www.adamszymkowicz.com
Nov 18, 2009
Nov 15, 2009
I Interview Playwrights Part 93: Julia Jarcho
Julia Jarcho (photo by Joe Buglewicz)
Hometown: NYC.
Current Town: NYC and San Francisco.
Q: Tell me about your play 13P is putting up.
A: It opens in a week, so I may have lost my ability to talk about it with any coherence at all... but It's about wanting to know the truth. There's a History Detective, and a girl who's been wronged, and they're trying to figure it all out. All of it. It's kind of inspired by the National Treasure movies. I'm interested in the way that even the shiniest fantasies of American identity are haunted by an awareness of national crimes. But I'm also interested in the way that unmasking those crimes becomes a fantasy, a point of investment itself. A question for me in making this play is, how would I insert myself into this discourse? What could I possibly have to say about history? And what does it mean to know history the same way you know a movie? Stuff like that. It's a two-person play, and the persons are Aaron Landsman and Jenny Seastone-Stern. They're both extraordinary performers with, I've always thought, really fascinating kinds of presence. And they're a joy to work with. We have a crack team of designers as well. And an amazing production staff. I've always loved 13P because the other playwrights are so cool, but this is the first time I've gotten to see the whole apparatus in motion, and I feel really lucky.
Q: You worked on this play at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. What was that experience like?
A: "A very supportive environment"-- but it really was. I've been a resident playwright at the Playwrights Foundation (that's who runs the Festival) for a little while, so the whole experience was pretty comfortable for me. It was a good way to get to know the script better, identify some of the challenges a production would involve, etc. And I think anytime an organization puts its resources at your disposal and presents your work, it's helpful just as a vote of confidence. Those can be hard to come by. The actors I worked with out there were really lovely too. As were the other writers.
Q: What else are you working on?
A: I'm working now on a piece about Las Vegas, where I went this summer on a kind of pseudo-honeymoon. But it's not really about Las Vegas. Hmm. It's about a kid who processes everything through a lens of popular culture. A really smart kid. I'm pretty sure Guitar Hero will be involved. Then also, the back of my mind has been harping on D.H. Lawrence lately. A pretty low-level involvement to date, but we'll see.
Q: How did you come to have plays in Paris and Berlin? Were you there to see them? What was that like?
A: I lived in Berlin for a year or so and I had a fellowship to work on a new piece there. I did a very small workshop-type production of one piece in a children's puppet theater-- it wasn't a puppet piece or a children's piece, but I was in love with the setup in this place-- they had done a version of "Where the Wild Things Are," you know, before it was cool-- anyway, while I was there I became friends with a choreographer and performance artist named Ami Garmon, who's American but has been living in Berlin and Paris for a long time, and I did two pieces with her, one in a Berlin festival and one in a Paris festival. I performed in all three of those pieces. Basically my approach to making theater at that point was that I wanted to be doing it as much as possible, that just making the pieces was an end in itself and rather than try really hard to get other people to put on my plays I would put them on myself with my friends. That possibility is still something I love about theater.
Q: Tell me a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: Hmm. I've been reading a bunch of Freud lately, so I'm a little scared to answer this question. But I will tell you that apparently my first word was "more."
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I like it when theater is restive. You know, challenging and challenged and quick and mercurial. If you already know something, then don't put it in a play. I think I really appreciate specificity-- but maybe that's one of those things like "good writing" that's just a catchall. I'm trying to answer the question in a way that won't rule out any particular type of theater, because there aren't any categories I'd dismiss out of hand. For instance, my plays tend not to have real characters, and it tends not to be totally settled in them what has happened or hasn't happened, and people tend not to talk the way people talk in real life. But I can enjoy all of those things in plays I see. I think it's safe to say that strangeness is a big part of the payoff for me. Give me something weird. In whatever way. I think, actually, to be honest, that for me to really like a piece it has to make me feel that the people who made it are not quite at home in the world. That something is amiss. But this can be a really joyful experience.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights starting out?
A: I wish I knew! I guess something along the lines of, get your pieces up. Don't assume that someone else has to decide to do them-- you can do them yourself. And then you can totally decide that you'd rather have someone else do them-- but at least try. A production at whatever level teaches you a million times more than all the workshopping and feedback in the world. I think.
Q: Plug your show:
A: Opening this Saturday!
13P presents...
American Treasure
Written and directed by Julia Jarcho
Starring Aaron Landsman and Jenny Seastone Stern
Sets: Jason Simms
Costumes: Colleen Werthmann
Lights: Ben Kato
Sound: Asa Wember
One night, a Real History Detective meets a gumptious young vagabond with a harrowing past. Together, they'll follow a paper trail of blood and tears that goes all the way back to this nation's beginning. Or somewhere else.
November 21 - December 12
The Paradise Factory
64 East 4th Street (between Bowery and 2nd Ave.)
November 21 - 22, 27 - 29, December 2 - 3, 5 - 6, 9 - 10, and 12 at 8:30PM; December 4 and 11 at 7:30PM and 10:00PM
tickets @ www.americantreasuretheplay.com
Nov 11, 2009
I Interview Playwrights Part 92: Lisa D'Amour
Lisa D'Amour
Hometown: New Orleans
Current town: New Orleans and Brooklyn
Q: Can you tell me a little about Terrible Things going up at PS122? Is this the amazing thing I saw in Minneapolis with the marshmallows and wrestling?
Q: What else are you working on?
A: I just finished a play called DETROIT, which a friend of mine recently described as "The Cataract but on Crystal Meth". There is no crystal meth in the play but there are two couples living side by side, similar to my play The Cataract. I also just did a little showing of a project called Dufu, Mississip, this funny little musical I am dreaming up with my husband, Brendan Connelly (of Theater of a Two-Headed Calf). It's the 8th century Chinese poems of Dufu, adapted to a Mississippi landscape. We showed a glimpse of it at the Catch series at the Bushwick Starr, with Dave Malloy on Ukelele (sp?) and Brendan on washtub bass.Q: Can you tell me a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: Two: One: My first play was staged in my backyard on a big hill when we were living in West Virginia. It was a passion play, and it moved from the bottom of the hill to the top. I made Missy Zimmerman play Jesus because her hair was long. We crucified her in our vegetable garden.
Two: We took a bunch or long road trips when I was little because we were in West Virginia and trying to get my super homesick mom back to New Orleans. To entertain myself, I would make my brother's do little skits on tape recorders. (I vaguely remember me as a reporter and Todd as the Big Bad Wolf?) We'd also spend lots of time trying to get my Dad to say a curse word in the front seat and capture it on tape.
Q: I've worked with your younger brother Todd a couple times now and am crazy about him although have learned not to go out drinking with him. Can you talk a little about Stanley and what it was like to work with him on that?
A: True dat, partying with Todd. Even worse: partying with Todd and Brendan. And add Brendan's mom Donna into the picture and you are really in trouble.
Working on Stanley was a fabulous experience. When I moved to New York, I wanted to make a piece for Todd that showed off his physical abilities -- he is an extraordinary, and extraordinarily precise, mover. We started working on this idea of a guy who thinks he is Stanley Kowalski, escaped from the play, long before Katrina....we were in mid-development when the storm happened and we felt like it had to be addressed...we were from New Orleans and the character that inspired the piece was from New Orleans. Todd was totally committed to the process and of course, the product. He's amazing isn't he? We really can't wait to work together again....I've got some ideas brewing...
Q: Can you talk at all about being in New Orleans after the flood?
A: Well first I need to remind you that the Saints are 8-0!!! The city is going totally crazy. It is amazing how that team is channelling so much energy into the city right now! I never really watched football again but now I catch every game, wearing my damn fleur de lis shirt. It sounds like a small dumb thing, a football team, but it is huge in terms of the morale of a city that is trying to remain vibrant.
The city doing great now, with HUGE reminders of the many people who were basically not allowed to come back because they are poor. This is a travesty.
But many people are back, and the DIY spirit of rebuilding has created a really beautiful thing. It was crazy, that whole year after the storm. Nobody was getting their subsidy money on time (if at all) and people were just making it happen. Not everyone could handle (or should have handled) the stress of the zaniness. Not enough schools for a long time, spotty services like hospitals and grocery stores. Almost all of that is resolved now (still some gaping holes in things like mental health services) and there's just a lot of energy...and new blood too. The N.O. theater scene is hopping in part because of like three new companies that have started since the storm....kids who moved there after college and settled down.
If you meant, like, what was it like to be there in the weeks / months after the storm...that is a different story. I was in and out (unlike my parents and extended family, who were just THERE). But when I was there it was a completely surreal landscape. I remember the party we had at my brother Chris' house in the Broadmoor / Uptown area....he was one of the first people back in his neighborhood (he has 6 feet of water in his house). And someone called the cops on us because we were too loud and we were like WHOO HOOO! There are people in the neighborhood to complain!!! It was exciting...
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: 1. Find your group of at least four playwrights who are going to be your support network. Read each other's drafts, listen to each other's success and sob stories.
2. Finish what you start. You will be tempted to leave it halfway done. This is what leads you to not being a playwright anymore. Finish it.
3. Don't worry about making money writing plays. Do things for free.
4. Don't waste too much time or money blindly sending plays out to theaters that don't know you. Meet directors and have them pass your plays on to people. Intern at theaters and sneak your plays in. Produce your own plays and invite as many professionals as you can to them -- even if they are out of town and can't come, they'll be happy to know about you.
Q: plugs please:
And then the show, opening December 4!
http://pearldamour.com/?page_id=43
Also Todd (my brother) is in a show at the Ontological:
Nov 10, 2009
I Interview Playwrights Part 91: Rajiv Joseph
Rajiv Joseph
Hometown: Cleveland, Ohio
Current Town: Brooklyn, NY
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I tend to work on a few things at once. I’m working on one play about sports book gambling, another one about gangsters in New Delhi, and then a couple other plays that, at this point, are too soft and unformed to describe in any coherent way.
Q: You are one of the writers who won the Whiting award this year. Congrats! Can you tell me about that?
A: A huge honor, and totally crazy. I actually had never even heard of the award before, and I got a call telling me I’d won it. I thought it was some friends messing with me. Basically someone nominates you for it, and you don’t even know it until you win. It’s an incredible award that will literally buy me more time to write.
Q: Can you tell me about your play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo?
A: It started out as a 10 minute play that I wrote at NYU and that nobody really liked, so it sat in my desk drawer for 2 years. Then I brought it to the Lark Playwrights Workshop and spent the next 3 years developing it through the Lark, which got it to a point where Center Theatre Group in LA wanted to to do it at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. They’re now going to remount it at the Mark Taper Forum in April.
The play takes place in Bahdad during the war. But it also takes place in a ghost world that is wedged into that reality. The ghost of a Bengal tiger roams the streets looking for God, a dead Marine haunts his best friend, and the ghost of Uday Hussein torments his former gardener. So it’s a ghost story, and a war story, and a story about translation and topiary and gold-plated weapons and lepers. I had the great fortune to have Moisés Kaufman direct the play. And we had this genius, brilliant cast.
Q: You and I have the same agent. Isn't Seth great!
A: Seth is the LeBron James of agents. He’s got a wicked handle, he sees the court like no one else, he will kill you from downtown, or he will post up and overpower you inside. Sometimes I have nightmares about him. He is that awesome.
Q: Tell me a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: I liked to play in the mud.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I guess I want a play to take me into a dream state. I’m excited by any theatre that does that, and that doesn’t wake me until the end.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: I struggle when I try to write what I think a “play” is supposed to be. So my advice is, just write what you think would be cool. And go easy on the stage directions.
Nov 9, 2009
I Interview Playwrights Part 90: Carly Mensch
Carly Mensch
Hometown: Harrison, New York.
Current Town: NYC, Hell's Kitchen.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I just finished two new plays. The first, Oblivion, is about moral relativism Or rather, how we teach ourselves single-entendre principles in a morally relative universe. The play starts with a lie - a high school teenager lies to her parents - and quickly expands into larger questions of belief and guidance (where we go to for answers to big questions). The play is also about Pauline Kael, former New Yorker film critic, and how young artists can worship older artists almost religiously. It's also quite simply about a family. How this one lie pokes a crack in the life of a seemingly put-together liberal family. In general, I'm obsessed with questions of generational differences. How one generation is different from the last, how certain sensibilities and world-views get passed down or replaced, how parents teach their children and vice versa.
The second play I wrote with a specific space in mind - Ars Nova. For those who don't know Ars Nova, it's a sort of old-school vaudeville cabaret theater. Red velvet curtains, bar in the back, very intimate. I wanted to write a two-person play that used the performative aspect of the space and I came up with the idea of historical reenactments, turning the theater into a sort of museum. I'm deeply amused and intrigued by historical reenactments - this idea that if you put on a costume and talk in a hokey accent that history becomes present-tense. I based the museum on one of my favorite museums in New York - the Lower East Side Tenement Museum - so I could explore issues of immigration and personal reinvention. There's also a love story and a bunch of philosophical smack-downs about why we study history and how our generation is culturally bankrupt. I won't say any more.
Q: You're going to head to LA soon to write for Weeds. Are you excited? What kind of car are you going to buy? What are you scared of and what are you looking forward to about LA?
A: Yeah, they hired a scrappy kid to write for a sexy drug-dealing mom, go figure. I'm very excited. I really like the show and the questions they're investigating - moral gray areas, modern parenting, what's up with the whole Mexican drug scene. I'm also really excited about writing as part of a team, getting to see how other people think through plot and character. I don't have a car yet. I don't even know how one procures a car - I should probably look into that. In terms of what I'm afraid of, I'm scared of losing theater. The theater community is so geographically specific - once you leave New York, it just sort of disappears, or rather, you disappear from it.
In general though, I think TV is up to really good things right now. A lot of shows are taking on socially relevant stories in artful and deeply entertaining ways. Most importantly, they're finding their audiences. Theater can learn a lot from TV instead of just carping about its seductive qualities. I think we owe it to ourselves as storytellers to figure out where our audiences are going and why and to reevaluate what's specifically theatrical, what absolutely positively has to be on a stage and not anywhere else. Everyone says that, but still people keep writing psychological dramas that would be better off on a screen.
David Foster Wallace wrote an amazing essay about TV called "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction." I urge everyone to check it out.
Q: You worked in the lit offices of Playwrights Horizons for quite a while. How did that inform your playwriting?
A: Working in a lit office, you realize literary managers aren't evil gate-keepers hellbent on quashing the hopes and dreams of aspiring playwrights via form letters. They're smart, thoughtful, caring people who spend countless hours reading scripts and doling out free dramaturgical advice. I found it very encouraging to learn that when a play gets read by a theater, it really gets read. A human being takes the time to grapple with it and figure out what the playwright is trying to accomplish. Not only, but working at a theater you learn that rejection isn't personal. A lot goes into curating a season; it's not simply "we like this play, we like this play, we don't like this..." which is often how the process appears from the other side.
At the same time, the job arms you with a descriptive vocabulary that can be detrimental to the creative side of your brain. You get very good at slotting plays into categories ("a talky, schematic issue play" "a self-consciously, meta-theatrical slim satire"). I found myself censuring myself before even trying out an idea. So it's an amazingly gratifying job and a great place to learn how to read a play, but as a playwright, you can't spend too much time in that position.
Q: Can you tell me what it was like to have a play in Humana? Had you been to Humana prior to that or was it your first time there?
A: Every playwright should go to Humana. Apply a million times until you get in. It's such a nurturing and empowering place to do theater; they treat writers like rockstars. I went there at 24 with my first play - I had never had a production before, never been to the festival - and they put my play on the mainstage in a 600-seat theater with a balcony. Sean Daniels, the director, turned our rehearsal space into a sort of kiddie romper room of experimentation; I ended up rewriting the ending about ten times. The script was definitely flawed, but the production made up for it in heart I think.
There's also something to be said for theater festivals. The energy, the variety, the drinking. It reminds you that your play isn't the only play that exists, that it's part of a larger thing called Theater. I saw the Civilians' show, Beautiful City, maybe five times. I saw Gina Gionfriddo's show twice.
Q: Tell me a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: For most of my childhood I was convinced I never actually went to sleep. That I was the only person on the planet who didn't partake in this basic human activity. One day my parents showed me a picture of myself sleeping in the backseat of our car. It was pretty enlightening.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I'm really into theater collectives right now. Experimental companies taking on big, messy ideas with singular visions. Elevator Repair Service. The T.E.A.M. The National Theater of the United States of America. The Civilians. I just saw Sleep No More by the British theater company Punchdrunk, which was an experience. I'm convinced that the future success of theater lies in groups of people, not individuals. They're able to circumvent the slog of the development process and create theater on their own terms. They're also coming up with the some of the most gutsy and powerful material right now, not to mention work that is visually arresting and super fun to watch.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Be ambitious - aim high, overshoot, mess up, try again. Theater needs bold storytellers right now. We need thoughtful people taking on big questions. With every bad play that gets produced, theater dies a little. We become a little more irrelevant. So be hard on yourself. Write every play like it's your last. If you're writing about five loafers on a couch, throw it out. Look outside yourself. Ask questions. Write the conversations you want to be having with society at large. Think visually, not just about words on a page. Think about the audience. Entertain them, respect them, challenge them. Don't write a play you know has already been written. Read a million books. Go on crazy adventures. Take strange jobs. Fall in love with older writers and then try to write better than them. Fall in love with theater and then write a play that redefines what theater is.
Q: Any plugs?
A: Rent a car this winter and go see Elevator Repair's Gatz at A.R.T. - see the marathon six hour version, don't split it up. I saw Gatz last year in Troy, New York and it was the single-most thrilling piece of theater I have ever seen.
Nov 6, 2009
I Interview Playwrights Part 89: Marielle Heller
Marielle Heller
Hometown: Alameda, CA which is in the East Bay Area.
Current Town: New York
Q: Tell me about your upcoming show, Diary of a Teenage Girl.
A: The Diary of a Teenage Girl is a play that I have adapted from the graphic novel by Phoebe Gloeckner. It's the story of a fifteen year old girl who is growing up in the 70s in San Francisco who is sleeping with her mother's boyfriend. That's the short answer. Really to me, it's the most honest coming of age story of a young girl I have ever come across. It pulls no punches. It's a look into the mind of a really precocious, really curious teenager, who is exploring her sexuality, and learning about herself through sleeping with her mother's boyfriend. It's not a black and white story of pedophilia, nor is it a lolita story. It's looking at a really complicated situation purely from the persective of the fifteen year old girl- through her fifteen year old lens, only further complicated by the time and place in which she lives. And surprisingly, it's really funny.
Q: How did you come to adapt this graphic novel?
A: Well I read the book, which my sister gave me for Christmas, I closed the cover and immediately called the publisher and just babbled something about wanting to make this into a play. I didn't really know what I was talking about. And after many months of correspondence with the publisher and eventually Phoebe, who seemed pretty on board, I got patched through to her agents who promptly shut me down. I got no after no. It didn't look like this was going to go any further, but one day I realized I wasn't willing to give up on this. I had never known so surely that I wanted to work on a project before, so I just called the publisher back and told her I wasn't going to take no, I didn't think she had taken me seriously, and I wanted a chance to show her what I wanted to do with the book. I ended up doing a pretty extensive presentation for her, and eventually got the theatrical rights to the book. That process took about 10 months. And from there, I had to actually start writing!
Q: Is this your first play? What challenges did you find in adapting someone else's work?
A: This is my first play, and the project which has gotten me into writing in a real way. It's been immensely challenging to adapt this book which I so revered (I understand now why people say it's easier to adapt a bad book than a great one). I felt such loyalty to Phoebe's work, but I had to get over that eventually. It just wasn't serving the play. And since then she and I have had great conversations about what adaptation means. She essentially had to adapt her personal diaries in order to write this novel- condense characters, fudge dates and timelines, etc., and she was the one who actually pointed out to me that I went through a similar process with writing the play. It's like the story has gone through two major meat grinders and has come out the other side... and it's been especially exciting to see that she still recognizes her story in the play.
Q: What else are you working on?
A: I've gotten into writing screenplays. It's been amazing because Diary kind of came along and swept me up into this new world, and opened up a whole different path to me that I hadn't really considered before. I have started writing with a partner, Cailin Goldberg-Meehan. We have one completed screenplay, which is about two nerdy fifteen year old girls (I clearly am working out some long buried issues from my childhood) who are overacheivers, and have never really socialized, who try to turn their social status around in one day, and make out with the boys of their dreams, and everything goes terribly wrong. It's a funny teen comedy about girls. And we're working on a number of other scripts. It's been really wonderful.
Q: You're an accomplished actor. How has your acting experience informed your playwriting or vice versa?
A: I think that everyone who works in the theater is constantly studying story. And whether it's conscious or not, we are all aware deep down how story functions, and what drives it. I realized I knew a lot more than I expected about what works and what doesn't, especially about how things sound coming out of actors' mouths, and how dialogue flows and beats need to build. It was easy for me to imagine myself in the play and consider that I would be the one feeling the pain if the play dragged. But I feel like really I'm just learning about this whole new craft of writing, and it's a journey that's got a similar timeline to acting: you're never done! And since writing, I'm sure my perspective as an actor has shifted. How could it not? It's probably just made me way more of a wise ass (just kidding... I hope).
Q: If you will, please tell me a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: When I was 12 years old my family went fishing at a trout farm and I fell in. I remember seeing all of the fish swim away from me in all directions, and feeling them slime up next to me. I emerged soaking wet and so embarrassed. My dad, who had recently seen Dancing with Wolves, called me Swims with Trout all summer. Maybe I've never recovered.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: Just when I think I know what type of theater person I am, it changes. I love theater that tells stories we haven't heard before, that is somewhere really honest and vulnerable even to the point of painful awkwardness. I love just seeing people really try and really put themselves out there. I guess the only theater I don't like is lazy theater (you know who you are).
Q: What advice do you have for an actor just starting out?
A: Start writing, or composing or something. It will only help. It's so difficult to be an artist who has to wait for other people to tell you when you can create. Find ways to make your own projects, whether by writing them or whatever. Just don't only spend your time auditioning because it will crush you.
Q: What advice do you have for a playwright just starting out?
A: God I have no idea. Just watch yourself with feedback, monitor it if you can. Notice when you aren't open enough to it, and when you're too open to it, and constantly check yourself on it. It's such a fine balance, and can affect everything.
Q: Plugs please:
A: Diary is going to be coming to New York in March to 3LD co-produced by New Georges. Check out our website: www.Diarytheplay.com and come and see the show!
Below is perhaps the best play trailer I've ever seen. --Adam
www.thediaryofateenagegirl.com
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