A: Made for Each Other is a play for one actor playing four parts, about a gay marriage that may or may not happen. I wrote it for an actor I knew well, John Fico. I melded some of his own experiences with my experience watching my mother in law die from Alzheimer's, then fictionalized it all. It's not a typical solo show, it's a real play.
The Year I Was Gifted is an autobiographical show I perform myself, about my year as a scholarship student at the Interlochen Arts Academy, where I met my first gay friend. I had to decide whether or not to put my scholarship at risk to stand up for gay rights. I call it a gay-straight love story.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: Doing revisions of Porter's Will. It was done recently as a staged reading at the Planet Connections Theater Festivity, and won for Best Overall Production of a Staged Reading, but that doesn't mean I'm done with it!
Q: Tell me a story about your childhood that explains who you are as an artist or as a person.
A: I got kicked out of Catholic school in the 6th grade for heresy. Enough said...
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: I'd make it easier to get second productions of good plays after the premiere!
Q: Who are your theatrical heroes?
A: Kate Snodgrass and Gary Garrison. I love Arthur Miller and Martin McDonough equally; go figure.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I need a real story with a beginning, middle, and an end. I describe myself as Aristotle's Bitch when it comes to structure, but I also need to be moved emotionally.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights starting out?
A: Write the play that only you can write.And don't forget the funny; especially when you're writing characters with big needs and big stakes, make the audience comfortable enough to follow your characters all the way.
Q: Plugs:
A: Both solo shows are running at Stage Left Studio Off-Off Broadway in a double bill we are calling "The Gifted Series". You can see one or both. Gifted is on at 7pm, Made for Each Other is on at 9pm, every Friday night beginning February 7th's preview, with a special talkback moderated by Martin Denton of Indie Theater Now.Running every Friday night from Feb. 7th through the end of March. Tickets and discounts at http://www.stageleftstudio.net/
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A: Edison’s Elephant is a play, co-written by David Koteles and myself, about the January 4th, 1903 public execution (by electrocution) of Topsy, a former circus elephant, on Coney Island. The electrocution was engineered by Thomas Edison, and filmed by his Edison Studios. The play examines this event from several viewpoints: that of Edison himself; Whitey, Topsy’s keeper; and various spectators (including a young boy). The play moves around in time, detailing the events leading up to the electrocution, as well as its future ramifications.
David and I had chatted about the Topsy story over brunch last summer (he thought there was a play in it). Soon after, David asked if I had anything to pitch to Metropolitan Playhouse for their Gilded Stage Festival. I said no, and asked him if he was pitching anything; he said no. So I suggested we collaborate. We decided to write about Topsy. I staked out the portions of the story which I most connected with, and David did the same. We eventually wedded our material into Edison’s Elephant.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: This summer I’m going to Minneapolis to workshop Retrospective, a play about the art world. In it, a curator dismantles the shack of a reclusive outsider artist, then reassembles it for display inside her museum.
I’m also working on another play I can’t talk about. It’s called The Revenger’s Tragedy.
Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: The Swiss Family Robinson was a story from my childhood which deeply affected me. This section in particular explains a lot about who I am as a writer and as a person:
“The ship had sailed for the purpose of supplying a young colony, she had therefore on board every conceivable article we could desire in our present situation; our only difficulty, indeed, was to make a wise selection. A large quantity of powder and shot we first secured, and as Fritz considered that we could not have too many weapons, we added three excellent guns, and a whole armful of swords, daggers, and knives. We remembered that knives and forks were necessary, we therefore laid in a large stock of them, and kitchen utensils of all sorts. Exploring the captain's cabin, we discovered a service of silver plate and a cellaret of good old wine; we then went over the stores, and supplied ourselves with potted meats, portable soups, Westphalian hams, sausages, a bag of maize and wheat, and a quantity of other seeds and vegetables. I then added a barrel of sulphur for matches, and as much cordage as I could find. All this—with nails, tools, and agricultural implements—completed our cargo, and sank our boat so low that I should have been obliged to lighten her had not the sea been calm.”
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: It would pay its artists a living wage.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Playwrights I admire and learn from include: Caryl Churchill, Chuck Mee, Irene Fornes, Mac Wellman, Jeff Jones, August Wilson, Naomi Wallace, Franz Xavier Kroetz, William Shakespeare, Edward Bond, Eric Overmyer, W. David Hancock, Witkacy, Thornton Wilder, and Samuel Beckett.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Cut.
Don’t write what you know. Expand what you know.
Be the most ruthless critic of your own work.
Submit everywhere—but never before the play’s ready.
Great actors are gold; hang tight to them: I’ve been waiting to write a role for a certain actor in Edison’s Elephant for 15 years.
Be a genuinely nice person—not false-nice, party-nice. If you talk shit about someone/their play behind their back, it WILL get back to them. Then they’ll know you’re just a big fake.
Others’ advice which has helped me:
Jose Rivera’s Assumption 6: “Each line of dialogue is like a piece of DNA, potentially containing the entire play and its thesis.”
Fornes: “The presence of the Author violates the life of the Character. Your characters need autonomy; let them do and say what they wish. Manipulate them ONLY once they have life.”
Fornes again: “The meandering, ‘useless’ place has great value. It’s better to explore too much than to be too rigid.”
Wellman: “Avoid at all costs the horrible Swamp of the Already Known.”
Lynn Nottage: “Don't waste your time; get to the real thing. Sure, what's ‘real?’ Still, try to get to it.”
Bill Withers: “On your way to wonderful, you're gonna hafta pass through all right.”
Q: Plugs, please:
A:
EDISON’S ELEPHANT by Chris Van Strander & David Koteles Directed by: David Elliott Performances: January 16th-25th, as part of Metropolitan Playhouse's Gilded Stage Festival Tickets: http://metropolitanplayhouse.org/edisonselephanttickets
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Current Town: At this moment I don't even know... Los Angeles I think?
Q: Tell me about SHINER.
A: SHINER is a grunge rock teen love story within a suicide pact. It's set in 1994 and these two outcast kids meet and start to bond over their crappy home lives and grunge rock and Nirvana and the release that the music gives them that young people so desperately need. Then one spirals faster into the negative side effects of that subculture and the other begins to pull out of the suicide pact. Then Kurt Cobain beats them to the punch.
I'd always wanted to write a play about Kurt Cobain. He was my first idol that I'd found outside of my parents' guidance. Nevermind was the first tape I ever purchased. When I first listened to that album the world just opened up for me. I was also going through puberty and trying to figure out who I was IN that world. Then my idol goes and blows his brains out. And I was like, "okay, so is that what we're all doing here?"
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I'm writing a six part mini series for HBO Asia that chronicles the rise and fall of two prominent families in Singapore between World War II and present day.
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 played soccer for nine years and I was not good at the sport. In nine years I think I only scored two goals. It wasn't until all my soccer friends made the high school Varsity team and I didn't that I really understood the athletic discrepancy between myself and the others. I went on to the drama club instead. Looking back, I often wish I'd been in some theatre or art camp rather than at soccer practice, but I think it was helpful to do something for so long because I liked it and not because I got any recognition for it.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: Ticket prices. It's prohibitively expensive to cultivate new audiences. Broadway is already out of control. But even the retail ticket price of an off-off house can be north of fifty bucks. It's hard to get new audiences to come out for that when they can stay home, turn on Netflix for ten bucks a month and watch TV shows that some of America's best playwrights are writing for anyway.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: All of the dead guys, of course: Shakespeare, Chekhov, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill. I also adore Tracy Letts, Adam Rapp, Sarah Ruhl. They've all made me cry in dark theatres or in my room reading their work. So has Leslye Headland, Dan LeFranc, Halley Feiffer, Rajiv Joseph.
The whole early 90's grunge movement in Seattle, too. Seriously. Those bands made music the way I think theatre artists should make theatre. They were just nuts for it and no one was thinking about their career. They rehearsed in basements and played shows in parking lots when they couldn't book even tiny venues. It was all about the music. They were theatrical, they literally lit stages on fire (not exactly pyrotechnics either, closer to arson). The kind of energy in that movement changed rock and roll forever. The bands from that era are definitely among my theatrical heroes.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: Theatre that really goes to the end of the line and then a little further. I love it when I can't believe I'm witnessing what I'm witnessing. Bold actions make strong characters. "She's not about to... no... no!" Those kinds of moments really turn me on. Unlike film or tv where we are kind of desensitized to action, it really carries in the theatre.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: First of all, advice isn't worth much. Everyone has their own backgrounds, resources, ways of working, tastes, their own luck and timing. And full disclosure, I still feel like I'm just starting out myself. But I think it is worth mentioning that you're better off writing about that really ugly secret inside of you that you're so sure no one is going to want to see on stage. You already know what that subject or topic or event is. You've thought about it a thousand times and probably experienced shame or regret whenever it comes up. And that thing that pulls at you in those moments...? ...that's your voice. Tame that motherfucker and trap it on the page. Let it scream on that blank white paper. Because whatever it is, your secret is far more universal that you probably think. Dress it in solid dramatic action and a bit of structure and you'll connect people into feeling less alone with their own secrets.
Also: The Pandora Ambient station is bad ass writing music.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: FaultLine is doing a run of SHINER at San Francisco's new Piano Fight theater in April 2014 to mark the 20 year anniversary of Cobain's death.
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A: I'm just starting to work on a new full-length that's inspired by a one-act I wrote that went up last June called Montana. I wrote the one-act for three amazing actresses: Melissa Stephens, Katie Lowes, and Amy Rosoff. The play is about three women in their early 30's and their last night, their graduation night from an MFA program, in the middle of nowhere. They're about to go their separate ways for forever, and it's about storytelling, the complications and joys of female friendships and being really smart at certain things while having no clue how to do certain adult things that, unfortunately, are necessary to learn in order to grow up.
I'm also writing a lot of notes (procrastinating) for a rewrite I'm gathering up the strength to do for my play called Luigi, which will have its premiere with L.A.'s Inkwell Theatre Co. in July. It sounds like a long time away, but a lot of the play is in Italian, and I just got back from visiting my family there, so I feel like I should do it before I forget everything they said and more importantly how they said it. They're all great storytellers, and just being around them is exciting as a writer. I'm pretty sure they're the reason I'm so attracted to being around actors, because, well, every single one is a performer in their own way.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Chekhov. I spent two years at Bennington just reading and rereading his stories and plays. I had these long reading lists with all these gaps in my education, and instead of filling those gaps, I would just keep going back to him. I don't think I'm wrong, either. I read his stuff anytime I'm feeling petty or small; he's the best bullshit detector I know of. Also, actors. I love great actors, I think it's good for a playwright to fall in love with actors. The actors I write for make me a million times better. They're the reason I can be so hard on my work and not be precious about it. I cut, rewrite mercilessly because I know if my work is not as good as they are, it's not as fun for them or for me. And there's nothing more fun or joyful than being in a rehearsal room where the writer, director and actors are working at their best.
But my real heroes are writers, always have been, only most of them are not playwrights. There's Deborah Eisenberg, Grace Paley (her short stories are an amazing study in dialogue), Tillie Olsen, Louis C.K., Joan Didion, John Cage, Salinger, George Saunders (as a writer and human being), Nabokov, Beckett, Pirandello, Calvino, Woody Allen, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop. That's a lot, and there's more, but finding those writers that tug on something inside of you are the best mentors you can have. I remember when I was little my brother told me that the best mentors are dead, so I better start reading. I always think of that. The best thing you can do is get permission to write from your heroes, permission to get out of your own way, and then give that permission to others as well as you can with your own work.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: I wish I had better advice than just keep writing, keep doing it, keep getting better and truer and closer to your own voice. Good work does get noticed, I've seen it happen to others and experienced it myself, and it takes a long time to make good work, so be okay with that, push hard but be patient. Try to get produced, and if necessary produce your stuff yourself. You'll be exhausted and broke but you'll learn more sitting in the back of an actual audience watching your words than you will any other way. Try your best to put blinders on and find the joy in making stuff and find people you love to create with and be loyal to them while widening your circle at the same time. Be kind, while learning to protect your work (this can sometimes be a difficult balance, but it's worth the effort to try to get it right). After a production or project is done, give yourself the space and time to be alone with yourself and your work, even if the work means daydreaming.
Trust your imagination and protect it from your impatience. Also, this seems obvious but READ! Read everything--fiction, poetry, non-fiction, plays--that you're even remotely curious about, you have no idea how it might influence your work or hit you in a certain way that may end up influencing your work in that magical, unexpected way that can make a piece of work sing. I have to remind myself of this stuff everyday, I think it's part of the deal no matter where you are on the road. Avoid people who just say, "Wow that's really hard," or whatever. I've seen people become totally discouraged because of the people they choose to surround themselves with. Try to be selective and generous at once. Life is hard, might as well find something worthwhile that's bigger than you and devote yourself to it. In short: No matter what, keep going.
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What a year! The biggest thing that happened is that we had a son. What an amazing tiring emotional journey we have begun. You know what I'm talking about, parents.
We also moved to CT. Right now, my wife is working as the Artistic Director of a youth theater while I'm taking care of our kid all day and whenever I can doing things like reading scripts and writing articles and short films for money.
I had 7 productions of my plays this year, including Clown Bar (Critic's Pick New York Times) and the remount of UBU (Critics' Pick Time Out NY.) It also marks the first time one of my plays has been done at a high school which got me actually incredibly excited, much more than I thought possible.
Hearts Like Fists and The Why Overhead are now published. And Clown Bar will be published soon too.
This year I wrote 3 plays, 3/4 of a screenplay and an hour long pilot, mostly before the kid came along. My writing group at Primary Stages has kept me sane and I'm lucky to have family help babysitting one day a week so that I can attend. Still working on some TV projects and play projects, web series, musical.
I started creating single pane comics using toys in my house. I call it Toys in My House Comics. It's a way I can still be creative while I'm trapped under a sleeping baby and don't have the mind space or time to write a scene. There are over 100 of them up so far. Here is one from this morning.
My web series Compulsive Love came out and was in some festivals. That led to some paid writing of short films. Also I will be teaching a class in web series writing this spring at ESPA.
The playwright interviews continue. Got up to 627 which means there were 85 interviews this year.
Did a brief retreat with writing group up in Bennington. That was fun. What else? Some weddings. One in Whistler Canada and one in Brooklyn. Visiting family in VA. A reading in Las Vegas. Readings with Amoralists and at MCC Theater and Primary Stages in New York.
Whew. Happy New Year Everyone!
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