I Interview Playwrights Part 15: Deborah Stein

Deborah Stein  

Hometown: New York, NY

Current Town: Minneapolis, MN

Q: You're headed to the Bay Area Playwrights Festival this summer. Tell me a little about the play you're working on there.

A: The play is called NATASHA AND THE COAT, and it's about the fashion industry and Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I actually started it five years ago and was overwhelmed by both the subject matter and the scope of it, and I shoved it in a drawer (literally) and only excavated it this past autumn. In a lot of ways, it's different from anything I've written before - a straightforward narrative about a family, clash between generations, based partially on personal experience. It's the first time when I need to figure out how old someone is, and where their parents were born, in order to fully develop and craft the characters - usually I work much more with allegory and archetypes. And I think it's going to be in two acts with an intermission - another first for me!

Q: Who are you working with on it?

A: Sean Daniels will be directing, with a stellar local cast including Corey Fischer and Naomi Newman, who founded the Traveling Jewish Theatre in San Francisco. They were in an earlier reading, in May, and were invaluable resources to discover the truth and nuance of the world I'm writing about.

Q: You are the new Bush fellow. Congratulations! Can you explain what that is? It's 50,000 dollars, right? How long does a playwright have to live in Minneapolis to be eligible to apply?

A: Thanks!! I'm pretty freaking excited. The Bush Foundation awards Artist Fellowship in a number of different disciplines. It's a total of $50,000 disbursed over 12 or 24 months, depending on how you want to use the fellowship. You need to be a resident of MN, ND, or SD for at least 12 months at the time of application.

Q: How did you come to start writing plays?

A: I acted in children's theatre when I was a kid, and started directing when I was in high school. In college I studied directing and creative writing, but mainly focused on poetry - I thought of those two creative pursuits as being decidedly different from each other. After college, I interned with the Pig Iron Theatre Company in Philadelphia, a physical theatre company making ensemble-based works. I was the assistant director, and part of my job was to transcribe rehearsal improvs to be shaped into performance text. Over the course of the rehearsal process, I became more and more involved in shaping the text, to the point of editing the transcriptions and providing additional writing that was based on gesture or character proposals from the acting ensemble or the director or even the designers. My credit on the production ended up being "writer" and I worked in this way with Pig Iron on six shows between 2000 and 2006. In the middle of it all I decided to go to grad school to try writing plays on my own, without the ensemble. I still do a mix of both processes - in fact, one of my other summer projects is to work with Pig Iron again, which will be like a sort of homecoming.

Q: What kind of theater do you want to make? / What kind of theater that other people make excites you?

A: Plays that are events, that capitalize on all that is vital and thrilling about live performance--raw and alive, all those people in a space together, having a communal experience which will happen exactly once. Plays that are like rock concerts, where your whole body is involved, whether you are artist or audience--where the line between those roles is blurred. Plays that recognize and embrace that we are in a specific place, in a specific moment of time. I dream of creating theatre on a massive scale, reaching audiences who don’t ordinarily go to see plays, sharing something unique in the collective present.

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

A: Go see lots of theatre. See it in both epic scales (Ariane Mnouchkine, Robert Lepage) and small, scrappy local companies doing it in the backyard. Identify like-minded collaborators, find your fellow travelers, work with them often. Pursue the big dreams and the large scale but also don't be afraid to do it yourself, don't wait for some large institution to give you a gold stamp, the only way to find and hone your voice by trying and failing and trying again. Theatre happens in three dimensions, in real time and space; what's on the page is the beginning, not the end.

Q: Link please for those in the Bay Area who want to see your play presentation:

http://www.playwrightsfoundation.org/index.php?p=182

I Interview Playwrights Part 14: Qui Nguyen

Qui Nguyen  

Hometown: El Dorado , Arkansas

Current Town : Brooklyn , NY


Q: You're remounting your show “Fight Girl Battle World” which I caught last year and loved. Can you tell us a bit about that? 

A:  Every year, my company, Vampire Cowboys, sets out to take on a different genre. With “Fight Girl Battle World”, we took on Sci-fi. This was our version of something like “BladeRunner”, except funnier, with a laughably small budget, and more kung fu. The outcome ended up becoming one of our most popular shows we’ve ever produced. After we closed it last year, we worked on finding the right opportunity to bring it back. We were offered slots in several different festivals but ended up choosing to go with HERE Arts Center’s Sublet Series for several reasons; HERE is definitely one of my favorite venues in the city, it gave us the luxury of being in the space for an entire week, and Vampire Cowboys just produced “Soul Samurai” this past winter there and we’re going to be producing our next show “Alice In Slasherland” there next Spring. It made for the perfect place for a remount.  

Q: Is it true it's your most popular show to date? Why do you think that is?

A:  Well, it’s definitely between that or our most recent “Soul Samurai”. Both shows sold out really quickly and both received a ton of love by both press and our audience. “Fight Girl Battle World” however sells more t’shirts than any of our other productions to date and, even after a whole year, we still get people who randomly email us about how much they loved the original run. I think “Fight Girl” just tickles people in that right way that makes them want to come back. It appeals to that little nerdy kid inside all of us who dug “Star Wars”, “Star Trek”, or “Firefly”. I dig it because it makes me laugh a lot. It’s perhaps the same for everyone else.

Q: Your plays contain a great deal of exciting and acrobatic fight scenes. Besides being the playwright, you are also the fight choreographer for many of your shows. Is it hard to be both the playwright and the fight choreographer but not the director?

A: Not really. I love writing and I love making fights. I however suck at helping actors explore moments and nuance. It’s just not a skill I have. I’m a bit too impatient for it. Robert who directs all my Vampire Cowboys shows is a master at this stuff, he can manipulate a scene to give it not only tension but texture. He’s good at exploring situations with actors and figuring how it’s all going work onstage. That’s what he enjoys. I however like writing cool dialogue and making people hit each other. It’s just a uniquely different skill-set.

Q: How did you become a playwright?

A: I originally wanted to be a novelist or a comic book writer and was pretty sure I was going to be that throughout undergrad even though I was an acting major at that time. However I started getting really frustrated that I kept getting cast either as the “stereotypical Asian” or none at all because of my race. So I started writing my own plays, shows that weren’t race or gender specific so anyone could play any role they wanted. That same ethos exists still today with my Vampire Cowboys plays. With the exception of “Soul Samurai”, all the other roles in all our other productions have all been racially neutral and we’ve been very conscious to make sure our company is as diversely cast as possible. People of color need superheroes and action stars too, so that’s what keeps me making the shows that I do. I like making heroes.

Q: Where can people go to buy your published plays?

A: Amazon, Drama Book Shop, and Playscripts.com. FGBW MOS LDID BW

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: All sorts. Anything written by living breathing playwrights. I don’t dig on the dead guys. Not cause I don’t appreciate what they did, I’m just tired of seeing a dead fucker like Shakespeare get literally thousands of productions a year while my friends struggle to get even one. That’s bullshit. My friends are better writers than that. They too deserve mad kudos.

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

A: Eat three meals daily, workout at least one hour a day, drink plenty of water, and smile.

Q: Link please and info for people who want to see "Fight Girl Battle World": http://www.vampirecowboys.com/shows.htm

my remaining summer shows

May 28-June 28, Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, FL, my short play Snow. (production #12 or so of this play) July 10-26 Echo Theatre, St. Louis, MO, a production of Nerve (production #5) July 5-August 1, Essential Theatre, Atlanta, GA, a production of Food For Fish. (production #8) July 15-July 26, Doorway Arts Ensemble in the DC Fringe, Washington DC, a production Herbie: Poet of the Wild West. (production #1) Other summer shows: I don't have the dates but Lights Out Theater Company in Chicago is doing two short plays of mine soon. (Snow and Goldentown.) My short play Film Noir will be done most likely July 5 at Midnight at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in western Massachusetts by the some of the interns. My play Ambience Pizza may follow on another night. If you can't make any of those, but don't want to feel left out, my plays Deflowering Waldo, Nerve and Food For Fish are published here, here and here. Also found at Amazon and other fine online bookstores. Also, some of my short plays are on my website.

I Interview Playwrights Part 13: Victoria Stewart

Victoria Stewart  


Hometown: Beverly, MA

Current Town: Minneapolis, MN

Q:  You just had a show up at The Playwright's Center that Workhaus produced. Can you tell me a little about that?
A:  Workhaus Collective is a collective of playwrights that produce our own work. The play, "800 Words: The Transmigration of Philip K. Dick" is an older play, I wrote it back in 2002. It had a nice production in Seattle in 2007 but since the Workhaus playwrights just choose which play to produce, I really wanted to see this play up with Luverne Siefert playing the lead and with Jeremy Wilhelm directing. (Jeremy directed a great version of the play in grad school and we had always talked about doing it again.) The play is about Philip K. Dick, the science fiction writer who wrote the stories that became the movies "Blade Runner" and "Minority Report." In 1974, he had visions of God that obsessed him for the rest of his life. It's a trippy play with transformations, non-linear storytelling and puppets. What's nice about Workhaus is that you really have control over the production so no one's trying to make the play something it ain't (which is helpful with such a strange piece.)  

Q: How did you become interested in writing about Phillip K Dick?
A:  My brother owns a science fiction/fantasy bookstore so I always grew up with sf around the house but I didn't get into PKD until my 20s. A friend suggested I read Lawrence Sutin's "Divine Invasions," a biography about PKD, just because it was a good read. I got obsessed at that point but this was about 5 years before I started writing plays. So I just read a bunch of his books because they were great. Near the end of grad school, I just plunged in, thinking nothing would come of it. Most of my plays are very realistic and linear so here I was tryin' to be experimental and shit. (All my years stage-managing for avant-garde directors at the American Repertory Theatre served me well.)  

Q: What are you working on next?

A: I just finished a new play called "Rich Girl" which is a modern-day adaptation of "Washington Square/The Heiress." It's about women and their relationship with money. I developed it at the Tennessee Repertory Theater which was a great experience.

Q: Tell me about Workhaus. Basically you're a playwright run theater not unlike 13p in New York. How do you decide whose show goes up next? How does it work?

A:  Workhaus is completely modeled after 13P. The playwrights serve as artistic directors during their show. The playwrights end up doing more technical stuff and house-management, etc. than 13P does because we can't afford a tech crew! So during tech, you'll see one of us hanging lights; during the shows, we're the ones house-managing. Because of this, we've realized that the playwrights have to be Minneapolis-based because we really need boots on the ground to produce everyone else's shows. How we choose which shows go up is a little haphazard. We have a core group of producer/playwrights and then we have a few satellite playwrights. We have a three show season and we only have 10 members, so people cycle through more than once with preference going to the main producers. We tried to plan two or three seasons in advance last year and all that planning went out the window very quickly. So now we're planning a year at a time. At this point, we're in residence at the Playwrights Center which means we use their theater and rehearsal space which is so helpful.

Q: Like me, you are married to a playwright. Would you like to comment on the challenges or benefits of a wright union?
A:  I'm pro-wright union. It's great, right? The benefits are having a spouse who really understands your challenges ("What? Another rejection letter????") and having a brilliant in-house dramaturg at your beck and call ("Honey, wake up and read my scene!"). The challenge is getting frustrated when one person gets something the other wants. But luckily, you're also really happy for the other person and as long as you keep in mind that what's good for one person is actually good for the unit you've become, it evens out.  

Q: You and I have the same agent. Isn't Seth great?

A: LURVE him. Cory and I do have a pet name for him but I won't write it down....

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Good theater. That may sound obnoxious but there are so many different kinds of great theater out there. On one hand, I love bold, visual, experimental work but I'm also happy as a clam when I see Arthur Miller done well. I like work that's emotional, that makes me lean forward, that's intellectual but not abstract. Also, because I'm an ex-techie, I get very distracted by bad production (and sometimes by great production) so I'm thrilled when I am completely drawn into something, whatever form it takes.

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

A: Just keep trying. Get yourself out there. Find people you trust to read and hear your work. Have faith in yourself.

I Interview Playwrights Part 12: Malachy Walsh

Malachy Walsh  

Hometown: Chicago, IL

Current Town: Lafayette, CA

Q: You're headed to Minneapolis in July to present a play. Can you tell me about how this came about and a little bit about your play?

A:  The play “Beyond the Owing” is about two people trying to figure out how to get married and have a life despite the financial – and emotional – debts they owe to others. I got the idea for it in early 2005 when everyone was buying houses at exorbitant prices. I couldn’t figure out how they were doing it. All I could see was debt without any way to pay it back. I had also graduated from Columbia only the year before where (rightly or wrongly) debt was a huge and very real part of the commitment to the arts (it was even the subject of our commencement speaker’s keynote address). In a sense, this grad school debt was my exorbitantly priced house. But the burden of owning it was also starting to affect, even distort, my relationship with the dream that had inspired me to go for it in the first place. I figured I wasn’t alone. And artists wouldn’t be the only ones having money trouble in the near future. I finished the first draft in the spring of 2005 and sent it around, knowing it had problems but thinking it was timely enough that someone would help. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival did a reading in the spring of 2006, followed by a Clubbed Thumb Workshop in December at Playwrights Horizons. The PCPA Theatre Fest in California followed in 2007. Interest dried up. Then I won a lottery slot in a reading series at the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis. I couldn’t attend, but I asked a friend living in MPLS - Genevieve Bennett who’d read an early draft and was a believer - if she’d direct it. Afterwards, she said she wanted to do it. She found a great bunch of actors and workshopped it over the next year or so, sending me notes and cut suggestions – almost all of which were excellent and I took. Obviously, the play has only become more relevant since its early versions. Hopefully, people will find it more resonant as well.

Q:   I had a great time working with Genevieve earlier this year. Is this the first time you two have worked together since Columbia? (Malachy and I got our MFAs at Columbia together along with Genevieve in 2004.)

A:  We did the short musical “BLAM! I’m Lee Harvey Oswald!” at Dixon Place in NY sometime in early 2005. Though I like the Bay Area where we live now, I do wish I lived closer to Genevieve. She’s an incredibly talented and generous collaborator who directs for - and in - the moment. Musical, human, but also unafraid to search the dark corners in a play and work them. Finding people like her is hard. But it’s the kind of relationship I really live for and that I’ve always wanted to build theatre on.

Q: You have a new kid and a day job in advertising. When do you find time to work on plays?

A: I try to write in the mornings, before all the outside voices drown out the inside voices. Since my son has lately decided that 5 am is a good time to get up, this has been getting more difficult.

Q: Your wife is an actress (and a wonderful human being). Would you like to make an argument for playwrights and actresses coupling up?

A:  The great thing about being with someone in the arts is that you understand each other. You “get” it. So, when your significant other says, “Yes, I’ll marry you, but I have to go away for a year to do the Oregon Shakespeare Festival” as mine did, you don’t freak out. You also have someone who can look at what you’re doing and respond appropriately to things that may be quite embryonic and need nurturing rather than immediate critical precision – though that comes later, too. In my case, I’ll add that Heather’s been amazingly good for helping me get over the fear of never having enough money. Being the child of a fairly well-off middle class life, I’ve spent a lot of energy worrying over the next pay check. As an actor, Heather’s kept me focused on what I’m doing NOW – rather than a worst case scenario fear about things that may or may not happen tomorrow.  

Q: You used to be my roommate. Do you have any advice for my wife about living with me?

A: Don’t leave the sponge in the sink.

Q: If I came to San Francisco right now, what plays would you recommend that I go see or what theater companies should I check out?
A: Since everyone knows the Magic is here, I don’t think I need to mention them. Same goes for the Mime Troupe – still great after all these years. However, there are some less broadly known companies that I’d recommend to anyone, anytime: Encore (which just did Steven Yockey’s SKIN), The Shotgun Players, Impact, the Marin Theatre Company, Crowded Fire, FoolsFURY and Playground (which introduces the Bay Area to writers with a season of monthly 10 minute playwriting contests). Charlie Varon’s solo work at the Marsh shouldn’t be missed either (Rabbi Sam starts in October). Also, check out anything by Mark Jackson (his FAUST: Part 1 runs until the end of June with Shotgun) and anything at the EXIT – a place run by Christina Augello who has helped a ton of artists get stuff up with her annual SF Fringe. (If it weren’t for her….)

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I like gripping, visceral theatre. It’s gotta stick with me emotionally. It can be weird or funny or brutal – even unlikeable and hateful – but if it comes off when I get up from my seat, well, that’s not what I’m most hungry for. Generally, that’s meant emotionally dangerous and vulnerable work in plays that end on questions rather than statements. It’s not a bad thing necessarily for me to be leaving a show asking, “What the fuck just happened to me in there?” In New York, I looked for that kind of work at SPF, Clubbed Thumb, LAByrinth and Soho Rep.

Q: What advice do you have for other playwrights?

A: Find people you like, then work with them and hold on to them for dear life. If you give up, everyone else will too. Never confuse a budget for a play. Be good to your actors – always. Don’t worry about what the institutions are doing - ever. Listen to your characters before anyone else. Write every day for as long as you can. Write longhand whenever possible. Writing isn't a competitive sport, despite what the competitions and memberships and production credits suggest: Other writers are your friends, not people you're trying to demolish. Coffee is good, liquor is not. Ask for help. Get a day job (I don’t care what David Mamet says) and keep it until it's impossible not to. And, my favorite, from Anne Bogart: Don’t wait.

Q: Is there a link up for people to buy tickets to your show at the Red Eye?

A:  We have a “trailer” at www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFdQegUWWes Our website is www.beyondtheowing.com

I Interview Playwrights Part 11: Jessica Dickey

photo by Geoff Green.

Jessica Dickey

Hometown: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q: I've heard a lot of great things about the Amish Project from various people. Can you tell me a little about the show?

A: The Amish Project is a fictional exploration of a true event, based on the Amish schoolhouse shooting that occurred in rural Pennsylvania on October 2nd, 2006. It is a solo show, with seven fictional characters, including the gunman and the gunman's widow, two Amish girls, and three townspeople... I was heartbroken by this gruesome event-- it struck a strong impulse to write, to just WRITE into that heartbreak and see what I could find -- but I did not want what I wrote to be tied in any way to the real people, so I basically took some of the givens of the tragedy and created my own characters around it. The New York Times recently likened this to writing "Stories From 9/11 That I Just Made Up", which I thought was a hilarious and great way to say it. I have a great respect for documentary theatre, but that was not what I was after when I started writing the play.

Q: How did you come to write it?

A:  I first researched a great deal about Amish culture. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, about an hour and half southwest of where the real crime occurred, and while I was not in the vicinity of an Amish community, I have always felt an affinity for "plain people" in general... I am very curious about people and communities that separate themselves in order to pursue their spiritual beliefs. There are many figures of this ilk that have fascinated me-- Saint Francis of Assisi, Gandhi, Julian of Norwich, Dr. James Cone... So I find the Amish intriguing because of their seclusion and spiritual discipline, and the ways in which they maintain their ethnic identity in our modern world. And when this sacred, quiet community came under attack in the schoolhouse that day in October, a fascinating series of events were set in motion, with shocking and awe-inspiring results... These things stayed with me, haunted me, and I wanted to go inward and explore what they evoked.  
 
Q: What does your writing process entail?
A:  Oh I don't know! LOL. Writing in my journal on the train, listening to a character riff... I usually need to do research of some kind--- I am currently working on a new play that had me researching the Omarska concentration camp in Bosnia (of the early 90's)... I like to let my characters monologue at first-- I like to just give them the mic, as it were, and see what they have to say, what they seem to be stuck on or circling around... Then at some point it becomes clear that this series of characters are all occupying the same psychic space, trying to inch toward one another, and then it becomes a matter of identifying what they are trying to do-- both to one another and as a collective whole. The play takes form from that void.  

Q: Do you change the play sometimes in performance or is it pretty well set?

A: Noooo, it's pretty well set. I love to improv, and I definitely spent a good portion of our tech riffing for the production team! LOL! I would improv from the characters while they were adjusting a light cue or working on something while I stood there on stage (I am a total slut for their laughter)... But when it comes to the performance, I keep pretty strictly to what we have set as much as possible. It's just the stage manager and I every night, and we need to trust each other to maintain the integrity of the piece as we cue one another through the play. I also find pleasure in the dance of a performance as much as anything else--- I attach myself to the subtle body anchors--- the weight shift, the focal point of the eyes, the breath. These are my tethers.

Q: This is not your first solo show is it?

A; Oh it definitely is.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A:  You know, more and more I am NOT interested in theatre with answers. I know this sounds elementary, but it apparently needs to be said. I also don't need art to be perfect or agreeable or for everyone. I feel like sometimes there is this pressure to make a piece of theatre thoroughly digestible and "clear" and linear. Who made this rule?!! I like it messy-- truthful-- theatre that is not afraid to go toward complex terrain and leave us with powerful questions. And I don't mind when theatre has a specific audience and isn't afraid to speak to that audience; like, you're a gay man and you want to speak to your community of gay men-- go for it! The rest of us can listen and learn and find ourselves in there if we wish. Do you know what I mean?!!? I'm just sick of watering things down to make them palatable. Fuck palatable. And while I'm bitching, I could do with a lot less irony and cleverness and cynicism. Okay, I'm done.  

Q: What advice would you give to any playwright who might read this who doesn't know some of the things you might know?

A: Oh boy. I'm sure I am totally UNQUALIFIED to be doling out advice. I feel like a messy toddler with playwriting. Um... I guess I can definitely say this: Don't wait for someone else to "discover you". Discover yourself! Don't be afraid to put your own work up on its feet. Use the festivals, the forums around the city, do it yourself. It's a self producing market now. Roll up your sleeves, raise the money, and present your own work. It's actually a thrilling thing to do. And it bears fruit-- externally and internally.

Q: What is the information for people who want to go see your play?

A:  Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, 224 Waverly. Our schedule is Mondays at 8pm, Wednesdays thru Saturdays at 8pm, and Sundays at 3pm. We're there 'til June 28th, and the show is only 65 minutes, so get your butts to the theatre! www.rattlestick.org and www.amishproject.com