I Interview Playwrights Part 267: Jason Chimonides

Jason Chimonides

Hometown:

Tallahassee, Florida. Moved there when I was two – born in Tuscaloosa though, Alabama. I guess I’m a southern ex-pat.

Current Town:
I split my time between NYC and a tiny little place called Indiana, PA where I teach theater at a reasonably sized public school called Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Indiana is about an hour east of Pittsburgh and Jimmy Stewart’s hometown!

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  It’s a thing called serverLove and it’s a bit difficult to describe – it’s set in a “futuristic” paracosmos in which a vast superintelligence called “server” (imagine if the internet became conscious) is exponentially integrating itself with humans at a rate that’s becoming difficult for our species to keep pace with. If you’re familiar with Transhumanism, or The Singularity, Virtual Reality, etc – this topic will not be exactly new to you, science fiction writers have been exploring this terrain for eons…

What I hope will make serverLove fresh, (and why it’s a play in the theater and not a film or novel), is, that as our man made machines become more and more intuitive and “organic” seeming, more natural, then to me it follows paradoxically, that live theater becomes the perfect medium through which to explore “Virtual” reality.

I became fascinated by the idea that an audience could watch onstage characters that existed in an utterly fleshed out, vivid, three dimensional virtual reality world - in utterly fleshed out, vivid, three dimensional time and space - and that the play itself could toggle back and forth between both the “virtual” and the “real” and that if calibrated well, the audience would feel, in a visceral way, all the simulacra folding in on themselves - which is how neuroscientists and philosophers increasingly see consciousness itself and does this make any sense at all…?

Anyhow. Topically, the play examines exponential technological evolution – and its implications for human relationships – but at a completely mundane level: youngish professionals falling in and out of relationships.

All of the characters in the play have been “mated” by server (try to imagine a kind of SUPER E Harmony matching your brain’s “lovemap” with another person’s at the minutest of neuronal levels) and are, in an objective sense, highly suited to each other, yet, despite their consonance, they still find themselves unable to form lasting relationships. The reason? server is always improving. The mating is always gaining subtlety and just like next year’s iPhone promises to be better than this years, there is an ingrain societal expectation that no matter how successful a pairing, one could always do better; The Paradox of Choice.

I’ll stop there.

Q:  How do you manage to balance your teaching life with your playwriting life?



A:  Teaching has actually provided the financial and psychic stability to seriously pursue writing, not to mention it’s given me the necessary time to really grow – I teach only 28 weeks a year! And since I don’t necessarily consider myself a “writer,” first, but more of a “generalist” generally – teaching’s a nice structure for a guy like me to keep his unruly brain occupied.

I write one full length project a year and have done so since about 2003, and balancing these projects with teaching, directing and music allows my creative interests to feed and talk to each other – life becomes integrated and that’s incredibly important to me. I also really enjoy attempting to contribute value to other people’s lives and to elicit growth. One isn’t always aware of the effect one is having on students, but I rest in the illusion that I’m doing some good. And just like in my Playwriting – I no longer read reviews.

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 7 years old I had a “Death Meditation” on my Big Wheel. I knew, intuitively that everything would one day come to an end and yet I simultaneously realized that things were infinite (the ultimate “BIG WHEEL”) - I think it was Joseph Campbell who said “The image of death is the beginning of story…” That day on the big wheel is where mine began.

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


A:  My overwhelming feelings of guilt that I don’t see enough of it, know enough about it or care enough about the medium AS a medium if that makes sense.

I’m 37, when I was in college I was OBSESSED with theater, (in addition to cinema and Brit Pop), I consumed as much of it as I possibly could, had dreams of joining the RSC or starting my own company, etc. Now, in a way, I’ve moved on from it and only enjoy seeing plays as a rare treat. Sure I’ve been burned by seeing a lot of uninspiring professional theater, but simultaneously there are SO MANY other human endeavors that I want to explore and for too long theater has siphoned off too much of my attention: visual art, physics, experimental music, space, Buddhism, neuroscience, are just a few examples of my current “Subject Crushes.”

And though I teach theater, ostensibly, at the undergraduate level, for me, it’s simply a lens, a container through which to view life and to develop as a human. And beyond writing my plays, that’s how I attempt to contribute to the field. Theater is a really great thing to do as a young person! For a certain type of personality, it can be the keystone of a truly transformative education. It certainly was for me.
Beyond that, the central thing that keeps me devoting large amounts of my life to making it is, that, as an art form, it’s open. And most importantly, perhaps: theater = the present.

And it’s always the present…

So what do I want to change about theater? Nothing. I only want to stop feeling guilty for it no longer being the center of my life.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  George Judy, my mentor at Florida State University - now at Louisiana State University. He was the first person who showed me that one could be something other than one of the conventional options the culture offered up. He was and remains one of my greatest inspirations.

I liked Peter Brook and Growtowski and Stephen Wangh and Sam Shepard and Shakespeare and Moliere and a bunch of writers and actors; I still feel that Anthony Hopkins is a soul mate.
Oh, and Morrissey! Can’t forget him! He’s my ULTIMATE theatrical hero!!!

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?


A:  It’s always changing, but essentially I like stuff that’s cosmic in nature. I like stuff that deals with the BIG questions: the ultimate nature of reality, the self, relationships, death, love, inner paths to outerspace, etc. I’m engaged by theatrical inventiveness and endlessly impressed by it, but it’s not what I really care about – at my core, I’m a naturalist and I like (and write) chamber pieces.
I saw “The Aliens” by Annie Baker this spring and that play totally met my test for Cosmic Naturalism. It was clear to me that she writes from an instinctual, intimate, yet ultimate kind of place. There was a moment at the end of the first act where a dude is watching a sparkler burn out and he’s saying something like: “It’s going, it’s going…” (I’m butchering it, sorry) And I thought: “YESSSSSSSSS………THE TRUUUUUUTHHHHHH…….”

The theater that excites me the MOST however currently, the very most, is the play that Phillip Seymour Hoffman directs over 50 years in Charlie Kaufman’s “Synedoche, New York.”

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


A: 
• Play to your strengths and use the writing as meditation – a listening for personal truth, work for yourself first and then invite people to dialogue with your play but don’t operate from a place of trying please anybody – this will only lead to SUFFERING;

• Cultivate a “growth mindset” as opposed to an “outcome mindset” and be comfortable knowing that it will take thousands of hours of practice to achieve ANY expertise at all. This approach will also help you to relax when you’re totally LOST in a script by reminding you that the more lost you are the more possible it is that a truly extraordinary creative discovery lurks JUST beyond your winking “I beam!”

• Don’t read reviews. If they say it’s good it’s not that good, if they say it’s bad it’s not that bad.

• And most importantly, DO IT FOR FUN….. Just for fun. Everything else will follow naturally and if it doesn’t – who cares…? You’re invested in the PROCESS! And the process is the only thing that actually exists.

Q:  
Plugs, please:


A:  serverLove is being read on Oct 18th through MCC playlabs! Marin Ireland and Thomas Sadoski star – Josh Hecht directs!
http://www.mcctheater.org/literary/playlabs.html#serverlove
I’m also in a band called the Cinema Twin, type us in to Facebook or iTunes and listen!!!!

I Interview Playwrights Part 266: Karinne Keithley

Karinne Keithley

Hometown:   A pair: Bishop Monkton, No. Yorks, UK / Los Altos, CA

Current Town:  Modjeska Canyon, CA

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Half the day, building displays for Montgomery Park, or Opulence, which is half museum, half audio-video-operetta. The other half, working on my dissertation prospectus.

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

A:  As a child I did a lot of things repetitively: draw oil pastels of Jupiter, watch the three films I owned on video (Wind in the Willows, My Fair Lady, Guys & Dolls), talk to the peacocks that came from Mr Jones' farm across the street to eat my mother's basil plants, and go to ballet. One of the highlights of my childhood was a hiking trip to the Lake District where we ate Kendall Mint Cakes and I was allowed to stay up past my bedtime to watch Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe.

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

A:  Put the room it happens in always in question, and architecturally make thinking space for different syntaxes of storytelling.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Mac Wellman, Big Dance Theater, Pina Bausch, Sibyl Kempson, Amber Reed, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Deborah Hay.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The serene, bewildering, mind-as-proliferating-multitudinous-scaffold, singing, ceremonial kind.

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

A:  Take anatomically and somatically oriented dance class -- seriously, I think that the best ear arises from kinesthetic intelligence.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Montgomery Park, or Opulence, an essay in the form of a building, at Incubator Arts Project NYC Nov. 4-13, 2010.

I Interview Playwrights Part 265: Rich Orloff

Rich Orloff

Hometown:  I was born and raised in Chicago.

Current Town:  New York City

Q:  Tell me about your new comedy SKIN DEEP.

A:  Several years ago, one of my plays was produced at the Key West Theatre Festival. At a party one night, I met a guy who worked as the front desk clerk at a local clothing-optional resort. The more he told me about his job, the more I knew there was a play there. A few years later, the festival produced another play of mine, and so I spent a few days - and nights - at the resort. I got a lot of material and a good tan, and it was all a tax-deductible business expense! I love my job.

On the surface, SKIN DEEP is simply a fun sex comedy, which I've tried to tell with clever wit and a few surprises. But I wanted to anchor the story in a way so that it'd be more than just a bunch of funny situations. Without giving away any plot twists, I've striven in SKIN DEEP to create moments in which characters have to face the ramifications of decisions they're both making in the play and made long ago. From the best comedies, I've learned there have to be moments when the laughter stops.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  As soon as I recover from SKIN DEEP (which starts performances on Sat Oct 16th), I plan to return to two unfinished projects:

Although it has lots of laughs in it, MEN OVERBOARD is one of my few plays which I've labeled "a play by" and not "a comedy by". It's about three brothers in their 40's, their elderly father, and the 13-year-old son of the oldest brother, who is about to have his Bar Mitzvah. The play explores the concept of "soul murder". If you see someone commit physical abuse toward a child, society agrees one should interact. But what responsibilities do each of us have when we see emotional abuse? This is the most raw play I've ever written, and I spend as much time not writing it as I do writing it.

To balance, I've also been working on a comedy revue entitled JEST DESSERTS. Inspired by the blackout humor of LAUGH-IN, none of the sketches in JEST DESSERT are more than a few minutes long. It's been great to be able to walk down the street, get an outrageous idea, mull it over and write it down. There's not a moment of character development or depth - this one IS just about the laughs.

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've seen you ask that in previous interviews, and I always think, "Boy, I gotta come up with something!" I can think of two moments that helped shaped me as a writer:

At a New Year's Eve party Maura Kosovski gave during my senior year of high school, Dede Endliss and I snuck into the den and watched A NIGHT AT THE OPERA on TV. I had never seen a Marx Brothers movie before, and I was in rapture. Nobody had ever told me that comedy could be such a relentless and anarchic attack on EVERYTHING, including logic itself.

In my junior year of college, I saw my first Frank Capra comedy, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT. After years of only wanting to write comedy as witty and crazy as the Marx Brothers, I suddenly realized comedy could be quiet, about the minutiae of human behavior, and that comedies could charm and touch us through the process of amusing us, instead of stopping to get serious.

I like to think my plays mix those two schools of comedy, the mix varying depending on the play.

One other story, about me as a person:

One summer I was a counselor at a day camp in Chicago, and during a field trip, as all the kids were getting back on the bus, one kid started to run away. I chased after him, and he ran down an alley. I cornered him. There were lots of pebbles on the ground, and he started to throw the stones at me. I kept my distance, so I was unafraid. I didn't know what to do, so I let him keep throwing stones. He kept throwing them and throwing them, until he was exhausted. Then he began to sob deeply.

Ever since then, I've realized that what a person is expressing and what they're feeling underneath can be two radically different things.

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

A:  Ticket prices! Who can afford Broadway or even Off-Broadway anymore? My friends can't - and most of them work in the theater! I'd love to have a play on Broadway someday - but I'd hate to ask folks to pay Broadway prices for anything I've written!

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes and influences?


A:  I think anyone who works in the theater these days is doing a heroic act. The hours are long, the risks are great, and most people (at least in the United States) wouldn't lose any sleep if theater stopped. To continue to create theater (especially if you've done it awhile) takes courage. I feel a deep affection and gratitude towards everyone working in it - regardless of talent.

My influences are way too numerous to mention, but they include the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, and a whole bunch of vaudeville comedians; the playwrights George S. Kaufman and his collaborators, Neil Simon, Joe Orton, Ferenc Molnar (best Hungarian comedic playwright ever!), Anton Chekhov, Noel Coward, Michael Frayn, Lanford Wilson and Terrence McNally; the early films of Woody Allen and Mel Brooks; the sitcoms of Norman Lear and James L. Brooks (Mary Tyler Moore, Taxi, etc.); and the sketch comedy of Sid Caesar, Monty Python and the Second City.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  A lot! I have eclectic tastes, ranging from mainstream musical comedy to the Wooster Group. I just want to be engaged and taken on a ride.

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

A:  Write more than one play. Have more than one theatrical experience. Say Yes unless you can think of a damn good reason to say No. Strive high, but constantly let go at the same time.

Some of the above are lessons I've learned; the last one is one I'm still learning.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Thanks for asking! The Foolish Theatre Company presents SKIN DEEP, a comedy without tan lines, from Oct 16 through Nov 6 at Theatre 54 in NYC. Winner of the Larry Corse Playwriting Prize and a finalist for the Sunwall Prize for Comedy, the play had eight readings and workshops around the country before I agreed to have it produced in New York. (I've learned not to rush the process!) As I participated in readings in New York, Florida, Georgia, Arizona and New Jersey, I also gained the confidence that the play works.

Folks can get tickets at http://www.smarttix.com/SearchResults.aspx?GUID=ccc571e4-c0a4-4a4d-97fd-ba6f0feacc28

You can learn more about my plays at www.richorloff.com. You can learn more about me by offering me drinks.

Next

1.  

As part of MCC Theater's Playlab series:

Monday, October 25, 7:00 p.m.

THE FAT CAT KILLERS by Adam Szymkowicz

Directed by Ethan McSweeney

When Steve and Michael get laid off from their work-a-day “lives,” their heads start swimming with sexy possibilities – i.e., pristine Mexican beaches flush with bikini babes. The road to bikiniville begins with a plan to kidnap their ex-boss, and quickly devolves into a hilariously ill-conceived mission to bring down and destroy The System itself. One CEO at a time.

All readings are at Baruch (151 East 25th) and start at 7pm, followed by the customary hour of mingling, wine and snacks.


2. 

Nerve in London  (production #8)

I Interview Playwrights Part 264: David Simpatico

David Simpatico

Hometown: Palisades Park, NJ

Current Town: New York City

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I tend to work on several pieces concurrently, though I am trying to narrow it down to two at a time. I've just been accepted into a year long opera training program at the American Lyric Theatre, so that entail a series of short projects through the year.

New projects I'm working on right now: an adult horror film version of HANSEL AND GRETAL; organizing my thoughts for WAITING FOR THE BALL TO DROP, a full length play about a year in the life of seven friends; APOCOLYPSE WOW, a vaudeville about the end of the world; and ORACLE a musical fantasy for young adults set in the world of Greek mythology. Oh, I just finished some one minute plays that appeared in the One Minute Play festival, that was a blast.

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 the fourth grade, I played the title role in our full scale production of MACBETH. My mother made my tunic from a Simplicity pattern, and the day of the cast party, I hid my pants and shirt in my duffle bag claiming someone had stolen my clothes, so I had to walk home in my tunic; that was perhaps the happiest day of my young life, walking home and twirling in my shakespeare tunic. I've been dancing the same dance ever since.

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

A:  I would urge my peers and the next generation to write for the theatre, not for the sofa. The lack of theatricality in theatrical plays is astounding. Use the parameters of the living space rather than limiting the material to what we accept as familiar. Engage my imagination. Enrage me. Anything, just don't put me to sleep.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Caryl Churchill; Tennessee Williams; Euripides; Shakespeare; Franco Dragone; Martha Graham; Zero Mostel. August Wilson. Charles Ludlum.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Visceral theatre excites me; something that expands my engagement beyond the restrictions of my chair. Expand my experience to the four walls of the theatre, to the farthest walls of my heart. Theatre that entertains me, from Maggie Smith in Lettuce and Lovage to the flying acrobatic dancers at the Streb Lab out in Willamsburg. I have had my fill of courtroom dramas and lectures on art, thanks.

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

A:  Take acting classes, perform, get your ass onto a stage and understand from the inside out what you are asking people to do; perform solo, your own material; read the whole play out loud to a small group of friends so you can hear your 'voice' on all levels; band together with friends and put your work up ANYWHERE you can, but stay in the live element; there is nothing that will illuminate the live theatre experience more than actual live performance. Film and video will not teach you what you need to learn as a playwright. And never stop discovering what you don't yet know: push yourself into dark waters.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  new pieces I'm pushing: CRUEL SHOES, an adult backstage musical comedy about a killer chorus boy with four homicidal female multiple personalities (http://www.cruelshoesthemusical.com/)
and THE SCREAMS OF KITTY GENOVESE, a rock opera about the infamous 1964 murder of a young woman while 38 neighbors watched and did nothing (http://thescreamsofkittygenovese.com/)

I Interview Playwrights Part 263: Deborah Zoe Laufer

Deborah Zoe Laufer

Hometown:  Liberty, NY

Current Town:  Mt. Kisco, NY.

Q:  Tell me please about your play Sirens at Humana.

A:  I had the time of my life at Humana. It was the most collaborative process I’ve ever been part of. I went to the early design meetings which somehow, insanely enough, I hadn’t done in the past. It made me really consider the arbitrary walls that are put up in production – who gets to interact with whom. Great designers are so inspiring. And I had brilliant designers on Sirens. They made me fall in love with my own play through their visions. And, being in the room I could help problem-solve and clarify and rewrite. It seems such a mistake that we’re not always invited to work together.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  My new play is about gamers, and the thin line between “real” life and our on-screen lives. It centers around the military’s recruitment of expert gamers to fly remote drones in Afghanistan and Iraq out of trailers in the Nevada desert. These are often teenagers and they’re finding they have worse PTSD than soldiers “in the field.” I Just had a reading at the Missoula Colony in MT, and I’m ready to get out a second draft.

Q:  What else are you up to?

A:  I just started the BMI lyricists workshop!!!! I’m so crazy out of my mind thrilled. I love musicals and I love learning something totally new, and we just had the first class last week and I can’t stop smiling.

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 in the woods. I raised woodchuck, beaver, deer, hawks, goats, ferrets, horses, swans, geese, pheasants, chickens, peacocks. (besides dozens of cats and dogs) I was a witch all through grade school. I was the only Jewish kid in my elementary school, and the only Jew many of them had ever seen. I trained a frog to come to me when I held out my hand. I was odd. And funny. Guess that about sums it up.

Q:  How do you think Paul Simon writes such amazing songs?

A:  Right?? He’s our national poet. If you read Adam’s website Paul, wouldn’t it be fun to work on a musical together? THINK ABOUT IT!

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

A:  Find a writer’s group of people you love and trust and respect.

Write.

Put together readings of your work. Just friends in your living room if you need to. Plays need to be heard.

Don’t say, as I did, “I’m not good at the business part – I’m just a writer.” I thought that was charming and artsy for a long time. But the business part is part of being a writer. And it’s really not as charming and artsy as we think it is to say we’re bad at it.

Don’t become addicted to online scrabble and chess! (As soon as I finish the 50 games I’m playing I’m DONE.)

I Interview Playwrights Part 262: Brian Polak

Brian Polak

Hometown: Keene, NH

Current Town: Pasadena, CA

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  This spring I finished a play titled “Underground” about a subway busker with an infatuation for the Unabomber. This play started off as an hour-long monologue almost five years ago. It has evolved into something decidedly not a monologue.

My wife, Jami Brandli (who is also a playwright), and I participated in challenge with each other during the month of August. We decided to use Facebook as a motivational tool rather than a constant distraction. We would work on a new play each day and update our status with our progress. The idea was to keep us focused on our work by proclaiming it publicly to hundreds of people. I finished a first draft of a play titled “moments before medicine” during the challenge. I’m really excited about it. It’s a two-hander about manipulation, drug addiction and abortion. Not really, but sort of.

Next up is a play about animal cruelty involving a matador who quits in the middle of a bullfight. After that is a play about the death penalty involving a prisoner who can’t be put to death by lethal injection because his veins are too small.

Jami and I are also finishing a TV pilot and a couple screenplays that we’re writing together.

Q:  Tell me about Boston Court.

A:  (I think most people in the LA theatre community see me as a marketing person at Boston Court and not a playwright. I get “Oh, you’re a playwright?” a lot when it comes up.)

I feel very fortunate to be employed full time not only in a theatre, but a theatre I would pay money to visit. Boston Court focuses on new works, although not exclusively. In 2009 we did two world premieres. This year we are doing four. The plays we do are all inherently theatrical, which is something I appreciate. The theater space itself is a perfect canvas for actors, directors, designers and playwrights. I know I work here and am supposed to say this, but if you live in the LA area and DON’T come to see the plays produced here you are really missing something special.

One of the greatest benefits of working here, other than the snacks in the greenroom, is the exposure I have to so many ridiculously talented theatre people. I bend the ears of our artistic directors, directors, playwrights, actors, designers, production manager and technical director as much as I can. I squeeze as much knowledge out of them as I can. And, fortunately for me, we hire talented AND generous people who are willing to talk to me. Sometimes I pretend I’m talking to them for “marketing purposes.” Usually it’s because I’m curious.

Whether you are in the area or not, follow us on Twitter and/or Facebook and you’ll have the pleasure of reading about some of my interesting and inane shenanigans at Boston Court. I’m lucky that part of my job is to be in Facebook and Twitter all the time.

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 the following took place I wasn’t a child as far as age is concerned, but as you’ll see I was still a child mentally. This is a story I have told many times over the years. I feel the need to repeatedly confess…

I was in New York for work many years ago. I had just been dumped. It was snowing. I was depressed, angry and short-tempered. I remember the day like it was yesterday and not almost nine years ago. It was a Friday. There was a blizzard. After work I had to get across town for something inconsequential. The office I was working out of was located on 8th Ave and 15th. The snow was coming down heavily and I was certain it would be difficult to hail a cab. As soon as I stepped out of the door onto the street an available cab approached. I thought I was lucky; my miserable, pathetic life was finally turning around. He pulled over and I stepped in "1st Ave and 1st Street," I told him. The nexus of the universe.

After telling the driver where I needed to go I sat back and sulked like a baby "my life sucks," I remember saying to myself. The cab driver was jabbering about something, but I wasn't paying attention. I figured he was on his cell phone or singing along to a song in a language I didn't understand. After a couple of moments I happen to lock eyes with him through the rear view mirror. He wasn't jabbering or singing. He was talking to me. I leaned in towards the opening in the plexiglass separating us "Excuse me?" I asked. "You shoulda caught a cab on the other side of the street," he barked. Was he serious? He couldn't have been serious. "Are you serious?" I asked. "If you know you have to go that way, that is where you catch the cab." I was dumbfounded. Or flabbergasted. Or flabberfounded. It took me about 2 seconds to lose my shit. "Just drive me where I tell you to drive me," I screamed. He screamed back. I wasn't hearing his words. All I knew was that he was yelling and I was pissed. "Just drive, you asshole." I heard him say something to the effect of "I'll drive you to Harlem and leave you there." I rattled of a series of "Fuck you's" for about 20 seconds straight. What he said in response was beyond my comprehension.

Why was I having this argument? I didn't really understand. I started to realize there was a chance I could end up in Harlem, about a bazillion blocks from where I needed to be, so I screamed "Pull over. Pull the fuck over NOW!" He kept screaming back at me, but he obliged at the next corner. I was out-of-my-mind at this point. As soon as the cab came to a stop I threw the door open and put one foot into the wintery-New-York-street-slush-muck. I looked back at the driver who was still screaming at me, his face perfectly framed by the rectangular opening in the plexiglass separation. I then reached down and grabbed a handful of icey-slushy-muck and threw it directly in his face, punctuated with a "FUCK YOU!" I slammed the door and walked off. Fifteen or twenty steps later I realized what I had done. There was something wrong with me and changes needed to be made or else I could end up in a gutter in with my face kicked in someday. I started to change that day. Today, nearly nine years later, I write about that guy a lot.

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

A:  It is logistically impossible for theaters to have an open submission policy. There are too many plays and not enough time to read and consider them all. I would like to change that.

On the other side of the coin, I’d like playwrights to really figure out if a theater is a good match for their work before sending it out. We are the ones who are creating the stacks of plays that nobody can get through because we’re sending our kitchen sink dramas to theaters looking for musicals.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  My wife is my theatrical hero. Before I met her I was simply dipping my toe in writing while my primary creative impulse was acting. She got me to dive in completely and showed me how to be dedicated to the craft. I may not have ever considered myself a writer if not for her. She is also the first and primary reader of all my work. I trust her opinion more than anybody else. I’d be screwed without her.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Going to theatre is like playing “Duck, Duck, Goose” when you REALLY want the goose, but you just keeping getting the duck. It’s really thrilling when you finally get a goose. I guess what I’m saying is I really like geese.

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

A:  Listen to your work. It will tell you exactly what you need to do next. Don’t be afraid to follow it. It doesn’t matter what you initially set out to write, once you start, the play is in charge. Do what it says.

Live a life. Have fun. Leave the computer at home sometimes. You’re still a writer even if you aren’t writing 24/7.

Read what every playwright said in this space before me. I have learned so much from reading these interviews. I’m sure everybody who follows me will also have fantastic advice. Bookmark this blog.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I have a short story coming out in the anthology “The Commonplace Book of the Weird.” Check it out. Its chock full of HP Lovecraft goodness. The book launch is October 18 at Bar 82 in NYC. More info here: http://www.facebook.com/l/e3a9aMSTB6i2qppTDzjlxmyI2EA;www.commonplacebooks.com/

Boston Court is presenting the world premiere of Jordan Harrison’s “Futura” beginning October 9th. See this play if you are in the LA area: http://www.facebook.com/l/e3a9amjbcG6lezbQo3VGFN3qXag;www.bostoncourt.com/events/62/futura

My wife has a play, “Technicolor Life” being presented at the Ashland New Play Festival October 21 and 22. http://www.facebook.com/l/e3a9ao6gAhFPbapxmqDclMY6QZw;www.ashlandnewplays.org/

I’m on the Board of Directors for needtheater in Los Angeles. They just opened the world premiere of Michael John Garces’ “The Web.” It runs through October 17 at ArtWorks in Hollywood. http://www.facebook.com/l/e3a9aybF_HrJyph-AVCsoJIcK3w;www.needtheater.org/home.html

I Interview Playwrights Part 261: Kate Fodor

Kate Fodor

Hometown: I spent the first half of my childhood in Connecticut and the second in New York City.

Current Town: Doylestown, Pennsylvania. (It’s a long story. A beautiful place and a long story.)

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m putting the finishing touches on a play called Rx, which is a romantic comedy (of a sort) set in the pharmaceutical industry. Or maybe it’s already done and I’ll leave it alone! It’s always so hard to tell. Also, I’m on what might be the last draft of a film adaptation of Elissa Wall’s memoir Stolen Innocence; I’m reading everything I can about the history of the birth-control pill for a play I’ve just started that’s (maybe) called Bedfellows; and I’m thinking in the shower about a musical for young people. I’m also about to take my first-ever playwriting class: Jeffrey Hatcher’s Art of Adaptation workshop in Philadelphia. I’m nervous.

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 narrated everything I did -- in my head and sometimes even aloud. It was third-person, past-tense and pretty much constant. If I was trotting up some steps, I’d think (or say) to myself, “She trotted up the steps.” If I was drifting off to sleep, I’d think, “She drifted off to sleep.” I thought about everything in terms of how it could be told as a story, and pretty much still do.

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

A:  Oh, you know, I guess I’d make it a little less fucking heartbreaking for people. Especially actors.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Margaret Edson is one, because she came in, wrote a gorgeous, heart-stopping, fiercely funny, unbearably tragic play, and then went back to teaching kindergarten, because that’s important, too.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Anything that deeply excited the people who made it. I don’t like slick, I don’t like flippant, I don’t like wise-ass. I’m a post-ironic kind of girl. I want catharsis. I want to believe.

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

A:  This is, oddly, from Cary Tennis, Salon.com’s advice columnist. I stumbled across it when I was procrastinating by looking for a juicy story about someone’s lurid, kinky problems. Instead, there was a letter from a novelist who was thinking about giving up writing, and a beautiful, brilliant response that read (in part):

“Remember that as a writer you must find your motivation internally, not in external rewards, and you work in opposition to the system, not as a supplicant to the system. Whatever contingent truces you have maintained with the system in order to participate in its orderly orgies of consumption and distribution, good for you. But you are not a part of the system. You are a free creative worker. You do not need the system to do your creating. You only need it as a utility to reach your audience, and increasingly not even for that. On the other hand, the system cannot create anything on its own. It can only manage and distribute. So it needs you. It needs you but it is not on your side. Remember that.”