I Interview Playwrights Part 666: Steve DiUbaldo

Steve DiUbaldo

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY.

Q:  Tell me about your play you're having read at Terranova.

A:  It’s called “Boomer’s Millennial Hero Story.” It will have its reading at The Cherry Lane on June 16th at 3PM as part of TerraNOVA's Groundworks series. Jenna Worsham is directing.

Here’s a blurb! --

A down-home, piano-playing American Storyteller of the Boomer Generation guides us through the "heroic" first twenty-five years of “Millennial” Montgomery Walter’s life. From a childhood full of trophies and medical over-diagnosis and self-esteem building, to 9/11 to the market crash to Occupy Wall Street, this raucous vaudevillian journey takes a dark absurdist look at class, generational cause-and-affect, and American folklore in a world where ideas never truly die.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I am currently beginning the process of collaborating with a composer on a folk-blues album/score that will accompany my play, “Under The Water Tower.” Next month I’ll be going to North Carolina to hang out with my old AAU basketball team as research for a new play I’ve been working on about kids from varying socio-economic backgrounds who share a hotel room at a tournament while vying for division-1 college basketball scholarships, with the slimy backdrop of the NCAA recruiting world. I am developing those with The Middle Voice – Rattlestick’s apprentice company – who RULE.

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 family was always moving, usually at the end of a semester or school year. I spent a lot of Christmas and/or Summer breaks in a new place, daydreaming about what my new school would be like, the kinds of friends I would make, and especially the kinds of girls there’d be. And I’d spend time missing all the people I had just left behind, wondering what they were doing. I didn’t discover my love for writing until I was about 19 or 20, but by then I’d had years of practice conjuring characters and places and events and seeing how close the reality was to my imagination… as well as filling in my own blanks of what the people I left behind had become by now. And then Facebook ruined all that, but luckily I had fallen in love with writing by then. I still find myself dreaming of the new and aching for the old, in my work and in my life.

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

A:  Tickets cost too much and nobody gets paid enough and I wish more people saw plays who weren’t in the theater. That’s a three-for-one!

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The not boring kind. That’s cheeky but I mean it! I like plays that must be plays, made specifically for the stage. Plays that ask big questions and challenge an audience to think, but don’t push an agenda. I like characters who are trying hard to be good people. Anything that makes me glad I went to the theater instead of laying in bed watching Netflix. I love poetry and the inherently American. Gross, funny, vulgar, ballsy, weird, sexy, dangerous…

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

A:  I should really be asking this question, and not answering it. From what I hear, and what I tell myself -- keep submitting work, don’t compare or compete with other writer’s journeys, find a way to make your own theater, and most of all, surround yourself with amazing people – people who are smart and kind and talented and who genuinely like your work and you likes theirs too. Patience. And, much like the rest of life, never become an asshole because things are going great or because things are going not so great. Work your ass off and don’t take advantage of your gift. We’re lucky to have found this.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Check out TerraNova’s “Groundworks” Series. TerraNova is an AWESOME place. The people there are tops. And if you don’t know these writers, get to know them and see their work. They’re great and I couldn’t be prouder to have been a part of it.

http://www.terranovacollective.org/groundworks-new-play-series-2014.html

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I Interview Playwrights Part 665: Judy Tate

Judy Tate

Hometown: Chicago, Illinois

Current Town: New York City

Q:  Tell me about your upcoming show at the The Kitchen Theater.

A:  It's called Slashes of Light and it is the coming of age story of a young girl in the 1960's in an all-black private school on the South Side of Chicago and her relationship with her friend, a budding radical; her smoldering crush; and the new white history teacher who comes to town to teach them.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I have several projects going. Some are writing projects and others are education projects. I am the producing artistic director of The American Slavery Project, and the co-artistic director of a theatre company for kids at risk,  sponsored by Manhattan Theatre Club's education program called Stargate.  You can look at the video here:http://www.manhattantheatreclub.com/education/stargate/

Q:  Tell me about the American Slavery Project.

A:  The American Slavery Project is a "theatrical response" to revisionism in this country's discourse around slavery, the Civil War and Jim Crow. We support work about the era by African descended writers.  We were founded in 2011 in recognition of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War and the dearth of work on NY Stages about the era from our own perspective and in our own voice. ASP has produced staged readings by several award-winning writers and created an original piece called "Unheard Voices" which brings life to the African descended men, women and children slaves, free people and indentured servants who lived their lives on the streets of New York during colonial times.

Our website is: http://www.americanslaveryproject.org

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 8 years old my parents bought me a "Showboat". It was a replica of the steam paddle boats that would go up and down the Mississippi doing plays. It had scenery you could change, characters on little pedestals and a book of scripts. It fascinated me and I played with it for hours-- directing my play characters, reading all the parts. Then, after looking at those scripts, I decided I was going to write my own and adapted a story to be performed. It was Rumplestilskin. I dressed my sister up in green leotards and tights and put pointy ears on her. Then I hired all the other characters from kids on our block. The king, the towns-people, et al. I played the princess, of course, and I gave myself a song.  "I can't spin this straw, straw, straw, straw into gold"! We toured backyards throughout the block!

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

A:  It would be cheaper and more inclusive.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I don't have heroes. Especially not in theatre. I don't like the idea of icons and pedestals.  In my mind people who live ordinary lives in what we look back on as extraordinary times - like during enslavement in this country - those people might qualify as heroes. People who made it out of concentration camps, or walked their families out of war torn countries like Rwanda, got out of the south alive during Jim Crow - they're maybe heroes.  But not theatrical people. That being said, I have a lot of respect for many theatrical people for various reasons. Among them, Lee K. Richardson & Ricardo Khan along with Louise Gorham, who founded Crossroads theatre, Eugene Lee who founded the Black and Latino Playwrights Festival, Woodie King, who founded The New Federal Theatre, Stella Adler who taught acting and respect for the playwright, Keith Josef Adkins, playwright and founder of The New Black Fest and many, many writers of plays and fiction. Among them: Toni Morrison, José Rivera, Lorraine Hansberry, Ntozake Shangé, August Wilson. Harvey Fierstein, Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins, Cassandra Medley, Cori Thomas, Alexander Thomas, Harrison Rivers, `all of the writers of the American Slavery Project's "Unheard Voices".

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Work that pinpoints and then illuminates a specific feeling, attitude, time or cultural phenomenon. Theatre that awakens understanding in me. Theatre in which I can get lost. I like theatre with complex characters. But I also like many different forms. I work in realism with a little magic thrown in, but I like other styles, as well.

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

A:  Write a lot. Re-write a lot. Tuck a play away and visit it a long time later.  You'll see new things.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Slashes of Light runs from June 11 - 29 at The Kitchen Theatre in Ithaca, NY
http://www.kitchentheatre.org/slashes.html

The American Slavery Project can be viewed at:
http://www.americanslaveryproject.org

Stargate Theatre Company performs Saturday August 16thVisit http://www.manhattantheatreclub.com/education/stargate/

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I Interview Playwrights Part 664: Sukari Jones

Sukari Jones

Hometown: Oxon Hill, MD

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about Location, Location, Location!!!!.

A:  “LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!!!!” is a story about a 9yr old physics prodigy, Asali, who doesn’t want her mom, Gladys, to die. To save her mother, Asali builds a time machine, but she breaks it, and in the end learns that schematics and equations don’t always add up to the solution to a problem. Because time breaks everything. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever written. It’s my first straight play. And it hits way too close to home. I don’t know if it’s any good, but I know it was good for me to get it out of my bloodstream. I’m very scared that people are going to actually see it. Very terrified. And very relieved.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  Only musicals, and both with composer Ben Krauss: #1 is a trio of 20min pieces about people in motion, traveling from uncertainty and, unbeknownst to themselves, into danger; #2 is a Motown-sound adaptation of Othello where the protagonist is the leader of a dysfunctional 4-man band, trying to “crossover” as a successful Black soul artist in the 1960s.

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 will cut and paste a lyric I wrote with Eric Day that accurately describes my life. The song is called “It’s All About Me”

I am seven

And today, Mom is taking me to Oxon Hill farm

Today is the day I almost die

But don't worry

I don't die

I am smiling

Cause today, mom will buy me lemonade in a red cup

Today is the day I will dance with a llama

Don't be jealous

Llama llama llama

It's all about me

La la la la la la

It's all about me--yeah yeah

We're gonna feed the ducks today

Ducks are my favorite

It's all about ducks

And it's all about me

I am holding

Out my hand

Full of twelve day old bread

But this duck is trying to eat me instead

Maybe I'm too delicious

Maybe the bread's too stale

Stop it duck! Don't eat me! This girl is not for sale!

Mom!

Help!

I'm dying and ripping my dress!-No!

Mom!

Save me!

S-o-s-o-s-o-s-o-s-Oh!

I think of my tombstone--Of all the luck

Here lies Sukari: Eaten by a duck

Mom is laughing cause she doesn't care

That I could have died today

I hate my Mom. I hate all Mamas

I even hate the llamas

Yes I am cool. Yes I am free

But mom didn't help

My life's up to me

It's all about me— La la la la la la

It's all about me—yeah yeah

From now on I know

From now on I see

Wow…It's all about me

La la la la la la...la!

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

A:  That I wasn’t the sole person of color in the audience and/or cast 99% of the time I go out to see a show.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Henry Krieger, Bill Finn, Michael John LaChiusa, Jeanine Tesori, Jerome Kern, August Wilson, Lynn Nottage.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that uses the stage as a lab to do an experiment. To investigate something. To test out something wacky. Theater that makes everybody uncomfortable, and then you ask yourself why? And you learn something about yourself you didn’t know. Theater dabbling in sci-fi, that tackles race, class, gender at all. Everything Exit Pursued By a Bear does. Theater where I can afford a ticket to the show.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 663: Mfoniso Udofia

Mfoniso Udofia

Hometown: Southbridge, MA

Current Town: Newark, NJ

Q:  Tell me about your play you're having read at Terranova on the 23rd.

A:  runboyrun, is the 3rd play in the Ufot Family Cycle. This play follows an older married couple who, for the past 30 years, have been living the same day over and over again. After a sudden burst of frustration, time finally starts moving ...but in both directions. The couple has to navigate through illness and memory in order to discover if they can learn to love each other.

I wrote this play because I wondered at the nature of unconditional love and the circumstances/fears that prohibit us from expressing it. To me this play is a bit of a haunt. With a lot of a terror. It's a vat of loneliness. With the tiniest pinprick of hope.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm travelling to Space on Ryder Farm as part of their Writers Group, and will be working on the 1st installation of the Ufot Family Cycle, The Grove. This play was the first play I'd ever written and follows a young first-generation woman who is torn between her traditional family and her own burgeoning identity. I am also working on the 4th installation of the Ufot Family Cycle which is currently untitled. This play was commissioned by the National Black Theatre as part of their "I Am Soul Residency."

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 mother and my father are instrumental to who I am as a writer. He is a brilliant literary-research-academic savant who uses language to carve himself into new spaces. She is a scientific genius whose love and patience know no bounds. I have too many specific stories about why they are the reason I write in the fashion I write. It feels wrong to pick one over the other...so the explanation of how/why I write is simply: my mommy and my daddy. They armed me with the stories, the skill, the dedication and the sheer tenacity.

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

A:  More plays from more voices. More international theater.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like a dense, epic play. I don't mind sitting for 3 hours in the theater if that 3 hours takes me on the journey of a life time. Also, I love an honest and unapologetic voice. I'm more enamored by a possessed play that harbors slight structural imbalance than I am with a well-made play with no heat.

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CAN YOU COME?

In NYC

A reading of

Violent Bones
By Adam Szymkowicz
Directed by Jen Wineman

With lots of amazing actors too numerous to enumerate.

Fri June 13 at 4:30 pm

Violent Bones is about being young, successful and broken. Kidnappings, stabbings, novel writing, a SWAT team and lots of interns.

RSVP to readings (at) primarystages.org

Primary Stages 307 West 38th Street, Suite 1510 | New York, NY 10018

Also come see my play Clown Bar at the super fancy new space, The Box Starting mid June and running for 2 months on Saturdays. Tickets at www.pipelinetheatre.org

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I Interview Playwrights Part 662: Matt Moses

Matt Moses

Hometown: Marine Park and Bay Ridge, Brooklyn

Current Town: Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn

Q:  Tell me about The Cloud.

A:  It’s a comedy that takes place in the internet.

I was thinking of the internet as a sort of magical Shakespearean forest. The kind you see in As You Like It and Midsummer. In THE CLOUD characters use their smartphones and computers (and knowledge of each other’s passwords) to masquerade as one another.

Director Wes Grantom, the design team and a great group of actors have done a fantastic job of bringing it to life. It’s running at HERE until June 1st.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  The main things right now are rewriting a new play called Index Crimes. It’s about a NYC police officer who takes on his superiors after witnessing injustices within the department. I’m also working on a new play about a girl who comes to believe that she’s the love child of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinksy.

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’s a journalist. When I was about 7 I visited him when he was working at the Federal Courthouse in Manhattan during the trial of the Westies, a notorious Hell’s Kitchen based crime family. It was scary seeing the accused murderers and their family members in the courtroom. My father told me that if you look into a mobster’s eyes you can see that they’re dead inside.

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

A:  Would be great if there were more venues in the US that did large cast plays by American writers.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Pinter, Richard Nelson, Paula Vogel, Ken Prestininzi, Michael Frayn, Maria Irene Fornes, John Guare.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  All sorts really. I love great acting. I love when it’s funny. A good story is nice. Dense language skillfully navigated can be thrilling.

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

A:  Write good scenes.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Come see THE CLOUD at HERE Arts Center til June 1st. Link to tickets and show info is here: http://here.org/shows/detail/1432/

Also, I perform every Friday night at 10:30 at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Chelsea with house group The Law Firm.

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