I Interview Playwrights Part 434: Dorothy Fortenberry

Dorothy Fortenberry

Hometown: Washington, DC

Current Town: Los Angeles

Q:  Tell me about Status Update.

A:  It's a play with songs about moving to a city you don't want to live in because your partner needs to be there, and becoming deeply addicted to the Internet. I wrote it a few months after moving to LA when I noticed that my most intense relationships were taking place over Facebook. It's also an Alice in Wonderland play, featuring Keyboard Cat, some pan-European houseguests, and several references to The Great Gatsby and the oeuvre of Kathy Acker.

Q:   What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm developing a play with Chalk Rep called Mommune about a minimum security facility for wayward mothers, set in the near future. Working with Chalk is fun because they produce site-specifically, so you get to write knowing that your actors can do things that would normally be off-limits. I also was just at the MacDowell Colony writing a play called Partners that I'll be workshopping with Page 73 this summer in New Haven about what the point of marriage is.


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

A:  I grew up as an only child in a 2-person family, so I spent a lot of time by myself and a lot of time with grownups. My favorite thing to do was just to listen. When my mom went to visit friends of hers in other cities, she'd bring me along, and I'd just stay at the dinner table, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, trusting that as the adults had more wine, the evening would get more interesting. And it usually did. Eventually, she would realize I was there, and she'd send me up to bed, but I would just listen from the top of the stairs. Or, I would search through all the books in her friends' guest room for passages about sex, which is how I speed-read Portnoy's Complaint at 13. Anyway, that hunger to find out how people tick and the notion that the answers can best be found in listening and literary sex scenes: still with me.

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

A:  I think, at the end of the day, all theater is community theater. It's local, it's hand-made, and the magic that is taking place is the same transformation that happens when your town mailman is Harold Hill. But I think currently, it really only feels like a community if you're a working theater artist -- I know that if I go see a play in New York or LA, I'm going to run into someone I know in the lobby, but if I were a lawyer or a gym teacher, I probably wouldn't. Which is all to say that I wish community were a bigger part of all levels of theater -- one of the main reasons I don't live in DC is that the wonderful theaters in town rarely produce local playwrights. Which seems nuts. Instead they bring in a cast and a director from New York to put on a play that was a hit in New York, and, well, it seems like that pretty effectively undermines half of what's interesting about theater to begin with.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Oh man, so many. When I was in high school, the school library was being renovated and they were going to throw out any book that hadn't been checked out in the last 5 years, and, to save the plays, I checked out and read their entire drama section, so 15-year-old me got super-into Charles Ludlam and Christopher Durang and Terrance McNally. Also, when I was in high school, a production of Baltimore Waltz at Studio Theatre blew my mind (I know I just undermined the point I made above, but it featured local actors, thank you). Escape from Happiness by George F. Walker will always be a touchstone to me of how "hilariously funny" and "deeply sad" are essentially the same thing. Lynne Nottage's Ruined is a play I study over and over again for its structure and bravery. The Rude Mechs' Method Gun was one of the best things I saw last year. Pig Iron, or course, Pig Iron. Chekov. And, while I'm not making a hierarchy, at the top has to go Caryl Churchill. Every play I've ever written is essentially my attempt to write Top Girls, as is every play I intend to write from here on out.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Scary theater. Theater that pokes at assumptions and comfort zones. Funny theater. Theater of big ideas. Theater that creates tension. Theater that makes me feel like I'm in good hands and then pulls the rug out from under me. Beautiful theater. Watching Pig Iron's Chekhov Lizard Brain thrilled me to the point of tears because it placed me inside the brain of someone in my family who no one in Pig Iron had ever met. And it had to be theater. It was completely and totally theater, it was precise and rehearsed and technically smart, and yet unlike anything I'd ever seen before. It scares me to think that I could have not taken the train in to New York that night and not seen that show. I would be less of a person for it.

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

A:  All right, so, keeping in mind that I, too, am just starting out, I pass along this advice from David Foster Wallace's commencement address at Kenyon, which is, to my mind, the most effective DIY guide to being a decent human being: "In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship." By all means worship theater, but try not to worship your own success or perceived lack thereof. That shit will eat you alive.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My play Species Native to California has a reading this Sunday, March 18 at IAMA Theater Company in LA at 7pm (1017 N. Orange Dr) Status Update goes up at Center Rep in Walnut Creek, CA in October. Anything by fellow Titled Field members Jacob Padrón, Teresa Avia Lim, Michael Locher, Roberta Pereira, or Becca Wolff. Also, I am a giant fan of and so grateful to Jen Haley for starting the Playwrights' Union in LA. I wouldn't have written Status Update without their annual Writing Challenge, and I am about to share my first draft of Partners with the same folks at this year's Challenge weekend.

I Interview Playwrights Part 433: Ethan Lipton

Ethan Lipton

Hometown: Van Nuys, California.

Current Town: Red Hook, Brooklyn

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m rehearsing NO PLACE TO GO, a musical I wrote for my band, which the Public is producing in Joe’s Pub, and I’m prepping for a production of my play LUTHER, which Clubbed Thumb is doing this June. Feeling exceedingly grateful for both opportunities.

Q:  Tell me about Ethan Lipton and His Orchestra.

A;  That’s my band. We play all over NYC and sometimes beyond, and we’ve been together almost seven years. The guys I play with (Eben Levy, Ian Riggs, Vito Dieterle) are all great musicians, which I can’t really relate to, but they are also silly, immature old men at heart, and in that sense we are kindred spirits. For a long time the music was my respite from playwriting. Songs are short (plays long), I write them while looking the other way (plays I write hunched over, trying to bore a hole through the keyboard), and performing is immediate (whereas play gestation is more like whale gestation). Recently, though, I’ve been trying to integrate the two in a few projects, which is both exciting and scary; kinda like introducing your two best friends and waiting to see if they’ll get along.

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

A:  In first grade I started a mime troupe with Emily Strickstein and Kristin Olson. We explored a number of narratives and themes, most of which culminated in me getting hit in the groin with an imaginary ball. From there I learned how to cross both eyes, then one eye at a time, then how to indulge my sadness, and before I knew it my path as an artist was set.

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

A:  Today? Let’s see. Actually, if I’ve learned one thing during my relationship with theater, it’s that I can’t change it. Theater has to want to change itself. Then it has to talk it over with the board of directors and figure out a way to integrate an education component, and then, maybe, it can have a fundraiser. After which a talk-back is probably in order, and if we could do all that before pilot season, so much the better. See, the only real problem with theater, I think, is human beings. It requires their participation. Lots and lots of them. And that’s what makes it awful, but it’s also what makes it awesome, all of these grown-ups working together to create “make believe” for other grown-ups. So, you know, we should probably be totally overhauling the art form every couple of years – from our creative processes to our aesthetic expectations to the way we run our organizations – but since that seems to be more work than most of us are willing to do, my short-term solution would be just to involve more animals. Oh, and I’d say we should put as much money into paying artists as we put into paying arts administrators, but I think everyone knows that already.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I love art that takes inspiration from other art forms and I have tons of heroes who make other kinds of art, but as far as theater-makers, I definitely owe a debt to people like Ionesco, Albee, Bulgolkov, Churchill, Guare, Shawn, Howe, the Wooster Group, Fornes, Foreman, O’Neill, and Checkov.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A;  A dumb idea deeply committed to.

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

A:  Wonder. And consider risking everything.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  NO PLACE TO GO, Joe’s Pub, March 14-April 8.
LUTHER, Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks, this June.

I Interview Playwrights Part 432: Riti Sachdeva

Riti Sachdeva

Hometown:  Complicated question for an immigrant – born in Bhilai (Chateesgarh) India, grew up in North Cambridge, MA

Current Town: Complicated question for a Gypsy -recently relocated from Albuquerque to Brooklyn.

Q:  Tell me about Parts of Parts & Stitches.

A:  It’s a play set in 1947 during the partition of Pakistan and India, towards the end of British colonial rule in the region. Members of my family were among 1 million murdered and 40 million displaced. Many of the situations and even characters are stories that my aunts, uncles, and papa shared with me. It’s about lovers, friends, neighbors, communities, and nations that are sacrificed for land, water, and political power; it’s about the physical and psychic shock of loss and displacement; and it’s about the courage that makes me wonder “could I possibly make a decision like that – to sacrifice my safety, my body -for someone else’s?”

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  When Parts closes, I’ll be in rehearsal for a solo piece Scene/Unseen, directed by Antonio Miniño, being featured in the Planet Connections Festival at Bleecker St. Theatre in June. With the Emerging Writers Group at The Public, I’m 10 pages deep into a revenge fantasy play about a widow of a suicided Indian farmer who comes to work as a maid in the home of the CEO of a multinational bio-tech corporation; in June, I go to the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis to further develop The Rug Dealer, which takes place in a Persian carpet shop in Boston; and I’m looking for an ensemble and funding to keep evolving my flamenco play La Fea: A FlamenChoreoMyth.

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 think it was our first Xmas in the U.S., I was six, and my parents wanted me to experience an American Xmas. They didn’t have much money so my mom bought a big dollar bag of accessories for my generic barbie and individually wrapped each tiny accessory – the high heels, coffee mug, necklace, etc.- so I’d have lots of presents to openJ Can you imagine how she came up with that idea, then spent the time wrapping these items that were a fraction of the size of her pinky (after working a twelve hour day?) How this story explains me as a person and artist: I believe in being resourceful - it’s a kind of alchemy - making magic out of the mundane.

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

A:  Capitalism.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Guillermo Gomez-Peña and Coco Fusco; Carmen Amaya, the late great flamenco dancer; flash mobs; Luis Valdez; Rekha the Bollywood star; Kathakali dance theatre; Miss Piggy; Suzan Lori Parks; Nilo Cruz; GWAR.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Gritty, raw, emotionally and morally complex but not sentimental; fantastical; historical; structurally playful and innovative; movement and music driven.

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

A:  Write, dance, sing, rewrite, cook, garden, rewrite, build community, see shows, rewrite, self-produce.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A;  My solo show, Scene/Unseen at the Bleecker St. Theatre, Planet Connections Festival in June; everything MTWorks puts up; the world premiere of Draw the Circle by Mashuq Deen at InterAct Theatre in Philly April 4-8; Arooj Aftab and Arif Lohar at Asia Society April 28; http://www.facebook.com/midniteschild

I Interview Playwrights Part 431: Melissa Gawlowski

Melissa Gawlowski

Hometown: Hell, Michigan (yes, really).

Current Town: Brooklyn.

Q:  Tell me about Spring Tides.

A:  I started Spring Tides in my last year of the MFA playwriting program at Ohio University. It started as a satire about a guy named Joe who wakes up one morning to find himself in Hell with a greaser named Frankie and a nun named Bernardina. They then team up to kill God. Obviously, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the current play. Happily I had opportunities for lots of development, including (besides Boomerang) a production in Philly with Cardboard Box Collaborative (I believe they procured a literal ton of sand for the show), and a developmental reading in Alaska with the Last Frontier Theatre Conference. It all helped me find what I really wanted to say. Time helps, too. I think I’ve grown up a lot since my mid-twenties. And happily my plays have come with me.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm working on a new full-length play that's a loose riff on the Orpheus/Euridice myth, when I’m not slammed with the reading/writing required for my schoolwork. I’m in my first year of the PhD program in Educational Theatre for Colleges and Communities at NYU. Arts education is another deep passion of mine—I work in the management of teaching artists and school partners at Lincoln Center Institute (with many wonderful colleagues). And I'm also working on planning a wedding and moving to a new apartment with my amazing fiancé. Life is full! But it’s all happy stuff.

Q:  Tell me about Analogous.

A:  Analogous is an organization founded by Marie Evelyn focused on interaction art, which is a term for artworks in various genres that resonate with the concepts of complexity theory. This ranges from the exhibition of visual artworks created with recycled materials to improvised experimental music to rule-based performance. My focus with the company is performance work involving language, as Co-director of Dialogue-as-Performance. One major project we worked on was Metis, which had a couple of different incarnations. The goal was to bring together playwrights and improvisational musicians and explore how a playwright might “improvise” with written words to share sonic/visual space with the musicians. We performed it at The Tank back in 2007 with six playwrights and six musicians. Our second version (last year) focused on the language, using an algorithm Marie and I came up with (she’s a master of algorithms) to determine the direction of the dialogue. It’s fun sometimes to work on things that are quite different from my other playwriting work.

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

A:  Well, this is a disturbing story that I may regret sharing, but when I was a little girl I had a stuffed bunny that served as my imaginary friend. Going to school I’d imagine he was roller-skating alongside the school bus. Also he had wings and could fly. Also he had magic-dust in his tail. One day, to mess with me, my dad told me about how people kill rabbits by holding them upside-down and breaking their necks (I warned you). I obviously found that highly upsetting. That night, I think because I was tempted by the horribleness of it, and I was hitting the age where I was starting to realize, “It’s just a toy. You can’t really hurt it,” I held my bunny upside-down and “broke his neck”. And then cried and cried. But then I consoled myself with the idea that he was a magic bunny, after all. So I took the magic-dust from his tail and resurrected him. Creepy as it is, I think maybe that story came to mind because it’s sort of like my writing—it has magic, and it’s dark, but also hopeful. I won’t say that this explains me as a person, though—I have a pet bunny at present, in fact, and I assure you that he is very well cared-for. No breaking real bunnies. That was a totally terrible story to share.

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

A:  Ummm… more funding would be nice. But besides that, wouldn’t it be great if there was cross-pollination between independent theatre companies across the country? A way for the amazing work being done in NYC to make its way over to Chicago, say, and vice-versa. So that companies could communicate with and inspire each other directly. Places like Portland, too, where they’re doing interesting stuff. And other cities we might not think about. Tulsa—I bet somebody’s doing something totally awesome in Tulsa. I’m a Midwesterner, so I like the idea of sharing more with the region between the coasts.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  There are so many exciting and wonderful writers out there. But heroes? Jacquelyn Reingold writes plays that are beautiful, touching, and incredibly funny. She's the writer I hope to be someday. Other heroes, shoot—well, Shakespeare, man. Beckett. Ionesco. Pinter. Churchill. Those guys are for serious.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I really like playwrights who use a magical quality, who ask big questions, and also make me laugh. Like Fornes, Rivera, Lucas, Ruhl, Durang too, and others. So many others! I recently read Griselda Gambaro’s Information for Foreigners, and that play shook me up. I also have to say that I am very excited by compelling theatrical design. I am so blown away by the work of scenic and lighting and costume designers—their insights and vision can be stunning. I was reminded of this upon seeing the work of Boomerang’s team for my show—I’m so very humbled by the talent I’ve been lucky enough to work with.

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

A:  Write, write, write, and see, see, see. It’s so important to see stuff (theater and dance and music, too), though the expense can be a challenge. It’s very easy to get stuck only seeing the work of your friends, but it’s really valuable to see what else is out there, both small-scale and large. Plus you’ll start to get the opportunity to meet more people, which I’ve found to be critical. Probably 90% of the work I’ve done has been with somebody I’ve met already, or through some personal connection. I think it can be tough being noticed when the group knows nothing about you already. There are a lot of playwrights out there.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Spring Tides opens Friday, March 9th and runs through the 25th at The Secret Theatre. Tickets are available through www.boomerangtheatre.org.  I also have a short play opening the same weekend as Spring Tides, as part of a short play festival by Full Circle Theater Company called “Unlikely Allies”. It runs for four consecutive Sundays starting March 11th at 4 p.m. in the basement of Triple Crown bar in Chelsea. I’ll also plug the work of my fiancé Dan Pratt, because I think keeping aware of work in other disciplines is really valuable. He’s a jazz saxophonist and has several albums out, most recently with his Dan Pratt Organ Quartet. He is phenomenally talented, as are the players in the band, and I’m not just saying that because I’m marrying the guy.

I Interview Playwrights Part 430: Aaron Landsman

Aaron Landsman

Hometown:  Minneapolis, MN

Current Town:  Towns actually. I live part time in Urbana, IL, while my wife Johanna Meyer is in grad school, and part time in Brooklyn, NY.

Q:  Tell me about City Council Meeting.

A:  City Council Meeting is somewhere between theater and a kind of conceptual art performance. It's an interactive piece where audience members perform transcriptions of city council meetings from around the country, creating a fictional city that lives in the space as long as it's spoken. Audience members can choose to participate, or not, in several ways. The goal is, in part, to allow people to speak another person's words, often someone who is or believes much differently than they do. It's about both holding a mirror up to power, and learning to empathize with a stranger, in a room full of strangers. The piece is being developed concurrently at HERE in New York, DiverseWorks in Houston, ASU/Gammage in Tempe, AZ, and Zspace in San Francisco, with local cohorts of artists and non artists. It's not political theater as much as the theater of politics. In each city we're building the piece with a local cohort of artists, non-artists, politicians or their staff, and other citizens.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I have two more play-like plays that I am trying to get into production. One is called Running Away From The One With The Knife, about suicide and religious faith. The other is Special Tonight, which is about intimacy, voyeurism, nostalgia and something I can't put my finger on, in contemporary urban existence.

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

A:  Here is a triptych. 1) My mother started writing seriously when I was a kid, getting up at 5 AM to write for an hour, before everyone else was awake, before she had to go to work teaching high school. That made me understand the writing life in a way that made sense early. Later, when I was in high school, my friend Carl and I would sneak out of our houses at night to sit up at Embers' Grille on Lake Street, drinking coffee, plotting adventures and writing. Even now I find the best time to write is when everyone else is asleep, or is supposed to be. 2) I came to theater as both an actor and a writer, and the misfits and punks I encountered in the little Minneapolis church-basement theater troupe I was part of were the first community I ever belonged to, felt welcomed in. 3) I tried a lot of drugs in high school, and writing helped keep me from following several friends down a path of serious usage. I found myself the chronicler of our misadventures, and that demanded too much of my time to get hooked

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

A:  I would make it less formally conservative - I'd want more theater artists to think conceptually as much as narratively. I'd make it braver about formal risk and provocation.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  In no particular order: The Wooster Group, Roger Guenevere Smith, John Collins and ERS, Richard Maxwell, Tanya Barfield, Anton Chekhov, Mallory Catlett, April Matthis, Melanie Joseph, David Hancock, Rude Mechs, Free Theater Belarus.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that seems like it might derail at any moment. Theater that makes something abstract palpable. Work that can't quite contain itself, that doesn't explain itself fully, but that is just as carefully wrought as the most narrative fourth-wall play. Theater that finds the sweet spot of allowing me to suspend my disbelief while honoring the fact that we are all in the room together, now.

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

A:  Write a lot. Find ways to hear the work read out loud so you can hear your habits. Learn whose advice is helpful and whose is bullshit. Nod whenever people give you feedback and write it down.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  City Council Meeting in 2013, all over NYC!

I Interview Playwrights Part 429: Joe Tracz

Joe Tracz

Hometown: Northville, Michigan

Current Town: Brooklyn, NYC

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Two musicals. One is with composer Craig Carnelia, and it's based on a recent true event. The other, with Joe Iconis, is an adaptation of a young adult sci-fi novel called Be More Chill. Weirdly, both touch on the same concern -- the way we use technology to build an identity, and what happens when that technology betrays us. I don't recommend writing two musicals at the same time, but it seems to be working out: where one story is tragic and true, the other is poppy and genre-riffy, so it's like using the same DNA to build two very different monsters. Uh, children. Did I say monsters? I meant children.

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

A:  In middle school, I entered a competition sponsored by the Henry Ford Museum where you had to present a diorama of a futuristic city. My writer brain devised a future where overpopulation was solved by zapping cities with a shrink ray and launching them into space. I convinced my team (hardcore science kids, all) that we should wear flightsuits and pretend to be astronauts who discovered one of these cities in, like, a wormhole or something. The brilliant part -- or so I thought -- was that we could claim our diorama wasn't a scale model, it was the ACTUAL CITY ITSELF!! Also, there were puppets.

When we showed up at the museum, I realized I'd gotten it horribly, horribly wrong. The judges wanted science, not science fiction. They wanted a factual discussion of urban planning and we were giving them Farscape. I was devastated, I felt like I'd let my team down. Of course New Lilliput lost. But my teammates forgave me when the camera crew showed up and went straight for our table. It turns out puppets and flightsuits make great visuals for the evening news.

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

A:  Beyond the usual wishlist -- expanded audience base, lower ticket prices, fewer plays set in upper middle class living rooms -- I'd love to see greater national cross-pollination. While I heart localized theatre, as a New York writer I feel disconnected from what's happening in Chicago, or Atlanta, or California. Not to mention internationally. We live in the age of instant networks; we should be creating locally but sharing on a bigger scale.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  From Kushner, I learned to be unafraid of going big and risking messy (a lesson I maybe learned too well), and from Churchill I learned the power of letting content dictate form. Also, I just picked up the book Eminent Outlaws, which traces the LGBT progress of the 20th century back to writers, many of them playwrights, who challenged conventional notions on what stories could be told. So that's all in there. But regular shots of inspiration come from the writers I interact with -- the Ars Nova Play Group gang, my classmates from NYU, and, right now, the Sons of Tennessee, which is a group some friends and I just formed inspired by this gay poets' salon we read about in the Times. I get to grab a beer with my heroes on a regular basis. How many people in other professions can say that?

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Looking at all the remakes and sequels in movies and on TV, it sometimes feels like theatre is one of the last safe homes for truly original stories. I'd rather see a new play by a playwright I've never heard of and know nothing about, than another really solid production of The Seagull. I love sitting in the audience and having no idea what kind of experience I'm in for. And think about it: a play has never been ruined because they showed all the good parts in the trailer.

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

A;  Learn to take criticism well, and smartly. Even if a note seems wrong, don't dismiss it out of hand. Try to figure out what's really being asked, and how to incorporate it in a way that still honors your intentions. I watch shows like Chopped and Project Runway, and I scream at the TV because half the time, the contestants are too defensive to realize the judges genuinely want their work to get better. Then I realize I could take that to heart myself. So that's my advice: watch more Food Network. (But seriously, you can learn a lot about your own work from watching creative people in other fields.)

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  In March, I'm having a reading of my play UP NORTH with the awesome people at Playwrights Realm. Also, my day job is with Blue Sky Studios, the feature animation house at 20th Century Fox, writing on an action fantasy film called LEAFMEN. Our first teaser trailer should be coming soon to a big-screen near you. I'm a lifelong animation geek; my twelve-year old self couldn't be more psyched.