I Interview Playwrights Part 15: Deborah Stein

Deborah Stein  

Hometown: New York, NY

Current Town: Minneapolis, MN

Q: You're headed to the Bay Area Playwrights Festival this summer. Tell me a little about the play you're working on there.

A: The play is called NATASHA AND THE COAT, and it's about the fashion industry and Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I actually started it five years ago and was overwhelmed by both the subject matter and the scope of it, and I shoved it in a drawer (literally) and only excavated it this past autumn. In a lot of ways, it's different from anything I've written before - a straightforward narrative about a family, clash between generations, based partially on personal experience. It's the first time when I need to figure out how old someone is, and where their parents were born, in order to fully develop and craft the characters - usually I work much more with allegory and archetypes. And I think it's going to be in two acts with an intermission - another first for me!

Q: Who are you working with on it?

A: Sean Daniels will be directing, with a stellar local cast including Corey Fischer and Naomi Newman, who founded the Traveling Jewish Theatre in San Francisco. They were in an earlier reading, in May, and were invaluable resources to discover the truth and nuance of the world I'm writing about.

Q: You are the new Bush fellow. Congratulations! Can you explain what that is? It's 50,000 dollars, right? How long does a playwright have to live in Minneapolis to be eligible to apply?

A: Thanks!! I'm pretty freaking excited. The Bush Foundation awards Artist Fellowship in a number of different disciplines. It's a total of $50,000 disbursed over 12 or 24 months, depending on how you want to use the fellowship. You need to be a resident of MN, ND, or SD for at least 12 months at the time of application.

Q: How did you come to start writing plays?

A: I acted in children's theatre when I was a kid, and started directing when I was in high school. In college I studied directing and creative writing, but mainly focused on poetry - I thought of those two creative pursuits as being decidedly different from each other. After college, I interned with the Pig Iron Theatre Company in Philadelphia, a physical theatre company making ensemble-based works. I was the assistant director, and part of my job was to transcribe rehearsal improvs to be shaped into performance text. Over the course of the rehearsal process, I became more and more involved in shaping the text, to the point of editing the transcriptions and providing additional writing that was based on gesture or character proposals from the acting ensemble or the director or even the designers. My credit on the production ended up being "writer" and I worked in this way with Pig Iron on six shows between 2000 and 2006. In the middle of it all I decided to go to grad school to try writing plays on my own, without the ensemble. I still do a mix of both processes - in fact, one of my other summer projects is to work with Pig Iron again, which will be like a sort of homecoming.

Q: What kind of theater do you want to make? / What kind of theater that other people make excites you?

A: Plays that are events, that capitalize on all that is vital and thrilling about live performance--raw and alive, all those people in a space together, having a communal experience which will happen exactly once. Plays that are like rock concerts, where your whole body is involved, whether you are artist or audience--where the line between those roles is blurred. Plays that recognize and embrace that we are in a specific place, in a specific moment of time. I dream of creating theatre on a massive scale, reaching audiences who don’t ordinarily go to see plays, sharing something unique in the collective present.

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

A: Go see lots of theatre. See it in both epic scales (Ariane Mnouchkine, Robert Lepage) and small, scrappy local companies doing it in the backyard. Identify like-minded collaborators, find your fellow travelers, work with them often. Pursue the big dreams and the large scale but also don't be afraid to do it yourself, don't wait for some large institution to give you a gold stamp, the only way to find and hone your voice by trying and failing and trying again. Theatre happens in three dimensions, in real time and space; what's on the page is the beginning, not the end.

Q: Link please for those in the Bay Area who want to see your play presentation:

http://www.playwrightsfoundation.org/index.php?p=182

I Interview Playwrights Part 14: Qui Nguyen

Qui Nguyen  

Hometown: El Dorado , Arkansas

Current Town : Brooklyn , NY


Q: You're remounting your show “Fight Girl Battle World” which I caught last year and loved. Can you tell us a bit about that? 

A:  Every year, my company, Vampire Cowboys, sets out to take on a different genre. With “Fight Girl Battle World”, we took on Sci-fi. This was our version of something like “BladeRunner”, except funnier, with a laughably small budget, and more kung fu. The outcome ended up becoming one of our most popular shows we’ve ever produced. After we closed it last year, we worked on finding the right opportunity to bring it back. We were offered slots in several different festivals but ended up choosing to go with HERE Arts Center’s Sublet Series for several reasons; HERE is definitely one of my favorite venues in the city, it gave us the luxury of being in the space for an entire week, and Vampire Cowboys just produced “Soul Samurai” this past winter there and we’re going to be producing our next show “Alice In Slasherland” there next Spring. It made for the perfect place for a remount.  

Q: Is it true it's your most popular show to date? Why do you think that is?

A:  Well, it’s definitely between that or our most recent “Soul Samurai”. Both shows sold out really quickly and both received a ton of love by both press and our audience. “Fight Girl Battle World” however sells more t’shirts than any of our other productions to date and, even after a whole year, we still get people who randomly email us about how much they loved the original run. I think “Fight Girl” just tickles people in that right way that makes them want to come back. It appeals to that little nerdy kid inside all of us who dug “Star Wars”, “Star Trek”, or “Firefly”. I dig it because it makes me laugh a lot. It’s perhaps the same for everyone else.

Q: Your plays contain a great deal of exciting and acrobatic fight scenes. Besides being the playwright, you are also the fight choreographer for many of your shows. Is it hard to be both the playwright and the fight choreographer but not the director?

A: Not really. I love writing and I love making fights. I however suck at helping actors explore moments and nuance. It’s just not a skill I have. I’m a bit too impatient for it. Robert who directs all my Vampire Cowboys shows is a master at this stuff, he can manipulate a scene to give it not only tension but texture. He’s good at exploring situations with actors and figuring how it’s all going work onstage. That’s what he enjoys. I however like writing cool dialogue and making people hit each other. It’s just a uniquely different skill-set.

Q: How did you become a playwright?

A: I originally wanted to be a novelist or a comic book writer and was pretty sure I was going to be that throughout undergrad even though I was an acting major at that time. However I started getting really frustrated that I kept getting cast either as the “stereotypical Asian” or none at all because of my race. So I started writing my own plays, shows that weren’t race or gender specific so anyone could play any role they wanted. That same ethos exists still today with my Vampire Cowboys plays. With the exception of “Soul Samurai”, all the other roles in all our other productions have all been racially neutral and we’ve been very conscious to make sure our company is as diversely cast as possible. People of color need superheroes and action stars too, so that’s what keeps me making the shows that I do. I like making heroes.

Q: Where can people go to buy your published plays?

A: Amazon, Drama Book Shop, and Playscripts.com. FGBW MOS LDID BW

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: All sorts. Anything written by living breathing playwrights. I don’t dig on the dead guys. Not cause I don’t appreciate what they did, I’m just tired of seeing a dead fucker like Shakespeare get literally thousands of productions a year while my friends struggle to get even one. That’s bullshit. My friends are better writers than that. They too deserve mad kudos.

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

A: Eat three meals daily, workout at least one hour a day, drink plenty of water, and smile.

Q: Link please and info for people who want to see "Fight Girl Battle World": http://www.vampirecowboys.com/shows.htm

my remaining summer shows

May 28-June 28, Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, FL, my short play Snow. (production #12 or so of this play) July 10-26 Echo Theatre, St. Louis, MO, a production of Nerve (production #5) July 5-August 1, Essential Theatre, Atlanta, GA, a production of Food For Fish. (production #8) July 15-July 26, Doorway Arts Ensemble in the DC Fringe, Washington DC, a production Herbie: Poet of the Wild West. (production #1) Other summer shows: I don't have the dates but Lights Out Theater Company in Chicago is doing two short plays of mine soon. (Snow and Goldentown.) My short play Film Noir will be done most likely July 5 at Midnight at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in western Massachusetts by the some of the interns. My play Ambience Pizza may follow on another night. If you can't make any of those, but don't want to feel left out, my plays Deflowering Waldo, Nerve and Food For Fish are published here, here and here. Also found at Amazon and other fine online bookstores. Also, some of my short plays are on my website.

I Interview Playwrights Part 13: Victoria Stewart

Victoria Stewart  


Hometown: Beverly, MA

Current Town: Minneapolis, MN

Q:  You just had a show up at The Playwright's Center that Workhaus produced. Can you tell me a little about that?
A:  Workhaus Collective is a collective of playwrights that produce our own work. The play, "800 Words: The Transmigration of Philip K. Dick" is an older play, I wrote it back in 2002. It had a nice production in Seattle in 2007 but since the Workhaus playwrights just choose which play to produce, I really wanted to see this play up with Luverne Siefert playing the lead and with Jeremy Wilhelm directing. (Jeremy directed a great version of the play in grad school and we had always talked about doing it again.) The play is about Philip K. Dick, the science fiction writer who wrote the stories that became the movies "Blade Runner" and "Minority Report." In 1974, he had visions of God that obsessed him for the rest of his life. It's a trippy play with transformations, non-linear storytelling and puppets. What's nice about Workhaus is that you really have control over the production so no one's trying to make the play something it ain't (which is helpful with such a strange piece.)  

Q: How did you become interested in writing about Phillip K Dick?
A:  My brother owns a science fiction/fantasy bookstore so I always grew up with sf around the house but I didn't get into PKD until my 20s. A friend suggested I read Lawrence Sutin's "Divine Invasions," a biography about PKD, just because it was a good read. I got obsessed at that point but this was about 5 years before I started writing plays. So I just read a bunch of his books because they were great. Near the end of grad school, I just plunged in, thinking nothing would come of it. Most of my plays are very realistic and linear so here I was tryin' to be experimental and shit. (All my years stage-managing for avant-garde directors at the American Repertory Theatre served me well.)  

Q: What are you working on next?

A: I just finished a new play called "Rich Girl" which is a modern-day adaptation of "Washington Square/The Heiress." It's about women and their relationship with money. I developed it at the Tennessee Repertory Theater which was a great experience.

Q: Tell me about Workhaus. Basically you're a playwright run theater not unlike 13p in New York. How do you decide whose show goes up next? How does it work?

A:  Workhaus is completely modeled after 13P. The playwrights serve as artistic directors during their show. The playwrights end up doing more technical stuff and house-management, etc. than 13P does because we can't afford a tech crew! So during tech, you'll see one of us hanging lights; during the shows, we're the ones house-managing. Because of this, we've realized that the playwrights have to be Minneapolis-based because we really need boots on the ground to produce everyone else's shows. How we choose which shows go up is a little haphazard. We have a core group of producer/playwrights and then we have a few satellite playwrights. We have a three show season and we only have 10 members, so people cycle through more than once with preference going to the main producers. We tried to plan two or three seasons in advance last year and all that planning went out the window very quickly. So now we're planning a year at a time. At this point, we're in residence at the Playwrights Center which means we use their theater and rehearsal space which is so helpful.

Q: Like me, you are married to a playwright. Would you like to comment on the challenges or benefits of a wright union?
A:  I'm pro-wright union. It's great, right? The benefits are having a spouse who really understands your challenges ("What? Another rejection letter????") and having a brilliant in-house dramaturg at your beck and call ("Honey, wake up and read my scene!"). The challenge is getting frustrated when one person gets something the other wants. But luckily, you're also really happy for the other person and as long as you keep in mind that what's good for one person is actually good for the unit you've become, it evens out.  

Q: You and I have the same agent. Isn't Seth great?

A: LURVE him. Cory and I do have a pet name for him but I won't write it down....

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Good theater. That may sound obnoxious but there are so many different kinds of great theater out there. On one hand, I love bold, visual, experimental work but I'm also happy as a clam when I see Arthur Miller done well. I like work that's emotional, that makes me lean forward, that's intellectual but not abstract. Also, because I'm an ex-techie, I get very distracted by bad production (and sometimes by great production) so I'm thrilled when I am completely drawn into something, whatever form it takes.

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

A: Just keep trying. Get yourself out there. Find people you trust to read and hear your work. Have faith in yourself.

I Interview Playwrights Part 12: Malachy Walsh

Malachy Walsh  

Hometown: Chicago, IL

Current Town: Lafayette, CA

Q: You're headed to Minneapolis in July to present a play. Can you tell me about how this came about and a little bit about your play?

A:  The play “Beyond the Owing” is about two people trying to figure out how to get married and have a life despite the financial – and emotional – debts they owe to others. I got the idea for it in early 2005 when everyone was buying houses at exorbitant prices. I couldn’t figure out how they were doing it. All I could see was debt without any way to pay it back. I had also graduated from Columbia only the year before where (rightly or wrongly) debt was a huge and very real part of the commitment to the arts (it was even the subject of our commencement speaker’s keynote address). In a sense, this grad school debt was my exorbitantly priced house. But the burden of owning it was also starting to affect, even distort, my relationship with the dream that had inspired me to go for it in the first place. I figured I wasn’t alone. And artists wouldn’t be the only ones having money trouble in the near future. I finished the first draft in the spring of 2005 and sent it around, knowing it had problems but thinking it was timely enough that someone would help. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival did a reading in the spring of 2006, followed by a Clubbed Thumb Workshop in December at Playwrights Horizons. The PCPA Theatre Fest in California followed in 2007. Interest dried up. Then I won a lottery slot in a reading series at the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis. I couldn’t attend, but I asked a friend living in MPLS - Genevieve Bennett who’d read an early draft and was a believer - if she’d direct it. Afterwards, she said she wanted to do it. She found a great bunch of actors and workshopped it over the next year or so, sending me notes and cut suggestions – almost all of which were excellent and I took. Obviously, the play has only become more relevant since its early versions. Hopefully, people will find it more resonant as well.

Q:   I had a great time working with Genevieve earlier this year. Is this the first time you two have worked together since Columbia? (Malachy and I got our MFAs at Columbia together along with Genevieve in 2004.)

A:  We did the short musical “BLAM! I’m Lee Harvey Oswald!” at Dixon Place in NY sometime in early 2005. Though I like the Bay Area where we live now, I do wish I lived closer to Genevieve. She’s an incredibly talented and generous collaborator who directs for - and in - the moment. Musical, human, but also unafraid to search the dark corners in a play and work them. Finding people like her is hard. But it’s the kind of relationship I really live for and that I’ve always wanted to build theatre on.

Q: You have a new kid and a day job in advertising. When do you find time to work on plays?

A: I try to write in the mornings, before all the outside voices drown out the inside voices. Since my son has lately decided that 5 am is a good time to get up, this has been getting more difficult.

Q: Your wife is an actress (and a wonderful human being). Would you like to make an argument for playwrights and actresses coupling up?

A:  The great thing about being with someone in the arts is that you understand each other. You “get” it. So, when your significant other says, “Yes, I’ll marry you, but I have to go away for a year to do the Oregon Shakespeare Festival” as mine did, you don’t freak out. You also have someone who can look at what you’re doing and respond appropriately to things that may be quite embryonic and need nurturing rather than immediate critical precision – though that comes later, too. In my case, I’ll add that Heather’s been amazingly good for helping me get over the fear of never having enough money. Being the child of a fairly well-off middle class life, I’ve spent a lot of energy worrying over the next pay check. As an actor, Heather’s kept me focused on what I’m doing NOW – rather than a worst case scenario fear about things that may or may not happen tomorrow.  

Q: You used to be my roommate. Do you have any advice for my wife about living with me?

A: Don’t leave the sponge in the sink.

Q: If I came to San Francisco right now, what plays would you recommend that I go see or what theater companies should I check out?
A: Since everyone knows the Magic is here, I don’t think I need to mention them. Same goes for the Mime Troupe – still great after all these years. However, there are some less broadly known companies that I’d recommend to anyone, anytime: Encore (which just did Steven Yockey’s SKIN), The Shotgun Players, Impact, the Marin Theatre Company, Crowded Fire, FoolsFURY and Playground (which introduces the Bay Area to writers with a season of monthly 10 minute playwriting contests). Charlie Varon’s solo work at the Marsh shouldn’t be missed either (Rabbi Sam starts in October). Also, check out anything by Mark Jackson (his FAUST: Part 1 runs until the end of June with Shotgun) and anything at the EXIT – a place run by Christina Augello who has helped a ton of artists get stuff up with her annual SF Fringe. (If it weren’t for her….)

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I like gripping, visceral theatre. It’s gotta stick with me emotionally. It can be weird or funny or brutal – even unlikeable and hateful – but if it comes off when I get up from my seat, well, that’s not what I’m most hungry for. Generally, that’s meant emotionally dangerous and vulnerable work in plays that end on questions rather than statements. It’s not a bad thing necessarily for me to be leaving a show asking, “What the fuck just happened to me in there?” In New York, I looked for that kind of work at SPF, Clubbed Thumb, LAByrinth and Soho Rep.

Q: What advice do you have for other playwrights?

A: Find people you like, then work with them and hold on to them for dear life. If you give up, everyone else will too. Never confuse a budget for a play. Be good to your actors – always. Don’t worry about what the institutions are doing - ever. Listen to your characters before anyone else. Write every day for as long as you can. Write longhand whenever possible. Writing isn't a competitive sport, despite what the competitions and memberships and production credits suggest: Other writers are your friends, not people you're trying to demolish. Coffee is good, liquor is not. Ask for help. Get a day job (I don’t care what David Mamet says) and keep it until it's impossible not to. And, my favorite, from Anne Bogart: Don’t wait.

Q: Is there a link up for people to buy tickets to your show at the Red Eye?

A:  We have a “trailer” at www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFdQegUWWes Our website is www.beyondtheowing.com

I Interview Playwrights Part 11: Jessica Dickey

photo by Geoff Green.

Jessica Dickey

Hometown: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q: I've heard a lot of great things about the Amish Project from various people. Can you tell me a little about the show?

A: The Amish Project is a fictional exploration of a true event, based on the Amish schoolhouse shooting that occurred in rural Pennsylvania on October 2nd, 2006. It is a solo show, with seven fictional characters, including the gunman and the gunman's widow, two Amish girls, and three townspeople... I was heartbroken by this gruesome event-- it struck a strong impulse to write, to just WRITE into that heartbreak and see what I could find -- but I did not want what I wrote to be tied in any way to the real people, so I basically took some of the givens of the tragedy and created my own characters around it. The New York Times recently likened this to writing "Stories From 9/11 That I Just Made Up", which I thought was a hilarious and great way to say it. I have a great respect for documentary theatre, but that was not what I was after when I started writing the play.

Q: How did you come to write it?

A:  I first researched a great deal about Amish culture. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, about an hour and half southwest of where the real crime occurred, and while I was not in the vicinity of an Amish community, I have always felt an affinity for "plain people" in general... I am very curious about people and communities that separate themselves in order to pursue their spiritual beliefs. There are many figures of this ilk that have fascinated me-- Saint Francis of Assisi, Gandhi, Julian of Norwich, Dr. James Cone... So I find the Amish intriguing because of their seclusion and spiritual discipline, and the ways in which they maintain their ethnic identity in our modern world. And when this sacred, quiet community came under attack in the schoolhouse that day in October, a fascinating series of events were set in motion, with shocking and awe-inspiring results... These things stayed with me, haunted me, and I wanted to go inward and explore what they evoked.  
 
Q: What does your writing process entail?
A:  Oh I don't know! LOL. Writing in my journal on the train, listening to a character riff... I usually need to do research of some kind--- I am currently working on a new play that had me researching the Omarska concentration camp in Bosnia (of the early 90's)... I like to let my characters monologue at first-- I like to just give them the mic, as it were, and see what they have to say, what they seem to be stuck on or circling around... Then at some point it becomes clear that this series of characters are all occupying the same psychic space, trying to inch toward one another, and then it becomes a matter of identifying what they are trying to do-- both to one another and as a collective whole. The play takes form from that void.  

Q: Do you change the play sometimes in performance or is it pretty well set?

A: Noooo, it's pretty well set. I love to improv, and I definitely spent a good portion of our tech riffing for the production team! LOL! I would improv from the characters while they were adjusting a light cue or working on something while I stood there on stage (I am a total slut for their laughter)... But when it comes to the performance, I keep pretty strictly to what we have set as much as possible. It's just the stage manager and I every night, and we need to trust each other to maintain the integrity of the piece as we cue one another through the play. I also find pleasure in the dance of a performance as much as anything else--- I attach myself to the subtle body anchors--- the weight shift, the focal point of the eyes, the breath. These are my tethers.

Q: This is not your first solo show is it?

A; Oh it definitely is.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A:  You know, more and more I am NOT interested in theatre with answers. I know this sounds elementary, but it apparently needs to be said. I also don't need art to be perfect or agreeable or for everyone. I feel like sometimes there is this pressure to make a piece of theatre thoroughly digestible and "clear" and linear. Who made this rule?!! I like it messy-- truthful-- theatre that is not afraid to go toward complex terrain and leave us with powerful questions. And I don't mind when theatre has a specific audience and isn't afraid to speak to that audience; like, you're a gay man and you want to speak to your community of gay men-- go for it! The rest of us can listen and learn and find ourselves in there if we wish. Do you know what I mean?!!? I'm just sick of watering things down to make them palatable. Fuck palatable. And while I'm bitching, I could do with a lot less irony and cleverness and cynicism. Okay, I'm done.  

Q: What advice would you give to any playwright who might read this who doesn't know some of the things you might know?

A: Oh boy. I'm sure I am totally UNQUALIFIED to be doling out advice. I feel like a messy toddler with playwriting. Um... I guess I can definitely say this: Don't wait for someone else to "discover you". Discover yourself! Don't be afraid to put your own work up on its feet. Use the festivals, the forums around the city, do it yourself. It's a self producing market now. Roll up your sleeves, raise the money, and present your own work. It's actually a thrilling thing to do. And it bears fruit-- externally and internally.

Q: What is the information for people who want to go see your play?

A:  Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, 224 Waverly. Our schedule is Mondays at 8pm, Wednesdays thru Saturdays at 8pm, and Sundays at 3pm. We're there 'til June 28th, and the show is only 65 minutes, so get your butts to the theatre! www.rattlestick.org and www.amishproject.com

I Interview Playwrights Part 10: Kara Lee Corthron

photo by Joanna Eldredge Morrissey 

Kara Lee Corthron

Hometown: Cumberland, Maryland

Current Town: New York, NY

Q: You’re coming to Minneapolis to work on a play with Penumbra next month. Tell me about this play.

A:  The play is called Julius by Design and if I were to consider all my plays my children, Julius would be the well-meaning, but difficult child that the school system desperately wants to put on meds. Its themes are about as universal as it gets: death, grief, forgiveness and letting go. At its center is an older couple—Jo and Laurel—whose son was murdered seven years before the play begins. Tired of their monotonous life of denial and shaky attempts to heal, Jo initiates contact with her son’s murderer and this leads to some craziness as you might imagine. The play is still early in its life cycle, but I’ve received such strange and disparate feedback on it so far, I’d put it away for a while, unsure of what I could do to make this child happy. So I was pretty surprised when Penumbra invited me out to work on it this summer. I’m really psyched and hoping this experience gives me some clues to crack the Julius code.  

Q: You wrote for NBC’s Kings this past season. What was that experience like?
A:   Kings was great, insane, enlightening, terrifying, and good. And probably a host of other adjectives I can’t think of right now. I joined the writing staff in September and by that point, the first four episodes had already been shot so I kind of jumped onto an already speeding train. And I had no prior TV experience at all. The immediate challenge I came up against was endurance. The seemingly simple act of sitting around a table everyday for eight and a half to nine hours brainstorming story points is not so simple. Imagine forcing your brain to do intense physical training after months of allowing it to just lounge around your skull eating chips. That’s the closest metaphor I can come up with to describe it. But after a few weeks, I adjusted. The hardest part by far was dealing with the intensity of life on set. And talk about endurance! One night, I got home around 2AM and was so tired I literally thought I was going blind. My longest continuous day on set was about sixteen and a half hours. This was hard for me; I’m a lazy person by nature. But despite the hours, stress, and sucker-punch to my brain, I’m really glad I had the opportunity to write for such a unique show and in a small amount of time—about five months—I learned WAY more than I ever imagined I would when I signed my contract. I was also really, really lucky that my first TV job was with an incredibly cool and wise writing staff. 

Q:  You were also the Princess Grace fellow at New Dramatists this past year. How did you participate in that community?

A:  The people that work at New Dramatists are some of the sweetest, smartest people around. Everyone there has been so supportive, even of the TV gig, which didn’t leave a lot of time for me to hang out at ND. But during the year, I was able to attend a few readings, the Christmas party, both all-writers meetings and just last week, I had my Princess Grace play read there with a phenomenal cast and director. So even though it’s an abbreviated version of the seven-year residency (and sadly, my time with them is just about over), I feel like I had a nice taste of the amazing benefits available to their playwrights.

Q: You were one of the few playwrights to have studied for 3 years at Juilliard. How helpful was that?
A:  Well, it was great to get an extra, pressure-free year just to play. And it was a joy to have additional access to Juilliard’s most precious resource: Mr. Joe Kraemer. I’m not sure I’d say it was necessary, as I’d had two full, productive years at the time of my graduation. But because the master class is run like a seminar, a large portion of the knowledge we gain there comes from reading plays by fellow playwrights and discussing them critically. I got to be a part of that process for sixteen playwrights (seventeen if I include myself) and that’s a lot of plays. For that aspect alone, I’m really grateful that I stayed that extra year. It’s funny you ask this question because I was just thinking about Juilliard. Chris and I recently exchanged some emails after I saw Why Torture is Wrong . . . and I just ran into Marsha at a Dramatists Guild event. They got me feeling all nostalgic for our Wednesday afternoons.  

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A:  When I go to the theatre, I love to be smacked out of my normal life and confronted with something I would never have thought/felt/imagined otherwise. I adore surprises! I like theatre that is bold. I like theatre that makes me laugh so hard it hurts. I like theatre that scares the shit out of me. I like to see honest, uncomfortable sexual tension. I like to see honesty of ANY kind. My favorite kind of play—regardless of the style, length, or subject matter—insists upon itself; it won’t let me dismiss it or forget about it the moment I hit the street for a drink and some gossip after the show. Nope! It forces me to make lasting space for it in my consciousness. Every time I go to a play, despite what I may have heard going in, I want to leave with the play still sitting on my shoulder, whispering in my ear. Maybe shouting. I don’t always experience this. But sometimes I do.  

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

A:  Uh well I don’t know if I’d label it “advice,” because it’s not that deep and I could probably use more advice than I can give, but all I’d say is write, write, write, and when you’re tired, keep going. The amount of time and effort we put into our actual work is probably the only thing we really have control over in this exciting, but often frustrating career. So take full advantage of your power and write like you’re addicted . . . even if you’re not.

I Interview Playwrights Part 9: Zayd Dohrn

Zayd Dohrn

Hometown: New York

Current Town: New York (I left for a while. But we all come back eventually)

Q:  So tell me about the play you have going up at SPF this summer.

A:  It's a play called REBORNING, and it's about a young woman who sculpts incredibly life-like baby dolls. Like this (scroll down a bit) Or this. Yikes. So she develops a twisted relationship with an older woman who wants to commission a doll to replace a child she lost. It's a pretty dark play, obviously, but kind of a comedy too. And I'm excited about the SPF production - awesome director (Kip Fagan) and incredible cast (Greg Keller, Ally Sheedy, Katherine Waterston), so I'm sure they'll do something fun with it.

Q:  Your play Sick has been done a bunch. It seems like I keep seeing it on various seasons. Can you tell me what that play is about and about the development process of that play and then where it's been produced and will be produced?

A:  Sure, it's about a family of allergy-sufferers in New York who never leave their house because they're terrified of the outside world. Basically I was trying to do A Doll's House meets Safe (great Todd Haynes/Julianne Moore movie from the mid-90's) with a little Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Glass Menagerie thrown in. It had its first reading at Woolly Mammoth last year as part of the National New Play Network Showcase, and then several theaters in the Network decided to do it based on that reading. It subsequently had productions in Dallas, New Orleans, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, and this summer it's going to be up in the Berkshires.

Q:  How's Juilliard been?

A:  It was a lovely experience. I can't imagine a better place for playwrights to meet and write and hang out.

Q:  I met you at the 24 SEVEN Lab in New York. You want to talk about that at all?

A:  About meeting you? Changed my life.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Oh, I don't know. Maybe once or twice a year I'll see something that really blows me away. But there's a lot more bad stuff than good out there. I guess if it were easy everybody would know how to do it. If it were easy I would know how to do it better.

Q:  I know you have a family. (one kid? Two kids?) How do you balance your artistic and family life?

A:  Yeah, two kids (baby girls), and it's pretty crazy. But probably easier than if I had a real job. My wife and I are both writers, so we're home a lot. And the kids are inspiring, which helps.

Q:  What advice would you give to the young upstart playwright who happens upon this blog post?

A:  Am I too old now to be a young upstart playwright? I don't know, I might try to discourage the person, because writing plays is obviously not for everybody. But bad writers can't be discouraged, and good writers wouldn't listen to me anyway.


Q:  Will you give the link please for those folks who want to go see your SPF show?

A:  Absolutely: http://www.spfnyc.com/festival/show.cfm?id=80 Tickets are 10 bucks, and I'd love it if other writers could come check it out.

Turned in a TV script this morning

Don't want to say much more about it now, but you may hear more once I hear the response. I can say I was paid to write an episode of a TV show and it's more money probably than I would be paid for an off broadway show and it's only like 25 minutes long and took less than 2 weeks of my time.

interview of playwright Steven Yockey

http://www.indytheatrehabit.com/2009/06/13/a-conversation-with-steven-yockey/

I Interview Playwrights Part 8: Madeleine George

Madeleine George  

Hometown: Amherst, Massachusetts.

Current Town: Brooklyn, New York.

Q: Please tell me a bit about your show at Clubbed Thumb.

A:  The play, Precious Little, is about a linguist who, in her early forties, decides to have a baby on her own and discovers through prenatal testing that the child may have a genetic abnormality. Through her encounters with an odd bunch of confidants (younger girlfriend, elderly speaker of a dying language, gorilla at the zoo) she tries to figure out whether she can deal with having a child who might never speak to her. It's a play about the limits but also the luxuries of language, about what we cherish about our uniquely human capacity for language as well as what it costs us to communicate in this way.  

Q: If I remember correctly you were one of those people who was in a playwriting program in high school. What was that like and how did it affect your later playwriting?

A:  I had the good fortune to participate in the Young Playwrights Festival when I was 17 and again when I was 18 years old. It was crazy to be produced Off-Broadway at that age, thrilling and destabilizing and I think a little warping--they put me up in the Chelsea loft of a pair of corporate lawyers who worked 20-hour days and were rarely home, so I would wake up every morning in this giant, off-the-hook beautiful apartment, stroll down the block for coffee and muffins, lie around the cavernous living room reading the Times and waiting to wander over to rehearsal, work on my play all afternoon and watch Mystery Science Theater and Beavis and Butthead with my fellow kid playwrights all night. Obviously it's been something of an adjustment growing into the realities of the profession since then. But I wouldn't trade the experience--it was an extraordinary first encounter with New York theater.  

Q: You are also one of the members of 13P. When does your show come up? What kind of experience has it been to be part of an organization of playwrights producing playwrights?

A:  My heart is full of love for 13P. I love being part of a group of writers whose work I admire, love to contribute to productions whose success ripples out to benefit more than just the people immediately involved in each show, love watching plays that might not otherwise reach the stage emerge fully formed out of a mist of eagerness, labor, and an Equity showcase budget. One of my favorite kinds of people is the Extremely Competent and Pragmatic Theater Person, the young producer or development associate or technical director or general manager who can anticipate any problem, fix any broken thing, handle any crisis. I'm emphatically not this kind of person, but I love to be around them--it calms me on a deep level--and 13P's all-volunteer staff is full of them, so even our staff and productions meetings are totally delightful to me. Next up for us is P#8, Lucy Thurber's Monstrosity, in July 2009, then P#9, Julia Jarcho's play American Treasure, in November 2009. My 13P show comes up in spring 2010, pending money, and then it's Sarah Ruhl, Young Jean Lee, Erin Courtney, and we're done. If people are curious to find out more, they could take a look at 13P's lovely new website: http://13p.org/  

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A:  My two favorite things to do at the theater are weep and think, preferably simultaneously. I like plays that take as given the notion that thinking and feeling arise from the same impulse and are inextricably intertwined--Wallace Shawn, Tom Stoppard, Suzan-Lori Parks, Anne Washburn, Rob Handel, Dan LeFranc, etc. etc. etc. Also I've been thinking lately about the expansive, beautiful things farce can do--I recently saw all three plays of Ayckbourn's Norman Conquests trilogy in a single day and it was perhaps the most mind-bendingly joyful theatrical experience of my life.  

Q: Your day job is writing young adult novels, one of the more interesting, (I would think) day jobs a playwright could have. How do you think that affects your playwriting, if at all?

A:  Actually, "day job" is stretching it a little for my relationship to YA novels--it's more like a long-term side experiment in a different genre (my real day job is running a college program in a prison). But I highly recommend it for playwrights who are curious to work in fiction--first of all it's one of the only areas of the publishing world that isn't totally going under, at least so far, and second of all it's a flexible form, heightened and somehow inherently melodramatic, like adolescence itself, which makes it ideal for dramatic writers. I've found it educational to work out novel-length story problems in my books--we'll see in the long run what impact that experiment has on my playwriting.

Here is one of Madeleine's books.

Q: Where can people go to buy tickets for your show? 
 

A:  Interested parties could visit this website: http://www.clubbedthumb.org/upcoming/s09/ The play runs Sunday 6/14 through Saturday 6/20 2009, no Wednesday show.

I Interview Playwrights Part 7: Sheila Callaghan

Sheila Callaghan

Hometown: Freehold New Jersey

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY and Studio City, CA

Q: You've had quite a year. First an Off Broadway show which was the talk of the town and subsequently published in American Theater and now you're writing for Diablo Cody's Showtime show The United States Of Tara. How do you feel?

A:  Exhilarated, terrified, in constant crisis mode, overwhelmed, exhausted, awed, thrilled. And other stuff.  

Q: Tell me about your experience with That Pretty Pretty and with Kip and the Rattlestick. What were the reactions you were getting to the show?

A:  For the most part, the responses were incredibly strong and often very personal, whether positive or negative. We got people who were in deep deep love with the project, grateful to see something like that on stage... I got a lot of emails from young female writers who said the play reaffirmed their faith in the power of theatre. And, we got people who didn't get the joke, who thought the play propagated the same ideas that in actuality it strove to critique. And of course there were a few furious people, some walkouts, etc. I'm not used to receiving personal attacks leveled at me because of my work, so it was a bit of a shock to my ego. But I've recovered I think, and perhaps my skin is thicker for it. The play had always terrified me, and I understand that kind of response in general is one worth following through for better or worse.  

Q: You just had a kid very recently. How are you finding balancing your home and work life? You and your husband are on different coasts right now, aren't you? Do you get to see each other?

A:  I don't know that I'm balancing it terribly well yet. On the sleep-deprived days I feel like I'm on the verge of mental collapse. But on good days, where the shit explosions and teething fits are at a civilized minimum, I feel like a superhero. But I love having this tiny being in my life. I am fully smitten. He's a very cheerful baby, very adaptable, which is good with all the traveling we do. This is an expensive, challenging, invigorating time for us. We've been doing a bunch of cross-country visiting, so he's been able to see his daddy every two weeks. Though often I feel like a single mom, which gives me a whole new respect for women who raise children on their own. I hope he brags to people someday about how we were able to pull it off. Right now I'm at my desk in my Tara office and he's next to me in his little musical walker. I'm so lucky I get to have him on the lot with me. I don't know how I would do this if I had a 9-9 TV job and a full-time nanny for him. I think we would have lasted less than a week.  

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Everything. Smart loud ballsy shit. Quiet pensive loaded shit. Quirky, absurd, silly shit. Romantic realistic heart-twisting shit. Long plays, short plays, plays that aren't plays. When stuff is done well, with commitment and vision and a fierce love of form, I get crazed and happy.  

Q: What advice do you have for younger or less experienced playwrights?

A;  None. I don't know what I'm doing.  

Q:  What time is Tara on or do you have a play coming up to plug?

A:  Tara is between seasons, so you can check the website to see when season 2 airs. My play FEVER/DREAM is running at Woolly Mammoth Theatre right now. A huge wild fantastical modern adaptation of Pedro Calderon de la Barca's LIFE IS A DREAM. It's a monster.

I Interview Playwrights Part 6: Daniel Talbott

Daniel Talbott  

Hometown: The Bay Area, California

Current Town: Brooklyn

Q: Tell me about the play you have going up at Rattlestick.

A; It’s the first play I ever tried to write and it’s called Slipping. It’s about this kid Eli who has recently lost his father in a car accident and then moves to Iowa with his mother from San Francisco to try to make a fresh start. I’m hoping it’s a simple love story about two guys and how getting what you want and being loved is actually sometimes the hardest thing. Having someone say I’m cool with you the way you are and I’m going to try to be there no matter what can often be the catalyst for the dam breaking and having to finally let go of stuff and deal with your life. It’s a play I’ve been working on and developing with a bunch of really cool peeps since 2001 and I feel like I finally have a small, simple play that focuses on the actors. I really hope it has a good honest heart to it and that people dig it.   

Q: When did you write this play?

A:  I started working on it during my third year at school and I can’t even remember why I started writing it other than I’d read an article in the New York Times about Sarah Kane and was so inspired by her story and her age and her writing that I wanted to try to write something myself, so I just dove in and gave it a shot and my first thought was like Damn, this is fuckin hard. As a young actor I hope I already had an immense respect for playwrights, but trying to do it myself gave me a whole new understanding of just how remarkable actual playwrights are and how insanely difficult it is to write a play, much less attempt to write a decent one.

Q:  Isn't it true that while you were studying acting at Juilliard they did this play at the Royal Court in London? What was that like? Did you have to miss classes here to see your play there?

A:  It was weird cause I didn’t know what the Royal Court really was until I started reading a lot about Sarah Kane, and then I found out they had a young writers program and that Sarah Kane I think had worked there, so I thought what the hell I’ll send it over to them and if they hate it and it sucks at least it was across the Atlantic and hopefully no one will give me a hard time for it being crappy. So I submitted it to them and then was so wrapped up in school that I kind of forgot about it until I got a call from them to be a part of Workers Writes and their Young Writers Programme. And to be honest when they called I actually thought it was one of my classmates fucking with me cause they all knew how obsessed I’d become with the writing over there and what was going on at the Royal Court and I thought they’d just left me a message to screw with me. So I went to class and was like, Ha ha you all are funny, and they thought I was insane, so finally Ola Animashawun called back and I literally almost passed out I was so excited. Juilliard was so supportive and cool about the whole thing and they actually helped work my rep season rehearsal around the time at the Royal Court so I didn’t miss anything, and I got to go back and forth about three times for rehearsals and opening and stuff. It was really amazing and Addie and I got to spend a week in London together in this amazing place in Sloane Square and it was just completely extraordinary and fun.  

Q: You are one of those renaissance men of theater. You act, you direct, you write and you have your own theater company. How do you do all those things? Do you ever set about to direct say and an acting job comes along and you have to do that instead?

A:  I’ve always just been in love with the theatre and said to myself that no matter what, whether I suck, or people think I’m bad or good, that this is it and I’ve always wanted to do as much in the theatre as I possibly can. I know this sounds dorky but it’s my life, along with my friends and my family, and there are so many aspects of it and I want to do as much of it as possible. I think that the more I do in the theatre the more I understand it from all these different angles and I think all of it’s helped to make me a better actor, director, artistic director, etc. When I work as an actor I think I understand directing better, and vice versa – it just opens me up and makes me a little less afraid of things, which is always my biggest battle. They way I deal with juggling stuff right now is that I’m first and foremost an actor and artistic director, and now one of the three literary managers at Rattlestick along with Julie Kline and Denis Butkus. So that helps me make decisions and so far I’ve been really lucky with being able to balance things, and my wife Addie and the rest of the RPRers have been insanely great about helping me do that. We all pitch in and pick up each others’ slack and I think are a really really wonderful team together.  

Q: Right now you're in St. Louis acting in the Merry Wives of Windsor and Bailey and Addie are with you, are they not? How old is your son now? Do you find it hard to balance raising a kid with your artistic endeavors. (I'm sure Addie, your wife, gets much credit too) Do you go everywhere together every time you get an out-of-town job?

A:  Yeah, we’ve been out in St. Louis working on Merry Wives with one of my favorite people on earth, Jesse Berger, for the last seven weeks or so and it’s been a really really great time with an awesome group of actors and Addie and B are both out here for the whole time. We try to go everywhere together and to not be apart as a family as much as possible. It kills me to be away from either of them for that long and I really didn’t want to get married and then spend half of each year away from each other. I think it’s a tough balance that most of the theatre folk I know go through, and I think we’re all trying to balance it and deal with it in the best way possible, and it can be hard. But I’m really lucky to have an extraordinary wife and son who really prop me up and are there for me and I hope I’m also there for them and they make me fight harder to hopefully be a better human being and man. I really struggle with confidence and fear and having them around reminds me of the important things and helps me be a tad more brave hopefully. B’s also three and half right now and school hasn’t fully come into play yet, so I think it will be even harder once he starts full time. I’ve actually been trying to do like one play out of town and then one play in town as much as possible so we can be home and stuff and also be working with RPR and with Rattlestick. At the same time though I tend to make a lot more money in regional theatre and we have to be able to pay our bills, and especially with not being able to sing most of what I go up for in town with theatre stuff is Off-Broadway which I love but doesn’t pay much. So the balance of the two makes it possible for us to make our living and hopefully get to be home and yet see a lot of the country too which is cool. I’m also not one of those actors that looks down on regional theatre. I love being able to travel around and work in a lot of different places and go with my family. I also believe in the regional theater and think it’s one of the great movements in American theatre history. I think it’s so extraordinarily important for theatre to be happening everywhere and it makes me sad when people rip on it, or act like it’s sub-par in some way. Theatre is theatre and there’s great and not-so-great theatre happening everywhere.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I love theatre that’s fucking with something and really trying to go there. I hate smug, cool theatre and theatre that’s hiding behind past achievements or snobbery. I think theatre has to have a great driving heart behind it and an extraordinary imagination and a searching for truth. I also like theatre that’s ugly and really risking something, not just pretending to. I think we all can dig deeper and work harder and have to do that as storytellers. It’s not about us, or our careers, and that can be really hard to remember sometimes but all that stuff can get in the way if you’re not careful. Not that we all don’t want to be successful, I mean we’d be crazy not to want that, but hopefully we all fight for it for the right reasons. I’ve been really impressed with Marin Ireland, Tommy Sadoski, David Adjmi, Mark Schultz, Lucy Thurber and Jessica Dickey this year and how all of their successes, at least to me, have come from the quality of their work and how hard they strive and how much they care about being artists and dedicate themselves. It’s so cool to see all that work pay off in such brilliant ways, and that their success comes from such humanity and quality. I think I also really love the way the Sarah Kane answered this same question: I love experiential theatre.

Q: I notice that your theater, Rising Phoenix does a lot of ghost story plays. Would you care to comment on your obsession with ghosts?

A:  I’m actually not sure what that is other than that I love the supernatural and the unexplained. I love things that are mysteries; I kind of hate that so much of the time people need to know everything, or at least try to know everything. I love imagining the many, many things out there that we don’t know and that science and technology really can’t stake a claim to yet. I love the spiritual and the unknown, and I guess that means I love the supernatural. There’s got to be something bigger than you and me and something that’s not just blood and dirt, hopefully.  
Q: What advice do you have for a young playwright starting out? (or a young theater artist of any ilk for that matter)

A: Do it with your heart and your work and be yourself. You also don’t have to be an asshole, no matter what certain people tell you and no matter how other people are acting. Be good to other people and it will hopefully empower them to do their best work which in turn will only make you better. Never think you’re better than someone else and/or look down on other peeps. We’ve all been good and we’ve all been bad and we’re all in this together as a team.

Q: Where can people go to get tickets to your play at Rattlestick? (link please)

A:  Ticks will be on sale soon on SmartTix and it would rock to have you all come check out the play. http://www.smarttix.com/show.aspx?showCode=SLI2&GUID=2712c77d-0d41-4c8f-b98e-ee9dd36d3fa9

I interview playwrights part 5: David Adjmi

David Adjmi



Hometown: Brooklyn, NY

Current Town: toggling Minneapolis and Brooklyn

Q: Tell me about your play Stunning.

 

A:  It's a play set in the Sephardic-Syrian Jewish community in brooklyn, which is where I was raised. It's sort of like an Edith Wharton novel, but with Syrians.

Q: It's going up at Lincoln Center, right? That must be exciting.

A:  It's really frightening and exciting, and I've never had a play on in New York before so I definitely feel the pressure. We're all working like dogs.

Q: You're one of those playwrights who write more than one play at a time. What's the most that you've had going at once? Do you have a bunch you're writing right now? What are they about?

A:  Well I usually only am actively writing 2 plays at once, and I work on one in the morning and usually rewrite the other at night. And I'll jot ideas or dialogue for other plays while I'm doing that. But these last plays I wrote that way were kind of intense and I got really sick for writing sixteen hours a day so I had to stop that. Now I'm doing just one at a time. I'm writing a commission for Berkeley Rep which is sort of about the oil industry, and I'm working on a screenplay which is sort of about Shirley MacLaine, but that's all I'll say.

Q: What kind of theatre excites you?

 

A:  Well I prefer not to be bored, so non-boring things. And I like non-literal theatre, I like metaphor, I like plays that form their own worlds.

Q: What do you look for in collaborators? (actors, directors, etc.)

A:  Well with my director I need to work with someone who gets that my plays have very specific needs and really works to figure out what they are. I also like to work closely in the process and I need a director who's going to help carve out for me what my role is in the process. I don't like the ambiguity in the room of "oh, who is this scary playwright? why is he talking to us??" I like directors who are secure in who they are and in their work. In terms of actors, I love really generous actors who are deft with my style, which is not easy, and also have a real raw emotional access

 
Q: Do you have advice for the playwrights who read my blog? Is there anything you wish you had known a few years back that you could impart on the masses?

A:  Well my plays and my experiences I think are specific to me and how I work and what I need, and we all have to come to it individually I think. That said, I think patience and faith and commitment to process both with yourself and your collaborators is enormously important. I didn't always have those things. I panicked quite easily and capitulated quite easily. I don't like to make choices out of fear -- in my writing or in production. There's always a moment where things can go south in production, or in development and it's usually when you are being asked to abandon your instincts when something doesn't work. It's extremely important for YOU, the AUTHOR, to understand for yourself WHY something doesn't work, and feel it on a gut level, before you change or abandon anything in the writing. That takes a kind of fortitude I didn't have when I started writing.

Q: You have a book of plays coming out, don't you? Can people pre-order that?

A: Oh gee, I don't know. I don't even have the galleys yet. It's not coming out til early 2010 so there's time.

Q: Where can people go to buy tickets to Stunning?
A:  You can get them on the website for Lincoln Center, which is http://lct.org/showMain.htm?id=185, or at the box office of the Duke Theatre, which is where we're playing.

I interview playwrights part 4: Dominic Orlando

Dominic Orlando  

Q: Tell me about this one man show you're performing. What is it about?

A: It actually started with a small idea, what KRAPP'S LAST TAPE would look like now, with video and sound and all the ways we can preserve and augment our memories. The Red Eye Theater here in Minneapolis has an amazing works in progress series and I got into it last year and explored that idea and it didn't interest me all that much--until Paradise Lost started creeping into it--I'm not sure how, exactly, but something about the pride of Satan, and his inability to see that being a King in Hell is not such a great deal--the idea of how stubbornness and misplaced pride can destroy your life. Maybe because of the Beckett influence, the main character also has trouble telling his story, so part of the drama of the event is can this guy get his shit together long enough to finish a sentence, never mind communicate these complicated ideas and thoughts.

Q: How did it come about?

A: I did it for The Red Eye's Works-in-Progress last year and they commissioned me to expand it this year for Isolated Acts, which is part of the same festival, but now I'm on the bill for an entire weekend, all by myself. Very new experience for a writer--I'm used to hiding behind many, many more people.

Q: Is this your first one person show?

A: Oh, yeah.

Q: Is writing a solo show for yourself to perform vastly different than writing a play?

A: This is a somewhat bizarre question coming from a playwright, but it's hugely different. Mostly because you can "compose" literally on your feet--basically write, act and direct (sort of) at the same time. And of course the structure is different, whatever the sense of--why are you asking me this, you know the answer already.

Q: I guess I just meant tell me how it’s different. Before Minneapolis, where were you living?

A; Brooklyn Heights

Q: You came to MN for a Jerome Fellowship, right?

A: yup.

Q; Do you think you'll stick around in MN for a while? What do you like about it?

A: There's a remarkable community of playwrights & theatre artists here--I'm not sure if it's because it's smaller (though, coming from a life spent in NYC, seeing "pop. 387,000" still gives me a kick)--but there's definitely a different vibe--the community feels more present. Of course, it could just be me, I was kind of a lunatic most of my time in NYC (a word we don't use lightly in my family). But it does seems unique. And I became a professional writer here, meaning I weaned myself off any kind of "survival job" so it will always have place in my heart because of that. I live in an actual house, and it takes me fifteen minutes (or less) to get to the airport. Which is really important because more than half my work is out of town--but, of course, New York is New York--so we'll see. And San Francisco/Berkeley is creeping into the mix as well.

Q; What kind of theater most excites you?

A: You know, The Walker used to send fellows free tickets, and we went to the first of Cynthia Hopkins' trilogy, and we walked in and I saw the set-up and I thought, "God, this is going to be unbearable"—but of course it was incredible. And I had the same feeling going into a Guthrie Production of "View From A Bridge"--which had some serious flaws, but overall knocked me out. So I think we're past the point of, you know, there's some Rule, or we should all pick a team and stick to it. There's definitely stuff that turns me off automatically, but I think most important is where is the artist coming from, is this the real deal or are they just shitting around or fucking with me or being fashionable (or trying to be)--so I guess "don't waste my time" is my only standard at this point.

Q: What advice do you have for my playwright readers about the business or act of playwriting?

A: Don't think of them as two different things. Other than that, it's extremely personal, how you work and how you deal with "selling" yourself (though you have to do it, there's literally no way around it). And maybe I'd come off my answer to the last question and say, Don't let some jackass from any school of thought tell you what a play is supposed to look like.

Q: What is the information for people who want to go see your show?

A:   It's at The Red Eye Theater: http://www.redeyetheater.org June 11th, 12th & 13th @ 8PM.

I interview playwrights part 3: Matthew Freeman

Matthew Freeman
 
Hometown: I’m from all over. Grew up in PA, mostly.

Current town: Brooklyn.

Q:   So tell me about this new play you have going up.

A:  It’s called Glee Club. It’s about a group of men who want very much to sing well, despite their obvious, crippling flaws.   

Q: Are you going to be sued by Fox?

A:  I doubt it. I heard of their show well after I started working on mine. And mine is called Glee Club. You see the difference there?

What’s odd is that I’ve never heard of a high school “Glee Club.” I usually hear about high schools having show choirs or jazz choirs or whatever. Choirs. Glee Clubs, in my experience, are generally for adult hobbyists or colleges.

But what do I know? I’m just this guy, you know?

Q: You know that TV show was co created by a NYC actor who was in a couple readings of mine. Cool guy.

A:  Didn’t know that. I thought this interview was about me, though. You’re bringing up the TV show and how you know people that worked on it. Would you rather talk about TV? It’s making me feel uncomfortable. I’m sweating a little. It’s like you’re just using this to name drop. Do you even really care about me at all?  

Q: Do you think you're better than him?

A:  Well..yes. I think so. I mean, I don’t know the man, but it’s my default response to strangers.  

Q: You work with a lot of the same actors over and over. What are the pros and cons of that? Can I assume Matt Trumbull is in this?

A:  He is. He’s awesome. So is David DelGrosso. Every actor in the show is someone I’ve worked with prior to this production.

I can’t think of any cons really. I love the guys I work with. They’re brilliant. I’m always looking for new people to add to my mental list, but I already know a ton of really spectacular actors. I believe in them, they believe in me, we all do our best for each other. That’s what it’s all about.   

Q: Are you in it, singing?

A:  No. I just wrote it. I sit in the back and eat ice cream and watch them sing.

Q: Oh. Well then when is the next time you're going to be in a play I can see, preferably about your life, starring you?

A:  Probably never again. I did it before as a joke on pretentiousness. Doing it again would be, well, actually pretentious.

Q: What kind of theatre excites you?

A:  I don’t really know. Whatever has a lot of life, I guess. I don’t like watching plays that feel like exercises in certain theories, or try to impress us with their dexterity. I like watching writers who appear to be enjoying themselves. Some of the darkest plays out there have a real passion in them, virtuosity. Some guts. I like theater that’s got internal organs.

Q: And this show is with Blue Coyote. How many shows have you done with them? The last one was published by Samuel French, right? Where could people buy that? (link please)

A:  Um… this is something like my eighth production with them, if you count smaller stuff.

The last one was published by Samuel French. That’s called When is a Clock. You can buy that one here: http://www.samuelfrench.com/store/product_info.php/products_id/7515  

Q: Many of my readers are playwrights. Do you have any advice for people who write plays?

A:  Don’t listen to people that try to give you advice, I guess. They’re also in the dark.

 

Q; And where can people buy tickets to come see Glee Club?

A:  They can buy tickets here! (Thanks for the plug!) https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/122/1243909800000

Or get more info at http://www.bricktheater.com

I interview playwrights part 2: Anna Ziegler

Anna Ziegler

Hometown: Brooklyn, NY

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q: Tell me a little about the play you have going up at Cherry Lane.

A: Dov and Ali follows the changing relationship between a Jewish high school teacher (Dov) and his Muslim student (Ali). Unfortunately, it's not a racy teacher-student romance. (Sorry, lovers of Notes on a Scandal'—and I am in your ranks, I assure you.) In this play, the two men help each other come to some important decisions regarding faith and love. The catalysts for these decisions are Dov's non-Jewish girlfriend, Sonya, whom he’s been hiding from his parents, and who all of a sudden wants to make their relationship more serious, and Ali's sister, Sameh, to whom something has happened that Ali can't discuss. Over the course of the play, these situations are blown wide open, forcing the men to reconsider everything they held dear.

Q: This play was just done in London. Were you able to go see it? What was that like? How were their American accents?

A: I actually was able to go over to London last summer for the entirety of the rehearsal period. I had a blast. The whole rehearsal process felt a little more laid back than I've been accustomed to over here -- until tech, that is, when there are only two days allotted to adding all the design elements into the play, as opposed to the luxurious three days that are typical over here. Getting to work with a British director and British actors on a play about a Jewish schoolteacher from Detroit was as fascinating and strange an experience as you would imagine it was. It was very different than working on the same play in New York. And their accents were great! It was funny to be there while the actors struggled with certain words. Just as there will always be one line that an actor gets wrong, there was one word each actor couldn't help but speak in a British accent.

Q: How did you come to write this play?

A: This play came from a number of places. First, I was teaching Lord of the Flies to my high school English class, as Dov is at the top of the play. I was working at a Jewish day school outside of Washington DC and was around a greater number of religious people than I ever had been. Inevitably, I began to question things based on the experiences of my colleagues and students. How are we supposed to handle situations in which things we want directly conflict with what our religion is telling us to do or be? Like Sonya, the non-religious character in the play, I started seeing religion as not simply something that comforts people in times of need and reassures us when we fear death, but as a source of difficulty and confusion. Particularly in the post 9/11 years, it seemed pertinent to write a play that questions the value of religion -- without, I hope, deriding it or those who choose to live by its rules.

Q: What are some of your other plays about?

A: All my plays are pretty different. I've got a play that's an adaptation of the Greek myth of Theseus and Ariadne, called The Minotaur; a play about Rosalind Franklin, the scientist who helped discover the double helix but whose work (controversially) was stolen by Watson and Crick; a play called Variations on a Theme about the aftermath of a break-up of a young couple in New York, among others...All my plays seem, however, to deal in some way with loss, forgiveness and the question of love's ability to endure.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I love theater that plays with language and creates worlds on stage that aren't quite naturalistic but aren't completely magical either -- lyrical places where realistic events or everyday matters take on new, heightened meaning. This is why I love Sarah Ruhl's work, Melissa Gibson's work, Rinne Groff's work. Anne Washburn's work. A totally incomplete list but those are the folks that popped to mind.

Q: Are there any plays up right now that you would recommend people go see?

A: Ruined. The Amish Project. The Norman Conquests. Others I haven't seen but want to: Night Sky, Our Town, Mary Stuart, Exit the King, The Dishwashers, West Side Story, Next to Normal, Into the Hazard, The EST Marathon...

Q: Where can people go to buy tickets to your play?

A:

  http://www.playwrightsrealm.org/Home.html

James Comtois--interview one

Remember how I said I wasn't sure where this blog would go next? Basically, I said most of what I wanted to say about playwriting. I was wondering if I would continue to blog. Well, now I've decided to start something new where I interview playwrights. I'm starting off with the delightful James Comtois. Photo by Randi Rosenblum.  

Hometown: Candia, NH  

Current town: Brooklyn, NY  

So what do you have going on right now?

A show called Infectious Opportunity, playing at the Brick Theater's Antidepressant Festival. It's about a screenwriter who fakes being HIV-positive to boost his career. Is Infectious Opportunity autobiographical? No. How did you get into playwriting? Do you like it still? what makes you write?

I got into playwriting in college after a few aborted attempts at writing comics and screenplays. I still like writing plays a great deal. I think the two main factors that fuel my writing are the ideas behind the scripts themselves and the fact that, through my production company, Nosedive Productions, I know the scripts are going to see the light of day via production in a very short period of time. It's always good motivation to write something when you know it'll be staged within 4-8 months of completing the final draft.  

What kind of theatre excites you?

Different kinds, although I mainly enjoy theatre that provides either a visceral or hypnotic experience. And if it can provide both? Hotness. Pure hotness. I think my favorite productions are those that find a way to immediately hook me in and make me forget I'm watching a play, and make the real world seem a bit distant and unreal after curtain call.  

You're one of those playwrights with his own theatre company (Nosedive Productions). What are the pros and cons of starting and running your own theatre? How many shows does Nosedive do a year?

Nosedive produces two shows a year on average. As I mentioned before, it's always nice to know that your work will be staged in the very near future. Plus, it's cool to be able to oversee and be actively involved in the productions, which ultimately offers me more creative control of the work. In terms of downsides, I guess running a theatre company means an increased workload. You can't just write a script then send it off and be done with it. You need to participate in the legwork in getting the thing staged (which is both a pro and con). Also, you're partially responsible for either paying for the production or getting the money for it.  

Many of my readers are playwrights. Do you have any words of advice for playwrights? Things to do, things not to do?

I think the best thing to do is to keep writing and to keep writing different things. If you write a script that you think stinks, don't spend all your time and energy rewriting it or fretting over it: just finish it, put it away (either for the time being or indefinitely, it's up to you), and write a new script. Perseverance and tenacity are pretty good traits to have when being a writer.  

You work with a lot of the same actors over and over again. How does that feed into your creative impulses (or not). (or what are the upsides or downsides to that?)

It's always a lot of fun to be putting on theatre with a team, especially a team that knows each other really well. Even though I rarely (if ever) write for a specific actor in mind, it's good to know that members of the cast & crew will be familiar with my work and overall style. But sometimes we like to mix it up. I always like to have at least one or two newbie cast members for any given show. Oddly enough, most of the cast members for Infectious Opportunity are new to Nosedive.  

And what's the show information for those people who want to see your show?  

Infectious Opportunity is playing for four performances at the Brick Theater on 575 Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn: Sunday, June 7th at 5pm; Tuesday, June 9th at 8pm; Wednesday, July 1st at 9pm; and Friday, July 3rd at 7pm. You can get your tickets here