Artistic Director Interviews

Peter Ellenstein
Hal Brooks
Chad Rabinovitz
Jim Simpson
Marty Stanberry
Russ Tutterow
Andrew Leynse
Mimi O'Donnell
Marc Masterson

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I Interview Artistic Directors Part 9: Peter Ellenstein

Peter Ellenstein

Hometown: Los Angeles, CA

Current Town: Independence, KS

Q:  Tell me about The William Inge Center For The Arts.

A:  The Inge Center was Founded in 1982, but had two previous, but similar, names. It sits on the Independence Community College campus in the small rural SE Kansas town of Independence. It was founded by Margaret Goheen, a close friend of William Inge’s with the intention of honoring some of America’s Great playwrights. Over the past 32 years nearly every major American Playwright has visited, from Arthur Miller and August Wilson to Neil Simon and Wendy Wasserstein. Since 2002 we have been hosting long-term playwright residencies in William Inge’s boyhood home (setting for “Picnic” and “Dark at the Top of the Stairs”). We’ve helped develop over 50 new plays and through the playwriting classes and at local rural high schools and at the college and through the 24-Hour Plays that we do each year, we’ve helped birth hundreds of short plays as well. In the summer of 2014 we’ll be helping, with many of the towns other organizations, create ASTRA, a unique multi-arts festival which will feature four plays in Rep, music events, visual arts, literary and everything in-between.

Q:  How do you choose playwrights for the programs?

A:  I’ve chosen them from recommendations, chance meetings, longstanding relationships and open submissions. We choose the playwright, not the play. The playwright chooses their own project and we help them, as best we can, with the resources we have, to take the next step in that project.


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

A:  My father was an actor, director and artistic director. My older brother is also an actor, director and artistic director. Sitting around my dinner table every night were theatre and film artists of all shapes and sizes: discussing, arguing, tearing apart and putting back together again every piece of theatre or film or TV that was recently seen. By the time I was 16 I had the equivalent of a PhD in theatre. And then I started doing it, which was where my real education began.

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

A:  I would have much longer rehearsal times, so that we could have a better chance to make real art, rather than just “getting it up”.

Q:  If you could change one thing about The Inge Center, what would it be?

A:  I wish we had the funding to host several more playwrights per year.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Good theatre. I am excited by all kinds of theatre when it is done exceptionally well. And bored to death by all types of theatre when it is done badly. I don’t particularly care for theatre that is hopeless or only points out problems that are obvious without shining new light on them. I want theatre to make me feel more alive in some way, not deadened or depressed.

Q:  What plays or playwrights are you excited about right now?

A:  Well, There are countless playwrights that excite me. At the moment we’re casting this year’s Otis Guernsey New Voices award-winner, Sam Hunter’s new play for a reading at the Inge Festival. I’m very excited about his work, as I see a distinct connection between his writing and Inge. Very few playwrights deal with empathy and forgiveness and both Inge and Sam do. I’m also always an advocate for my good friend Richard Hellesen’s work. I’ve directed him a lot, and I always learn new things. But There really are a great many wonderful playwrights out there these days.

Q:  What do you aspire to in your work?

A:  Having a real effect in some way with whatever I do. Either helping people become more sensitive or increasing their knowledge or allowing introspection or maybe just detoxing through laughter. I don’t care much for mindless entertainment that is just past-time. I strive to make the experience holy in some way, so that people feel that they’ve grown or changed or enhanced their life for having sat in the dark for a couple of hours.

Q:  What advice do you have for theater artists wishing to work at the Inge Center?

A:  Bring your own fresh produce.


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Episode 5 of Compulsive Love!!

5th episode of my web series Compulsive Love is here!  Watch it and previous episodes on Koldcast or Blip or Daily Motion or Boomtrain or Youtube or JTS.

Embedded #5:



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I Interview Playwrights Part 565: Kirsten Vangsness

Kirsten Vangsness

Hometown: Porterville & Pasadena CA

Current Town: Los Angeles, CA

Q: Congrats on the LA Weekly nomination. Tell me about the show you were nominated for.

A: I was Nom. for best play of the year for the play I wrote, Potential Space.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Right now, I am finishing up the season of CM (where I play Garcia, and I also help write her lines), and I working on a one person show I am doing at the Hollywood Fringe Festival and also rewrites on Potential Space which I will be re-mounting in the fall.

Q: How would you characterize the LA theater scene?

A: The L.A. theatre scene is a vibrant, quirky, wonderland. It's almost like a magical city within the city that you have to KNOW about to know it's there, folks sometimes think L.A. is a vat of TV Shows and people wanting on TMZ, but in reality there is this vibrant world of creatives making new content for the stage. Theatre is where the conversation starts, we are the great birth-er of dreams and ideas and often no credit goes to it. I am so honored to be part of it.

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 had a lisp that made it impossible to understand me sometimes and dyslexic so at school I had speech therapy for years and a reading class, it consisted of me having to talk endlessly to the speech pathologist and have her correct me and write letters and read things and learn the way other people saw things (the right way). I loved telling her stories, I loved to see her look pleased and I loved the paradigm shift my brain would make when I could understand how a word looked and was spelled the correct way-- that are so many ways that things look different to different people. I feel good when I can bend words and see people smile or understand a thing because of how I chose to say it.

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

A: MORE ATTENDANCE.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Scott McKinley. Helen Mirren. Teresa Rebeck. Eddie Izzard. The entire company of Theatre of NOTE.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I love a play cocktail of funny, absurd, & sexy with a good dash of high stakes.

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

A: WRITE. Just write. And Delight yourself, write what your soul longs to know and read and play in.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: Starring in Kill Me, Deadly the movie opening later this year written by Bill Robens

Mess written by me, at Theatre of NOTE during the fringe festival (don't have dates yet)

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I Interview Playwrights Part 564: Madhuri Shekar

Madhuri Shekar

Hometown: San Jose, CA and Chennai, India

Current Town: Los Angeles, CA

Q: Tell me about your upcoming show at the Alliance.

A: My play 'In Love and Warcraft' has won the 2014 Kendeda Graduate Playwriting competition and will be produced at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, February 2014. Not only am I thrilled about the award, this will also be my first professional production.

The play was developed in a workshop production at USC last April, directed by Chris Fields. It's about a gamer girl, Evie, who also plays love doctor by using strategies from World of Warcraft to help other people fix their relationships. For her own life, she's content with a so-so relationship with her online boyfriend until she falls for someone IRL (in real life). In order to keep him around, she's forced to venture out of her comfort zone and explore the terrifying world of real life intimacy, and all the complications of a non-virtual relationship.

Q: What else are you working on?

A: It's the last semester of my MFA at USC, and I'm working on my thesis play- 'A Nice Indian Boy'. When Naveen, a thirty-something gay man, falls in love and wants to get married to his unconventional boyfriend, it's an uphill struggle to get what he truly wants- all the trappings of a fairytale romance, along with the complete support and approval of his family. In most Indian marriages, even the heterosexual ones, you can't have both.

We'll have a staged reading of the play at the end of May, directed by Robert Egan.

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

A: My dad used to act on stage, and loved performing. He never got a chance to do it professionally, but when we lived in the Bay Area, he and his friends would produce Tamil plays, usually comedies, and he would act in them.

Once when I was three, he was acting in a play called "Ayya Amma Ammamma". I was sitting in the front row with my mom, who had my one-year-old brother on her lap. Enthralled by the show- and before she could do anything- I lept off my chair, ran up on to the stage in the middle of the performance, and hugged my dad's leg, refusing to let go. The best part was that my dad stayed in character and improvised lines until one of the other actors appeared from backstage to pry me off of him.

I think I knew then that I was meant for the stage, but maybe not as an actor.

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

A: I grew up in Chennai, India, and my first real exposure to theatre was working with my college dramatics club and (at the time) amateur English language theatre companies. The theatre scene in India has continued to expand, despite almost no public aid or support from the government. There are many downsides to that for sure, but I am always so inspired by how these theatre companies (such as Evam, who I love working with) manage to produce their shows, raise money from affiliated commercial services, make the sort of theatre they're passionate about, and still remain financially solvent. Sure, most theatre artists can't quit their day jobs yet, but they have a hunger and passion about making theatre that attracts young people in droves. Just from what I've seen, I'd guess most audiences at an English play in India are in their 20s and 30s. I was at the wonderful Prithvi theatre in Mumbai last year, and everyone hanging out in the coffee shop after the show was around my age.
I don't see that here, and although the environments are so vastly different, I think American theatre companies could learn from how theatre is made around the world, and how it's becoming so much more relevant to the younger rising middle class (with disposable income!) than it is in the U.S.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Anyone who makes a living doing theatre is my hero.

Mahesh Dattani's work opened my eyes to how not all English plays had to be about Brits or Americans, that the English language could capture the rhythms of the Indian vernacular, and that yes, I could be a playwright too.

My professors and mentors at USC have had the biggest influence on my writing. Velina Hasu Houston, Luis Alfaro, Oliver Mayer and Paula Cizmar inspire me year after year with their passion and their work ethic.

My classmates Megan Kelly and Zury Ruiz never stop surprising me with their writing. It's such a gift to have been in class with them these past three years. I love them too much to admit publicly, so let's just say I'm excited to see where we go after graduation.

And, of course, my Dad, who has promised to act in one of my plays when he retires.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: If your play tells a strong and honest story, with compassion for the characters, and lets me laugh along the way, I will be your devoted fan forever. So much of the theatre I see is full of cleverness, and dialogue that doesn't ever sound like real people talking. I don't want to see that, I just want to see something sincere and true.

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

A: My MFA at USC is one of the best things that's ever happened to me. I was very lucky to be at the right place at the right time (and with the right people!), but the training I received here has been invaluable. Not all MFAs are financially out of reach (USC gives its writers a generous fellowship), so I think if you're open to experimenting and learning and failing in a safe space for a few years, it's worth it.

And whenever you're feeling stuck, read this blog.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: If you're in LA, come check out the USC New Works festivals in April and May, showcasing the new and original plays of the MFA playwrights.

For tickets and timings- http://sait.usc.edu/spectrum/events.asp

2nd years-
Morning View by Jesse Shao, April 12-14
Tales from Tent City by Brian James Polak, April 19-21
My Dear Hussein by Nahal Navidar, April 26-28

3rd years-
And All The Trees Shall Clap Their Hands by Megan Kelly, May 28 & May 31
¡What a Piece of Work is Man! by Zury Ruiz, May 29 and June 1
A Nice Indian Boy by Madhuri Shekar, May 30 and June 1

Follow the news (and our updates about our last semester at USC) at our blog- mfawriters2013.wordpress.com

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I Interview Playwrights Part 563: MJ Kaufman

MJ Kaufman

Hometown: Portland, OR

Current Town: New Haven, CT

Q:  Tell me about the play you're bringing to New Harmony.

A:  Sagittarius Ponderosa tells the story of a 29 year old transboy moving home to the woods for family reasons and falling in love. And it has puppets. I started writing it a few months ago. I had been feeling frustrated that most queer narratives are coming out stories and most trans narratives are transition stories. Why are the most prominent narratives organized around arriving at a more stable identity? I wanted trans narratives that would focus on fluidity, highlighting the way many of us are different genders in different spaces. I wanted art that would acknowledge constant change as an intrinsic part of being a person.

Around the same time my teacher Sarah Ruhl introduced me to what she calls Ovidean plot form. Here’s how I’d describe it: A plot form in which identities are in a constant state of change and worlds are in a constant state of change so that human beings can be multiple genders at once, or become a beast and then a tree as a result of falling in love or being heart-broken or struggling to struggling to escape from someone. Basically all things and characters are able to morph and change throughout and the resolution of conflict does not depend on arriving at a more stable identity. As soon as I understood it it I fell in love with it. It sounds more true to my life than any coming out story. I started working with it first to examine a landscape of gender fluidity but found the form led me to a more ecological fluidity, the way that things are constantly changing and being recycled in nature. This ultimately led me to a sort of spiritual fluidity: the way that love and souls are recycled.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  A play about a family that goes on a family history tour to connect with their roots but ends up realizing they have no idea who they are. It's actually part of a series of plays about 10 generations of one family haunted by the same ghost. And also another play about gay people.

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 a kid my friends and I used to get my brother dressed up as a girl for fun. We were really good at it. His name was Henry so naturally his drag name was Henrietta. Once he decided to go to a party at my aunt's house as Henrietta. He really committed to the role and party guests were all totally charmed by the new little girl in our family. For weeks afterwards people we met at the party would ask us in complete sincerity, where's Henrietta?

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

A:  Artists would control the means of production.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Paula Vogel, Sarah Ruhl, Naomi Wallace, Suzan-Lori Parks, Caryl Churchill, Cherrie Moraga, Taylor Mac, Peggy Shaw, Adrienne Kennedy, Bertolt Brecht, Thornton Wilder, Hallie Flanagan, Morgan Jenness, Polly Carl...I could go on and on...

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that surprises me into feeling something new. Weird, scary worlds that are strangely familiar. Theater with puppets, projection, music or movement, installations, ensemble theater, theater that moves through a large space or building. Stories about my queer and trans community. Ghost stories.

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

A:  Make sure you get to hear and see your work as much as possible. Theater doesn't happen on the page and you won't know what a play is until you get it up on its feet. Get actors to read your early drafts. Produce your own work. Don't give in to the cycle of readings, readings and more readings- fight to get your work produced. Take risks. Write what you love and really have to write, not what you think other people will want to produce.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Carlotta Festival of new plays! Find out more here: http://drama.yale.edu/onstage/festival/carlotta-festival-new-plays


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