I Interview Playwrights Part 44: Kyle Jarrow

photo by Lauren Worsham 

Kyle Jarrow

Hometown: Ithaca, NY

Current Town: New York, NY

Q: You're one of those people who is always working on twenty things at once. You write plays, music, musicals, you're in three or four bands and now you've started a publishing company. Tell me about this publishing company. How did this come about?

A: Several years ago, my friend Jeffrey Dinsmore (“Jeffrey” D for short) was one of the founders of an indie publishing company called Contemporary Press. They concentrated specifically on pulp fiction and crime stories — and they published quite a few books, with an impressive amount of success. Then a few years ago that company folded, and so Jeff was looking for a new project. He approached me and another friend, writer Clay McLeod Chapman, to see if we’d be interested in working with him on starting a new publishing venture. Awkward Press was the result. The idea is to focus on publishing imaginative, story-based fiction, and to do it in an affordable format with an eye toward design. Really treating books as an art object, but trying to do it without making them too expensive.

Q: What else are you up to now? You have a play or musical in the works?

A: I just got done workshopping a new musical at Williamstown that I wrote with Nathan Leigh, called THE CONSEQUENCES. We’re doing rewrites now, based on what we learned at that workshop, and hoping to do another workshop this fall and move toward a production in the spring. Meanwhile, I’m preparing to do WHISPER HOUSE, another musical (this one I wrote with Duncan Sheik) at The Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. That opens in January.

Q: How is writing a musical different than writing a straight play?

A: There are two main differences, it seems to me: One, in a musical you’re able to go more deeply into character’s thoughts and feelings. Songs allow you to have characters sing directly to the audience about what they’re feeling. In a straight play, you have to work in a more round-about way to show this kind of inner life. The second difference is that musicals tend to be a more collaborative process. Even if one person is writing book, music, and lyrics (which I’ve done on a few occasions) there’s still an arranger involved, and a music director in addition to the director. Having more people involved in the creation process can be challenging, but ultimately I think it ends up being more exciting.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I like theater that surprises me. Far too many of the new plays I see are traditionally structured pieces about upper middle-class white people with dark secrets. There’s a place for that, absolutely, and plays like that can be amazing, but they’re hardly surprising. I like to see a wider range of subject matter and more experimentation with form. I like to be made to think about things I wouldn’t have thought about otherwise.

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

A: The theater industry is a fairly conservative industry, in my experience. Probably because of the generally geriatric age of the core audiences at many theaters. This can make it frustrating when you’re first starting out and you’re trying to make a name for yourself. The best (and most fun) way to get started is to band together with other likeminded peers — actors, directors, designers — and get your work produced. Even if it’s on a very small scale, you’ll learn things from seeing your plays produced that you’ll never learn from reading them on the page. And through these productions you’ll gradually build a name for yourself, on your own terms. You won’t be dependant solely on the whims of theater literary departments.

Q: Plugs here and links for the publishing co, your bands, anything else:

Check out my new band Super Mirage! We have a record coming out in January. http://www.supermirage.com The publishing company can be found at http://www.awkwardpress.com And my website, that has more on all the crap I do, is at http://www.landoftrust.com

I Interview Playwrights Part 43: Christina Ham

Christina Ham

Hometown: Los, Angeles, California

Current Town: Minneapolis, Minnesota

Q: What are you working on right now?:

A: Two full-lengths - "The Tiny Soldier" which is a classic ghost tale (with a twist) and "Tar's Children" which is an apocalpytic tale set in a truck stop. Q: How long have you been in Minneapolis and where did you move from?: A: I've been in Minneapolis for 4 years now. I moved here from Los Angeles, California after receiving the Jerome Fellowship.

Q: Tell me a little bit about what you do at the Playwrights' Center:

A: I am the Program Coordinator for the Many Voices Residency Fellowship Program that's funded by the Jerome Foundation. I facilitate weekly workshops for beginning and emerging playwrights that allow them to hone their craft. In addition, I am constantly looking for opportunities to network with theaters where the artists whose work is being developed at the Center could grow beyond our walls and ultimately be produced.

Q: Could you tell my audience how you got involved in writing plays for children? How many of those have you written now? What do you like about it?:

A: When I first moved to Minneapolis for the Jerome Fellowship I was commissioned by the Guthrie Theater to go into a regional high school and work with the students to develop a one-act play. I worked with a group of drama students at St. Francis High School in St. Francis, MN to develop my play "County Line" that was published by PlayScripts. That was my first opportunity to write for a children and I thoroughly enjoyed the process. So far I have written four (I wrote one while in graduate school at UCLA, the one for the Guthrie, and the two I've been commissioned to do for SteppingStone). I am in the process of preparing to write another one for SteppingStone who has commissioned me once again. What I like about writing for children is that it really frees you up to have fun on the page and really let your imagination run wild. It really asks you to use the "play" part in playwriting. In addition, it allows you to teach life lessons to kids in a way that will hopefully have an indelible impact on their lives.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?:

A: Theater that really wants to take chances. I know people throw that phrase around a lot in our line of work, but I really mean it. I don't like seeing things that have clearly been done over and over again. Theater that takes place in unusual worlds or plays with language and structure is always interesting to me. I do believe there's a place as well for the classic kitchen sink play, but that's not the kind of theater I generally gravitate towards.

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

A: Try many different types of things on the page. Keep writing and, as I always tell my residents, the advice Jose Rivera gives to playwrights -- strive to be your own genre. There's nothing worse than reading a new writer who's trying to imitate someone else. Don't be afraid to be yourself. Plugs: Cold reading of "Tar's Children" coming up at Penumbra Theatre. Production of "Henry's Freedom Box" at SteppingStone Theater in February 2010, and a production of "After Adam" at Luna Stage in Fall 2010.

I Interview Playwrights Part 42: Rachel Axler

Rachel Axler

Hometown: New York

Current Town: Los Angeles

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Right now, I'm writing for a sitcom, which doesn't afford me a ton of time to do playwriting. But my play, Smudge, will be produced at The Women's Project in January, which is tremendously exciting. And I do have the beginnings of two new plays...one's a farce and one is kind of about an atheist's late-life potential conversion. Other than that, I write a lot of useless cartoony things on index cards.

Q: How long did you write for the Daily Show? What was that like?

A: I wrote for the show from May of 2005 through the conventions this past September, so that's...math years & something months. Figuringggg... it... ouuuttt... Okay, about 3 and a third years. Actually, almost exactly that, to the day. Is this answer too specific? Have you stopped caring? I find this very interesting. The job was amazing, and I adored it. Not only did I get to work with some of the brightest, quickest, funniest people I've ever met, but I was in the enviable position (especially, I think, for television) of truly, truly believing in the quality of our output. A lot of people ask why I left -- like, how anyone could ever leave a job like that? My background is in theatre and playwriting, and I started to feel a strong desire to combine joke-writing with writing for characters and working with story again. So while I certainly wasn't looking to leave, when the opportunity came along to be on the original writing staff of a new sitcom, I was excited to try my hand at it.

Q: You write for Parks and Rec now, right? What's that like?

A: I do! It's fun, and very different -- far more collaborative than it was at The Daily Show. We actually have a writers' room here, in which the bulk of our day is spent, and although we're all in front of computer screens all day (that part's the same), the joke/dialogue pitching process is primarily out loud, rather than turning in a written packet of work. So while I used to think of something, work it out on paper, craft the sentence, make it as funny and concise as possible, etc...I don't have the luxury of doing that, now. I'm working on censoring my thoughts less, and just spitting out the raw joke idea -- recognizing that the editorial process is split among numerous brains, rather than taking place in mine alone.

 Q: I just started writing for TV about a month ago. It's so tiring. How do you find time to work on your own stuff?

A: I don't. I wrote a bit during our last hiatus, which was several months ago. Annnnd now I'm pretty much waiting for the next one, to finish drafts of these new plays. But here's where I got lucky: In New York, I had a wonderful writing group, and we'd get together to read each other's work every few weeks. (I also had The Lark for a year, which was how I got SMUDGE finished.) When I arrived here last September, I was contacted by this amazing chick named Jennifer Haley, who was starting an LA-based group called The Playwrights Union (http://www.playwrightsunion.com/). We've met numerous times, now, to read each other's work out loud, and it's definitely kept me somewhat moored to the world of playwriting, even when I can't submerge myself fully. ...What's up, boat metaphors!

Q: What theaters or shows would you recommend for someone who just moved to LA?

A: Have you heard the expression, "Aaaaaaauuuugh?" If there were theatre in my office or my apartment, I'd be able to recommend it. As is, I don't get out enough. Oh, but several friends of mine (and fellow UCSD MFA alums) have started a theatre company called Chalk Rep (http://www.chalkrep.com/), which does site-specific work -- new and classical plays. You should check them out. And I've seen readings at The Black Dahlia Theatre (http://www.thedahlia.com/), which I think always chooses good new scripts -- and they're doing my friend Ruth McKee's wonderful new play, STRAY, this fall. But if anyone's reading this who lives in LA and wants to recommend theatre or shows to me, please do! I...probably won't be able to go. But I want to know about it.

 Q: Tell me a story about your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person. A: I used to fill out credit card and college applications, with all fake/pun information, for fun. Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Stuff with music. Stuff without fixed walls. Funny stuff, but with real emotion.

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

A: I'm still just starting out, too. But for people, say, writing a play for the first time: Find a playwright you love. Copy his/her style. Never show this play to anyone, but learn from it. Let it mature/grow/evolve into something that's yours.

Q: Tell me about Smudge, the play you having coming up this season.

A: I'm so, so, so excited about it. It's a play that began, in seedling-idea form, during my last quarter of grad school. For a long time, I had a draft with ten excellent pages, followed by about 50 pages of dreck. Then I scrapped everything but those ten pages, added a third character, and turned what was initially an argument about what constitutes a life into a play. I workshopped pieces of it at The Lark, then had my first readings of it through The Playwrights Foundation in San Francisco, where I discovered that people really responded to it. It was at The O'Neill two summers ago, which was an absolutely amazing experience. And now it's going to have its first full production at The Women's Project. It's about a young couple having their first child, and learning to be parents. It's also sort of about what might happen if a mother hated her first child. It's sort of about developing a relationship with something you've created. I hope it comes off funny, and a little creepy, and a little sweet, and a little sad. And it should have, if all goes well, some uber-cool lighting and sound. Go see it!!

Philly Premiere of Nerve in April

http://news.yahoo.com/s/playbill/20090824/en_playbill/132168

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Three posts from Stephen Adly Guirgis at the Ojai Playwrights Conference

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/08/stephen-adly-guirgus-at-ojai-playwrights-conference-.html#more

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/08/stephen-adly-guirgis-works-with-the-interns-at-ojai-playwrights-conference.html

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/08/steven-adly-guirgis-the-communion-of-plays.html

I Interview Playwrights Part 41: Laura Lynn MacDonald

Laura Lynn MacDonald

Hometown: Orland Park, Illinois

Current Town: Milwaukee, Wisconsin - via Chicago and New York City.

Q: Tell me about your adaptation of Peer Gynt playing in Central Park.

A: Christopher Carter Sanderson, the Founding Artistic Director of Gorilla Rep asked if I’d write a new adaptation/translation of Ibsen’s epic play. Neither of us was interested in creating a direct translation (or a four hour production!) Instead, I was given the freedom to fly with my own writing as I followed the adventures of Peer Gynt as laid out in the original text. What we’ve created is a two hour production with nine actors playing fifty-six roles and two brave souls playing Peer. The production is underscored with some inspired songs and sound effects by Andre-Phillipe Mistier. The Great Boyg, an ominous force that intercepts Peer’s life, sounds like an echo from the underworld. The characters in the play are enhanced by imaginative masks and costume pieces by Mikaela Holmes and Benjamin Heller. There’s a fabulous pig and a three-headed troll. And like all Gorilla Rep shows, this one will keep the actors and the audience moving from scene to scene around Summit Rock in Central Park.

Q: You were one of the founding members of Gorilla Rep. How did the theater come about?

A: Sanderson had been creating theatre in public spaces in New York City since 1989. In 1992 he decided to form his own company out of a group of actors he’d cast in a production of UBU IS KING! (performed in Grand Central Station) and two board members. I was one of the band of actors wielding a large phallus at Grand Central Station. It was powerful and fantastic. We were all very serious about our artistic intentions in those first company meetings. I have some great photographs of all of us reading over the first contract at Jy Murphy’s apartment. There was a feeling in the air that we were making something memorable that afternoon. Gorilla Rep has grown and refined since that time, but the mission remains the same: “...to provide the highest quality productions of classical dramatic material with the flavor of contemporary immediacy to people where they are FOR FREE.”

Q: What's the theater scene like in Milwaukee? If I came to town tomorrow, what shows or theaters would you suggest I check out?

A: Milwaukee has a significant arts and theatre scene for its size. It’s such a beautiful, accessible city. Several artists have moved here for work and stayed here to live. Right now, I’d recommend The Chamber Theatre’s production of Mark Brown’s AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, with a phenomenal scenic design by Keith Pitts. Milwaukee Rep will soon be producing THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR, Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation of Gogol’s play, which is sure to be a hoot. One of my favorite theatres to recommend is Next Act - a wonderful intimate theatre that does consistently lovely work. They will open their season with MARY’S WEDDING by Stephen Massicotte. Another gem is Renaissance Theatreworks, our only company founded and run by women. Milwaukee sadly lost The Milwaukee Shakespeare Company to the economic downturn. Hopefully, she will rise again.

Q: Tell me about working in the literary department at Milwaukee Rep.

A: Joe Hanreddy, the Artistic Director, introduced me to Kristin Crouch, The Rep’s Literary Director. I assisted her throughout last season by reading new play submissions, writing production articles and doing dramaturgical research. Beyond reading so many wonderful (and not so wonderful) scripts, the most fun for me was sitting in on first rehearsals where the vision for the production is shared with the creative team. The Rep allowed me to meet directors and designers I admired and watch them work. I was given a commission to write their educational touring show, then later, I taught playwriting workshops in Milwaukee area schools. It was a tremendous opportunity to get a glimpse of what it takes to put on a 14-show season.

Q: You’re also a dramaturg. What do you like most about dramaturgy?

A: I love collaborating. I also love storytelling. Dramaturgy for me is taking off my playwriting hat and discovering how I might best serve the script or production at hand. It’s collaborating to tell the story the playwright or director wants to tell. Sometimes it’s creative or critical feedback, sometimes it’s editing, researching, or writing marketing material for shows. It’s all part of the experience - from what you see when you enter the lobby, to what you hear during the show. Every project I’ve worked on has been different. And often, especially in the creation of a new script, we’re all surprised at the outcome.

Q: What kind of theatre excites you?

A: I like plays that mine language. I like plays that make me laugh during the sad parts. I want to watch people (or other-worldly creatures) struggle for meaning - struggle for love - maybe reach for God. And I’d rather be terrified in my mind than see long bloody knives. So many plays and playwrights inspire me. Some favorites are Chekhov, Euripides, Shakespeare, August Wilson, Stoppard, Rajiv Josef, Nilo Cruz, Sarah Ruhl, Naomi Iizuka, Anna Deavere Smith, Arthur Miller and Mary Zimmerman’s adaptations.

Q: You started off as an actress in NYC, then you took a long break, finding your way back to the theatre over ten years later. What was that journey?

A: In 1995 my mother was injured in a car crash that subsequently changed the trajectory of my life. I was just thrown in another direction. Eventually, I expressed myself creatively through bodywork. I was a certified massage therapist, Spa Manager and National Trainer for Elizabeth Arden Salons and Spas. I loved the travel and teaching for the first time. Several years passed before I got the performing bug again. I’d moved to Milwaukee and was cast in a few plays and commercials. I got married and had a baby, ... then another baby... One sunny January day I thought I was going to combust if I didn’t do something, write something, express something - so, I wrote a screenplay. Over the next year it turned into WELCOME TO FREEDOM, this intricate love story about two gay teenagers - one shipping off to Iraq. I just lived and hid inside that story and it fed me when I really needed to be fed. Since then I haven’t stopped writing dramatic stories - either films or plays.

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

A: I’ll just tell you what I’m trying to do. Having kids, I try to write as often as I can. I do a lot of my writing long hand, so there are pads of paper everywhere, especially the car. I don’t know why my characters like to talk to me while I’m driving, but they do. I get out of my own back yard. I go to classes, workshops, free talks by so-in-so who wrote this-n-that. I often see 1-2 shows a week. I try to go to previews or performances with talk-backs whenever I can because there’s a chance to learn more about the show or say “hi” to the director. If there’s an opportunity to volunteer at a theatre I’d love to work with, I try to be there. If there’s a benefit, I try to go. I’m a member of several organizations (The Dramatist Guild, Chicago Dramatists, The Playwrights’ Center) and writing groups that have allowed me to meet some fantastic colleagues. I read books about history. What I do know, I teach - and the classroom gives huge returns to me. I try new genres. I push my boundaries because I don’t want to keep writing over the same territory or writing in the same form. I improvise. I just sit down and start banging it out. And if I’m in a writing groove, I let everyone know I have to disappear for a while.

Links for Laura Lynn’s show: www.gorillarep.org , www.lauralynnmacdonald.com

5 Questions with Leonard Jacobs: http://www.clydefitchreport.com/?p=3684