I Interview Playwrights Part 734: Heloise Wilson

Heloise Wilson

Current Town: Brooklyn, New York.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I am about to start rehearsals for '' The Great Osterlin Colony '' in June at Dixon place for a show that my theatre company Little y is producing. I can't sleep at night thinking about the stage design ( How are we going to bring a bed to dixon place ?? ) but I am super excited. The play is about an artist's colony in a mansion on a secluded island surrounded by a dried out sea.

I'm finishing my last semester at Brooklyn College with Mac Wellman. We have a workshop every week and have to bring a full length play once a semester. So I am working on my full length play which is due last month. It's about objects and belongings left in garages, closets or given to relatives and charity after someone passes away. But I am not even sure it's about that yet.

I'm also writing a play for children about outer space, love and Blaise Pascal. Mac Wellman asked me to write it. He's nutty.

And I'm also an actor and I'm working on my actor's things. Just finished a film called Elans which is in post prod.

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 don't think I have one particular story. I think I was a dramatic person and a narcissist since day one. I would direct plays about llamas and baby pandas and cast and boss around my brother. Or I would pretend I was a BBC broadcaster and give the weekly summary for the Archers ( Sorry for the extra British references here). I think I have always had an interest in dramatic structures and story telling.

My dad is a musician and film composer and looking back I think this had a huge impact on who I am today. He dragged me from one jazz club to another growing up and it has taught me a lot. It taught me about creative pursuit ,finding the balance with a day job, about work ethic and collaboration. I spent a lot of time in rehearsals, sound checks, and I went to a lot of gigs. A lot of these people my dad was hanging out with were super odd but always had great stories to share with an eight year old. I am so grateful for the bohemian artsy upbringing I have received.

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

A:  I know everyone says theatre is in very bad shape but I disagree. I think American theatre is thriving. If I could change one thing however, it would be how the government and tax payers are involved. In Europe, making theatre is also a nightmare, but the government and the arts council help so much more. So yes- stronger arts councils and big private companies more involved.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  The productions at the National Theatre in London have had a great impact on me in my teenage years. Same for Ariane Mnouchine, Robert Wilson, Irina Brooke, Wajdi Mouawad and a French director named Phillipe Hadrien. Nowadays I would say my theatrical heroes are the people around me. Mischa Ipp my partner in crime with Little y is a great producer, a great actor and dramaturg. She is my everyday hero. Mac Wellman, Erin Courtney and Anne Washburn, who I all studied with at Brooklyn College are also my mentors and heroes. They totally changed everything about who I am. And I love the writing of fellow playwrights Zarina Shea, Zohar Tirosh-Polk, Kristine Haruna Lee, Kate Benson. So I would say that my heroes are the people who blow my mind every week - I am lucky that I get to hang out with them and see their shows and read their work.

There are also institutions like the Women's projects or The Bushwick Starr that I think we should look up to as role models.

I also have a mega girl crush on Heidi Schreck because she is also an playwright/actress and she is simply amazing at everything she does. I really want to be Heidi Schreck when I grow up.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Everything excites me. I love good writing but I also love strong directing choices. In Europe, theatre is so much more director oriented, so I love when I can see the director's trademark. I like things to be visual, with a strong use of space. So I would say I like strong physically told narratives.

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

A:  I have recently received two great pieces of advice. Mac Wellman once told us that the most important thing we can do everyday is to feed our creative ego.

The second one, is something Anne Washburn told me after I asked her how on earth I was supposed to make it through my twenties pursuing theatre and making seven dollars a year ? Should I quit everything and start writing commercials ?

She told me that no one would be interested in my sold-out soul. So you really have to write what matters to you and you have to keep doing it. Because eventually that's what brings exposure and attention.

I am also learning right now the importance of momentum. If you write a play it is important to have a reading pretty soon after. If you have a reading it is important to self produce pretty soon after and not wait around.

Also, on a more practical level, find a day job that stimulates you and allows you to meet people but does not suck you out of your creative energy. If you have to write all day at your job and you are too tired at night to write again maybe find something that doesn't involve writing.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 733: Ben Jolivet

Ben Jolivet

Hometown: Fall River, Massachusetts.

Q:  Tell me about your play next season at Wilbury.

A:  It's called Cain + Abel, and it's sort of this mashup of biblical myth, theatre, and reality TV. I call it a "riff" on the Cain and Abel story, partly because it doesn't owe all that much to any source text. When I got the idea, I went back to the Bible and discovered the story is, like, a paragraph long, and doesn't say anything about anything. Had it been a fuller story, I might not have touched it, but I loved there was so little information and I could make up whatever I wanted. I love doing that. The play actually owes as much to these statues I saw in a Humanities textbook in college. I can't remember what civilization they were from, but it was one of the earliest, and they were these statues of these tall, thin people, with these giant eyes and these gaping mouths, staring up in awe--or horror. I can't remember who they were, from when or where, but I remember realizing in those pictures that the sense of "what-the-hell-is-going-on-in-the-world-why-is-everything-so-terrifying" has been part of human life since the start of human life. So that’s a big part of it. And Lilith is a part of the story, and she's sort of a gollum; God is sort of a wandering artist with a name that can't be said aloud; Abel has a wife we've never heard of... and then there are these brothers who can't find each other. And of course (because why wouldn’t there be), there’s a nod to reality TV-style confessionals, and sex, and, of course, a little bit of gore. It’s going to be a ride, for sure.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm working on new drafts of things that have been on my desk for a while. I write first drafts incredibly quickly--generally, within two weeks. But then it takes me a couple years to figure out what to do with the mess I made so gleefully. I'm also about to start grad school at Hollins Playwright's Lab, so I’m getting ready for that to be part of my life.

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 Catholic, and I was pretty devout. But the Judas story always puzzled me. Jesus says to him, something like, "It would have been better for you never to have been born..." And I couldn't wrap my mind around that. If Judas didn't do what he did, Jesus wouldn't have been crucified, and the whole central event of Christianity wouldn't have happened, and then what? So I couldn't fathom how Judas was a bad guy. Yeah, he did something crappy to God--but he kind of had to for the story to unfold. So for him to do that thing that "needed" to be done, and for God to be all, "you're evil" really upset me. And when I tried to express that, nobody got what I was saying. And this was when I was, like, 10 or 11. I was young. But nobody could tell me why Judas was a bad guy. And I think so many of my plays (including Cain + Abel) are about "bad guys" and why they do what they do--how people are driven to it. In a weird way, I'm like a defense attorney. Many of my plays are about people doing the wrong thing, often, and getting audiences to empathize with that at least enough to say, "gee, well, that's effed up, because s/he's not bad..." And then, maybe, maybe, to get themselves to see themselves doing the same things.

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

A:  Nothing is more alive than theatre, and yet so much of what is produced is so dead to modern life—I think. Maybe that’s a cliché. I think we need to honor the classics, yeah; they taught us everything we know, but audiences--the audiences we hope to attract, the young folks--can't draw a line between old, stiff clothes and birch trees and samovars. They don't see a relationship to their lives. So why go? I go because I worship Chekhov, but why would someone who doesn’t come from this world go? Or even care? And why spend the money? It's cheaper to see reflections of your experience in a movie or, hell, on YouTube. somehow theatre needs to CARE about the lives of its audience more. For whatever that is worth.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  When I was a kid: Tennessee Williams and Christopher Durang. As I got older, Paula Vogel, Tony Kushner, and Richard Greenberg. Sarah Ruhl always makes me want to sit down and write. Now, though, it’s also the amazing collaborators and friends I get to work with.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theatre that surprises me and makes me feel like a kid again. When a piece of theatre can surprise me, God it's exciting! I love to gasp at a play.

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

A:  Talk yourself into a realistic idea of success, and hold on to it. When I decided to take writing seriously, I felt like, "oh, I'll just get into Yale, and then Playwright's Horizons will start doing my plays, and that'll be that." Totally unrealistic. Now, I tell writers who take my workshops that success is getting your work in front of people who want it. To me, that’s success (when I’m clear-headed enough to believe myself). It doesn't have to be that to a writer starting out, but something reasonable needs to be the goal. Also, be, just, a delight to work with. Be an exceptional collaborator. That doesn't mean be a pushover, but be generous. Listen well. Learn to shut up and take feedback and not defend yourself, and divorce yourself from the very human feeling that you are what you write. You aren't. Any feedback, even if it doesn't seem helpful in the moment, will often yield new and better things. Take the feedback, be silent, and then go back to work. It’s OK to throw feedback away, but not if you haven’t wrestled with it a bit. And don’t take yourself too seriously. This isn’t rocket surgery. We’re playing make believe. That should be fun.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Cain + Abel @ The Wilbury Theatre Group, October 2015 www.thewilburygroup.org
Communion staged reading @ The Wilbury Group, April 21 2015.
I’m also leading a playwriting workshop there, starting in early May.  www.benjolivet.com

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I Interview Playwrights Part 732: Matthew Capodicasa

Matthew Capodicasa

Hometown: Scotch Plains, NJ

Current Town: New York, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  My play, You Remind Me of You, is going up as my final production with the Fordham/Primary Stages MFA in Playwriting program, so I’ve been working on that pretty regularly.

I’ve been wanting to write a love story—a girl meets boy, etc., etc. kind of love story—for a long time. And then I started to read about face blindness, a condition where you are neurologically incapable of recognizing faces, even those of people you see and interact with every day. I thought that each of those things might be a way into writing about the other.

The play is about Adele, who dropped out of law school to take care of her father when he had an accident that caused him brain damage. She meets Vincent, a musician with face blindness. It’s really bad timing, but the two start to fall in love, and try to figure out what that means and what it demands of them and how they can maybe begin to make a life together.

I’m pretty excited for the production. We’re at the Flea Theater, and I’ve got the amazingly generous, insightful and formidable Sarah Krohn directing a fantastic and super smart cast, and a design team brimming with beautiful and intimidating ideas. I’m a very lucky, and anxious, person.

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 was obsessed with The Wizard of Oz when I was little, and maybe perhaps filled my imaginary world with people like Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion and the occasional post-witch Winkie. One day when I was maybe three years old, my dad took me for a ride into town in a little red wagon. We stopped for ice cream, sat outside for a bit to eat, and then it was back into the wagon for the ride home.

After a little while, I suddenly screamed, “Stop! We forgot Dorothy!” and demanded my father take us back to town. My dad dutifully turned around and pulled me back to go get her.

My fianceé loves this story.

I think the whole thing is actually mostly a credit to my dad, who was willing to just go with what was either a really involved bit or an early-onset personality disorder.

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

A:  I would make the ticket prices lower. A boring answer, I know. But important, I think.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Edward Albee, Annie Baker, Samuel Beckett, Georg Büchner, Chekhov, Caryl Churchill, Cusi Cram, Bathsheba Doran, Christopher Durang, Will Eno, Maria Irene Fornes, Melissa James Gibson, Amy Herzog, Naomi Iizuka, Rajiv Joseph, Sarah Kane, Tony Kushner, David Lindsay-Abaire, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Marsha Norman, Nick Payne, Sarah Ruhl, Jenny Schwartz, Shakespeare, Diana Son, Stephen Sondheim, Paula Vogel, Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, August Wilson, Lanford Wilson.

I realize that I just spewed a gigantic list of writers I’m a fan of, and I have many theatrical heroes who are directors, designers, actors, producers, dramaturgs and teachers. But I figured I’d just go with writers here.

Q:  What kind of theatre excites you?

A:  I’m a fan of all kinds of theatre, honestly, but I really fall in love with plays that make beautiful, richly imagined worlds, and explore those worlds in theatrical, surprising ways. A theatre of language, of invention, of ridiculousness, of engagement, of diversity. Theatre that aspires to something. A humane theatre. Also, a really good fart joke goes a long way with me.

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

A:  As a playwright just starting out, I am wildly unqualified to answer this question. So I’ll just rattle off some of the things I try to tell myself: write every day, remind yourself you don’t know anything, read broadly, read generously, see as much as possible, find like-minded collaborators, strive for empathy, resist the urge to retreat and hide in your apartment, look for the joy in the crazy process of making something from nothing in dark rooms, floss.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Come see You Remind Me of You! April 16-19 at the Flea Theater!

Tickets are available here: http://yrmoy.brownpapertickets.com

Also, my 10-minute play, Of Our Own, is going up April 28-May 2 as a part of Theater Masters’ Take Ten Festival. My play will be directed by the awesome Margot Bordelon.

Tickets are available here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/take-ten-2015-national-mfa-playwrights-festival-nyc-tickets-16138886845

And come see the work of my fellow grad students in the Fordham/Primary Stages MFA program:

Mêlisa Annis’s United Front (http://unitedfront.brownpapertickets.com)

A double-bill of Alessandro King’s Aykroyd and Julian Giat’s Kid’s Choice (http://aykroydkid.brownpapertickets.com)

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I haven't written this play yet but I will

Studio 42’s below-the-belt, no-holds-barred, best of the best heavyweight championship returns to rock (and shock)
…for the LAST TIME…EVER!

Saturday, May 2nd at 8pm
Don’t miss the city’s most deliciously “unproducible” playwrights battle it out for fame, glory, and the title of Most Unproducible Playwright.

Your 2015 contenders are:
Meghan Deans (Ashore) – 2 Time Returning Champ!
Christopher Oscar Peña (a cautionary tale)
Lauren Yee (The Hatmaker’s Wife)
Krista Knight (Salamander Leviathan)
Adam Szymkowicz (Clown Bar)

Featuring: Brian Belcinski, Dana Berger, Adam Blodgett, Brian Burns, Kristen Harlow, Megan Hill, Alex Herrald, Polly Lee, David Mitsch, Lynne Rosenberg, Natalie Saibel, Risa Sarachan, Julie Sharbutt, and Liz Wisan

May 2nd – $35 advanced tickets on sale now!

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I Interview Playwrights Part 731: Lisi DeHaas

Lisi DeHaas

Hometown: New York, New York.

Current Town: New York, New York. (Since 2009)

Previous Towns: San Francisco & Los Angeles (1991-2008)

Q:  Tell me about Leave Me Green.

A:  LEAVE ME GREEN explores the relationships among a group of New Yorkers touched by loss. It takes place in the winter of 2009 when Gay marriage was not yet legal in New York State. It centers on Rebecca Green, and her son Gus, who have just lost their third family member, Inez, to the war in Iraq. It addresses issues I have written and performed about over the last two decades: gender and sexual identity, how the personal is political, GLBT rights- specifically marriage equality and the importance of speaking openly about our families. It’s a good old American “kitchen sink” drama. It’s a story about a non-traditional family struggling with grief, in a traditional dramatic container. The play is a dramatic reflection of my worst fears. What if I lost my life partner and was left a single parent? What if grief overcame me and I became an active alcoholic? What if my son felt betrayed by not knowing the origins of his birth story? The play formed out of my recent experience mourning three sudden deaths in my family, one of which left my nephew without his mother. As I struggled with my own grief, and my family’s grief, writing the play became an affirmation of the fullness of life. It was in and of itself a practice, a commitment to living.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  A couple New York City plays. One, in very early stages, is a full-length four-character play about two misfit middle-aged people who reconnect upon returning home to their neighboring childhood apartments after the deaths of their respective parents. The other, Balloon Man & Cat Lady, is a one-act about an alcoholic ventriloquist who sells balloons in the park, and his feral cat rescuer wife. They play explores their doomed co-dependent sinkhole of a relationship the only escape from which is death. The play needs some work to become the comedy I hope it will be.

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

A:  One of the first stories about my childhood is that at three years old I pounded on the locked door of my parent’s room and yelled, “Someone open this fucking door!” – and lo and behold, they stopped whatever it was they were doing in there, and did. My, “If you Hear something, Say something”, strategy was very effective. Unfortunately my take no prisoners pre-school attitude waned in the face of my childhood fascination with ballet. I studied at the American Ballet Theatre School near Lincoln Center, which has long since been torn down. It was a very cool building- featured in the classic film The Turning Point. What they didn’t show in the movie was the epic roach infestation throughout the school. The older students had a great show where they would pull back the cork board in the lobby to reveal what was behind it: a shiny rectangular teeming mass of roaches. I would stand at a safe distance from this horror, as other kids feigned terror with delighted squeals, and wonder at their bravery. At age nine I was cast as “Fifth Position” in the ballet Etudes and I got to do a grand plié (in fifth position, of course) and a little jete on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House. Suffice it to say that is the largest theatre I’ve ever had the privilege to perform in. In college, I discovered that if I did something called “Dance-Theatre”, I could actually talk while dancing. This was a welcome discovery. I decided to become a Performance Artist and move to San Francisco; because the birth of my literal and figurative voice coincided with my realization that I was batting for the, “Other”, team. At 22, I made a performance called, “Recipe For Grief”, about a Midwestern housewife testifying to the murder of her transgender lover by her husband. At the end of this piece, having stripped off my 50’s housewife attire and hung it on a clothesline behind me, I did a naked movement sequence consisting mostly of back bends, then smashed eggs on my head to represent the bashing. The piece ended with a blood-curdling scream. Eventually the text in my work became central, even though the characters I portrayed were discovered through improvisation in the studio. Twenty years later I’m writing stories for other people to perform, but my writing evolved out of my own experience of being a performer.

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

A:  Three things: More diversity, More accessibility, More resources.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Jean Genet, Antonin Artaud, Mabou Mines, Bill T. Jones, Tony Kushner, Larry Kramer, Lisa Kron, Peggy Shaw & Lois Weaver, Alvin Ailey, Paula Vogel, Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Paul Rudnick, Peter Brook, Kate Bornstein, Justin Vivian Bond, Lee Theodore, Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, Holly Hughes, Suzan Lori Parks, Sonya Sobieski, Tommy Kail & Lin Manuel Miranda, Karen Hartman, Tanya Barfield, Aristotle, Anna Halprin.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theatre that isn’t afraid to get personally political in service of the greater good. Lisa Kron’s, “Well”, “Fun Home”. Doug Wright’s “I am My Own Wife”. Suzan Lori Parks, “Father Comes Home From The Wars”. I like theatre that is physical, embodied, an emotional journey for the performers and the audience. I loved the Anne Washburn and The Civilians’, “Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play” Virtuosic spectacle. Musicals. Melodrama. Theatre of the Absurd. Drag. Transformation. Catharsis. Work that opens our mind and heart simultaneously.

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

A:  Share your work regularly, get feedback from a group. Bearing witness and supporting other people’s creative process feeds your own. Find a writing routine, a sustainable ritual, and stick with it. I get up very early in the morning, make coffee, light candles, burn sage, and write for a couple hours. If I don’t have to go into work and my family life allows it, I write for longer. If I stick with this structure three, ideally five, days a week, I enjoy writing much more than if I stop and have to get started all over again. Momentum is key. It’s always my goal to see as much theatre as possible: new work in progress as well as full productions. This being said, I am nowhere near close to seeing as much as there is to see on any given week in this city.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My new play LEAVE ME GREEN, directed by Jay Stull, is at The Gym at Judson, 243 Thompson St., in a limited run through April 11th. You can find more information on our Facebook page: https://www.Facebook.com/LeaveMeGreen or call: (866) 811-4111 for tickets.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 730: Shirley Lauro

Shirley Lauro

Hometown: I was born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa.

A great place in which to grow up and come from!

Current Town: I came to Manhattan after a BS @Northwestern and MFA @U. of Wisconsin. I taught at Tisch, City College and Yeshiva U. and wrote part time, publishing a novel for Doubleday: THE EDGE. Then I left teaching and began to write plays in New York. I’ve lived in Manhattan for many years now, and call it my home. I love the city – the theater, ballet, music, museums, people – I can’t ask for anything more.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I just finished an article for Samuel French that will appear in their online website in their Breaking Character section. It concerns an Israeli production of my play, ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT, which centers on innocent, country German Gentile girls coming of age in The Third Reich. This production was startlingly different from the New York and other productions in that Israelis saw 30’s Germany as decadent, with a production reminiscent of CABARET. It was mesmerizing.

I’m now working on a play whose subject matter is the relationship of a mentally ill mother and her daughter. The theme deals with what a child’s responsibility to a parent as opposed to her responsibility to self. The play is set in Iowa ( as are THE CONTEST, THE COAL DIAMOND, NOTHING IMMEDIATE, and SUNDAY GO TO MEETIN’)

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

A:  While growing up in Des Moines, I was lucky enough to become part of Drake University’s Children’s Theater. We had a season of our own in the University Theater and then we toured Iowa with our fairy tales. I was committed to becoming an actor at the time and was cast as “Cinderella”, Miss Minchin in “The Little Princess,” the Witch in “Sleeping Beauty” much to my delight. Unfortunately no Disney scout swooped down on the scene in Iowa to give me a contract. Point of fact, I think there were no live actors doing Disney movies then. So I was never spotted or signed to become a Disney star. But that Children’s Theater sparked a deep passion for theater in me. Our coach had studied with Marie Opspenskia (sp?), the great Russian Method actress. That coach instilled in me a deep passion for theater that is with me today.

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

A:  A recognition of the theater as an art form instead of an avenue for escapism: sex, flash, and bling! I know that escapist theater has always been with it – but it seems more and more prevalent on the Broadway and Off-Broadway stages now. Only the Indie Off-off Broadway theaters seem to dare to do classics, re-interpretation of the classics, and modern serious plays.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  The great American dramatists from the 20th Century: O’Neill, Miller, Williams. Particularly Williams because of his masterful depictions of women. Also – from the past: Ibsen, the social conscience playwright, who again had such a grasp of women as they were in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. I did a Master’s Thesis on Williams and Ibsen on this very theme. And of course Shakespeare. What playwright would not mention Shakespeare, who impacted us all – from high school to The Old Globe in England, to the American productions.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Straight plays, serious plays with magnificent actors, inspired costumes, scenery, lighting. THE AUDIENCE knocked me out in the recent Broadway import from England. With Helen Mirren doing Queen Elizabeth II, exquisite lighting/scenery/costumes – I was awestruck. Wish America would do plays like that!

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

A:  Get training in all aspects of theater: acting, directing, designing. Theater is theater and a group art. Not steeped in all elements that put a play on the stage is a huge disadvantage. Coming from an English background rather than a theater background is a disadvantage and tends to make one academic rather than theatrical!

Stick with the theater for your training before you jump into writing for TV, big screen, small screen. Being told what to do: how characters are supposed to behave and scenes to move, and what the ending must be – all within a time framework – these are hugely destructive to the playwright’s creative gifts. Only when you are firm in playwriting, should you venture into other mediums.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: My website: www.shirleylauro.com,

Facebook wall Shirley Lauro 

Breaking Character:  http://www.samuelfrench.com/breakingcharacter/

The Actors Studio (reading of new work, 4/15/15.


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