Melbourne, Australia.

Q:  Tell me about your upcoming play with the Production Company.

A:  In the play, the internet has its own cities. They're cities you can physically go to. The city this play focuses on is Myspace New York. It's about this girl who leaves her hometown for Myspace New York, and when she gets there, she falls in love with someone who's not capable of being a true part of life anymore. The play follows her journey in Myspace New York. It's kind of a comedy and kind of a tragedy. Oliver Butler, the director from the Debate Society is directing it. He's really very brilliant. I'm loving working with him and the cast.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I've got three premieres coming up in Australia next year, they're called 'A Golem Story', 'Neighbourhood Watch' (which is about the 84 year old Hungarian lady who lives across the street from me in Melbourne and is kind of my best friend and sometimes enemy) and 'Return to Earth'.

Q:  How would characterize Australian theater?

A:  Gosh, there are so many different kinds of Australian theatre. But I think that a lot of Australian theatre that really works kind of subtly sidles into what it's doing- so that you don't realise where it's going until it's there.

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

A:  Sorry this is really long!

When I was about fourteen years old, I want caving (spelunking) with my outdoor education class at high school. We repelled deep into this cave called the Punchbowl. It was dark and you had to negotiate your way down, wearing a headlamp, and bouncing off of and scrambling down a forty meter (don't know what that is in feet or yards) cave wall. Once in the cave, we went for all these adventures. In the dark. Through chambers full of bats. Sliding down a wall in a place called The Ballroom Chamber where it sounded like music was playing because of the voices of the bats. Over never ending holes in the ground, that you had to kind of edge around or jump over. After these adventures we went back to the base of the forty meter cave wall that we had repelled down. The only way up, was by climbing a very thin, shaky sort of silver metal and chain ladder. I was very scared about this. At the bottom of the ladder, was a sort of grave, made of rocks. Our teachers said this grave was fake and a joke that spelunkers had made. But the longer I was down there, at the bottom of the ladder, the more I began to feel that this grave was real.

I started to think that the grave was for this half bat, half man creature that now roamed the cave, looking for young girls as victims. I got more and more frightened. It became kind of an intense claustrophobic feeling.

When it finally came my turn to climb up the ladder, I was terrified. I was pretty sure I would fall down it and die. But I was sure that if I didn't climb it, then the I would be killed by the creature from the grave.

When I finally reached the top of the cave wall, I sat down, so relieved, in the opening of the cave. It was mostly closed in, but from the top, I could see the sky and all the bright, bright stars. I guess I was kind of halluncinating. Because when I sat there, watching the remaining students climbing from the pitch black, up out of the cave, I would see the light of the headtorches gliding over the cave walls. And I could, so clearly and realistically painted into the cavewalls portraits of young women. Their faces, their expressions, their personality. And I knew these were the young women that this half bat, half man had kept in the cave, sacrificing so that he could taste life and light. I was so sure it was real.

When I got home, I wrote about this giant bat/man creature sacrificing a girl in the cave. For some reason, I decided to write it as a play. I'd never written a play before. But it just seemed right. I haven't stopped writing plays since then.

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

A:  I guess I would change it so that mainstream theater was made for audiences of all different ages, of all different demographics and that we trusted that audiences wanted to launch off into places they haven't been.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Here are just some- I have more- but it will start getting crazy if I list all the people and companies I admire in theatre: Mac Wellman, Robyn Nevin, Caryl Churchill, Thorton Wilder

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  It doesn't matter what style it is. As long as it's true to itself, has a pulsating heart that you can feel, and that humbles you, changes you, challenges you.

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

A:  Just put on a play. Get anyone you can- even if the only people you can find aren't quite right- just get them and put something on. That's how you learn. By seeing and hearing your work. Also, see as much theatre as you can. Go and see all the theatre- every different type as often as possible. Also, read your own work outloud to someone you trust- it helps you to know exactly what it is, what parts work and what parts need work.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: Plug for 'Goodbye New York, Goodbye Heart' at the Here Center:
http://www.productioncompany.org/productions/goodbye.shtml

I Interview Playwrights Part 287: Anne Garcia-Romero

Anne Garcia-Romero

Hometown: Wellesley, MA

Current Town: South Bend, IN

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I'm working on my play, Paloma, which had a great reading at the Open Fist Theater Company in Los Angeles last August. The play explores the lives of a young inter-faith couple in 2004 New York City and Madrid and how their religious differences threaten to demolish their love. The play is inspired by a gorgeous fourteenth century Muslim Spanish text, Ring of the Dove by Ibn Hazm, that considers all the permutations of love.

I've also translated an acclaimed Spanish play, The Gronholm Method, by Jordi Galceran, which was produced in Australia last summer. Galceran's play has already been successfully produced in Spain, Latin America, Europe and Russia with a current revival recently opened in Barcelona. A dark comedy about four job applicants vying for a top corporate position, The Gronholm Method examines the question: How far would you go to land your dream job?

I'm also just starting a new play so I can't say too much yet only that I've been studying the works of Mexican visual artist, Martin Ramirez, as inspiration. I'm working on the play as part of my Moreau fellowship in the department of Film, Television and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame. We're aiming to workshop the play next year at Notre Dame.

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 traveled to Barcelona from Massachusetts with my Spanish father when I was seven. We went to visit my great great uncle, a celebrated Spanish painter and sculptor. I walked through Tio (uncle in Spanish) Vicente's home gallery in awe of his work ranging from striking portraits to an expressionistic series on circus performers to stunning sculptures of voluptuous women. Tio Vicente wore a burgundy bathrobe and had long white hair down to his shoulders framing his cool chunky horned rim glasses. I held onto my dad's hand as my young mind soaked in this artistic abundance. I treasure the black and white photo from that day: I lean into my smiling dad, holding his index finger with a look of contentment on my face, next to my serene Tio Vicente.

This story contains many elements of my journey as a writer. As a Spanish-American, I gain much of my inspiration from the Latin world and often write about how the Anglo and Latin worlds collide, intersect and transform each other. I also draw huge inspiration from my father's Spanish family of artists. Dealing with loss has also been an area I've continually explored as a writer. My father passed away while I was in college. Surviving the death of a parent has greatly shaped who I am. Learning how fleeting life can be fueled my passion to pursue my writing.

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

A:  If I could change one thing about U.S. theater, theater companies would produce a wider, broader range of plays by women and men who fully represent the cultural complexity of twenty-first century U.S. culture. Theatergoers would then have access to a huge selection of diverse theatrical worlds that would challenge, entertain, delight and intrigue them. The U.S. theater would be on the cutting edge of social change and an apt mirror to contemporary society.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  My theatrical heroes who are with us in spirit only include Federico Garcia Lorca, Lope de Vega, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, William Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams.

My theatrical heroes who are still with us in body and spirit include Maria Irene Fornes, Nilo Cruz and Griselda Gambaro.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I am excited when I go to the theater and see a play that is culturally complex, linguistically innovative, aesthetically adventuresome, impeccably produced and has a running time of less than two hours.

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

A:  Keep writing. Trust your instincts. Find your tribe. Produce your own work at least once. Try directing your own work. See a ton of theater to hone your skills and discover what you really like in a play. Read widely. Know that in most cases you will have to do something in addition to playwriting to earn a living so find that work which you enjoy and gives you time to write. Buy the Dramatists Sourcebook and submit your work to lots of places that appeal to you. Cultivate a spirit of generosity toward your peers. Playwriting is a marathon, not a sprint. Continue on the journey and know that there are many definitions of success. And above all, always, always keep writing.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My play, Desert Longing, was just published by Playscripts. It's part of a wonderful collection of short plays about Latino history in California. http://www.playscripts.com/play?playid=1544

Visit my website: www.annegarciaromero.com



Check out these wonderful playwrights' websites too:

www.adrianasevan.com

www.brookeberman.net

www.caridadsvich.com

www.elaineromero.com

www.juliehebert.com

www.quiara.com

I Interview Playwrights Part 286: Tony Adams

Tony Adams

Hometown:  Rives Jct., MI

Current Town:  Chicago, IL.

Q:  Tell me about Trickster.

A:  Trickster takes place in-between the spirit world and a war ravaged Southwest reminiscent of the dust bowl. The human world of the play is pretty brutal place--a mixture of the old testament, the southwest during the war on Geronimo and Juárez today. The spirit world will use masks and movement, and the characters on earth will be puppets. (Though not actual puppets, they'll be actors playing puppets.) It's bawdy and brutal, beautiful and brokenhearted. There'll be music and sex and fighting and fun. It's a re-imagining of the legends of Don Juan, Coyote tales and the Genesis account of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar. In a lot of ways it uses stories from the past as a mask to talk about today.

Part of it is an artistic response to a day when my daughter Charlotte was about a year old. She was standing next to the TV while I was flipping through the channels. A music video came on, I forget which, and I thought "this is a good song". Then I looked at the screen. Looked at Charlotte, and back to the screen. In that moment all the images I'd seen of women growing up, seen but not noticed, exploded in my head when I looked back at Charlotte and connected the dots. I've been trying to figure out that explosion in my head since.

When I had initially conceived of the show, three or four years ago, it was different. I was different. The economy was humming along, Tony Jr. wasn't walking, Charlotte wasn't born yet and Mom hadn't yet gotten sick. Since that point the economy imploded, Tony Jr'.s huge, Charlotte is talking in full sentences and Mom passed away.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  Being the best husband and father I can be; directing Caridad Svich's Iphegenia... (a rave fable); Producing and curating The Alcyone Festival; giving whatever support I can to the amazing artists I'm lucky enough to work with; trying to grow Halcyon to the point where we can pay people more than a pittance; and failing miserably at catching up to the stack of play submissions I've been sent from other writers.

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

A:  When I was little, I spent a lot of time on my Granny and Pa's farm. In addition to corn, fruit and vegetables that they sold at a farm market out front, they raised chickens and guinea fowl. We would eat them and sell some to pay for food for the winter. My dad had been laid off from the prison where he worked. (Things were so bad in Michigan around then they were laying off people who were supposed to be guarding convicts.) I didn't realize what poor meant, or that we ate at Granny and Pa's so much because we didn't have much food then--I just knew that's how we were able to eat.
When time came to harvest the birds, everyone would come over and each person had a different job. My brothers and cousins would get the birds out of the coup and carry them to my grandpa, dad and uncles who had a tree stump and hatchet and would chop off their heads. Granny, mom and my aunts would pluck their feathers and clean them. Mom told me that, when I was like four, one of my first jobs was to get the headless chickens from the stump to the women. I'd spend all day chasing chickens with their heads cut off, covered in blood, and taking them up to the women with a huge smile on my face. It was the only thing they could think of to tire me out.

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

A:  I would make producers stop being cowards without the vision and backbone to put up what they know in their heart can be great. Not good, Great. To stop hiding behind audiences, step out front and put their weight behind something or someone that gets them so fired up they are compelled to share it. And if an AD can no longer find something that revs them up to that point, stop going through the motions, step down and get out of the way so someone else can.

I know a lot of people talk about how great and open European audiences are, but from my experience they aren't any more or less open than American audiences. The big difference I saw when I was there was there were producers with the vision and courage to go beyond the very narrow, homogeneous, stories and writers that get routinely produced here. The world isn't a homogeneous place, but you'd never know if from sitting in most houses.

I firmly believe that there is no challenge facing theatres that leadership, courage and vision can't overcome. But there's only two ways you can get people talking about your organization: inspire them or piss them off. If you can do both at the same time, they're hooked. If you can't inspire people or create an experience that will blow them away, there's very little reason for them to come back.

If you are timid, you lose. We have way too many timid producers, and it shows across the field.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Ariane Mnouchkine, Hélène Cixous, María Irene Fornés, Federico García Lorca

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  In science, I think there's only two ways that we can truly find out more about our universe: point a big telescope up to the heavens and try to figure out the expansiveness of it all, or go in a lab and smash atoms together to see what what forces drive everything around us.

Theatre that can approach either is exciting. King Lear, What of the Night or Caroline or Change on one end and Safe, The Brothers Size and Chad Deity on the other. I'm not as interested in polish as I am in power.

Because I wear so many different hats, producer, writer, director, designer, etc. it takes a lot for me to just forget where I am and fully live in the story the actors are telling. I can enjoy a play immensely but never get fully enveloped by it. It's rare, but on some nights, when every thing is clicking and you can forge a connection among strangers and feel that communal energy when you're taken away to some amazing new place or some new world you hadn't noticed right in front of you, forgetting everything outside the story and just live, just be completely alive in the moment you're sharing with a group of strangers--that's what truly excites me.

I know it probably sounds like some silly thing you're taught in school, but if you've had that experience--whether through theatre or music or sports or politics, whatever--it's addictive. People spend their entire lives trying to recreate and relive those moments.

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

A:  When I was studying in Paris, I had applied for an internship working with a Parisian theatre and was turned down by my college because my GPA wasn't high enough. The woman who ran the program on-site asked why I didn't do an internship. I was open and told her I really wanted to but my grades weren't good enough to qualify. She looked at me blankly then furrowed her brow and said, "Who told you you can't do that? A piece of paper? That's stupid. Go do it."

So I did. She helped me and called a friend who was an actor and hooked me up with an internship with a Arguia Theatre, a small theatre doing a show at Théâtre du Chaudron-- who only houses plays directed by women. It was right next to Le Théâtre du Soleil. The first day I was there they asked me what I wanted to learn and I said, "everything." They laughed at that, but because I asked, everyone took the time to help me learn and pass along whatever knowledge they could to offer.

I worked my ass off and learned a lot and then they asked me to stay on for another month or two and help them with a festival they were doing with La Tempête, another theatre in that crazy compound. I didn't know it was 41 plays in rep (with around 275 actors) by a who's who of French theatre. It was an amazing thing to see firsthand. I was very lucky, I was working 30-40 hours a week at what was essentially a poor storefront and at the same time was able to watch and interact with some of the most amazing artists in Paris.

I think everything that has been good in my life since has followed the same pattern. I guess that's a long way to say: be open; don't be afraid to ask; work your ass off; recognize when you're lucky; thank the people who are helping you; and if someone tells you you can't do something--That's stupid. Go do it. And if push comes to shove, don't worry about trying to get your foot in the door--just kick the damn door off it's hinges and go.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:
Trickster opens January 6th, Iphigenia opens February 17th and the Alcyone Festival opens June 9th. All are at the Greenhouse Theater, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave in Chicago (the old Body Politic and Victory Gardens space for folks who haven't been in Chicago in a while.)

I Interview Playwrights Part 285: christopher oscar peña

christopher oscar peña

Hometown:  San Jose, CA

Current Town: New York City by way of Manhattan (Harlem!) - thats for all the brooklynites

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  It'd be nice if this were a straight-forward one project answer but it never is! I'm currently in the Catskill Mountains in this ridiculous estate on a ten day retreat with Terra Firma Theater. The company is rehearsing a workshop of an adaptation of Bergmans "Cries and Whispers" and they brought me up as playwright-in-residence to work on whatever. I'm beginning a rough (read: ideas in mind, about to write page one) brand new jazz based musical, set in the 1920's in a brothel in new orleans with composer Jesse Gelber. I'm also in the middle of rewrites on my play Icarus Burns which I have a deadline on very soon, and I also just got a book agent and am in the process of writing my first novel for young adults. So it's a very busy, very exciting time. When I get back to the city in a few days, I'll also continue shooting my web series 80/20 (which i cowrote with Vayu O'Donnell) and am also acting in. We have a RIDICULOUS cast (Shannon Esper, Jennifer Ikeda, Matt Rauch, Michael Izquierdo, Mike Crane, Hannah Cabell, Lucas Near-Verbrughhe, to name a few) and Wendy McLellan is the lead director on it. Everyone's been very generous and is excited about the project so that's amazing obviously. I have a deadline on a musical I'm writing with Parker Ferguson that was commissioned by Carlos Armesto's Theatre C, so that needs to get done. Oh yea, I'm also starting to write song songs, like non-theater songs with Kevin Joaquin Garcia. Kevin's one of my best friends in the world, an extraordinarily talented musician, and on top of collaborating on the web series, we have a variety of projects in the works that we're very excited about. I've always loved music and though I don't know a lot about it practically, Kevin's encouraged me to pursue it, so that's come out via song lyrics. We'll see what happens.

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 knew this question was coming and I could never really put my finger on one story. When I was a kid I remember being precocious and one day wanting to be a firefighter and another wanting to be a doctor. My mom always complained about her back so I always wanted to make her feel better. But I don't know that those were ever things I really wanted to be- you know, for myself. And recently, my dad told me that when I was very young the first "when i grow up I want to be" thing I ever said, was actually a writer. Which was beautiful and stranger since I don't recall it. But it makes sense now. And also, I think as a family, my grandparents and aunts and uncles and stuff, they always talk about how I always had a book in my hand. Or if i went missing at the mall, they knew theyd find me at a bookstore. I wasn't the cool kid when I was little and I think I just grew up with books, with words. I felt safe there. In a way I think I had a very old soul very quickly, and books seemed to be the way to experience this world I always longed for and hoped would someday be real or true.

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

A:  I'm sure people wont like this, but I wish it were more hip and current. And what I mean by that: look at film, look at music, music is a phenomenal example. You have 14, 15, 16 year olds who are working. Whether you like that or not, those industries really embrace the current. And the theater, I mean its ALWAYS behind. I dont go to the theater to find new ideas. I know theaters are suffering from a lack of money, but a playwright writes something at a certain time because it means something to them at that particular moment, there is an urgency. But by the time things get produced, if they ever do, its two, three, four, five years later. Its already dated when it's new. And Broadway is all hollywood, recycled movies now. And the fact that we're an industry where 45 years olds are considered "emerging" as writers because its taken them that long to get notice. We've all read the reports on new plays and playwrights. I dont know, I do it because I love it, but when I talk to people outside of the theater, theyre not jazzed by it, and its easy to see why. Wow, that was inarticulate.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I will always think Angels In America is the greatest play of all time, and you can't convince me otherwise. So Kushner certainly is my biggest. I will always think of Naomi Iizuka as my artistic mother. I'll always credit her as the first person to show me that theater can be more than this boring dead thing I grew up feeling it was. Paula Vogel, Suzan Lori-Parks, Sarah Kane, Sarah Ruhl, Luis Alfaro, Chay Yew, Les Waters, Williams, Miller, Caryl Churchill, Ruben Polendo, Miguel Piñero, Lisa Portes, Carlos Murillo, Brecht, Joanne Akalaitis, Doug Wright, Adam Rapp, Anne Garcia-Romero, Ivo van Hove, Sam Shepard, Michael John Garces have all left an artistic footprint on my work in one way or another. All those people have been deeply influential to me in one way or another and I certainly think theyre the reason I love theater. I got my MFA from NYU and a large reason I went there was because of people who had gone or taught there: Rinne Groff, Julia Cho, Daniel Goldfarb, and Itamar Moses. I knew there work before I went to grad school, so I credit them for a lot too.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  dangerous. unconventional. surprising. weird. stuff that feels rock and roll. things that terrify me. things that confuse me. my theatrical heroes ARE the theater that excites me. but along with them, the joke has always been that I dont love things that were created before the year 2000. And in a way thats true. I am MOST excited by the work of many of my peers and contemporaries. so ill tell you some of them (including more than just writers): dan lefranc, greg moss, david adjmi, krista knight, sharif abu-hamdeh, lauren yee, bekah brunstetter, mattie brickman, stefanie zadravec, tea alagic, mike donahue, maria dizzia, the civilians, michael esper, daniel aukin, leigh silverman, quincy tyler bernsine, lou moreno, davis mccallum, evan cabnet, rolin jones, anne kauffman, matt roi berger, lauren gunderson, emily schwend, daniel tallbot, bill heck, sanjit de silva, jihan crowther, david murray, elevator repair service, aaron landsman, peter gill-sheridan, daniel alexander jones, peter sinn-nachtrieb, daniel zimmerman. anytime those artists work: GO! im always excited to read, or see what these people are doing. if i were to teach a class, they would be my syllabus. if i were 14 and in the middle of nowhere, i wouldnt want to be taught hamlet for the tenth time, i'd want to know what all these people were doing.

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

A:  its hard of course. but you have to be your best advocate. make sure you have a few good plays under your belt, and make sure until you feel they're ready, and only them, share them with people. but it has to be when you know theyre ready, because a lot of time people won't come back. know everything. that's impossible of course, but one of the greatest pieces of advice, that i think is incredibly important, is that you want to know as much as possible about the profession youre in. read everything you can get your hands on. watch as much as you can. know the work that is out there. be well read. i find it problematic when people say they want to work and live in the theater and then you ask them certain things, and you realize that they dont know much about whats out there. the more eager and sincere you are about knowing as much as possible, i think the further it'll get you. this is key. dont burn bridges. dont bad mouth people- the theater is an insanely small community and youd be surprised who hears what. support your colleagues.

i think the most valuable thing ive learned so far: is build a community. naomi used to say to me : "find your tribe."

this is one of the most underrated, important things i know to be true. find those people that you find brilliant, that you would work on anything with, that you would cry to. find the people that you want to spend the rest of your life with and support them. champion them and youll find theyll be there for you, doing the same thing. and this is about the work, but its also about the bad days when you need to go see an embarrassing chick flick. or those nights you have to have a drink. find your family. ive been lucky to have some amazing collaborators and friends. theyre the people i write for, theyre the people i recommend, theyre the people i hang out with. to that end im going to plug them: kevin garcia, shannon esper, josh barrett, vanessa wasche, vayu o'donnell, steve stout, dominic spillane, jennifer ikeda, lucas near-verbrugghe, patrick heusinger, demin borges, vonia arslanian, adam folk, mike donahue. they're talented, theyre charming, and im lucky to have them.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I'm currently a writing fellow with the Playwrights Realm so there will be a reading of my play "Icarus Burns" sometime in the new year

Also, at some point very soon, I'll be having a reading of my play "maelstrom" which I've been working on with Chay Yew at NYTW

Terra Firma will be having a workshop of "Cries and Whispers" and I'm lucky to call them home and continue developing my work with them, so you should definitely check them out

stay tuned for our upcoming webseries: 80/20

ive just secretly launched my website which ill be keeping up to date so you can find me here, see whats coming up, get in touch, all that jazz! : http://cpinthenyc.wordpress.com/

I Interview Playwrights Part 284: Lynne Kaufman

Lynne Kaufman

Hometown: The Bronx, New York City

Current Town: San Francisco

Q:  Tell me about Acid Test.

A:  After having written and produced some twenty full length plays, I've written my first one person play. I wanted to get back to uninterrupted story telling . ACID TEST is inspired by the life of Ram Dass, aka Richard Alpert. It explores his life from being a young, tenured psychology professor at Harvard in the 1960's, where, along with Timothy Leary, he ran a legal experiment using psylocibin, to his being fired by Harvard, and, with Leary, starting the psychedelic revolution.

The play traces Alpert's pilgrimage to India, where he meets his guru, and experiences spiritual enlightenment. Alpert returns to the States as Ram Dass (Hindi for Servant of God), becomes a revered spiritual teacher and sets up several major philanthropic organizations. And then he is 'stroked', paralyzed on his right side, and stricken with aphasia. Once again he has to reinvent himself.

ACID TEST interweaves the journey of a singular life, a time of cultural change, and an attempt to understand 'the big picture.' It just had its first staged reading in Independence, Kansas, where I and Adam Szymkowicz are playwrights in residence at the William Inge Theatre Festival. Simon Levy directed ACID TEST and Jonathan McMurtry played Ram Dass. It was a joy to work with such talented collaborators and the play was very well received. It will get its next outing at The Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley, CA. on Dec. 8th.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  Starting a new play,"Quick, quick, slow" about a couple on the verge of divorce who, in a last attempt to save their marriage, head to Buenos Aires to take tango lessons. Their teachers, a young Argentinian couple, have major relationship problems of their own.

How does the magic of tango 'the dance of love' change their lives.

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 8, I got my first library card and I could check out 10 books at a time. I carried them home, closed the door of my room, and lost myself in the books...The Bobbsey Twins, Little Women, Fairy Tales. Transported to another world. I became someone else. That's why I write.

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

A:  A return to regional theatre when local theatres produced local playwrights. Every working playwright needs a home.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Checkov. Shakespeare. Ibsen. Tennessee Williams. Arthur Miller. They speak to me loud and clear.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theatre that makes me think and feel and remember.

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

A:  See and read as many plays as you can. Hang out at your local theatre. Get to know the folks there. Enter contests. Join or form a playwrights group. Keep writing. Hone your own voice. Follow your own passions. It's worth it!

I Interview Playwrights Part 283: David J. Loehr

David J. Loehr
 
Hometown: LaPlata, MD (born), Dundee, FL (grew up)

Current Town: Hanover, IN

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  The script I'm currently working on is Follow-the-Lady, a noirish P.I. story that involves physics and a magician whose assistant has vanished. After that is a script named Ex Cathedra, set in a collapsing gothic cathedral. I'm also deep into the research for a script about architecture and design. And I'm working on several short pieces for a 2amt audio project, among other things.

Q:  Tell me about 2amt.

A:  2amt began in the middle of the night one night when I sent an email to sound designer Nick Keenan (New Leaf Theater and Side Project Theatre, Chicago). I'd wanted to get his opinion on a couple of ideas. Within a few minutes, we began chatting via Twitter, talking about some of those ideas. More and more people joined in, even though it was late at night by that point. I was there for about five hours' worth, never did sleep that night. The next day, Kris Vire of Time Out Chicago tweeted that he'd missed much of the "great 2am theatre summit." And the name stuck.

That conversation grew to become a community of theatre artists and companies around the world, all centered on the hashtag, #2amt. The reason for the hashtag is to make it easier to search on Twitter to find the threads of conversation and join in. It also makes it easy to archive, which we've been doing from the start. At the same time as adopting the hashtag, I set up the website, 2amtheatre.com, which has blog posts inspired by conversations and questions from the hashtag as well as posts that inspire new conversations.

From there, we've developed a podcast with profiles and interviews, we're working on creative collaborations and an online streaming new play reading series. We've also been attending conferences and developing workshops for things like social media usage, new play development, design work and more. We'll be introducing two of our new projects soon, one that features some short plays and another that uses Twitter to tell a story. Some of the ideas that have already grown out of 2amt include 360 Storytelling and Talkbackr. I created the 360 format and tested it out with my company, Riverrun Theatre, and now it's spreading to other theatre companies around the country like Strawdog in Chicago, Crowded Fire Theatre and Impact Theatre in the San Francisco area, and Glass Mind Theatre in Baltimore. Talkbackr.com is a website and application developed by Brian D. Seitel that came directly from conversations on the hashtag about audience feedback and how to gather honest reactions. There are a few more projects like that in the pipeline as well.

We like to say we're "thinking outside the black box." We know there are no one-size-fits-all ideas, but there are ideas that can scale up and down to fit different theatres at different levels. Those are the kind of ideas we like to develop.

2amt brings together folks from major regional theatres and tiny storefronts, Broadway producers and one-person touring shows, critics and playwrights, designers and journalists, and it encourages them all to mingle and share ideas, ask questions, make connections. Sometimes, the conversation is about art, sometimes marketing, maybe lighting design or play development. It's always engaging and worth dipping into. That the community thrives--that it exists at all--still amazes me.

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

A:  I grew up in my grandparents' doll museum with a family of writers and teachers. My earliest memories involve setting up displays that told a story. Following along on tours of the museum, I'd be listening and learning the history behind a certain doll or dollmaker. Often, the story of how a doll found its way into the collection would be the most interesting. By seven, I was giving tours myself, because I'd heard them almost daily and memorized the details. I'd even play with some of the dolls, creating stories of my own. At that age, a building filled with dolls, furniture and toys was a wonderland of imagination.

At the same time, watching my mother, I saw writing as part of everyday life, it's what you did when you weren't reading, cooking or hosting tours. I started to think of the museum tour as a story, then wondered how the individual stories connected. Soon, I was rearranging the order of stories on the tour, building from one to the next.

The museum was in central Florida, just a little south of Disney World; it opened for business a few months before Disney. Almost overnight, attractions sprang up throughout the area. My mother and I would go to them and figure out what stories they were trying to tell. Some worked better than others, but each one had a theme, a plot, characters...

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

A:  I would suggest regional theatre companies emulate the slow food movement in terms of supporting artists, designers and playwrights. How? Why? It's something I've been developing for a post at the 2amt site, but the short answer is, focus on your region. Cultivate the work of artists nearby. Not only does it save money in transportation & housing, it creates more interest within your community, your patrons, a sense of a "home team" if you will. If you want world premieres, then feature your own playwrights. Export those plays to other companies, import regional premieres of other shows, take part in rolling world premieres like the National New Play Network presents. It's not just a matter of economy of resources, it's a matter of developing names your audience will know, will get to know and want to know. It embraces another element that's unique about theatre--a film or tv show may come from an anonymous writer or group of writers, but a play can come from right next door. Then, by supporting regional premieres and rolling premieres, you help ensure life for a play beyond a single production.

I'll be elaborating on this at the 2amt site soon...

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Tom Stoppard, because he makes it look so simple.

Joe Papp, for showing what sheer force of will can accomplish.

David Dower, for his optimism and accessibility, his drive to bring everyone to the table.

Tom Evans, for training decades' worth of students to be better, always be better, and helping them discover how to do just that.

I know there are more, but that's the kind of question that makes my brain go blank...

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Good stories, well told.

That's glib, but true. That much is enough to remind me why we do what we do. Myself, I love stories that engage on multiple levels, that challenge me to keep up. I like a show that reaches out, grabs me by the throat and makes me pay attention. I love a show that rewards that attention.

My favorite nights of theatre are a mixed bag...in no particular order...

-- Patrick Stewart and Bill Irwin in The Tempest in Central Park, that was simply magical.

-- Anything Goes at Lincoln Center in 1987, spun sugar magic of another sort.

-- 7(x1) Samurai, a brilliant silent solo piece I've seen in DC and Cincinnati, David Gaines performing the Seven Samurai with only a bare stage, two masks and his imagination.

-- The Neo-Futurists' Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, on tour and in Chicago, which showed me new ways to tell stories.

-- And, if I'm being honest, watching Jim Stark perform Seeing Red, a script of mine about Vincent van Gogh, which is a more personal story than I'd thought when I was writing it. Seeing it transform in Jim's hands, taking that journey with the audience and talking with them afterwards, that's been thrilling.

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

A:  Find people to read your work. Find more people to read it aloud. Listen to your words in their voices. Make sure you're not writing several characters with the same voice. Refine, rework, revise. Learn the rules so you can break them. When you break them, do it with style. More important, have a better reason for breaking them than "because they're there." Get a table, some chairs and a light, tell a story with those and nothing more. Go to as much live theatre as you can, absorb it, learn from it. With every word you write, every scene you craft, every story you tell, embrace what makes theatre unique and electrify your audience. Make your own luck, but make it count. Tell stories, but make them yours. Tell your stories to whomever will listen. Leave them wanting more.

Only connect.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Well, 2amt, of course, the website being 2amtheatre.com. We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up there.

My own company, Riverrun Theatre in Madison, Indiana, is continuing our 360 Storytelling series each month. Our next production is an import from the Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis, Pure Prine, coming up this month. With that show, we're opening in a new venue, a relatively permanent space (at last) with a storefront in the heart of downtown Madison, so we're looking for folks to bring shows and help keep the space busy. We're right up the Ohio River from Louisville, KY. The website is www.riverruntheatre.org.

And my personal website is www.davidjloehr.com, which has links to some short pieces and a selection of plays in development, among other things. It's also where to find news of shows in production and scripts available for production. The Rough Guide to the Underworld is one show with a couple of tentative productions coming up in the next year--you can check out the site from the 2009 production in Washington D.C., including some video, at www.rg2underworld.com.

I Interview Playwrights Part 282: Julie Hebert

Julie Hebert

Hometown: Berwick, Louisiana

Current Town: Los Angeles, California

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  A new play commission with choreographer Deborah Slater, on the topic of women and aging, to be premiered next fall at ODC in San Francisco. Also, a pilot for CBS.

Q:  Do you have to mentally adjust when writing TV vs theater?

A:  Yes, though I think it's almost automatic now. The requirements for series television are quite specific, so fitting a story into that template is almost a technical challenge. When I'm thinking up a story for television, I try to imagine what the play version of it would be like-- which frees my imagination and opens up the story in unexpected ways. Sometimes, I can use those thoughts, sometimes not. When I begin to think of a new play... there is no template, so it's much more open-ended, and consequently it takes a lot longer to settle into the story. I love writing slowly because the surprises are deeper and stranger and more organic. Writing slowly is not possible in television. I feel I at heart I am a slow, weird, small-theater playwright passing for quick and normal in TV.

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 no iconic story that explains my impulse to write. What comes to mind is how much time I spent alone, how I craved solitude and found time for it, though I grew up in a very large family in a very small house. I remember as a child finding a hiding spot under the big Ligustrum bushes lining the fence in our backyard. I would crawl under there and just sit and listen and watch birds, wind, sky, my siblings, etc. I remember locking myself in the bathroom to read in peace. I remember taking long, long walks on the levee along the river. I still love sitting in trees and thinking of absolutely nothing.

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

A:  That the artists be paid as well and as consistently as the administrators.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Irene Fornes, Sam Shepard, Sam Beckett.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Bold, unexpected theatricality with a point of view and heart.

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

A:  Write, write, write. Write, write, write. Repeat.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My play, TREE, will be performed at Victory Gardens in Chicago next spring, directed by Andrea Diamond. TREE just won the PEN Center West Award for Drama. Also, check out www.juliehebert.com, for periodic updates. (Thanks for asking!)

I Interview Playwrights Part 281: Aditi Brennan Kapil

Aditi Brennan Kapil

Hometown: Born in Sofia, Bulgaria. Raised in Stockholm, Sweden.

Current Town: Minneapolis, MN

Q:  Tell me about your play at the Long Wharf.

A:  "Agnes under the Big Top, a tall tale" is premiering simultaneously at Mixed Blood Theatre (February) & Long Wharf Theater (March). It's a play about a handful of immigrants whose lives intersect and collide. It's about migration and displacement, but in the sense of losing your sense of self, your identity. And it's a play about the transformation that follows. And because I feel like theater should in form and structure be the story that it is telling, it's experiential like that, the play itself is a melding of European and American theatrical aesthetics in terms of style and metaphor, etc.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I just completed a translation of Strindberg's 'Miss Julie' that I'm really proud of.

I'm involved in a couple of ensemble investigations of Shakespeare's 'Macbeth'.

I'm in the beginning stages of a trilogy based on the Hindu trinity of Brahma, Shiva, and Visnu- really exciting, if I can manage it I'd like to write them simultaneously so they can co-exist.

I'm also in the research stages of a play set around the Leipzig Trial after the burning of the Reichstag.

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

A:  Hm. My mom was hit by a motorcycle and went into early labor with me. At that time, at least in Bulgaria, fathers weren't allowed in the hospital because they're irrelevant to the birthing process. I came out discolored, and they immediately put me in an in incubator because I was a 'blue baby', blood flow problems. My mom was convinced that I was dead and they just weren't telling her, she'd lost a baby a year earlier in India. A few days later, a nurse is changing my mom's sheets and my mom is at the window waving to my dad who is holding a bouquet of flowers out in the street. The nurse looks outside and can't help but notice that he's not white, he's Indian.

Nurse: Is that the father?

My mom: Yes, that's my husband

Nurse then fetches the doctor, and they realize that I'm not a blue baby, I'm just brown. And perfectly healthy.

I don't know that that explains anything, it's what came to mind.

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

A:  More flexible spaces. I would love to see more productions where the artistic team can guide the audience's experience from the moment they walk through the door. Guide how they experience the play. This is not to say that I have anything against a stage, or choosing to stage a play on a stage, I just like the idea of artistic flexibility in terms of how theater is experienced.

Q:  Who are your theatrical heroes?

A:  brave actors.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like theater that engages every part of me. I like metaphor, emotional journey, to be surprised, to experience collective epiphanies, to be left with lingering memories.

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

A:  Write what you really want to see, it's not just an exercise. Every play is a new invention.

Q:  Plugs, please.

A:  Like for upcoming productions and such?

Come see 'Agnes Under the Big Top' at-

Arena Stage in DC for the New Play Festival in January: http://www.arena-stage.org/shows-tickets/the-season/productions/new-play-festival/

Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis in February: http://www.mixedblood.com/mainstage/agnes

Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven (directed by the amazing Eric Ting) in March: http://www.longwharf.org/agnes-under-the-big-top

My rarely updated website is www.aditikapil.com

I Interview Playwrights Part 280: Elaine Romero

Elaine Romero

Hometown: San Juan Capistrano, CA. This is a complicated question. I’ve spent many years in Tucson, Ariz., and my husband and I still own a home there. We’ve relocated to Chicago where I teach at Northwestern University.

Current Town: Chicago, IL.

Q:  Tell me about Wetback.

A:  A lifetime of border experience culminated for me in Wetback. My play tells the story of a hate crime against a Mexican immigrant and implicates the Latina, Amalia, who fails to protect him. Amalia is a high school principal, an educator, who has employed and housed an undocumented worker for many years. She fires him when she fears for her job. I’m exploring the big questions for Chicanos/Mexican-Americans. What is our relationship/responsibility to the Mexican immigrant? Do we have any? And now that my home state of Arizona has upped the ante with their anti-Mexican laws, what do Mexican-Americans do? What’s our moral responsibility to the people in a region that once belonged to Mexico?

I’ve spent the last many years living close to the border in Tucson, Ariz. and I grew up close to the border in California. My grandparents lived in San Diego, so we always had to go through a border checkpoint to visit them from Orange County. There’s a certain psychological terror that looms around border checkpoints for me. As a result, the Border Patrol/La Migra has never been far from my psyche. The last few years I’ve split my time between Los Angeles and Arizona. I’ve watched the Southwest border transform from tolerant to intolerant in a matter of a decade. It seems just a couple months ago that Lou Dobbs still had his nightly anti-Mexican rant on CNN. Even liberal politicians lobby for the Great Wall of China—Southwest. Even Obama is sending 1200 troops to guard the border. So, what does a Latina playwright do? The recent reelection Gov. Jan Brewer raises the possibility of immigrant camps/prisons along the border.

I’ve felt in my bones that our border tensions would result in violence. I received a commission, alongside Mexican playwright, Berta Hiriart, to write a short piece about the border. That’s when I first started getting the early rumblings of the play, though I’ve been taking notes on a play that involved the Minuteman Militia for many years. I’d initially thought I’d expose their roots with the KKK, then I opted for a Chicana point of view, and to point the finger within, at the Latina character. I reconceived the play as a full-length story. I took that through a rigorous process at the Lark New Play Development Center. I should list them under Hometown! Then, I had an opportunity to spend a week with professional actors and director, Samantha K. Wyer, through Voice &Vision’s ENVISION Retreat. They fed us the most amazing food and supported us in the most profound way. I wrote like a maniac, drafted and deleted scenes, worked tightly with a top-notch team. I questioned every line. I got as far as I could in that week. Samantha and I took the play to Voices at the River at Arkansas Repertory Theatre and I kept digging and adding scenes, and deleting. We had another amazing workshop and I uncovered deeper layers of the story that really excited me. Arkansas Repertory Theatre, and, now, Urban Stages and the Invisible Theatre, have really stepped up to the plate with Wetback by giving me more developed time through staged readings. A play sympathetic to the Mexican point-of-view is sadly controversial at this moment in time. I’ve lost a lot of sleep over Wetback because I feel the immediacy of it. Today is the day for this piece.

As a side note, and perhaps as a primary note, a couple days after I finished my first draft of Wetback, Mexican immigrant, Luis Ramirez, was murdered in a hate crime in a Pennsylvania park. The murder shares eerie similarities with my piece. He was murdered because he openly loved a white woman in a park. Ramirez was murdered by skinheads. My character dies at the hands of a member of the Minuteman Militia. I don’t know if a political event has hit me quite so hard when I realized life had imitated my art. My soul is crying for Luis Ramirez in ways it has not cried before. In some sort of spiritual retroactive way, I believe the play was written for him.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I’ve been working on Ponzi with Kitchen Dog Theatre through a commission with NNPN. Far beyond Madoff, Ponzi schemes have unraveled all over the world since the economic collapse. Recently, I received this ridiculous gift of several weeks on the Manasota Key at the Hermitage Artist Retreat in Florida. They gave me a place on the beach and I slept to the sound of the waves. In the mornings, I’d walk the beach, collecting shark teeth and getting myself into a meditative mode to write. I started Ponzi originally at the Lark’s Winter Retreat. It’s a three-actor play that deals with three recent acquaintances, money, power, and sex. I’ve been drawn to the idea of how we permit money or status to define us and who we are, as humans, at our core when one of our identities slips away. The main character, Catherine, grapples with the issue of whether or not the money she has inherited she can be loved for who she really is, or if all her relationships are colored by her inheritance. I’ve boiled it down to the statement: is it easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich woman to be loved for who she is? I think in many ways Catherine unconsciously wants to unburden herself of her money to see who she really is——to see if she can really float on her own? She’s always controlled her world through sex because she doesn’t trust she can be loved. But her sexual power has always stemmed from her economic power. When she loses her wealth in a Ponzi scheme, she has absolutely no idea who she is and if she can survive. We presented it in June at Kitchen Dog’s New Works Festival. We explored time in Ponzi. I’d written the play with three different structures. I’ve landed on a good one, and added some live video and slides. The play just won an Edgerton Fund for New American Plays Award. We are premiering it at Kitchen Dog Theatre in the spring. We’re looking for partners for the Continued Life Fund, so I’m putting the word out to theatres.

I spent the lion’s share of last year working on The Dalai Lama is Not Welcome Here for InterAct Theatre Company through their 20/20 Commission Program. Again, the world economy plays a role in this one. I’m interested in how the personal fits into the global, and in the ways the two collide. In this play an American couple lose their young son to a defective Chinese toy. When the husband gets a job in Shanghai, China, the wife seeks to destroy the small toy manufacturer who made the toy. When she succeeds, she tries to undo what can’t be undone. Writing Dalia Lama shoot me straight into my bone marrow. The play comes from such a deep place of grief and moral confusion. I broke my heart to write it. Kate, the protagonist, is a Medea of sorts. I have a difficult time even reading the play without being overwhelmed by the feeling of loss. And yet, as in many of my pieces, I’m interested in a non-religious redemption, the question of whether or not one can forgive the unforgivable.

I have a short play, A Simple Snow, which premiered at the InsparTO Festival in Toronto last spring. It won their contest. It’s also been shortlisted for Short+Sweet Sydney. The play takes place inside a snow globe. I got the idea when I saw a photograph of an Amish carriage on a postcard while I was doing a residency in Lanesboro, Minnesota. It’s been an odd little play to crack. We Skyped rehearsals in Toronto, which was great. I think my producer, director, and the whole team had been fascinated with the puzzle of how to make that play work. And, for me, it was thrilling to have people say that they didn’t know if it could or would work, but that they want to take the risk of exploring it with me. Sometimes I think it’s the most theatrical plays that scare us the most. The play was presented in their Best of the Fest week, so I felt sure we’d achieved our goal with that premiere.

In addition to these plays, I’ve just written a screenplay for Back Fence Productions. It’s an adoption story that involves a concomitant mythical world that the adoptee creates for survival. I’m working with producer Terry Chase Chenowith.

I just finished an adaptation of SUN, STONE, AND SHADOWS for Arkansas Repertory Theatre. It was neat to adapt fiction and to work with my own translation from the Spanish.

Now, I’m feeling the rumbles of a new play and looking for the right company to commission it.

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 three brothers. We once discovered a fossilized whale skeleton when we were children. We went home and got a bunch of Hefty trash bags and collected the fossils. I gave the fossils to my friend’s father because he was a geologist. I told him I was giving him the fossils for “carbon dating.” I figured he had a lab and that he could do that part of the job. Hah! I’ve always had an investigative mind, and I’ve always wanted to get to the bottom of everything that could be known. For me, playwriting is an act of excavation. It can be an excavation of my own psyche, or a political or social dynamic. Having three brothers has defined me in many ways. First, because they’re brilliant, and keeping up, has kept my mind flying, but secondly, it has caused me to write about gender dynamics.

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

A:  I love producers who trust their taste and don’t merely replicate what others do. I would populate the world with them.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Harold Pinter hands down. And Williams. I’m attracted to writers of conscience like Kushner and Miller. I’m drawn into the worlds of Paula Vogel and Sarah Ruhl. I’m always excited to see new work by Octavio Solis, Carlos Murillo, and Annie Baker. And Beckett. Never forget Beckett.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I love adventures in language that delve deeply into character and story. I love broken hearts. I love plays that aren’t afraid to feel. I love characters who find themselves in moral conflicts. I love gray. I like the hard questions. I’m a fan of politics that have been humanized and dramatized. I think there’s a way to write a strong political play without landing in agit prop land. I delight in the balancing act of that. I want to have as much empathy for my antagonists as my protagonists. I love the quandary of being challenged to love someone I hate.

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

A:  There seems to be a desire for instant mastery or recognition. Sustained playwriting careers take time to build. And trust me, you don’t want to burn too brightly and out quickly before you’ve found your voice. Be aggressive, but be patient. Keep learning. Support your colleagues. Go to the wall for somebody else every day. I’ve done that on NEA panels and been the only voice saying so and now those playwrights are famous. Fight for the words you believe in whether they’re yours or somebody else’s. Believe there’s enough to go around. Be humble.

Lots of amazing people will be here

You should go too--

On Monday, November 15th the Writers Guild of America, East Foundation is honoring Jules Feiffer, the great cartoonist and humorist, with a benefit at Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

Jules will perform a one-man show called Jules Feiffer: Funny Side Up.  This is a one-night only event that has never been performed on Broadway. 

Special appearances will be made by Robert Klein, Bill Irwin, Mike Nichols, Eric Bogosian, Marsha Norman and Michael Weller.

Jules will take the audience through a retrospective of his career as a cartoonist, screenwriter, playwright and author while showcasing giant images of his comic strips and other artwork – some never before seen in public.

Tickets are now in short supply.  If you would like to attend act fast while seats are still available.  Tickets can be purchased at Telecharge.com.

More information can be obtained by clicking here.

I Interview Playwrights Part 279: Alexis Clements

Alexis Clements

Hometown:  Not applicable. I’m an Army brat, so I call the place I’m living home. But I did spend most of my childhood at a couple different addresses in Northern Virginia, in the suburbs outside Washington, DC.

Current Town:  Brooklyn, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’ve got a couple of projects cooking at the moment. First and foremost, I’m working on building a tour of my performance piece Conversation, which I premiered at this year’s Philadelphia Fringe Festival. We had a great run there and I’m working on bringing it around to a few different cities in 2011. It’s written and performed by me, and it’s about a woman who is working on developing a theory of conversation in which each person gets exactly what they want from the other person. The main character begins to present this theory to the audience, but things start to go awry very quickly. The Philadelphia audience really responded to it, so I’m looking forward to bringing it to other spots and seeing how different audiences react to it.

I’m also continuing to develop Spitting Against the Wind, a piece I presented early iterations of at Dixon Place and the Brooklyn Arts Exchange. It’s a performance piece in which I play the role of Benjamin Franklin, who has, it turns out, been alive ever since the 1790s, and spent most of the past 200 years or so trekking across Asia. The story is a challenge to the myths that have grown up around Franklin and an interrogation of why we want to believe those myths. It’s also a piece that’s stretching me artistically—it’s got storytelling, movement, and an aesthetic that’s gonna push me in some new directions.

And early next year I’ll be doing a dog-sledding trip in Norway, in the style of Roald Amundsen’s 1910 trek to Antarctica. Yes, seriously. I can’t quite believe it myself. But it’s all part of the research for a show I’m working on, Terra Incognita, about an Antarctic cartographer.

So, I’ve got my hands full, but with good things, I think.

Q:  Tell me about Out of Time & Place.

A:  Out of Time & Place is a two-volume anthology of plays written by 11 members of the Women’s Project Playwrights Lab, myself included. The Women’s Project published the books late this summer and I edited them, along with the playwright Christine Evans. The books have this dead-on introduction by Theresa Rebeck, then there are essays preceding each play giving you a sense of the context out of which each grew. But the meat of the books is the 11 plays by 11 very different, very strong voices. There’s quite a range of writing, from a piece challenging notions of identity among a group of six Muslim women living in Cape Town, written by the London-based South African writer Nadia Davids; to the play that won this year’s NY Innovative Theater Award for Outstanding Full Length Script—Crystal Skillman’s The Vigil or The Guided Cradle; to my own piece, Conversation. I’m pretty proud of these books and am glad to be able to offer them to the theater community.

It’s a project that grew out of the discussions that started gaining steam in the last couple years around the question of how to achieve gender parity in the theater. Julia Jordan, Sarah Schulman and Anna Zigler hosted a couple of town halls on the subject in 2008 and 2009, and then the group 50/50 in 2020, whose goal is to achieve gender parity by the year 2020, had their first meeting in the second half of 2009. So, I was going to these meetings, and listening to the dismal statistics being quoted and some of the unfortunate stories being told, and I started asking some questions of myself. I was thinking about what my experience was, as a playwright and also as someone who regularly writes about theater and performance art for print publications here in New York. I also started to look further back, to my experience as a young person, falling in love with theater and performance art in high school and college.

As I was thinking about those first experiences of theater, I remembered this small bookshelf of plays in the green room of the theater in my high school, the first place I ever picked up an actual play script. And though my memory does not have the crispness of Google’s Streetview, I can say with some certainty that pretty much all of the plays on that shelf were by white European and American men. Things changed a bit in college, when the required texts started to include the occasional woman and minority writer, but it was still rare to be in a classroom where contemporary work by woman and minorities was being discussed..

I connected those experiences with comments being made at those teaching in universities who were saying that they couldn’t find published contemporary work by women to put in front of their students. And, even more perturbing, the assertion by some people working in theater that there simply weren’t plays written by women being offered to them for production. All of this, for me, pointed clearly to a need for publication, to fill the gaps and to counter the recurring false assertions by disingenuous (at best) individuals who would prefer that the world believes that women aren’t writing strong work for the stage (let alone any other medium).

And, to be honest, I really admired these women that I shared two years with in the Women’s Project Lab program. They are a pretty remarkable group. I wanted to find a way to honor that group, and this was a great way to do that while also addressing the above goals.

I should also mention that for those of you in the New York City area, there’s going to be a book launch event at the Drama Book Shop on Dec. 3 from 5-7. Eight of the writers featured in the books will be on hand, presenting excerpts from their work and also telling the stories behind their plays. Learn more here: http://www.outoftimeandplace.com/official-book-launch-event/

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

A:  Oh, man. That is a really tough question. Makes me wonder what my parents would answer if someone asked them. I have the notion to call them right now and ask them, but unfortunately, it’s quite late as I’m answering these questions, so it’ll have to wait. I know that my father recently reminded me that I’ve been putting on shows since I was wee little thing, so that’s clearly been part of who I am for as long as I’ve been.

In lieu of a specific tale, I’ll give you instead an image of me as a young child that I think speaks volumes.

We rented this one house, when we first moved to Northern Virginia, on Amherst Avenue. I must have been about five years old at the time, kindergarten and first grade—the best time for kids, I think, or at least it was for me, besides that one preschool in Florida, but that’s another story. Anyhow, there are all sorts of memories that I have from that house, but one of the things that came to mind when thinking of your question is the sun porch off the side of the house where my mother had her big old roll-top desk pushed up against the wall and she used to sit for hours sorting out bills and all manner of other things. She had a calculator that she would type away at faster than I could ever imagine typing, and neat piles of papers and forms, and envelopes and paper clips and pens and all these important looking things.

And then, over in one corner of the sun porch, facing the opposite direction, was a little kid-sized table and chair, where I carefully created my own piles of important looking things. I would get my teachers to give me the extra worksheets they had left over after everyone in the class had gotten their copies and I would also collect piles of blank paper or blank forms that needed filling out. And so my mom would sit up there at her big roll-top desk doing her work, and I would sit down at my little desk in the corner, doing my own work—checking boxes on lengthy forms and solving addition and subtraction problems and jotting down ideas I had. And all the while the sun would be streaming in on us through the jalousie windows, and the birds would be stealing the cherries from the neighbor’s cherry tree near the fence in the backyard, and the crabapples would be making a mess in the front yard, and cars would be driving up and down the Avenue. And then my brother would come home, or my dad would come home, and work time would be over. But for some portion of many of the days we lived in that house, my mom and I would sit and do our work together on the sun porch—me doing my best and most earnest imitation of productivity.

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

A:  To include more women and minorities in all arenas of professional theater-making.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Laurie Anderson, Robert LePage, Melanie Joseph and The Foundry Theatre, David Greenspan, Peggie Shaw, Penny Arcade, Holly Hughes, Spalding Gray, Martha Clarke, Luigi Pirandello, Tennessee Williams…I could go on.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I’m pretty partial to experimental work and work that bleeds across genres, particularly stuff that takes some of its cues from the visual arts tradition of performance art. But I also love a good story and I love a great performer, regardless of the category of theater it is.

When it comes down to it, though, the thing that makes a live performance work for me is the sense of magic it contains. Performance always involves smoke and mirrors, to some extent, and that’s what makes it amazing and so powerful when it works. When you walk into the theater you know you’re going to be deceived. You’ve paid for the privilege of it. There’s nothing worse than a show where nothing is left to the imagination, where every detail is painstakingly rendered, where my role as an audience member is entirely passive—there are plenty of other mediums I could turn to for that.

Even in the most punishing performance art, there’s a contract established between the performer and the audience that is typically predicated on creating a new world of possibility inside the performance space for some period of time. That is a powerful agreement, and an amazing opportunity to rewrite the rules of the known world, if only temporarily. And while many other art forms can create new worlds, they don’t have to manufacture it for you live, in real-time, and make you not only want to believe what’s happening, but also let yourself into that world to await an unknown result.

To me that represents a kind of magic that can only be achieved in performance. Some of the most satisfying performance pieces I’ve ever seen I’ve walked away wondering how it was possible, how they did what they did, or what exactly it was that just happened to me.

So deceive me. I asked for it.

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

A:  Get to know your colleagues. As much as writing is a solo sport for most of us, performance is most assuredly a team sport. The team sport mentality didn’t come naturally to me when I first began writing, but by participating in programs like the Playwrights Forum in Washington, DC, and the Dramatists Guild Fellowship program, and the Women’s Project Lab, I started to have a sense that I had colleagues, and that I didn’t always have to view myself as in competition with them, which can be a difficult thing when you’re an ambitious young writer.

And beyond that, when you go see shows, keep an eye out for designers whose work you admire, directors who fire you up, actors who you love. You need a team and you should know who you want on it.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  The most important plug at the moment is for everyone to have a look at Out of Time & Place. It’s meant to be, not only a great collection of writing for performance, but also a resource for professors looking for contemporary work to teach in the classroom, particularly contemporary work by women. It’s also a fantastic source of material for actors seeking new monologues and scenes.

Get copies and learn more about the books at www.outoftimeandplace.com

You can also keep up with the other projects I’m working on at www.alexisclements.com (where you can also sign up for my mailing list).

I Interview Playwrights Part 278: Lila Rose Kaplan

Lila Rose Kaplan

Hometown: Mamaroneck, NY

Current Town: Usually Santa Barbara. Frequently Los Angeles. Sometimes New York.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’ve got a couple plays brewing. WE ALL FALL DOWN is about a family of cultural Jews attempting to have their first Passover Seder. It’s a dark comedy, like most families, and it’s my first play with an intermission. Then there’s THE LIGHT PRINCESS, which is a musical for young people or people who remember being young. I’m working with a fantastic composer named Mike Pettry. We adapted the story from an old British fairy tale about a Princess who is born with no gravity. My play 100 PLANES is about two female pilots in the Air Force. It explores how women treat each other in the workplace. I’ve been developing this play with The Lark in NYC and we have a Studio Retreat coming up in February. Finally, I'm starting something brand new. Like in utero new. I’m developing it as part of the Center Theatre Group Writers Workshop in Los Angeles. It may have something to do with twins. It may have something to do with quantum entanglement. It may be about personal hygiene. I have pages due next week. We shall see.

Q:  Tell me about WILDFLOWER

A:  WILDFLOWER is a play that I wrote during my second year in grad school. I heard about a Wildflower Hotline in San Diego and I was intrigued. How could flowers be urgent enough for a hotline? When does something beautiful become dangerous? And then it hit me. Adolescence. Adolescence is when something beautiful becomes dangerous. So, WILDFLOWER explores the discovery of desire and its consequences. It's about the adolescent in all of us. Chris Burney from Second Stage saw the UCSD production of WILDFLOWER and two years later he produced it as part of their Uptown Series. It was a beautiful production directed by Giovanna Sardelli. It was thrilling to have my Off-Broadway debut surrounded by such a supportive and talented team. WILDFLOWER is now available through DPS if you’re interested in reading it.

Q:  Tell me about your current residency

A:  I am the very first Playwright-In-Residence at the Kavli Institute for Theorectical Physics at UCSB. It’s pretty cool. There are some amazing characters walking around. Yesterday I met a man who works for the Bureau of Standards, which is in charge of universal measurements. They keep track of things like the meter and the kilogram and the volt. The man I met is in charge of the second. He makes sure our measurement of the second is as precise as it can be. It’s fantastic what people are working on at Kavli. I’m collecting wonderful ideas for future plays. I’m also leading seminars that teach scientists how to craft their talks into compelling stories and how to be good storytellers for different audiences. It’s an inspiring place to be.

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 father took me to the beach when I was little. I think I was about 3 or 4. My scientific father tried to explain the food chain to me. He told me that the sharks eat the big fish and the big fish eat the little fish and the little fish eat the plants. I pondered it all for a while and then I asked, “But Daddy, what does the beach eat?”

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

A:  I long for an accessible theatre, an affordable theater, and an immediate theatre. When I used to direct, I loved working for an outdoor Shakespeare company that performed in local parks all over New York. The shows were free and they were in neighborhoods where people lived. The neighborhood kids would come see the shows every night. It was magical.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Thornton Wilder, Tony Kushner, Sarah Ruhl, Paula Vogel, Anne Bogart, Maria Irene Fornes, William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Steven Sondheim, Tom Stoppard, Julie Taymor, Caryl Churchill, Jose Riveria...to name a few.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theatre that pulls me in and holds me close. Theatre that’s surprising. Theatre that’s messy. Theatre that’s beautiful. Theatre that collides language and characters and story and music and movement in unexpected ways. Theatre that isn’t afraid to be theatre.

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

A:  See as much live theatre as you can. See dance and music too.

Find other playwrights and share your plays and experiences.

Find collaborators you love and make things with them as often as you can.

Live a life outside the theatre. You’ll have more to write about.

Take walks.

Leave time for daydreaming.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Get your own copy of WILDFLOWER at DPS http://www.dramatists.com/cgi-bin/db/single.asp?key=4156

Check out 100 PLANES at the Lark on February 17-18 http://www.larktheatre.org/events/10-11_season.htm

Check out The Playwrights Union in Los Angeles http://playwrightsunion.com/

Check out the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics http://www.kitp.ucsb.edu