I Interview Playwrights Part 209: Sofia Alvarez

Sofia Alvarez

Hometown: Baltimore, MD

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A;  Working on revisions to my play, THE FISH BOWL that will be part of Juilliard’s Playwright’s Festival in September and directing Blair Singer’s NOTICE ME that starts performances at the Wild Project on 7/19.

Q:  Tell me about NOTICE ME – how did you get involved in this project?

A:  Blair is a client of my former boss at CAA and we became friends when I worked there. Earlier this year we were having lunch in LA I asked him what was going on with NOTICE ME – I play I’d always loved. He told me he wanted to do it in New York with “kids.” I immediately called my friend Daniel Grossman who runs FOGLIGHT, a production company that produces theatre, music videos and independent films, that was four months ago - we open next week.

Q:  Do you identify more as a writer or a director?

A:  I identify as a writer but I love directing and will continue to do so for as long as I have the opportunity - they fill different creative needs for 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:  Both of my parents are writers so I fear I may bore you with all of the stories I could tell here but I will say that when we were very young- my brother, sister and I would entertain ourselves with character based improv games we made up with titles like “Dark Bar”, “Carpet Salesman” and “Child Molester”. The latter in which my sister Amelia, in a Tony worthy turn, would wear our grandmothers large, yellow “molester glasses” and beg my brother and I not to “take her shades” when we put her in prison.

Also, most members of my family were very sharp and creative teasers, as the sensitive youngest I developed a thick skin from an early age – I think this shows in my plays – which are ultimately sympathetic beneath a prickly exterior.

Q:  Is that how you would describe your writing – prickly and sympathetic?

A:  Sort of - I am currently at Juilliard and in my mid-year review my professor Chris Durang told me that what he sees in all of my plays is a combination of psychology and humor – which was exciting to hear, as that is how I would describe them as well.

Q:  Who are your theatrical heroes?

A:  Maria Irene Fornes. FEFU AND HER FRIENDS is my favorite play and I directed a production of MUD for my thesis in college.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like theatre that is emotional without being sentimental. Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of THE SEAGULL directed by Ian Rickson on Broadway and Jez Butterworth’s JERUSALEM, also directed by Ian Rickson at the Royal Court come to mind. Also, there was a reading of Bash Doran’s KIN at the Pacific Playwrights Festival that totally blew me away - I can’t wait to see the full production at Playwrights this season.

Q:  You had a play at the Pacific Playwrights Festival as well, correct?

A:  Yes. My play BETWEEN US CHICKENS was one of the other readings.

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

A:  Apply to everything and don’t second guess yourself based on other people’s opinions, you know better than anyone else the strengths and weaknesses in your own writing.

Q:  Plugs, please:

Come and see NOTICE ME 7/19 – 8/1 at The Wild Project. www.noticeme2010.com

I Interview Playwrights Part 208: Kevin R. Free

Kevin R. Free

Hometown:
Greensboro, North Carolina, though I am officially an army brat. My family lived in Texas, Virginia, Kansas, Illinois, Kentucky, and North Carolina all before I turned 6. But I lived most of my life in North Carolina.

Current Town:
New York City

Q:  Tell me about the play you're putting up in this year's NY Fringe.

A;  A Raisin in the Salad: Black Plays for White People is a sketch show about culture and how it’s created. Or, rather, WHO creates it… I think my goal is to make people laugh about race & identity by using stereotypes, pop culture references, and absurd images. It’s a series of connected sketches that add up to a collage – a decidedly American quilt, if you will – that depicts how I relate to the world (or did at the time the seed for this show was planted).

Q:  What else are you up to?

A:  At the moment, I am directing 16 incredibly talented kids aged 10 – 15 in a production of Godspell in Westchester, at Broadway Training Center. I’m also directing Tracey Lee in her solo show for FringeNYC, Standing Up: Bathroom Talk & Other Stuff We Learn From Dad …And I’m narrating a great book right now - Any Known Blood, by Lawrence Hill.

Q:  You worked with the New York Neo-Futurists. Tell me more about them?

A:  I am still an ensemble member of the New York Neo-Futurists, FYI. I am taking a break for a while, but I could go back in 2011.

Everything I know about myself as a writer, I learned first as a Neo. We don’t play characters and we don’t ever pretend onstage. Because we acknowledge the audience as part of the show, the show is visceral and immediate and dangerous, when we get it right. The show to which I am referring is, of course, Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind (30 Plays in 60 Minutes). We write and perform all the plays and most of them are under 2 minutes. The plays are so in the moment that many people mistake the show as improv (but it aint). Anyway, I discovered when I started writing as a Neo-Futurist, I discovered that I had a lot to say – about myself – but I never really wanted to say it. A Raisin in the Salad: Black Plays For White People is actually an expanded, extrapolated piece that started as a series of plays in Too Much Light…

Q:  You're an acclaimed actor with an amazing voice who acted in gigantic hits like Susan Gets Some Play. How does your acting inform your writing and vice versa?

A:  Acclaimed? Moi? Thank you!

My first real taste of being myself in all my crazy glory onstage was in Too Much Light... and that's what I want now, all the time. I wrote great plays for myself, and others wrote great things for me. The more I did and wrote for TML, the more I realized that I can be that free in all my auditions. And my acting informs my playwriting, because I'm always looking to write something in which I can cast myself (because I'm so acclaimed & have such an amazing voice). Speaking of acting, when are you writing a play for me? Call it "Kevin gets some Soul," or something. Maybe?

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've a few stories, I think:

My first voice teacher, Phyllis Tektonidis, an international diva, taught me my first audition song, which I used from 10th grade until my first year of college. It was “Swanee.” I honestly had no idea that I was singing a minstrel song. It’s Gershwin! I still cringe when I think of what the black people who saw me sing that song were thinking about me.

When I was five, I mocked my cousins for the way they pronounced my name. They were southern, so to my five year-old-raised-on-army-base ears, they called me “Kay-yuh-vee-yin.”

My high school chorus teacher, before opening her front door for me, told me that normally she didn’t “let black people into my house, but I figure you’re not black - you’re just wearing makeup…” (I know that was a racial slur, but was it also a gay slur, as well…maybe?)

I tell those three stories to say that in my adult life, as an artist, It is important to me not to sing minstrel songs, literally and metaphorically; to embrace where I come from, rather than revile it the way I am tempted to; and to make it clear that I identify as black, regardless of the way I talk, the way I sing, or the way I dress. I am also gay. So there. I remind myself of all that in my work, because, even with all my anger and sadness, I’m happy to be who I am.

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

A:  It would be that we all recognize our power within the theater machine. Not so much that we are in control of other people, but that we have power over ourselves. We can make choices. Actors can decide what roles they don’t/do want to do; playwrights can tell the stories they want to tell; theatres/companies can find ways to present work that will find an audience. And, likewise, audiences who don’t have a theatre-going lifestyle will recognize the power in attending theater, if for no other reason than to figure out how to change theater.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I’m inspired most by people that I know: the people who create theatre on a shoestring budget; who have no representation, but write and perform and anyway, the people who create and maintain theatre festivals; and most of all -the children with whom I work year-round, who create theatre based on their lives.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Oooooooh I love me a dangerous comedy, honey. I like when plays and performers are just at the edge of crazy. I want to see something immediate and close to the bone. I also love seeing theatrical magic onstage. It’s easy for me to buy it, if I can see the wires showing.

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

A:  Well, I feel like I am just starting out, so I feel a little foolish giving advice. But I will say this: if you receive great feedback about your work, which opens a door into your psyche about how you work or about your writing quirks – and it rings true to you, LISTEN TO IT. Then listen to all the feedback you receive to discover whether that feedback is informed by the original feedback. For instance, if someone says to you, “Hey, Spike! Your endings are never resolved.” And if you believe that to be true – and you like that about yourself – then perhaps all the rest of the feedback you receive about how you have no point of view plays right into your endgame. Feel me?

Q:  Plugs, please:

A: 
www.kevinrfree.com - that’s me…

Godspell Broadway Training Center, July 30, 31 at 7:00 PM & August 1 at 3:00 PM Tickets & More info: www.broadwaytraining.com.

Tracey Lee’s Standing Up: Bathroom Talk & Other Stuff We Learn from Dad in FringeNYC at the Players Theater, August 13 – 29. www.tleestandingup.blogspot.com. Check back for our official dates!

A Raisin in the Salad: Black Plays for White People in FringeNYC at the Players Theater, August 13 – 29. www.blackplaysforwhitepeople.com Check back for our official dates!

Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind (30 Plays in 60 Minutes), every Friday & Saturday at 10:30, Kraine Theatre - www.nynf.org

I Interview Playwrights Part 207: Ken Weitzman

Ken Weitzman

Hometown:
Great Neck, NY. I’m a Great Necker.

Current Town:
Bloomington, Indiana. I teach at IU.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m working on an adaptation of a non-fiction book by Lars Anderson. It’s called Carlisle vs. Army. It’s about a 1912 football game between the Carlisle Industrial Indian School and the Cadets at West Point. Barely 20 years after the massacre at Wounded Knee, Native Americans and the US Army were squaring off on the football field. Jim Thorpe, arguably the first celebrity athlete, was on the Carlisle team and Dwight Eisenhower led the Army team. It’s a great story to work with. I’m also working on a play about a western water rights deal gone awry.

Q:  You've done quite a bit of teaching. How do you manage to balance your teaching and writing lives?

A:  The difficulty of time aside, I’d say they balance each other. Teaching is important to me - to support myself and my family, yes, but also for fun, for inspiration, for having to articulate in the simplest terms what I do, why I do it, and what its value is. If all I did was write, I'd go crazy.

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

A:  Hmm. I don’t know, lots of random stupidity. When I was around preschool age I think, my brother got a cassette recorder as a gift and he, my sister, and I made recordings. I remember at some point yelling over and over into the recorder, “sock in the eye!” I don’t know why. But it cracked up my siblings, which delighted me. There was something about the word play, the pun, the sound of those particular words together, the violence of it, the repetition, the exuberant idiocy - I’d say that’s all in my writing (and my personality I suppose.)

Though nowadays, as a father, I think more about the childhood(s) of my two sons and how to communicate to them some vision of the world and what it is to be a human being. So I’d say my writing is somewhere between that and “sock in the eye!” Perhaps the tension between the two?

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

A:  One thing? I’m not sure. Certainly the price to attend. But I hesitate to say that because I can’t say I know how to fix that. But less costly theatre would certainly alter many things.

Also, the critics. I wish the whole idea of the “review” was abolished or transformed at the very least. I wish those covering theatre never gave their opinions on what they liked or deemed worthy. I wish they were more like reporters in their approach - giving context, the story of the experience of being at the play, including the experience of the audience around them, interviews with them, with the artists, the artist’s peers, etc. etc.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  How about influences? Albee, Miller, Shanley, Adele Shank, Allan Havis, Les Waters, Caryl Churchill, Erik Ehn, Amy Freed, The Atlantic Theater Company, Young Playwrights Inc.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theatre that re-orders everyday logic, and the metaphors we use to understand our existence, so we see things in new ways. That’s a terribly written sentence but I’m leaving it anyway. I like theatre that’s for the audience, not just for the people on stage. I like plays that are energetic, exuberant, vital, playful. I dislike it when plays are lazy or take shortcuts in their storytelling. I prefer simply produced plays in smaller venues.

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

A:  Misinterpret your influences. Or, less coyly, don’t shy from trying to emulate those people and those works that influence you most. You couldn’t imitate or truly steal them even if you wanted to – because they’ll be filtered through the prism of your own experiences/world view/individuality. That being said, read a lot and see a lot of theatre so that you have influences. And get involved with theatre companies so you can meet people and hopefully find collaborators who help guide and inspire you, and whom you trust.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Two productions in winter 2011.

The Catch at Denver Center: http://www.denvercenter.org/shows-and-events/Subscriptions/DenverCenterTheatreCompany.aspx#catch

Fire in the Garden at IRT: http://www.irtlive.com/shows_and_tickets/season_preview/

I Interview Playwrights Part 206: Michael Golamco

Michael Golamco

Hometown:
The San Francisco Bay Area from the peninsula to Marin County to all points in between.

Current Town:
Los Angeles! As a Northern Californian I used to hate on LA, but I have to say that this city’s really grown on me.

Q:  Tell me about Year Zero that went up recently at Second Stage and Victory Gardens.

A:  Year Zero is a play about a sixteen year old kid that loves Dungeons and Dragons, hip hop, and talking to a skull. It’s a dramatic comedy about the Cambodian Genocide, and there aren’t a lot of those around so I felt like one needed to be written.

The play world premiered at Victory Gardens alongside my pal Kris Diaz’s The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, which is one of my favorite plays of the year. Seriously, have you seen this thing?

Anyway, Victory Gardens is full of wonderful, caring people, and Year Zero grew immensely as a result of that premiere. Plus have you had the hot dogs in Chicago? Amazing. The foie gras hot dog at Hot Doug’s is incredible. Beyond that Chicago is a great place to do work -- they really embrace you and make you feel at home. It’s perhaps the most welcoming city I’ve ever worked in.

The second production of YZ took place at Second Stage, alongside Chad Deity again. Dude, what are the odds? Anyway, I love working in New York. I have a lot of friends there and it feels like a true home base. Any time you need to, you can go lounge at the library at New Dramatists and just read a book and leave the cares of the world outside. And Second Stage was an awesome place to work on the play -- it felt like a true second production in that the play got a lot tighter and more focused. They really take care of you as a playwright there, and we had a lot of fun working in the rehearsal room. Will Frears (our director) is a hilarious, really smart guy.

Q:  Tell me please about Cowboy v Samurai going up at Jobsite in FL this August.

A:  Cowboy is best described as “Cyrano de Bergerac with race as the big nose”. There is also a ninja in it, or rather a man who thinks of himself as a ninja but really isn't a very good one. All plays should have ninjas.

Florida’s great! I think the folks that are doing it are great as well! Also, Cowboy should also be coming back to Minneapolis later in the year, from what they tell me.

Q: What else are you working on?

A:  I live in LA so I’m required by law to write for the screen as well as the stage -- otherwise I might get deported to another state. I’m not kidding -- there’s a guy that comes over twice a week to scan my hard drive.

So I’ve sold two features so far this year, and I’m continuing to do film work while I move into TV writing. Theater-wise, I’m working on a commission for South Coast Rep, plus a couple of other things that are rattling around looking for cohesion. Also I want to get a dog in the next couple of months. I know, I’ve been talking about getting a dog for years, but I think I’m finally going to pull the trigger. I’m probably going to name him/her Spaghetti or Omelette or Egon.

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 ten my dad brought home a Commdore 64. You should’ve seen this thing: Beige. Yeah, remember when computers were beige?.. A big old keyboard with the entire computer built into it. It used CASSETTE TAPE DRIVES to store data. Here’s the Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64

Anyway, I used to mess around with that thing for hours. Back then magazines like BYTE and Compute had programs printed in them that you would type into your computer, line by line, and run. This was before the Internet or modems even. I would spend days doing that, taking the programs apart and modifying them and seeing how they worked. How to change them. I taught myself how to program in BASIC doing that, which translated to C, Java, PHP, later on. I may be the only playwright that is also a subscriber to the Apple iOS developer program. But who knows -- maybe Sam Shepard’s working on an iPhone app in Objective C right now…

Anyway anyway, those formative experiences taught me a lot about structure, elegance, keeping things simple and precise. A lot of that knowledge transferred to writing and storytelling. It sounds kind of kooky and a bit demystifying, but I think programming and creative writing are linked in a lot of ways. In one activity you’re writing code that compiles for machines; in another you’re writing code that compiles for humans.

That sounds totally nerdy. Please don’t take my lunch money, I need it to buy milk so I can grow.

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

A:  The economics problem. Expensive tickets, (in)accessibility. At the same time, the nuts and bolts of the enterprise itself is, by its nature, a very expensive and time-consuming process. Plus how do you pay playwrights a living wage, etc., etc.. A lot of the stuff that’s covered in TDF’s Outrageous Fortune.

This is a devil of a problem that I don’t have a solution to. But something needs to change. It’s going to take all of us putting our heads together as a community. Good work needs to get out there, and there are things that theater can do that no other medium on earth can do. I’m pretty sure we’ll figure something out -- I’m an optimist about it.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I’ve always loved Neil Simon’s plays. There’s a comedic wit and charm present in them that I really admire. I think that there are some very smart people working in the theater right now: Adam Rapp, Sarah Ruhl, Lynn Nottage, Guirgis, Julia Cho, Lloyd Suh. Confession: Sometimes I like reading plays more than I like seeing them (because I can study the intricacies of the language in my own time, etc., etc.), and I always get a kick out of reading these guys’ plays. Maybe that’s because I can cast them in any way I wish in my imagination.

Also actors are my heroes. I’m talking about the ones that work their asses off because they love doing what they do. I’m specifically talking about actors who will bake delicious cookies for everyone and bring them to a Saturday rehearsal. You know who you are, and you are my hero.

You know who else are my heroes? Stage managers, designers, house managers, ushers, and everyone else that keeps the whole shebang going.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Stuff that, while I’m watching it, gives me a sort of out-of-body experience. I love theater where the energy is so palpable that it’s contagious. I think it’s the one-to-one live nature of the thing -- when I see really good theater I connect with it on a visceral, autonomic level. I hope that doesn’t sound too weird. I really get energized by it.

I usually have a good time watching any theater. If people care enough to be up there, giving a hundred percent, then I’m usually there with them from the audience. Doing that stuff’s hard.

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

A:  I think the thing that helped me a lot when I started was to just shut up and listen. Take peoples’ notes, understand them and see where they’re coming from. Be open minded. Don’t close up or get defensive. Also, write a lot and send your stuff out to every contest, call for material, etc., that’s out there. Get eyes on your work. Keep writing new work while you’re waiting for a response. Do new drafts of the stuff you’ve got. The things that you’re writing now, even if they become drawer plays, will probably inform your later work in important ways. If you have questions contact me through my website: www.michaelgolamco.com. It may take a while for me to respond, but I’ll do my best.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Red Dead Redemption on the XBOX 360 is a mighty fine video game. I just got to Mexico in it, you should check it out. Also, Fallout: New Vegas is lookin pretty good. It comes out in the fall. Oh you know what else is really good? Plants Vs. Zombies on the iPad. Though once you get the watermelons that freeze zombies (“wintermelons”) it gets a bit lopsided.

I Interview Playwrights Part 205: J. C. Lee

J. C. Lee

Hometown: New York City, NY

Current Town: Berkeley, California

Q:  Tell me about your trilogy that Sleepwalkers is producing this year.

A:  The trilogy is called This World and After and consists of 3 plays, all of which will be opening in San Francisco in 2010-11. The first is This World Is Good, followed by Into the Clear Blue Sky and The Nature Line.It all started sometime in 2006 when I was writing a new play for the Williamstown Theatre Festival's leapFROG program and found myself amazingly frustrated and exhausted and devoid of all hope in myself (hella emo, kids) - it was a sort of emotional apocalypse and wound up opening up my writing to the imaginative potential of the end times. There's something incredibly "death cultish" in Western culture; our constant obsession with being punished for the guilt of our existence pervades much of our social fabric largely thanks to religious philosophy. It became a focal point in my work for many years and helped churn out these plays. Plus you can write whatever the hell you want if the world is coming to an end.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  There's this insane ridiculous thing I wrote called Pookie Goes Grenading which will be featured as part of the Bay Area Playwright's Festival this coming July - it's a play about a troupe of dorky high school kids who embark on a sort of epic quest to produce the world's greatest film and wind up becoming terrorists along the way. I'm also working on a commission from the Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Performing Arts to write a play that allows high school kids to, you know, actually play high school kids in real time. That play's tentatively titled The Inexplicable Disappearance of Hector Villaraigosa and is slated for production in February 2011. Other than that there's a film project on my plate and my unending blogging.

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 spent my summers on the Jersey shore (fistpump) and my older cousins one time convinced me to cover my entire bike with ornaments in the hope of coming one step closer to be the super hero I'd always longed to be. I did it and took the bike to the top of a concrete ramp in the street. Proudly I launched myself downward only to have the ribbons and cards taped to the bike jam up the chain and freeze the wheels. I flipped over the handlebars and tore open my arm. Seeing a bone jutting through the open skin, I screamed like a mad man and my cousins fled. That serves as a pretty apt metaphor for everything I do.

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

A:  Our penchant to condescend. We take ourselves and our art way too seriously and fail to realize that there are plenty of people quite content to never step foot in a theatre and they're totally normal and intelligent. It's our job to give them a reason to come, and that reason can't be pretentious academic bullshit. We must rediscover the joy of telling stories again and be eager to share that joy with others. Our complaints about funding cuts and lackluster attendance only reflect our inability to communicate the excitement of our craft.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Shakespeare - he's the ultimate working class bad-ass. Tony Kushner for helping me realize that one could be a citizen apart from an artist. Jose Rivera and Caryl Churchill for constantly blowing my mind. Tony Taccone for running a theatre that never fails to do relevant, incredible work. And David Mamet for being himself no matter what the other kids say.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I really love Shakespeare when done well. Watching the RSC tackle King Lear with Ian McKellan at its helm changed my life. Beyond that, I'm always excited by well structured but imaginative work that doesn't try too hard - why people always think imagination and structure are in conflict is sort of beyond me. I loved Lisa Kron's In the Wake and Naomi Iizuka's Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West (both at Berkeley Rep).

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

A:  You'd better be doing it only because there's nothing else in the world you can do, because if there is something else, you should probably do that. It's likely to be easier and have greater social benefit and pay more than being a playwright. If it's the only thing you can do, then do it with intelligence, grace and honesty. Don't try to be original. Don't try to be clever. Don't be afraid to still shit you think rocks and make it your own.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Definitely check out the Brother/Sister Plays in the Bay Area next year. Not to mention Scapin at ACT and, if you can manage it, get to NYC to check out Signature's revival of Angels in America. That's enough theatre to merit loin-girding, no?

I Interview Playwrights Part 204: Ruth Margraff

photo:  David Little-Smith.com

Ruth Margraff

Hometown:

I grew up all over Ohio and Michigan staring up at my Dad preaching brimstone in tiny churches full of grieving widows. Mrs. Aho for example. Was an Ishpeming widow who screwed the piano stool up too high for me to reach the pedals when I played the ofratory in 2nd grade. So she landed in my play THE CRY PITCH CARROLLS which is a nativity set in a nostalgic nuclear winter. Spent my 20s as a New Yorker, trying to hustle through the skyscrapers and scrape by. Learned a lot from a bum on Thanksgiving who ranted and raved as he jumped down to get a sandwich from the subway tracks. There was a rich and lonely widow in my building who bashed her mouth on the lobby door and ended up in my play WALLPAPER PSALM. I kept leaving New York for Providence, Austin, Dallas with a few stints in Minneapolis and out to LA and then years abroad but I didn’t know what I was missing until I found Chicago.

Current Town: Chicago

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I just recorded a 2nd album with CAFÉ ANTARSIA so we’re working on the mix and release of that. I’m touring and recording also with a rock band FEVER IN THE FUNKHOUSE so I’m playing more organ and honky tank piano and jamming with Kenny Withrow of the New Bohemians who is our lead guitar player and I love the soul-splaying lyrics of Nikos Brisco. I’m tackling some Tolstoy with Bonnie Metzger, starting to conspire with Little Jack Melody/Steve Carter who is the bass player for Brave Combo, something classical with O-lan Jones, finishing a trilogy of martial arts operas with Fred Ho into a book, just starting to work with Trap Door Theater on my Ottoman/Greek opera for next season and tearing through the sculpture gardens on my bike which is how I meditate.

Q:  Tell me please about Cafe Antarsia.

A:  CAFÉ ANTARSIA ENSEMBLE is…very Balkan/Greek boudoir sort of lyric portraiture set in operatic miniatures. It’s dark and gypsy and the passion is thick as blood. There are icon paintings like this in the mountain monasteries of Crete where the nuns get drowsy and you have to know how to cross yourself to get in and you have to cover your hair. You can see where the Ottomans fired into the paint where the wood is torn and yet you see something almost figurative there. The shape is not at all like a mirror – but it holds a sort of power over you that makes you want to light a candle and stay there in the quiet of it as the blazing sun goes down and the wind starts to howl to the darkness. I’ve called it working-class opera for a while because we do everything by hand - making the props and costumes and hauling them around on our backs through trains and flights. We’ve toured all over the world, and the music of the marketplaces settles like dust on our shoes.

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

A:  It was hard to remember all my sins to avoid eternal damnation when I started taking communion so here were a few:

Saying the devil blew me off the porch when I ended up with a tooth through my lip.

Eating all the scallions and lettuce after a flash flood out of the garden. They always said I ate like a rabbit. Was it my sister or me falling asleep on a landing between staircases? And finding the cauliflower at my Aunt’s house – I just remember all the kittens were dying, my cousin was covertly slicing open leather chairs and pulling up my dress to look under it and getting his mouth washed out with soap. Some of this ends up in ALL THOSE VIOLENT SWEATERS.

Opening my eyes during communion and seeing the kid in front of me gutting the stomach of a skunk pin from Avon and scooping out the wax perfume. A later bottle of Sweet Honesty inspires a few lines in FLAGS UNFURLED.

And most regrettable: dressing up in all black and hiding in my brother’s closet while he stole a look at the forbidden television. I tapped on the door all through the program and then jumped out and scared him into a palsy – he was hyperventilating, he was dying and shrieking and I was tearing off the mask and saying no really look, it’s just me. It’s me.

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

A:  We would be more like Europe and Russia and India where theater is part of the culture so we wouldn’t scream at it like an alien in our backyard. We would treat it as art and be entertained by it as art rather than TV’s bratty stepchild. We would not be afraid of art or calling something art. We would enjoy parsing a play out intellectually in a cafe the next day or for the next few years rather than consuming it like a cheap hamburger in the moment. Theater would be more like music. Theater would be more like poetry which is how people talk if you really listen to people not induced by reality-programmed reality. Theater would attract the best minds and souls of our generation. Theater would be colder in terms of its ideas and hot as hell in sensuality. We’d have less of what I call “swollen protagonism” plays and more noticing of our swollen antagonism in the world. I would change a lot about theater as you can see and I kick at its pillars almost every day with every muscle because I have a deep love almost spiritually for the theater. One thing that has never changed about me is that I’m in my bones a rebel and always slightly outside of what I’m in.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  My sisters are from Dah Teatar in Belgrade with Barba and Grotowski as my brothers, Roma gypsy musicians like KAL and my teacher Djula Milosavljevic (Juliano Milo), Greek blues singers from tavernas in Crete and mainland Greece at the end of the Ottoman Empire. I admire the Brechtian/Weimar cabarets, Robert Ashley, Atom Egoyan’s early films, Dadaist manifestos, Picasso, Sartre… I line up with the neo-cubists in terms of language

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=%2Fjournals%2Fthe_drama_review%2Fv053%2F53.3.margraff.html

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The kind where I can see the raw labor – not the slick soulless high-tech expensive kind. Theater that shows us the tragic flaws and ecstasy of living, the sweat and tears sprung from a heart that aches because it is so unbearably wide open. I love plays that are thick with poetry so you have to pay rapt attention. Ivo van Hove’s MORE STATELY MANSIONS, Ken Prestininzi’s CHASTE which I just saw twice at Trap Door, Erik Ehn’s early musicals at BACA Downtown, Oksana Mysina in K.I. FROM CRIME, Reza Abdoh’s QUOTATIONS OF A RUINED CITY, Ozen Yula’s TREACHERY IN THE NEAR EAST, Nick Cave, Little Feat, Saban Bajromovic, a stunning play by Mattei Visniec I watched from an opera box in at the National Theater of Cluj directed by Mona Chirila which made me convinced I was born in the wrong country and there was a mistake, I should have been Romanian.

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

A:  Get off the beaten track of playwriting. We’ve built in systems that churn out a pulp of American playwrights from which a few squeeze themselves to the top by writing the same story over and over. They are fought over by the same handful of cowardly theater capitalists. This work is dead. It has no real vision and is an instant gratification product that - as it expires - because of its toxic packaging and waste - will do great harm. Be singular and seek out the obscure even as you embrace the world. Read books not blurbs and sound bites. Try to figure out what happened pre-19th century and 10 minutes ago from contradicting points of view. Think long, strange, horrifying and ecstatic thoughts and spend a lot of time in solitude and with strangers and your family to find out who you are. Travel on long trains away from everything you know – not as an imperialist but as a pilgrim. Name yourself an artist not a wannabe celebrity. Don’t walk on people’s necks on your way up the scaffolding. Rich or famous or nobody you still have to sleep at night.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  SEVEN now touring Sweden, going to Istanbul in the Fall, introduced by Hillary Clinton in New York this Spring. http://sevenplay.org/

http://www.unt.se/kultur/politiker-debuterar-i-almedalen-983073.aspx

http://www.hollywoodlife.com/2010/03/13/meryl-streep-hillary-clinton-women-world-summit/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-28/hillary-clinton-joins-daily-beast-summit/


CAFÉ ANTARSIA ENSEMBLE playing July 31, 2010 Zebulon Café 9pm (Williamsburg, NYC) http://www.zebuloncafeconcert.com/ , August 13 opening for Patrice Pike (Chicago) TBA and Sept 3 at the Kessler Theater (Oak Cliff/Dallas) http://www.thekessler.org/


FEVER IN THE FUNKHOUSE playing Aug 26, 2010 Stubbs with the New Bohemians and Kevin McKinney from SoulHat (Austin); Aug 27 Last Concert Café (Houston); Aug 28 All Good Café anniversary (Deep Ellum Dallas); Sept 4th Jack's Backyard (Dallas)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1NoX_UZLgQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-876l_8paY

July 1-18, 2010 (Los Angeles) very cool "trashy" opera I worked on awhile back with ingenious composer O-Lan Jones set to open July 1st at an abaondoned car dealership warehouse in Culver City
http://www.overtoneindustries.org/

Recent publications:
http://www.ruthmargraff.com/html/publication.html

Recent work with Theater Without Borders:
http://tcg-2010.conferencespot.org/talks/5835

http://www.brandeis.edu/slifka/actingtogether/casestudies/margraff/curator.html