I Interview Playwrights Part 543: Jaclyn Backhaus

Jaclyn Backhaus

Hometown: Phoenix, AZ

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about SET IN THE LIVING ROOM OF A SMALL TOWN AMERICAN PLAY.

A:  I am a member of Theater Reconstruction Ensemble, a company devoted to the revitalization and re-examination of classic theatrical works and styles. Last year (I can officially say that because it’s 2013 now, WHAT), I wrote my first play for TRE, a Chekhovian mash-up called THE THREE SEAGULLS, OR MASHAMASHAMASHA! In the midst of searching through the American Realism canon for our next play, John Kurzynowski (TRE’s Artistic Director) turned to me and said, “or, you could just write it.”

SET IN THE LIVING ROOM… pays homage to the stylistic tropes and character relationships found in American Realism of the 1930s-1950s. Before I sat down to work on it, I read a lot of Odets and Inge and Williams and Miller. It tells the story of the Lorimer family of Southern Illinois—what breaks them apart, what seals them together. There’s a lot of whiskey and a lot of familial swearing. Punches are thrown! Hams are roasted! The production at Walker Space in February will serve as a springboard for us to play with the performative ideas of the Golden Olden Days. Method Acting, The Group Theatre, object exercises. Cherry Pie. Americana! A bunch of actors from THREE SEAGULLS are returning for this show, and I am so excited to write for them again.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I am the busiest I’ve ever been, it seems! I am developing a musical with Andrew Neisler and Mike Brun called FOLK WANDERING, which performed at Ars Nova’s ANT Fest last summer. It follows three interwoven storylines that span from Tenement-Era Manhattan to Depression-Era Utah to rural 1950s Indiana.

I spent the latter part of 2012 developing a piece called HEARTPRINTS with Preston Martin as a part of Fresh Ground Pepper’s Play Ground Play Group. In it, we play two people who are writing a theatrical adaptation of a movie Preston watched on Netflix. We rattle off the names of a bunch of crushes we had in 2006, so if you guys are curious about that, you will have a great time.

I just finished a fever dream of a play about Coney Island and its history called SHOOT THE FREAK.

And I’ve been perpetually revising my first feature-length screenplay, PHILLIP AND FALLING ASLEEP, which is about Sedona, the Crystal Vortex, sibling rivalry, displaced IT Technicians, and loads of complicated dream theory. Tomorrow, it may be about something different.

Q: Tell me about Fresh Ground Pepper.

A: Fresh Ground Pepper is a development series devoted to showcasing emerging artists and new work. We do several free events every year, and they range from a curated circus for children to a musician/choreographer clash to gallery-style media showings. Last year we did an event devoted to the Future AND we curated someone’s actual wedding. We’ve performed on rooftops in Queens and in a few renovated churches and in theaters all across Manhattan and Brooklyn.

At the end of every year, we do a festival of new play readings called FGP PlayGround. This year, we formed the FGP PlayGround PlayGroup (FGPPGPG) and we were able to develop 7 playwrights’ pieces with each other over a lengthier period of time. The FGP PlayGround Festival this past December, held at the New Ohio, was incredibly exciting. Applications for this year’s PlayGround PlayGroup are available now (if anyone is interested, they should email playground@fgpnyc.com).


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 in 4th grade, a letter was sent home with me to my parents that told them that I was “messy”—I would doodle and scribble and draw all over every square inch of every worksheet, every scrap of notebook paper. It was very nonsensical and it probably looked like the journals of the dude in SE7EN so I understand why my teacher was perturbed. Also it was all in no. 2 pencil, so my homework probably smudged onto everyone else’s. I tried to clean up my act and get wise with my doodles. But honestly, I still do it. I carry journals around with me so I can scribble-note every silly thing someone says, every weird phrase that pops into my head, every strange and singular word-shape or idea. I consciously use maybe 3% of it in my writing. But it’s a fun 3%.

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

A:  This whole notion of theater as “a dying art form.” Or people bemoaning the fates of the big production houses or the decaying future prospects of American Drama. Anyone who says that just has to try on a new perspective. Shift their eyes downtown a little bit. Of course, there will always be the money stuff, which is... something to change about a lot of things in this country and around the world. For now, I will say: to those that say we are dying, we are very much alive!

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  The Wooster Group and ERS, Adrienne Kennedy, Maria Irene Fornes, Edward Albee, Cliffy Odets, Martin McDonagh, Sarah Ruhl, Tennessee Williams. The work I see at Fresh Ground Pepper never ceases to inspire me.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Things that are funny that turn sad—I have big feelings and I ride every wave if it’s honest and true. I am a big fan of sincerity. I like when characters fall in love (especially when they a) sing about it or b) keep quiet about it in a way that breaks everyone’s heart).

I love zany things. Things where people eat and drink a lot. Collage pieces that only make sense once it’s all over. Plays in which objects are characters, work with a touch/heaping spoonful of magical realism. And I love communally-built ensemble pieces.

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

A:  Find people you trust to collaborate with. Be open to sharing your work with others in order to better it with their input and insight. You never have to stop creating just because you don’t have production lined up. Go to readings of plays by your friends and strangers. See as many shows as you can. If you are inspired by someone’s work, let them know—maybe one day you will work together. And submit to programs you would like to be a part of.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  A busy winter!

FOLK WANDERING IN CONCERT is gonna hit Joe’s Pub on January 9th!

The first Fresh Ground Pepper event of the year, FGP Birthday, will be at the Culture Project on January 25th!

TRE is throwing a benefit gala honoring Tina Shepard at Dixon Place on January 27th!

SET IN THE LIVING ROOM OF A SMALL TOWN AMERICAN PLAY runs from Feb 21-Mar 9 at Walker Space!

And I am very jazzed about Pipeline Theatre's production of CLOWN BAR by Adam Szymkowicz!

My 2012 In Review

I had 11 productions of my plays this year, including Hearts Like Fists in LA and NYC which were both without a doubt the best received productions I've had.  Most recently I had 2 plays in NYC at the same time which was exhausting but good.  Four of my plays premiered this year and each of my published plays had at least one production.  At the moment, there are 5, maybe 6 productions scheduled for 2013, including Clown Bar with Pipeline in March and perhaps two plays in Lima, Peru, both in Spanish.

This year I wrote a screenplay in the spring and a play in the fall.

I'm sad to say my web series Compulsive Love isn't out yet but I think it will be out soon.  I can't wait for you to see it.  I started writing a new web series I'll be excited to tell you about soon.

One ongoing project is making My Base and Scurvy Heart into a musical with Dan Moses Schreier and Matt Sherwin.  As part of my 2 month residency at the Inge Center this fall, we did a workshop and we were able to try some stuff out.  Cady Huffman, Nellie McKay and Sean McDermott came to Kansas to help us out with it along with some other cool people.

I taught playwriting to freshmen high school students in a tiny town in Kansas for two months and wrote a new play while I was there.

Also spent the year writing an animated pilot and bible with Ruben Carbajal and Larry Kunofsky, a half hour comedy called supersomethings about a group of D-list superheroes living in a city overrun with superheroes.  We'll start pitching that soon.

I was fortunate to go to the Orchard Project where I did some revisions of existing plays and plotted another with Bradford Louryk.

What else?  The playwright interviews continue.  There were 126 new interviews this year bringing the total up to 542.

Kristen and I took a mini vacation last winter in Cap Cod.  That was nice.  Were able to spend a little time in CT in summer on a lake.  Was at Little Pond with Flux at their annual retreat.  I started consulting for Broadway producers and took on a volunteer lit mgr position.  Also read a bunch of scripts for various things for money.  Probably read 140 scripts or so.  Went to Roanoke VA to see student readings at Hollins.  Was in LA for a bit.  Christmas in St. Louis and Charlottesville. 

Whew.  Looks like it was actually a busy year for me.  Wonder what the next will hold.  Glad the world didn't end.

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Press quotes from LA and NYC productions of Hearts Like Fists

 Critic’s Pick; “Parody and punches fly in Adam Szymkowicz’s “Hearts Like Fists,” the Flux Theater Ensemble’s comic hybrid at the Secret Theater in Long Island City, Queens. The combination is madcap. Pretty hysterical too… Hurting for a laugh? These Crimefighters should save the day.”  --New York Times

“Hearts Like Fists . . . is a silly, over-the-top, and adventurous comic book-style play that offers a fun, twisted exploration of what it means when someone Hulk-smashes your heart on the ground into a million pieces… Fists argues that the most important moments in life are the ones directly in front of us, and that we shouldn't let being hurt in the past affect our decisions moving forward. It's goofy. It's absurd. But it hits hard where it counts—right in the ticker.” –Village Voice

Critic’s Choice; “A trio of buxom superhero babes is taking names and kicking butt in “Hearts Like Fists,” Adam Szymkowicz’s graphic novel come to irresistible life at Theatre of NOTE… Staged for what is surely less than Christopher Nolan’s weekly tea budget, Hearts Like Fists is the perfect summer date show: exhilarating, nerdy-sexy, and silly-smart. Try finding that on Fandango.”  --LA Times

Pick Of The Week; “Fun well done neatly sums up this brazenly silly and irresistibly funny show… Love unrequited is the recurring motif in this gender-bent spoof; it fuels the dastardly doctor's crime spree; inspires Peter, a dedicated physician with a damaged heart, to design an artificial one; and plagues the peace of mind of all and sundry, even the staunch and sturdy Amazonian crusaders and the hitherto dazzlingly invulnerable Lisa.”  --LA Weekly

“In Hearts Like Fists, Szymkowicz has written a play that is both campy and clever, but also full of heart and hope, another notch on the prolific young playwright’s belt . . . one of this summer’s most exciting thrill ride-like treats.” --Stage Scene LA

“…Szymkowicz is a wistful wit with a broken-romantic’s ear for the big Urban Lonesome.”—NY Magazine

“It's hard to imagine a better night at the theater… Like the best comic books, the story has a bright, action-packed surface with deeper complexities at work beneath. "Hearts Like Fists" delivers an enviable double blow: humorous and profound at once, it demonstrates that the boundaries of what can be done with speculative storytelling onstage are limitless, and always have the capacity to astonish.”  --io9

“… Adam Szymkowicz, one of the leading theatrical voices of his generation, intertwines themes both humorous and mature together… Szymkowicz provides plenty of sugar to make his complicated medicine about crooked hearts go down smoothly. His dialogue comes riddled with memorably arch lines … that aren’t just hysterical, they’re psychologically accurate. He has created a fun show that refuses to be dumbed down.”—NY Press

“Hearts Like Fists is a charming, light-hearted comedy about love, gallantry, and the endless human propensity to fall for the wrong person. Adam Szymkowicz’s script is a comic book hero inspired romp from lights up to lights down. He goes to great lengths to twist and torture the heart — the metaphor of the heart I mean — contorting it between mechanical tool and symbol of the pulse that through the green fuse drives the flower. The result is a gently absurdist send up of the romantic calculus that informs most of the present day mythology of love and dating… An accomplished playwright, Mr. Szymkowicz’s play has no rough edges and no obtuse angles.” –Cultural Capitol

“Although Adam Szymkowicz’s hilarious new play Hearts Like Fists is ostensibly a play about comic book-style Superheros and Supervillains, deep down it’s an utterly charming and goofy romantic comedy. Which is not to say it’s not a hilarious sendup of superhero tropes, because it is that as well. The comedy fires on all cylinders from the beginning and almost never lets up.” –Broadway World

“Playwright Adam Szymkowicz has constructed this story like a sandwich: knife-fulls of surprise and suspense are smeared across meaty gymnastic fight sequences, with all of it packed between the twin slices of our desire for connection and our fear of what that connection might do to us.  It’s a tasty concoction.”—New York Theater Review

“…the play, written by Adam Szymkowicz … is, in all probability, unlike anything most theatergoers have ever seen. Running some 90 intermissionless minutes, it flies by, scarcely leaving time for the actors or the audience to catch their breath. The innovative play, which questions the purposes and passions each individual has in life, has come up with situations and lines that are at once ludicrous and hilarious.”  --Queens Chronicle

“Right now, it feels as if Adam Szymkowicz has cornered the market on shows that feature figuratively and literally broken hearts…”  --That Sounds Cool

“If you have one aorta of desire to know what love is, you will enjoy Flux Theatre Ensemble's production of Hearts Like Fists by Adam Szymkowicz.” –nytheater.com

“Author Adam Szymkowicz has written an extremely funny script that alternates long lyrical monologues with staccato noir-ish one-liners. It's both poignant and hysterical… All in all Hearts Like Fists is fabulous and smart fun.” –Show Showdown

“A chop-socky cartoon on stage, Hearts Like Fists, written by Adam Szymkowicz, is an action-packed adventure romance set in the surreal world of female crime-fighting superheroes. Nurses by day, skilled warriors by night, a band of ferocious and feisty femmes battle the dastardly and elusive Dr. X and his deadly war against romance … Don’t miss this show!”  --Arts Beat LA

“Hearts Like Fists by Adam Szymkowicz is an homage to Film Noir and Marvel Comics and when blended together produces a hilarious theatrical experience! You won't want to miss this truly fun production!” --Hettie Lynn Hurtes of NPR Station KPCC

“Pow! Hearts Like Fists connects. Adam Szymkowicz's crowd-pleaser is a smashingly funny mash-up of action comics and rom-coms.”  --CurtainUp

6 StageSceneLA Scenie Awards including one of the “Best World Premiere Plays of 2012”

I Interview Playwrights Part 542: Chelsea Sutton

Chelsea Sutton

Hometown: Murrieta, CA

Current Town: North Hollywood, CA

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Oh, it feels like a million things! I’ve started three different plays with three different writers groups I’m involved with in Los Angeles. With The Vagrancy, I’m writing a post-apocalyptic play called H.A.P. about a trunk that might have magical powers and a group of people who worship it. With The Eclectic Company Theatre, I’m writing The Many Deaths of Kassie McGreevy about a girl who quite literally dies all the time. And with the Katselas Playlab I’m writing The Sudden Urge to Jump – a love story in a video store. In January I’m also doing an eight-day intensive workshop with The Vagrancy of my play The Dead Woman – so I’ll be busy with rewrites. Oh, and I’m working on finishing a novel and a short story collection too, with another novel and novella in the docket.

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 a painfully shy child and even had trouble speaking early on – I couldn’t even pronounce my name in first grade and had to go to speech therapy. But I was always writing stories. That’s how I communicated. And I was always reading. Mostly ghost stories like the Goosebumps series for quite a long time, which is probably why there’s death in just about everything I write. As cliché as it sounds, becoming a dancer in elementary school and then an actor in high school helped me break out of this – it was easy to play out stories on stage, first with movement then with speech, because I didn’t have to be myself. So somehow I started out as a shy reclusive kid with a mild speech impediment and became the girl who gave a speech at her high school graduation in front of thousands of people and made half of them cry. And I’m still struggling between those two people almost every day. That’s how most people are, I think – struggling with at least two different versions of themselves at any one time.

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

A:  I wish we could redefine what “producible” means for a play. It seems almost impossible to get a play produced if it has more than four characters and runs longer than 90 minutes. Producers and fellow writers have told me this many times, in fact. If it has a big cast it better be a musical – and one with a built in fan base. If the writer is unknown and a woman, producers seem even less inclined to seriously tackle the material – the studies done in Los Angeles alone by the LA Female Playwrights Initiative show that women playwrights are produced at a lower rate than their male counterparts. And if you do get a production, getting the second or third is hard because everyone wants the world premiere – because a world premiere is marketable. I hope that if the next Great American Play came along that happened to have twelve characters, there would be a producer willing to put it out into the world. But I can’t help be cynical about it. Even our mid-size and large theaters in LA produce small cast and one person shows more often than anything else. It’s just a financial reality right now.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Sarah Ruhl, Paula Vogel, Naomi Iizuka, Edward Albee, Anne Garcia-Romero, Howard Ashman, Caryl Churchill, Tom Stoppard, Luis Alfaro, Sheila Callaghan, Samuel Beckett…I could go on.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  This is going to sound simplistic – but I like theater that really creates an emotional reaction in me. And that doesn’t happen often. I’ve seen so much theater that has an interesting plot or a beautiful design or a big Hollywood star – but I just don’t care about the characters and end up feeling nothing in the end. It’s really the most important thing for me – even if I know where the plot may be heading, tragedy or otherwise, if I really care about the characters and the stakes, I’ll hoping against the inevitable and my heart will still break even if I saw the storm coming from the first scene. And that feels so good, sitting in an audience, holding your breath. That being said, I love magical realism, puppets, dark/macabre themes and designs, sci-fi theater, dance and anything that really pushes the boundaries of the two-people-in-a-living-room-in-NY-talking-about-their-love-lives-drama/comedy mold.

So basically theater that makes me hold my breath…with dancing puppets.

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

A:  Write. A lot. Take every opportunity that comes your way. Meet people. Learn how to do all the other jobs in a theater – direct something, do the marketing for a show, stage manage, get on stage and do a monologue, design costumes. Do it all! Write. Find your tribe, people you can create with and fail with. Produce your own work at least once. Write something outside of your comfort zone. Listen to the critics, glean what you can from their reviews, politely thank them for spending quite a bit of time thinking about your work, and quickly throw out all those negative thoughts that will otherwise haunt you. Submit everywhere, to everything. Write.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I’m directing a new play called Low Tech by Jeff Folschinsky at The Eclectic Company Theatre in North Hollywood, CA. It will have dances and masks and funny things. It opens April 12, 2013. I’m a staff writer for an online fiction magazine called Fictionade:  http://www.fictionade.com/ You can also check out my website for readings and things that should happen in the near future:  http://withcoffeespoons.com/

I Interview Playwrights Part 541: Laura Marks

Laura Marks

Hometown: Lexington, KY

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about Bethany.

A:  I wrote this play in early 2009 right after I’d been laid off. It’s a darkly funny study of desperate people in desperate times, set in a community that’s been decimated by the foreclosure crisis. Since writing it, I’ll confess that I’ve been anxiously watching the news for signs of economic recovery, worrying that my play would stop feeling relevant. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I don’t think that’s been the case…

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I have a spooky play called Mine that’s getting its Chicago premiere at the Gift Theater this summer, and I’m working on a new play called Gather at the River which is about religion, morality and the extreme ends of the blue-state vs. red-state divide. It draws on my Kentucky roots.

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 can’t think of a truly definitive story, but there’s a character in Bethany who’s a wilderness survival enthusiast, among other things; and working on that play reminds me that one of my favorite childhood books was the US Air Force Combat Survival Manual. I don’t even know why we had this in the house. My dad must have bought it at some Army-Navy store around the same time when he started keeping canisters of freeze-dried eggs and sausage in the garage, just in case of nuclear winter. He’s a thoroughly rational guy, a doctor —not your typical doomsday prepper. But I have a bunch of his love letters to my mom when they were in college, and even as a young man he had this strain of concern that I find very moving: he was already worrying about protecting my mom and their as-yet-unborn children.

So anyway, we had this insane book. And it was about the stuff every kid wants to know: how to stay alive after you’ve been shot down in enemy territory. You didn’t just learn the basics like how to build a lean-to or ensnare wild animals. There was crazy shit in there, like how to distill your own urine if you couldn’t find clean water. And there was a first-person account from a guy in a Vietnamese POW camp who had performed a hemorrhoidectomy using the sharpened steel arch support from his combat boot. He described the postoperative patient as “living in considerably greater comfort.” I mean, you can’t read that as a kid and not have it etched in your brain.

I have two little girls of my own now, and I’m often surprised at the extreme scenarios they’re drawn to in their make-believe games. But it seems utterly normal and healthy for them to work a few things out this way. Marsha Norman once said, “Plays are about survival.” And I think that’s true, whether the plays are being done with LEGOs in the living room or on a professional stage. We all like to imagine how we’d act under different types and levels of duress, how we’d function and survive.

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

A:  I wish it wasn’t just for the rarefied few. I wish that audiences—and the people who make theater—were more representative of the whole community.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  For sheer pluck and doggedness, I’d say Helene Hanff and Moss Hart. They’re not heroes in the Olympian sense. They feel accessible. Hanff wrote a book called Underfoot in Show Business—I believe it’s out of print now, but it’s this wonderful, humble memoir of her time as a young playwright trying to get produced in the 1940’s and 50’s. It’s the perfect antidote to self-pity. And Moss Hart’s memoir, Act One, has the most epic account of a rewrite that I’ve ever read.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  “To see deep difficulty braved is at any time, for the really addicted artist, to feel almost even as a pang the beautiful incentive, and to feel it verily in such sort as to wish the danger intensified. The difficulty most worth tackling can only be… the greatest the case permits of.” – Henry James

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

A:  Apply to the Emerging Writers’ Group at the Public. Apply to Juilliard’s playwriting program. Send your stuff to the Lark Play Development Center. Apply to New Dramatists. Join the Dramatists Guild.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  This spring, I can’t wait to see Dominique Morisseau’s Detroit ’67 at the Public and Tanya Barfield’s The Call at Playwrights Horizons.

And my play Bethany will be at City Center Stage II, running January 11-February 17, 2013. The Women’s Project is producing it, Gaye Taylor Upchurch is directing it, and the cast and creative team are an absolute joy.

I Interview Playwrights Part 540: Don Zolidis

Don Zolidis

Hometown: Janesville, Wisconsin. 



Current Town: Austin, Texas and Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. 



Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’ve got about 800 new projects. I just finished a new play, TRUE BELIEVERS, about a disgraced Astrophysicist who teams up with fundamentalist Christians to write a biblically-based Astronomy Textbook. 



Q:  Tell me about the Edgerton Foundation New American Play Awards and the two plays you are having produced as part of them.

A:  The Edgerton New American Play Awards are grants given to theatres to help with producing new work. The theatres apply for them, and then the Foundation selects the winners. They’ve had a pretty good track record for picking the most-heralded plays of the year. Unbeknownst to me, both of the theatres producing my plays in 2012, The Purple Rose Theatre in Michigan and The Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis, applied for awards independently. Both of them won, which was quite a shock to me.

The plays I had selected really couldn’t be more different. WHITE BUFFALO, which ran in the spring at The Purple Rose, is the story of a miracle birth on a small farm in Wisconsin. CURRENT ECONOMIC CONDITIONS, which is a comedy about a 20-something returning to live at home after losing her job, played at the Phoenix.

I was honored to receive both awards, but I only learned about it from Google alerts! Funny. 



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


A:  Like most children of the eighties, I spent a great deal of time in front of the television watching cartoons. Most of that time I was violently annoyed that the heroes always seemed to win and the villains were always morons. I was usually yelling at the screen for the villains to simply get their entire gang together (why did Skeletor only choose one of his henchmen for a task? Send everybody!) and then pick off the heroes one by one. I spent a lot of time diagramming how this would happen, and playing out scenarios in my mind where the good guys were captured and murdered and the bad guys won. I don’t think I was really an evil kid, but without getting too pretentious about it, I think I was striving for narrative complexity and actual danger. The preordained happy ending drained the drama out of everything. I guess that’s why I like writing plays, where the outcome is often in doubt and not always happy, and probably why I also like Game of Thrones.

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


A:  Just one thing? I’d like to confront the mindset of New York City as not only the center of the theatrical world, but the only place where important theatre happens. There are many great regional theatres in America producing outstanding work (Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis, DC, etc…) and there are certain publishers who won’t even look at plays that didn’t play in New York. This may seem like a small thing, but it undercuts a play’s ability to live after its first production, if it premiered in a smaller market. It’s hard enough making a living as a playwright, but when your career seems arbitrarily defined by your ability to land a New York production, it makes it even harder. I don’t like to whine, but there is excellent theater being done outside of New York, and making it unpublishable and unproduceable is a shame.


Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?


A:  David Lindsay-Abaire, Christopher Durang, Eugene O’Neill, Shakespeare, Paula Vogel, Sarah Ruhl, I could go on and on…


Q:  What kind of theater excites you?


A:  I like theatre where the situation is clear but the outcome is in doubt and the path is surprising. I know that’s vague, but it’s hard to be specific about this entirely. I think a lot of theatre out there now is intentionally obscure and atmospheric rather than dramatic.

I also like huge theatre. Theatre that takes risks, that has twenty people on the stage, and deals with enormous, world-shaking themes. You know, the kind of stuff that’s almost impossible to get done.

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


A:  Hook in with a theatre group of your peers. It’s so hard to be sitting alone somewhere, emailing out stuff for eternity and listening to silence. You need to be part of a community of like-minded individuals. Get together with your friends and produce your own work. It’s not that expensive to rent a miserable little dive, charge a few bucks at the door, and put on a show.


Q:  Plugs, please:


A:  My newest play, MILES AND ELLIE, will open June 20th at the Purple Rose Theatre in Chelsea, Michigan and run through August 31st. (a 77-performance run for a world premiere! It’s such a joy to work with them. From there, it will move to the Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis and then the Montgomery Theatre outside of Philadelphia. Playscripts will be publishing my 48th play, A BRIGHT SWARM OF BEETLES, about the life of Soviet playwright Mikhail Bulgakov, early next year. Also you can check out my website at www.donzolidis.com

Entrevisto a Dramaturgos: Concepción León Mora

Concepción León Mora

¿De qué estás trabajando ahora?

En un texto que cuestione la pertinencia del ritual en una sociedad tan confundida y egoísta como la actual. La “particular” interpretación del fín del mundo en el calendario Maya ha sido uno de los grandes temas tocados por mucha gente, como Yucateca, creo que es un buen momento para ponerlo a tela teatral. Escribo la historia de un anciano sabio que debe preparar la bebida sagrada para salvar al pueblo. Esta bebida incluye alcohol, el sabio fue alcohólico, omnubildado por el alcohol mató a su hijo a golpes. Ahora debe elegir entre rechazar su sabiduría o volver a beber.

Dime, si se quiere, una historia de su infancia que explica quién es usted como escritor o como persona.

La relación con mi abuela es mi motor de escritura, ella era una narradora nata, plena de sabiduría y amor, escribo como parte de aquel ritual nuestro que nos mantenía la boca llena de historias y el espíritu asombrado.

Si pudieras cambiar algo de teatro, ¿qué sería?

Las formas de producir y las estrategias de publicidad.

¿Quiénes son o fueron sus héroes de teatro?

No creo en héroes, en todo caso eso sirve para las taquillas del cine, al teatro le sirven los seres humanos, sin capacidades fantásticas e omnipotentes pero con finitas cualidades humanas. En ese sentido admiro a todos los que hacen teatro sin estar persiguiendo o arañando tal o cual beca.

¿Qué tipo de teatro te excita?

El que no tiene una producción apabullante y confía en la capacidad de los actores para llenar el espacio vacío.

Plugs, Por Favor 

Mis más recientes colaboraciones con “Teatro de ciertos habitantes” y “Carretera 45” son obras que recuperan la memoria convocando algunos miedos de infancia y poniendo en primer plano la identidad de los que estamos en escena.

I Interview Playwrights Part 539: Concepción León Mora

Translated by Andrea Thome and Lily Padilla
Concepción León Mora

Q:  What are you working on now?


A:  A text which questions the relevance of ritual in a society as confused and selfish as our present one. Many people have been making their own strange interpretations of the Mayan calendar’s supposed “end of the world.” As a Yucatecan myself, I think now is a good moment to address this this on stage. I’m writing the story of an old wise man who is supposed to prepare a sacred drink in order to save his town. This drink contains alcohol, but the old man had been an alcoholic before and, possessed by alcohol, had beaten his son to death. Now he must choose between rejecting his own knowledge or having to drink again.

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 relationship with my grandmother is my fuel as a writer. She was a born storyteller, full of wisdom and love. I write as part of that ritual of ours that kept out mouths mouth full of stories and our spirits amazed.

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


A:  Forms of production and publicity strategies. 


Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  
I don’t believe in heroes; in any case, those are useful to movie theater box offices. What’s useful to theater is human beings without fantastic or omnipotent abilities but with finite human qualities. In that sense, I admire everyone who makes theater without chasing or grabbing for this or that grant.


Q:  What kind of theater excites you?


A:  That which doesn’t have overwhelming production values and which believes in the ability of the actors to fill the empty space.


Q:  Plugs, please:


A:  My most recent collaborations with “Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes” and “Carretera 45” are works which recover memory, drawing on certain childhood fears and highlighting the identitites of those of us who are onstage.

Sunday 7pm at the Lark, reading of Mestiza Power, translated by Virginia Grise and directed by Daniel Jáquez