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Oct 4, 2009

I Interview Playwrights Part 66: Christopher Shinn


Christopher Shinn

Hometown: Wethersfield, CT

Current Town: New York, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I'm writing a new play.  Experience has taught me that the more I talk about what I'm writing, the less I write, so I'll have to leave it at that!

Q:  What are your classes like at the New School?

A:  I teach two classes -- a class for first-year writers, and a thesis supervision class for 3rd year, graduating writers.  The third-year class is easier to describe: because the student plays are going into full production, I see my role as a kind of producer-slash-dramaturg, giving the kinds of notes, feedback, and guidance that I got when my first plays were being produced at theatres like Playwrights Horizons and the Royal Court.  I feel like the students should have an experience that mirrors what they'll be going through in the real world -- and that's something very different than the teacher-student dynamic.  I don't completely take off my teacher's hat, but I'm very aggressive in making suggestions and passing judgment on what works or doesn't work in the play.  I also encourage the students to be aggressive with me: if they disagree with a note of mine, tell me why.  I explain that they're free to ignore my notes but not free to fail to engage with me about them -- producers will demand no less.  In short, I don't want them to interact with me as a student, but as an autonomous playwright putting his or her work up on the stage in collaboration with a producer whose opinions may overlap as well as diverge from theirs. 

The first-year class is challenging.  Every year I agonize about it.  In short, I don't want the students to have a little Chris Shinn in their heads while they write, saying, "This monologue is too long" or "Disguise the exposition more!" or "What is the protagonist's objective?" etc.  (I've also found that almost all rules have been broken in great plays, so what's the point of generalizing?)  Instead, I want to open up a process inside the writer that is primarily his or her own.  The rest of their lives will be spent looking at something they've written and trying to figure out, "What is going on in this play? Is it good? How can I make it better?"  The things I do in class are meant to help them answer these questions themselves. 

For example: when students bring in writing exercises, I try to get them to look at their own texts to discover what they are trying to explore and where they go awry -- let the critique come from within the work itself, not from my playwright-superego terrorizing it from without.  The evidence is in the text: what someone says, when someone changes the subject, when another character interrupts, when someone moves from speaking to action, etc.  What do these things tell us?  Is a character changing the subject because she feels frightened of continuing?  Or is the text itself changing the subject because the playwright is frightened of continuing?  Or is it both and if so, what are the implications of that?  The self-critique emerges in the tensions among these possibilities, always hewing closely to the text itself.  I suppose this method owes something to deconstruction, but the aim is for a better reconstruction.  "Look at what the text is doing" is different than "I think the text should do this" -- less arbitrary, less authoritarian, more supportive of the writer's unique subjectivity.  Fostering the student's relationship to their own work in this way hopefully will allow them to eventually overcome the universal temptation to appeal to an external "authority" (real or canonical) in order to feel secure about what their work is communicating and its value.  The text becomes its own authority, something we can always return to in the midst of our pain, doubt, and confusion about our work.  I could boil my method down to this: "Part of you knows what you are trying to represent in your play and part of you doesn't, and the evidence for this is in the text itself.  The only way to better understand your text and find a more successful representation is by referring again and again to it, rather than by applying external concepts and ideas to it."  Of course we all have these ideas and concepts -- there is no pure text existing outside of them -- but I remain constantly amazed by what opens up when the text itself is examined, in as far as this is possible, on its own terms and in relation to itself.  As intellectual as this might sound, it's actually about the primitive emotional impulses that guide us in our writing, a further opening up to that part of ourselves and the traces it leaves on the page.  Boiled down to its essence: "Dreaming while awake."

There's a lot besides that that we do in class, but I have to maintain a little mystery for the benefit of current and future students!

Q:  Many of your plays have been done in London before being done in the US. Are there big differences between American and English theater? What do you like most about opening in London?

A:   It's cheaper to produce plays in London, so theatre tickets don't cost as much -- that means younger and happier audiences.  Also, more government funding means theatres can take more risks in their programming -- especially in producing writers in their 20s.  The lack of a subscription culture also makes for more enthusiastic audiences, since they deliberately picked your play to go see.  Also, the short preview period, though it has its anxiety-provoking aspects, also gives tremendous excitement and momentum to a new play -- a handful of previews and the critics are there, as opposed to the 3 or 4 week system we have here, which gives too much power to audiences in shaping the final product.  So all these are big differences.  That said, at the end of the day, I've had extraordinary experiences with productions and audiences both in the US and in the UK.  The power of doing creative work is still strong enough -- for the most part -- to transcend some of the unfortunate economic realities and limitations of our theatre system here. 

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 a kid, my mom would play tennis at a tennis center in my town.  The tennis center had a small daycare center where the kids would go while their moms played tennis and, afterward, sat and had coffee together.  One day a black boy around my age -- four or five -- was in the daycare.  I had literally never seen a black person before (except on TV) and I was very curious about him.  He had a huge afro and I couldn't stop staring at it, it was so strange and exotic to me, fascinating.  I thought about asking the boy if I could touch it, but I was too scared to do this -- I felt it was taboo.  I thought I might just reach out and brush my hand against his afro so quickly that he wouldn't notice.  So I did -- and he noticed.  Immediately he recoiled -- scowled and refused to play with me anymore.  I felt tremendous shame and confusion since I had felt only a positive feeling of curiosity and longing for him.  Why did he reject me?  When I later told my mother about what had happened, she tried to explain to me why it was rude to reach out and touch someone's hair without their permission.  I remember having a sad and strange feeling that there were things in the world that not only I didn't know about, but that I couldn't know about -- couldn't ever understand, couldn't ever "touch."  For whatever reason this idea to me was very traumatic, and I think writing became a way not only of representing my own experiences, but also attempting to represent the experiences of others outside of myself.  I still think I am largely writing about otherness and difference -- especially the otherness within oneself (what we don't consciously know about ourselves) and the otherness of the world and its traumatizing refusal to support our narcissism. 

Q:  What is the purpose of theater? 

A:  The purpose of theatre is to create a space inside the audience member in which they can safely submit to another's subjectivity and, in that process of submission, grapple with and enlarge their understanding of themselves and others in an active way. 

Q:  What kind of theater excites you? 

A:  I like plays that try to represent the deepest layers of human experience.  Any genre can do that -- or fail to!

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

A:  Work hard! 

Q:  Any plugs? 

A:  There are so many great writers out there that the list would be too long, so let me limit plugs to plays I've seen in production that I'd encourage people to seek out if they happened to miss them in performance.  Keith Bunin's The Busy World Is Hushed, Jessica Goldberg's Get What You Need, Bekah Brunstetter's Oohrah!, AR Gurney's Indian Blood, Jez Butterworth's The Night Heron, John Belluso's "The Rules of Charity," and Itamar Moses's "The Four of Us" are all extraordinary plays.  This list could be longer, but I have to stop somewhere! 

More on Chris:

http://www.christophershinn.com

Nov 23, 2009

I Interview Playwrights Part 96: Enrique Urueta





Hometown:  Born in Radford, VA; raised in Halifax County, VA; my hometown of Clover is now an unincorporated township, so South Boston, VA is the closest approximation to hometown.

Current Town: San Francisco

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  At the moment I'm preparing for two upcoming productions. My play Learn To Be Latina will premiere with Impact Theatre in Berkeley in February 2010  (read about it here: http://www.impacttheatre.com/season/0910/ltbl.php) and then in June  Forever Never Comes
goes up with Crowded Fire here in San Francisco  (see http://www.crowdedfire.org/inDevelopment.html#FNC). Rewrites, rewrites, rewrites! When I need a break from those, I go back to work on First Person Singular, my first non-theatrical text. It's a collection of prose poems about a man who returns to San Francisco to figure out how and why his relationship failed and discovers along the way that sometimes things fall apart for all the right reasons.

Q:  What theater companies or shows should I check out when in SF?

A:  There is a lot of great work being done in the Bay Area.  Berkeley Rep and The Magic are great, of course, but there are lots of smaller gems that do truly outstanding work. I'm a huge fan of Crowded Fire Theater Company, Cuttingball Theater, Encore Theater Company, Campo Santo, Impact Theatre, Shotgun Players, and Killing My Lobster. The Jewish Theater of San Francisco, Z Space Studios, Aurora Theatre Company, and SF Playhouse are pretty wonderful, too. The performance series at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts never fails to deliver something exciting.

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


A:  After a battery of intelligence tests when I was in second grade,  my parents were encouraged to place me in a school that had a gifted program. Thus began the daily 20+mile commute to Halifax County Elementary School. I didn't know anyone at all there and I was a shy, awkward kid, so making friends didn't come easily. A boy in my class invited me over for his birthday sleepover and I remember looking forward to it and the possibility of new friends. The whole thing turned out to be a disaster. There were all these expectations to play basketball and football, neither of which I was good at. To make matters worse, I brought my Gizmo toy (remember? From Gremlins?) to play/sleep with, which TOTALLY sent them over the edge. The sleepover turned into this seemingly endless taunting session where I got pushed around and called names like sissy and fag. One of them jokingly said "Are you sure you're not a girl?" and everyone began to laugh. Three things became clear at this moment: 1) There was an expectation of behavior that defined "boy" and by default (through non-fulfillment of those expectations) defined "girl"  2) that "girl" was somehow less than "boy" and 3) by not fulfilling expectations of being a boy, I would be called a fag.  Of course I didn't have that language for it at the time--I wasn't rocking out the queer and feminist theory at the time-- but that's the best translation of that awareness in retrospect. It was a profound moment of realization that there were predefined roles expected of people and that these roles had rules. I've been fascinated with gender and the social expectations of gendered behavior ever since, which is something I keep exploring in my writing.

Q:  What is it like to grow up in rural Virginia as a Latino/radical queer socialist?


A:  Look at you with the Facebook reference! ;-)

It's funny, because I don't think I grew up any of those things, but rather grew into those identities. In terms of class, I have an odd history of being both of privilege and then suddenly being extremely poor. That sudden shift also marked the transition between elementary school and junior high. I went from being comfortably middle-class to being on the free/reduced lunch program. It's an awkward age in which change is palpable. It reverberates throughout my senses to this day.  The suddenness of that class shift burns that awkwardness into memory.

I grew up in an area where race was defined in terms of white and black. Looking back, it's fascinating to see how I navigated myself socially as a function of being in this seemingly undefined space. The school cafeterias were always the most self-segregated spaces along lines of race and class, and I was able to sit at either a black table or a white table without it being a question. At the time, there wasn't a large number of latinos in the area. That combined with the fact that my sisters and I spoke perfect English allowed for an amount of privilege. Ostensibly, we weren't white but the fact that we weren't black meant that we were afforded privileges of whiteness. Aside from migrant workers coming in for the summer, there wasn't a large latino presence. There was my family, which is Colombian, a Puerto Rican family, a Chicano family, and a Cuban family, and I don't recall our families ever really interacting. What I do recall is going to Colombia for the first time in 9th grade for six weeks and coming back with this realization of a cultural heritage that was incidental at best up until that point, as well as an awareness of myself as "other."

I knew that I liked guys from the age of 4, but I didn't come out to anyone until my senior year, and even then it was only to a small group of friends who all turned out to be queer anyway. It wasn't until attending The College of William and Mary (*shudder*) that I faced direct homophobia. I decided to be completely out from day one, and pretty soon I had a knife in my door. That sort of set the tone of what was to come:  slashed tires, bottles thrown at my head at frat parties (thankfully drunk people have bad aim), things being thrown at my car windshield while I was driving, being harassed by total closet cases (one of whom now lives in SF and cruised me at Gold's Gym earlier this year before I gave him a reminder of our history) and being told by campus administration that if I wasn't "so loud about it" that things like that wouldn't happen. That coupled with the overt racism I faced, both from students and faculty, made me seek out something that could help me explain what the hell was going on, why I felt like I didn't seem to fit anywhere. That search led me to taking a couple of writing workshops with Lois Weaver (of Split Britches Theater Company) who was in residence for a semester, and those workshops gave me a space to honestly and openly explore issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Those workshops left me wanting to read more about feminism, queerness, and race, so I began to take more classes that allowed me to learn more and ultimately give me the pieces of the puzzle that explained why my experience of the world was so different from everyone else around me. If anything is to blame, it's theatre. Theatre introduced me to feminism, which introduced me to queer theory, Marxism, and critical race theory. I went to college an apolitical aspiring paleontologist and left imagining myself to be the bastard child of Che Guevara and Oscar Wilde with Gloria Anzaldua as my spiritual grandmother. Wouldn't that be a fabulous lineage?

Q:  Why are you looking at me like that?


A:  Cuz I see you, Adam. Shakin' that ass. Shakin' that ass.

Q:  What is the purpose of theater?

A:  I believe theatre is a powerful space for people to gather together and collectively witness stories that make us laugh or cry or in some way move us, provoke us to think. It is a space for us to gather and see that through all our differences there is the possibility of connection. We see this through our identification with character, with story, and with each other as audience members as we bear witness together to the events that unfold on stage. Aesthetics is politics and nowhere is this more powerfully felt than in the liveness of theatre. Theatre historically has been a tool that shapes and reinforces ideologies about race, gender, class, power, and the state. As artists we can create a theatre that reinforces the social norms that keep us divided or we can use the same tools to critique the structures that shape us and bring us to a shared recognition of our common humanity so that we can move forward. I choose the latter.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The kind of theatre that most excites me has a depth of character, richness of story, a necessity for existence, and an awareness of itself as theatre by actively interrogating the formal, linguistic, and temporal/spacial constraints of live narrative. Euripides, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Strindberg, Brecht, Beckett, Chekhov, Ionesco, Miller, Williams, Albee, Pinter, Sam Shepard, Michel Tremblay, Enrique Buenaventura, Adrienne Kennedy, Maria Irene Fornes, Caryl Churchill, Sarah Kane, Suzan-Lori Parks, John Guare, Tony Kushner, Jose Rivera, Reza Abdoh.  Each of them did/do this in their own way, and I continually go back to their plays for inspiration when I'm feeling stuck. There are so many playwrights writing today whose work I'm excited by:  Sheila Callaghan, Christine Evans, Liz Duffy Adams, Juliana Francis-Kelly, Mickey Birnbaum, Octavio Solis, Migdalia Cruz, Nilo Cruz, Naomi Iizuka, Christina Anderson, Robert O'Hara, Daniel Alexander Jones, Cassandra Medley, Kristen Greenidge, David Adjmi, Heidi Schreck, C. Denby Swanson, Victor Lodato, Jenny Schwartz, Luis Alfaro, Jorge Ignacio Cortinas, Alejandro Morales, Ricardo Bracho, Evelina Fernandez, Marisela Trevino Orta, Jason Grote, Betty Shamieh, Yusef El Guindi, Abi Basch, Krista Knight, Christopher Chen, Adam Bock, Quiara Hudes, Sarah Ruhl, Carl Hancock Rux, Thomas Bradshaw, Tarell McCraney, Marcus Gardley, Eisa Davis, Zakiyyah Alexander, Sarah Hammond, Young Jean Lee, Anne Washburn, Melissa James Gibson, Paloma Pedrero, Elaine Romero, Carlos Murillo, Brad Fraser, Judith Thompson, Caridad Svich, Sung Rno, Crystal Skillman, Lucy Thurber, Ken Prestininzi, Lauren Yee, Sherry Kramer, Eugenie Chan, Peter Nachtrieb, Deborah Stein, Kristoffer Diaz, Jordan Harrison, Kia and Kara Corthron, Mark Ravenhill, Phillip Ridley, Alice Tuan, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, Steve Yockey, Andrea Kuchlewska, and Karen Zacarias, just to name a few. And of course you, Adam. ;-)

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

A:  There's over two thousand years of theatrical history---take the time and familiarize yourself with the breadth of it (experimental theatre began with Euripedes). Read lots of plays. Go see lots of plays. Identify what it is you like/don't like and why. Try to arrive at a definition of your aesthetic, but allow it room to breathe and shift. Find the theatres that match your aesthetic and develop relationships with them (a good start is by seeing their productions). Practice transcribing real conversations, study linguistics, and bury yourself in poetry. Listen to music. Language is more than words, it is rhythm, melody. It has consonance and dissonance. Be fully aware of the potential (and limits) of language. Draw. Paint. Take pictures. Look at art, really look at images and composition. You create the play world on the page, and how you write the play can affect the visual translation. Don't be afraid to think imagistically, but don't direct on the page. Watch tv and film, but be aware of how theatre is different. Be nerdy about something. Anything. Be generous of spirit, of knowledge, of self. There's little money to be made in theatre, so why turn this into a competitive sport? Be happy for your friends' successes. Their success can lead to your own. Take time off before gradschool. An MFA for the sake of an MFA is not a reason to get an MFA, and it most certainly is not worth going massively into debt. Write what you know. Write what you don't know. Write from your heart. Write from your gut. Try not to write from your head. Write what you want to see, not what you think they want to see. Write about what most matters to you. Write. Write. Write. Push yourself beyond your comfort zone. Try something new in each play. Be ambitious. Don't be afraid to ask difficult questions or travel difficult terrain. Don't be afraid to fail big! Give audiences credit--they're smarter than theatres would have you believe. Not everyone is going to like your work. Not everyone should like your work. If you're not pissing someone off with your writing, you're doing something wrong. Learn all the rules of playwriting--and then fucking break them all. Above all else, have fun. Otherwise why bother?

Q:  Any plugs?

A:  I've got a big year ahead! Learn To Be Latina in February with Impact Theatre and Forever Never Comes in June  with Crowded Fire. Visit their websites and sign up for their e-mail list.

http://www.impacttheatre.com

http://www.crowdedfire.org

If you want to be on my e-mail list, drop me a line at enriqueuruetaplays at gmail.com. Hope to see you in the audience!

Oct 31, 2018

I Interview Playwrights Part 1010: Dorian Palumbo



Dorian Palumbo

Hometown: Woodbridge, New Jersey

Current Town: New York, New York

Q:  Tell me about Divination. 

A: Divination takes place in a crystal shop somewhere down on the Jersey shore. It’s a cast of six women, and the characters some from all sorts of backgrounds and stages of life, all getting together to take a class in “Psychic Mediumship”. Each one of them is battling something personal, whether it’s disease in the family, racial attacks from the neighbors, coming out – they all need to take their power back, in some way, when they’re joined by a new classmate who’s really had life smack her in the face and needs to find her tribe. It’s about the supernatural, and psychic phenomena, and new age philosophy, but, ultimately, it’s about female friendships.

And, if I can get on a soapbox here for a second, it’s not about a bunch of women getting together to complain about how they’re treated, or not treated, by men. It has virtually nothing to do with men. This is the second of two ensemble female shows I’ve written, and not having any male characters on the stage to throw their weight around and drive plot is a very freeing experience.

Q:  What else are you working on now? 

A:  Like a lot of writers, I have a queue of things that I’ve sketched out, and things that are half-finished – and I’m likely to ignore all of them and keep working on a screenplay I’ve just started to break story on. You have things you doodle on until something else catches fire and you get obsessed with that new thing. I can already tell this new screenplay’s going to be a big lift, because it’s a period piece and a comedy, but I don’t really care because it’s making me happy to work on it. I also plan another play that’s kind of in the research phase right now.

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 sixth grade, I decided to write a play about Santa Claus. Don’t ask me what the story was – I’m old, this was probably 1972 or something, so I don’t remember – but I remember there was this kid in my class that was kind of bigger than all the other kids, and a bit awkward, and the other kids used to give him kind of a hard time, so I made him the star of my play and asked if we could rehearse it a little bit and present it to the rest of the class. Everything was going fine, and then one day when we were supposed to rehearse the play, Paul, the kid playing Santa was sick, so this other kid, called Patrick, tried to bully his way into the lead part. I let him read, and then Patrick spent an hour trying to convince me that he was better in the part, and that I should kick Paul to the curb. Well, of course Patrick was better in the part – he could read better, was way smarter, and he was a total ham. And he was also an asshole, so I said “no.”

When we did the play for the class, Paul’s Mom had made him a really cool Santa costume, and even though he couldn’t stand still and never got “off book”, he had a great time, and so did the class. And it made being at school suck just a little less for Paul, so I was happy about that.

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

A: I think this idea of talkbacks has to be applied a little more judiciously. I’m not going to go all Mamet or anything like that. But it’s one thing for me to do a staged reading for a room full of theatre professionals who ask incisive questions and take me to task; it’s kind of another to have some rando stand up in the audience and yell at me for putting too many curse words in my play. Yes, that really happened. If a play has controversial subject matter, like Bryony Lavery’s “Frozen”, for example, it’s perfectly appropriate to do a moderated talkback afterward with the cast if people are into it. Honestly, one of the best parts about theatre for me is having a drink afterward with a friend and talking about what we just saw, so if the show is over, I’m not hanging around to listen to strangers “process” the experience together. I’m pretty much going to the bar.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes? 

A: Theresa Rebeck, Samuel Beckett, Alan Bennett, Paula Vogel, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Harvey Fierstein, Thornton Wilder, Wendy Wasserstein

Q:  What kind of theater excites you? 

A:  I love to see a really masterful actor at the top of their game, like Fiona Shaw, or Janet McTeer. Laurie Metcalf. I saw Alan Rickman a few times and was mesmerized. I once saw Jerry Ohrbach walk out onto a stage that was miles away and I could still feel that star-powered prana out in the cheap seats. And when really terrific actors are supported by an outstanding play and really artful direction, that’s the triple-threat of course. “Indecent”, for example, had me absolutely gobsmacked. But something else I really love, love most of all in theatre in fact, is when a playwright takes me into a world I’ve never peered into before – not in documentaries, not in the news – and makes me take on a perspective that’s brand new to me. Broaden my perspective without lecturing me or, god forbid, boring me, and I’m yours for life.

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

A: Find your trusted readers. Whenever you finish something new, you’re going to need to be able to solicit feedback from people who know how to give it. They can’t be competitive with you, they have to know the form you’re working in inside-and-out, and they have to be honest without being snarky.

I have four trusted readers in my life now, and even though two of them are personal friends, I always pay them a fee when I ask them to give me notes because, hey, we’re all broke, and we can all use a little cash now and then. Nobody’s that much of a genius that they don’t need notes. Maybe Tom Stoppard doesn’t need notes. Everybody else needs them. When you’re starting out, you’re going to get lots, so start getting used to getting them from people whose opinions you respect.

Q:  Plugs, please: 

A:   “Divination” will be opening on Hallowe’en night, Wednesday, 10/31, 2018, at 8 PM, at the American Theatre of Actors (americantheatreofactors.org) and running Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8 PM (10/31, 11/1, 11/2, 11/3 and 11/7, 11/8, 11/8, 11/10), and Sundays (11/4 and 11/11 @ 3PM) Tickets are available at smarttix.com (https://smarttix.com/Modules/Sales/SalesMainTabsPage.aspx?SalesEventId=8348)

If you come on Sundays, we’ll have a guest Q&A from actual psychic intuitive Veronica Moya. Or you can come on the weekdays, and you come early, you might be able to get a quick Tarot card reading from me before the show. It calms my nerves.
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Feb 20, 2008

yesterday and today

An email I wrote yesterday to my friend Larry followed by his response: I'm going to Joe's undergrad playwriting class tomorrow. This is what I told him I would say: I'll start by saying, "no playwright is happy. It's a miserable life. Even the most successful are completely miserable, even if they somehow are capable of making a lot of money." then I'll move on to "no one reads plays anymore. even if you get your play published someday, no one will ever read it. There was a time when it was literature, but that time is long gone." then "if you want a lot of people to see your work, you should somehow land a job in tv or write a film. Most likely you will never get a film made or land a job in tv but if you do, the work you make will be forcibly watered down by your bosses or by executives." "On the other hand, if you want to work in theater, the only way to do so is to water down your work yourself. round all the rough edges. make the "arc" that everyone likes. you must appear to be doing something edgy or new or risky. You must appear to write a play about something but if you actually write a play about something, or write something edgy, no one will ever do that play. which is why you may as well write for tv. you're more likely to get something risky on hbo than on an american stage. although honestly, none of you kids will ever get anywhere near either of those places unless you have a famous parent." "you may think that you have some sort of control in theater that you don't in hollywood but you don't really. and you will never make a living unless you write a big musical that isn't about anything that people like to sing." how's that for an opener? To which my friend Larry replied: There is one alternative to the bleak (and mostly true) options that you present. The artist can work independently. Funding the work him- or herself. Or at least privately, through donations. This obviously means doing things on the cheap. But doing things on the cheap on your own dime often yields greater freedom than working with the crass for-profit bigwigs or through the pernicious and often petty non-profit sector. Anything that's away from institutions. Making it a truly personal kind of art. There are enormous limitations and risks one takes in such a venture, but, at the end of the day, one owns every triumph, along with every mistake. And don't I know that firsthand. I truly believe that the main hope for theatre in this country is for more theatre artists to work independently. Even if it means a parlour-theater, or a living room-theatre, or a studio-apartment-with-or-without-a-bed-that-folds-up-theatre, or an abandoned-school auditorium-theatre, or an empty-barn-theatre, or a conference-room-when-the-suits-aren't-around theatre, rather than renting a costly off- or off-off-broadway house, which is always an option, but a financially costly one. when the people like you, Adam, and the people like myself, and all the bloggers, and all the people in Joe's class, and all the downtown crowd, and all the people that the downtown crowd would never give a second glance to in midtown, and all the people who like what's happening in midtown but have run out of options for what to see or what to be involved in, when all of us are willing to attend and/or produce this independent - and by that I mean TRULY and NOT CHICLY independent - theatre, then theatre as an art form will finally grow its balls back. Theatre seems so lamentably and inescapably middle class to me. If we take capitalism out of the mix, or at least try to, the way a garage band does in rock before they sign to a major label, the way any busker passing the hat does, the way poets reading in a café do, then we would take our art, at first, off the grid, but onto, at a certain point, a larger canvas beyond the grid. Please feel free to quote me in this class and to refer anyone with questions or arguments directly to me. l [NOTE: Joe, of course, does not want me to say those things. I’ll let you know how it goes. Class is at 5.]

Apr 9, 2007

class

Interesting post from Isaac on class

http://parabasis.typepad.com/blog/2007/04/whatever_happen.html

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. As a
playwright, I am writing from a certain point of view
which is MY point of view. It comes from where I grew
up and how I grew up and the people I know and how I
see all those factors. I was raised Catholic. My
father's family was Polish Catholic. My mother's
family was all sorts of English, Dutch, Scottish but
basically the culture she came from was a Protestant
American culture, though she herself was not praticing
Protestant.

Both my parent were teachers who taught in public
schools, my mother high school math and my father 5th
and 7th grade--specializing in science. My father
also started a series of businesses while teaching
full time. He built picnic tables then he opened a
video store in the mid eighties, then he started
buying houses. Basically he's a workaholic. Both my
parents are now retired but he is still buying houses
and working on them and then trying to resell them.
And so through lots of hard work and smart investment
he is doing quite well financially right now, or at
least much better than a teacher is expected to be
doing.

So basically my point is that I grew up in a house
that was a hard working house and also not exactly
working class and not exactly not working class.
(I've spent many hours roofing). I went to a public
school and a public university. I grew up in a small
town in Connecticut, which is something that is hard
to explain unless you too grew up in a small town in
Connecticut. And I think a lot of my small town view
of the world remains as well as the idea that I have
to have a day job (not to mention the grad school debt
that I'm currently saddled with, which makes my day
job necessary.)

Based on the way my parents worked and worked, I am
likewise working a day job and doing my best to write
plays as my other job. It's what I'm expecting myself
to do and it's also incredibly tiring. And while I
know that I do tend to write more when I have a full
time job, I also have a lot less time to write.

I know I would be more focused on my playwriting if I
didn't have a 9-5 job. And I know that it would have
been helpful if I had gone to undergrad at Princeton
or Yale or somewhere that had had a theatre major--
course when I was applying to school I didn't know I
wanted to be a playwright. But if I had gone to an
Ivy league school I think I would have a clearer
picture of the wealthy people that make up New York
audiences. Six Degrees of Seperation is a fantastic
play but it's not a play I am equipped to write
because I am not of that world.

And so sometimes I wonder if the wealthy theatregoers
are interested in what I have to say. Is my point of
view something that would interest them? I am not
Jewish. I'm not writing about people living on the
Upper West side. I have a certain unique point of
view and some of that has to do with growing up where
and when and how I did.

Considering the price of theatre tickets, the off
broadway and broadway audiences are and have to be
wealthy these days.

At the same time, I want my plays to be produced in
small theatres throughout the country. I want my
plays to mean something to the actors in Michigan who
are holding down day jobs and then come to rehearse at
night.

And I want to find a way to make a living writing.
Because I'm so very tired. Especially on a Monday.

May 20, 2011

I Interview Playwrights Part 356: Renee Calarco


Renee Calarco

Hometown: Rochester, NY

Current Town: Washington, DC

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I’m revising THE RELIGION THING, which is an uncomfortable comedy that’s scheduled for production at Theater J in January 2012. It’s a play I’ve been working on in fits and starts for about six years; there were some terrific development readings at Charter Theater/First Draft Geva Theatre, and Theater J.

Also, I just finished a revision of KEEPERS OF THE WESTERN DOOR , which is another uncomfortable comedy… about Alzheimer’s. (Because nothing says “comedy” like degenerative brain disease, right?)

Q: How would you characterize the DC theater scene?

A: Vibrant, very collegial, and more experimental that people give it credit for being. Also, audiences here are insanely smart and willing to invest their time in seeing new work. I’m an associate artist with Charter Theater/First Draft, and our mission is to develop new plays and the audiences who love them. We hold monthly free staged readings of new plays, and it’s just crazy how many people turn out for them—anywhere from 25 – 50 people on a Tuesday night. Nearly everyone stays for the post-reading discussions. Audiences just want to be heard. They want to connect, they want to engage with artists, they want to watch theater being made. And they will follow artists anywhere if we’re willing to pay attention to them.

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 come from a family that absolutely worships the performing arts; growing up, I had all these relatives who were really talented amateur artists. My maternal grandmother was an actor and singer in local Yiddish theater; my maternal grandfather was a playwright, songwriter, and director; my mom was a jazz singer; my uncle was a director and opera singer. My great-uncle was a vaudeville-style comedian. Everyone worked for a living first, and did their art on the side. It was heartbreaking because we all knew that everyone was kind of dying a little inside---desperately wanting to spend all their time performing and writing—and knowing that economically, it was impossible. My brother Joe was the first person in our family who really made the commitment to make a living doing theater. My cousin Gina is just starting her professional acting career. And I’m still a bit in both worlds: I’m a playwright who has a day job (that’s theater-related).

Anyway, here’s my story. When I was in high school, I was hanging out with my friends in the auditorium; I think we were getting ready for play rehearsal or drama class. As we sat there on the stage, I thought, “This stage is absolutely bare…and anything can happen right now. We can just make something up right now and it would still be like a performance.” It’s kind of a cheesy story, but that feeling eventually led me to doing improv, which then led me to playwriting. And now you know why improv is the gateway drug to playwriting.

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

A: The notion that theaters have to somehow educate audiences about how important theater is. Audiences aren’t dumb. If we don’t want to entertain audiences first, I think that’s a problem. As a playwright friend of mine once said, “Nobody was ever forced to take hockey appreciation class in school.”

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Anything that’s surprising and that tells a great story. Anything that could only happen on stage, rather than on TV or in the movies. I love bare-bones productions and I love over-the-top spectacle. Really, I just like to be surprised.

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

A: Take an acting class. Take an improv class. Learn about design and stage management. And spend time with people who aren’t in the theater. This is advice I’m constantly giving to myself, as well. See plays, but also see other forms of art. The best thing about living in DC is all of the free museums!

Q: Plugs, please:

A: THE RELIGION THING opens at Theater J on January 4, 2012:

http://washingtondcjcc.org/center-for-arts/theater-j/

Jul 4, 2012

I Interview Playwrights Part 475: Megan Hart


Megan Hart

Hometown: Highland Park, NJ

Current Town: New York, NY

Q:  Tell me about This Is Fiction. Is it fiction?

A:  This is Fiction is my first play, aside from a couple of 10 minute plays and a one act. So I feel a little funny answering your interview questions since I haven't yet fully grown into the title of playwright. Then again, does that ever happen?? Anyway, its a play I started writing quite a few years ago, mostly as a dare to myself to see if I could or would do it. I've written fiction for a long time, but had never tried to write a play and one particularly slow summer, I decided I would. About a hundred drafts later, nurtured by my amazingly supportive (and pushy) theater company, InViolet Rep, This is Fiction was produced (by InViolet) at the Cherry Lane Studio this past month. In the end, I hope it's a play about family, about the fictions we create about who we are and what our family is, and about what happens when your family and your art collide. As for the 'is it fiction' question, like any true narcissist, I'd say while some of the characters may resemble my relatives, really aren't they all just versions of me?

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm working on a big crazy fiction piece that I've been developing as part of a group of wonderful playwrights and theater makers (and fiction writers): Bixby Elliot, Jennifer Bowen, and Paul Davis. I'm also working on a screenplay.

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 first grade, my school made us all take a computer class, with those big square green-screened early PCs. The idea was to just start typing away and get comfortable with this new-fangled device. It wasn't a writing class--in fact I don't think anyone even read what we wrote. But after the first week, my teacher called my parents and said I spent the entire class contorted in my seat, brow furrowed, chin in hands, agonizing over where to begin, what to say, what story to tell, what words to use. It all felt so IMPORTANT. By the time I was ready to touch the keyboard, the class was over. I don't remember much from that age, but I clearly remember those classes. I'd say it explains my neuroses, the respect I have for putting down words on paper, and my general inability to sit still.

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

A:  There's a lot I would change about the business (Showcase contracts can be frustrating. Lets have fewer shows on broadway based on (bad) movies. Why can't artists afford to see other artists' work? Why don't our audiences look like the audiences in any midtown AMC on a Saturday night? More community based theater. More actors of all sizes. Cheaper rehearsal space.), But theater? I don't know. I think it's pretty great, especially because it's always changing whether we want it to or not.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that makes me think, "I could never have made that!" "God, I wish I wrote that." or "I want to be in that." Really good acting excites me. Theater which is smart, not just clever. Theater which is clearly made with joy, heart, and sweat.

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

A:  The advice I keep giving myself: Stop apologizing. Keep writing.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Check out my blog, www.mousebouche.blogspot.com! Check out my theater company, www.invioletrep.com! Check out my talented sister, www.rebeccahart.net! Check out this fantastic web series that features my amazing husband www.eastwillyb.com! Eat a sandwich at my cousins' cafe www.thecommonschelsea.com!

Sep 7, 2010

I Interview Playwrights Part 255: Lisa Soland




Lisa Soland

Hometown:  I grew up in a small town of only 350 people, but still knew the horses and the woods better than the individuals who lived there – Northern, Illinois.

Current Town:  Los Angeles.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Last week the director Charles R. Miller and I cast an evening of works of mine entitled “MEET CUTE,” which is a collection of six short plays on the topic of “boy meets girl” in a unique and cute fashion, and then hopefully falling in love. It opens at Pellissippi State College in Knoxville, Tennessee, October 15 and runs through October 24, 2010. Look for the publication with Samuel French, under the same title.

Also, I have just recently been invited to serve as one of seven playwrights-in-residence at the Tennessee Repertory Theatre in Nashville. Mentored by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright John Patrick Shanley (Doubt), my play The Family Farm will be part of the Tennessee Rep’s Ingram New Plays Festival next May.

Q:  What can a student in your playwriting class expect?

A:  I run a playwright workshop entitled The All Original Workshop. I teach both live workshops in Los Angeles and Eastern Tennessee, and online one-on-one through Ichat and Skype. I work uniquely with each student, regardless of where they are in the process, and what it is they want to achieve. Many of my students have been produced all over the country as well as being published by Samuel French, Eldridge Publishing, Smith & Kraus, JAC Publishing and others. When you work with me, you can expect professionalism, excellence and progress. Check out the website at www.PlaywrightWorkshop.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:  I was born sixth out of seven children and I remember thinking when I was very young, that God must have had a reason to place me sixth and that this reason would serve me somehow in what it was I was going to do with my life. I decided that I was supposed to watch and learn from them, both in their successes and in their mistakes; to watch their behavior, so as to save time and heartache with regard to the decisions I would be making in my own life.

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

A:  I think theatre is fine just the way it is. I think as artists, we are meant to strive and work hard and strain to see what is true and real about life. I think great work comes out of this struggling, and as much as we all wish we could make a living more easily at what it is we love to do, that very struggle is molding us into humble, compassionate, hard working playwrights, who have enough of a tiny seed of doubt within us to question even our own inner life. And that doubt is good.

Of course there are things to try to change, there always will be in all places and in all professions, but overall, I think it’s important for people to deal fairly with each other and to follow through on what they say they are going go do. If one is not worth their word, they’re not worth much.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Charles Nelson Reilly. Period. He was my mentor as I worked my way up through the theatre as an actress and he inspired me to eventually become a playwright. A bunch of us Florida people participated in his advance acting class on Wednesdays from 10 am to 2 pm at Chandler Studio in Studio City. Charles loved playwrights and spoke with such admiration of them to us actors, that six of us in his acting class became writers – myself, John D’Aquino, Cynthia Faria, Mark Fauser, Brent Briscoe and Kendall Hailey. Charles called us The Faculty Actor/Playwright Company. He wrote this, “The Wednesday class has amazed me. I’ve only had two other actors who wrote and that was in the late 50’s and early 60’s…they were Lily Tomlin and Robert Ludlum but I don’t know what happened to them. Readers?” He was always, always dropping seeds of hope and success into your mind, sometimes without you even knowing it.

Also, Burt Reynolds, who started The Burt Reynolds Jupiter Theatre in Jupiter, Florida so his friends in Hollywood would have a safe and fun place to recover and play parts they might not normally get to play due to their type-casted lives in the Hollywood film industry.  That same theatre also became home for many of us “up and comers;” a place for us to learn and grow alongside his famous friends. Burt continues to care about turning around and lending a hand to those who are coming up behind him. He did that for me and I will never forget it.

And I have to mention William Luce, my Jelly Bean. I met him when cast in his play “Luce Women,” playing the role of Zelda Fitzgerald with Charles Nelson Reilly directing. Bill has remained a significant role model for the playwright I have strived to become and more importantly, he has continued to be my friend. He is brilliantly talented and a very good man.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Any kind, anywhere, at any level.

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

A:  Make sure you love it and then…make sure you do it. No matter what, no matter who or what is in your path trying to oppose you. You won’t make it and you won’t make it good, if you have no opposers. So bless them and continue to work hard and do what’s right.

May 7, 2016

I Interview Playwrights Part 835: Emily Schmitt



Emily Schmitt

Hometown: Cincinnati, OH

Current Town: New York, specifically Bay Ridge, Brooklyn

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Several things, but what I'm most excited about is a play called "Under Further Review," which is very loosely based on something that happened when I was in college. A young woman committed suicide after accusing a football player of sexual assault. This lead to an investigation into the university's sexual assault policy and a great deal of turmoil on campus. My play is about a former star athlete who must confront his alma mater after his daughter's rape on campus. In doing do, he faces some disturbing truths about himself and the institution he most loves. The play is currently being developed with the help of The CRY HAVOC Company.

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 fifth grade, I had a gym teacher I really detested. Looking back, I'm not sure if I detested him, or if it was just the humiliation of gym class that made me feel a great injustice was being done in my life. Either way, I decided that he needed to be fired. I had some legitimate reasons, such as the way he talked down to the girls in the class and one uncomfortable moment when he shouted into the dressing room. My best (only) friend, Katie, and I decided to write a petition to get him fired. We walked around at recess asking the girls in our class to sign it. All but one put their signature on that piece of paper, which Katie then slid under the door to the principle's office one fateful Wednesday evening.

The next day was probably the most traumatic of my educational experience. Everyone who signed the petition was rounded up into a classroom, where this gym teacher was openly weeping on a stool facing the students. The parish priest, an even higher position than the principal, informed us that we had committed the Cardinal Sin of slander and, if we did not ask for forgiveness, were going to Hell. (I cannot make this stuff up.) We were then asked, one my one, to apologize to this weeping adult man and explain to him what had possessed us to do such a thing to him. Naturally, most of the fifth grade girls were terrified and pointed their fingers at Katie and I. We, apparently, had threatened to beat them up if they didn't sign. We had lied to them and said the form was about Girl Scouts. We had even forged signatures. One by one, my classmates were dismissed as their false claims of my misdeeds were accepted. Finally, the only ones left in the room were myself, the priest, this gym teacher, and Katie. I still remember the moment I looked down and realized we were holding hands.

That pretty much sums up my feelings about justice, faith, and friendship.

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

A:  I find the theatrical community to be pretty philosophically homogeneous, which is dangerous if we really want to connect with our audiences. I once had a director tell me to stop writing about Catholicism because its not relevant in modern society. I think he spent too much time around theater folk.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Arthur Miller is my guiding light. Death of a Salesman may very well be a perfect play. I have yet to find a flaw in it.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I actually just stood up and spent about ten minutes pacing my apartment trying to think of something to say other than "Hamilton is the greatest!" I wish I had some cool, edgy, thing that no one's heard of. But that would be dishonest. Hamilton is by far the most exciting thing I've seen in the past year, and here is why: it's a true epic. Plays stopped wanting to be epic for a little while and just got really small. We wanted to write very small plays about middle-class couples having difficult break-up conversations in their living rooms. I'm not sure why that happened. Shakespeare wrote about kings. I'm not saying every play needs to be about powerful people or great historical events, but the emotions should be that big. And the stakes should be that high. (See why I love Arthur Miller....)

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

A:  If you're writing a play to make a statement or to teach your audience something, take a step back. You are not morally or intellectually superior to your audience. Start with with a question and try to scare yourself a little.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My play "Whatchamacallit: A Play About Jesus" is running for one more weekend at the Secret Theater. People say it's pretty funny.
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Feb 16, 2014

I Interview Playwrights Part 640: David Lawson



David Lawson

Hometown:  Annandale, Virginia

Current Town:  New York City. Specifically: Astoria, Queens.

Q:  Tell me about Spermicide.

A:  Spermicide is a multi-character solo show about despicable, depraved and strange men in America circa right now. In terms of the content of the show: There’s a street catcaller character that voices his interior monologue (“Damn girl! I sincerely believe that telling you this on 6th Avenue at 9AM while you’re heading to work is the kinda praise that will make for an amazing start to your day.”) There’s a Starbucks employee who feels his “religious freedom” has been violated because he is fired for sharing his Jennifer Lawrence/Pokemon mashup sex fantasy in the break room. There’s a Brony. There’s a guy doing “showtime!” on the subway…except it’s musical theatre. Yvonne Hartung is directing the show. It’ll be a fun, strange, dirty time.

Most notable about the development of Spermicide is that I’ve been working on the show by performing at “character slams” at UCBeast and the People’s Improv Theatre. Those venues have these open mic nights that are for character monologues as opposed to stand-up or storytelling. I thought they presented a great way to develop a multi-character solo performance.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  A new solo show I wrote called Insomnia in Space. I’m working with director Lillian Meredith on it. We’re calling it “an immersive, solo-performance piece contrasting the vastness of the universe with the minutiae of everyday life.” I’ve been an insomniac since I was thirteen and the thing that has always helped me finally sleep or calmed me down on sleepless nights has been meditating on thoughts of outer space. I’m also working on a play called The Algeria Alternative, about a woman who works at an office facilitating data from drone strikes and how she decides to leak information that’s detrimental to the company. I have been bringing in pages to The Propulsion Lab, the playwriting group of the Queens arts collective Mission to dit(MARS). Director Leta Tremblay will be directing a reading of that one soon.

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

A:  For most of elementary school I was a loudmouth, hyperactive, disruptive little shit. It often went to darker places than just being “class clown.” In 3rd grade after I had learned about the word “FUCK” I decided to write it down in huge letters on a piece of paper and show it off to the class. I got suspended from school. In 4thgrade I forged a kids report card (sloppily, might I add) to be all Fs with stuff like “This kid is totally pointless. His parents should just quit.” I got suspended again. I spent half of my elementary school experience in “time out.”

Then two things happened that changed me. First: I saw The Truman Show when I was twelve. I had a huge epiphany. Because Jim Carrey…the ultimate loudmouth hyperactive disruptive little shit…had brought some nuance into what he did. The connection was clear to me: If the hyperactive kid behaves, they can do something truly great. Like give a compelling performance in a great movie. Second: My sixth grade teacher named Brett Heflin made a deal with me. If I could behave during class, I could put on a little two minute show every morning before class. It worked like a charm. I behaved because I so badly wanted to write and perform that show every morning. Those two things were the first of many, many times art made me change the way I lived my life.

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

A:  Picking one is so tough. So I’ll spitball a few for you. I wish companies would budget things so 25% of the entire run of every production was “pay what you can.” I wish Lincoln Center would work out a revenue stream with all the unions and turn that amazing archive of professionally filmed theatre into a online, streaming “Netflix for theatre.” I wish theatres would adopt the “never be dark” ethos. Because we have these huge expensive theatres that sit completely empty way too often. Why not fill those spaces? 6PM shows. 10PMshows. Midnight shows. Year round. Every night. Even if they’re simple, super low tech productions. I’d love to see a major theatre have a fundraising campaign to pay every artist that comes through the building a living wage instead of just funding construction for the building.

Most personally for me: My favorite parts of being a teenager were 3PM to 6PM in my high school’s theatre. Those hours planted the bug in me to go out to places where I’d learn about folks like August Wilson, Tony Kushner, Anne Bogart, Bertolt Brecht and so much other stuff I would have never discovered if I didn’t have that bug planted. The more money and resources we have towards arts education in public schools, the more bugs we are going to plant.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The kind that makes me laugh really hard at things that are painful, true, dark, terrible and dirty. The kind I walk out of thinking "Wow, I never thought of it THAT WAY." The kind that makes me feel the feelings I get when I'm heartbroken, depressed and frustrated and thus, I believe, leaves me better equipped to deal with those same emotions when they arise in real life situations.

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

A:  Go out. Go out to shows and readings, Q&As and all sorts of other theatre events. Money’s an issue? You can find plenty of stuff for free or cheaper than a movie ticket. If that fails you can probably volunteer as an usher and see something for free. So do it. And when you’re there say hi to people. Strike up conversations. Ask older, more successful artists “What were you doing when you were my age?” I’ve always learned a lot asking that question. If you see someone who once created something that blew your socks off, tell them.

Find a way to fund your work and stage it. Someone told me when I was 21 I would always need “at least $20,000 dollars.” That’s a load of bullshit. You can find a way to put your work up on a budget of a hundred or fifty or zero dollars. Even if you don’t do it at a "theatre theatre" and it’s only a single performance or two or three performances. Do it. Because the only way you’re going to learn to write for the stage is by having your plays actually existing in time and space.

Understand that an experience you hate in the moment could pay massive positive dividends down the line. Understand that those folks you read about in some New York Times profile? Ya know what, sometimes even they have to check coats or sling drinks or lift boxes.

Most importantly have good friends. Good friends to work with. Good friends for mutual emotional support. Good friends to laugh, drink, run around, scream and shoot the shit with. Good friends that you trust to tell you what they honestly think of your work. Those “flaming arrows” they throw at your work are gonna hurt like hell sometimes…but they will help you get better. Love the success of your friends in the same way baseball players celebrate together at home plate when one of their teammates hits a walk off home run…despite the fact that they themselves didn’t hit it.

Be kind. Be patient. Keep creating.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A: Spermicide goes up on March 14th and 15th at the Brooklyn LaunchPad in a double bill with a multi-character solo show by Melissa Gordon called Fresh. My solo show VCR Love is published through Original Works Publishing and my plays Gloves for Guns, Thanks for Traveling and Turning Atomic Tricks are published on Indie Theater Now. I'm online at www.dtlawson.com and I'm @dtlawson on Twitter. Say hello would ya?


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Jan 4, 2017

History of a Play: Pretty Theft




Pretty Theft

I wrote it in 2004/2005. It was the first play I wrote after my grad school thesis play (Nerve) at Columbia. I took a class with Chuck Mee at the Flea and we were supposed to write plays about Joseph Cornell and steal each others' dialogue to create our plays. He ended up using some of the class' work in his Cornell play including some of my wife's writing. I used the class more as an inspiration. I didn't steal any dialogue but I took images from the class. Cornell was obsessed with ballerinas and created what are known as Cornell Boxes. Boxes and ballerinas both found their way into my play. And I took the name Allegra from an Allegra Kent quote Heidi Schreck brought in and I took the name Joe from Cornell and probably a lot from my wife Kristen Palmer.

I applied to Juilliard with the play and got in. (I think it was the 3rd or 4th time I applied) The summer after my first year at Juilliard, the play was done in the DC fringe. I was sending it out a lot and I must have sent it to that small company. It was the first year of the DC fringe. It was in the Canadian Embassy I think and the seats were really far apart which made for a really odd but overall positive experience. There were readings.  Evan Cabnet directed one at Ars Nova.  Daniella Topol directed one.  I was working for Judy Boals and she helped me set up a reading.  And then we did a workshop at Juilliard that Moritz von Stuelpnagel directed and Anna O'Donoghue was in.  And then the play had a small production in Seattle.

And then a production in New York with Flux Theatre Ensemble in '09 which had a good Times review so I was able to get it published. It was the first show I did with Flux. They also did Hearts Like Fists and are about to premiere Marian later this month. All three plays with Flux had the terrific Marnie Shulenburg in them.

There have been 7 productions since the Sam French publication at schools and small theaters and there are two more planned. The small but bigger-than-I'd-had-before advance I got for that play still hasn't been paid back but I think maybe with these next two productions it might be.

One more thing. When I meet a high school or college age actress who has heard of me, it is almost always because of this play. Many times a young actress has gushed to me about this play ... which makes me happy it still resonates . . . and . . . I've written 30something plays since then.

At the moment, the play is selling at the rate of about 2 a day.  Which is A LOT more than my other plays like Clown Bar or Hearts Like Fists that both get done much more frequently.


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