I Interview Playwrights Part 64: Erin Courtney

Photo by Peter Bellamy   (Check out his upcoming book of photographs of playwrights!)

Erin Courtney

Hometown: Hermosa Beach, California

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q: Tell me about what you're presenting at the Prelude festival.

A: I am presenting a reading of a new play called A MAP OF VIRTUE. Ken Rus Schmoll is directing. A Map of Virtue is a symmetrical play in which a bird statue guides us through a story of coincidence, tragedy and friendship. Part interview, part comedy, part strange middle of the night horror, a group of friends encounter evil and dissect their own responses to it. We have a great cast - Maria Striar, Matthew Dellapina, Birgit Huppoch, Matt Maher, Benton Greene, Matt Korahais and Normandy Sherwood.

Q: What else are you working on?

A: I will have a ten minute play in the Fall at the Flea Theater. The collection of short plays is called THE GREAT RECESSION. My piece is called "severed" and I am a big fan of all the other writers in the project - Thomas Bradshaw, Sheila Callaghan. Will Eno, Itamar Moses and Adam Rapp.

Ken Rus Schmoll and I are looking for a producer or a space to do a run of Black Cat Lost, which is a sort of an "entertainment" about mourning.

Q: Like me, you're married to another playwright. (The wonderful Scott Adkins) Would you suggest playwrights marry playwrights?

A: All playwrights should marry playwrights, but if you can't find a suitable playwright to marry then you should marry a very patient, generous and creative soul who appreciates your need to compulsively go see theater and write at odd hours and spend many hours at rehearsals.

Q: Can you tell me about teaching at Brooklyn College?

A: Teaching at Brooklyn College is something I am extremely grateful for. The genius of Mac Wellman continues to inspire me every day. He is a great mentor as a teacher and a playwright. Also, Mac chooses amazing grad students who are incredibly smart and courageous in their quest for finding new ways to make theater. So, it's a great job because I am continually learning and I never, ever take for granted that there is only way one to think about and make theater. It is an astounding community of artists.

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

A: Write, Dream, Write down your dream when you wake up, go see great and bad and good theater, be nice to other playwrights and actors and directors, listen to good ideas, let yourself fall in love with your own plays, support your friends.

Link to Prelude: www.prelude.nyc.org

I Interview Playwrights Part 63: Gary Winter

(It's the photo he gave me)

Gary Winter

Hometown: Sheepshead Bay NY (Home Town of Vince Lombardi)

Current Town: Clinton Hill, NY

Q: What are you working on now?

A: My aunt was an aerospace engineer through the Mid-1950’s through the early 90’s, so this piece has started out to be about a woman working in the aerospace industry (in L.A.) in the 50’s, but we’ll see what it turns out to be. When you read about the early days of rocket science it’s kind of incredible to find out how seat-of-the-pants the experimentation was. Like, in order to test fuel mixtures these guys would literally go out to the desert, light a rocket’s fuse then dive behind sandbags. I don’t think the play is going to be about that, but the research is fascinating.

Q: Can you talk about the Pataphysics workshops? I've done three: with Paula Vogel, Lee Breuer and Chuck Mee and I learned a ton each time. Can you talk about what they are and who is up next?

A: Anne Washburn founded Pataphysics in 2001 and the Flea has hosted and supported the program, which is run at cost. The goal is to give theater artists an opportunity to sit down with master playwrights whom they ordinarily wouldn’t have access to. I’d say the main thing for me has been to understand the intellectual groundwork of playwrights whose work I had known (like Mac Wellman), or was just getting to know (like Jeff Jones or Erik Ehn). So understanding their ideas, literary and philosophical influences, and the rigor and curiosity with which they approach playwriting has been an eye-opening, expansive and joyful education. It also helps to hear how people talk about their work, and realize that’s something we need to get good at. I suck at it but that’s no excuse.

Jeff Jones teaches a workshop about “building assemblies” at the end of November.

Q: Can you describe the Erich Ehn Pataphysics retreat you were just on?

A: It’s a silent playwriting retreat in the Catskills. One thing about being silent for three straight days is that your mind and body take on a whole new rhythm; that is, you have the time and space to sustain the writing by finding a steady rhythm, which of course is difficult to do in our day-to-day lives. Because I remained focused inwardly without having to think about social niceties or anything like that, I was surprised how much stamina I had. Erik meets with us as a group about 3 times a day and does physical as well as writing exercises, and then talks about what we might process for the next writing period.

Q: For years you were the Lit Mgr at the Flea. How was that? What did you learn from that experience?

A: Lit Manager at the Flea: A fabulous ten years. When I interned at the Flea I was just completing NYU, and the Artistic Director, Jim Simpson, said he wanted a playwright as Lit Manager (a volunteer position). Naturally I was terrified but excited to be part of a really cool theater. Also I didn’t have a theater background, so I was really keen to learn the nuts and bolts of how theater is made. I kind of love process, and being able to sit in on rehearsals and production and design meetings has been invaluable. I’ve met people who have become colleagues and friends-not to mention getting to know an army of talented actors who’ve come through the Flea.

Once you’re in the mix of things-getting to know writers and their work-I think the best thing you can do is be in a position to put that person on the theater’s radar. (and I’m only referring to my experiences at the Flea; I’m sure lit manager’s jobs and influence vary widely). I’d be nuts to think the Flea should produce every play I’m in love with, and that’s the way it should be. But you can call attention to writers, and at least by providing access (ie-readings) you might be able to get other theaters interested in the writer. Of course it’s exciting when all the pieces fall into place. When Joe Goodrich sent me SMOKE and MIRRORS, I loved the play, we did a reading and the Flea produced it. Score! At the same time I didn’t understand Alice Tuan’s AJAX, but Jim did and it became one of our most successful shows. That was sort of a humbling experience, and I realized I will be dead wrong at times, and I won’t always “get” a play by reading it. Also talking to the writer about his/her work is often necessary, particularly if you feel there’s something drawing you in, but you’re still not clear about the writer’s intentions. I had a few such conversations with Tom Bradshaw a few years ago because I didn’t understand why he started one narrative thread and seemed to drop it midway through. His answers were really concise and it’s helped me appreciate what he’s up to ever since.

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

A: My uncle was a fishing boat captain, so we went fishing a ton and I spent a lot of time staring at the horizon, daydreaming, and what else is writing but daydreaming?

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I love stumbling upon plays like you might a new and strange kind of animal. Then I’m like, oh wow, I didn’t know you could do this in theater. In recent years that’s happened with TR Warszawa’s KRUM (at BAM). It was 2:45 of talk and un-flashy but fabulous staging, totally engaging. Irene Fornes MUD (the production she directed at Intar in the mid-90’s) was also like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I didn’t really understand it, but fortunately Irene was teaching at NYU at the time, so the class had a good discussion with her about the play. One thing she said, which I’ll never forget, is that when people tell her they didn’t understand MUD but they had a powerful experience, she responds that it is this “experience” that’s important.

Other performances were Mac Wellman’s FNU LNU at SOHO Rep (I’m still singing the song from that show: “Why the Q in Q-tip”), Susan-Lori Parks’ AMERICAN PLAY and VENUS (The Public), and Len Jenkin’s DARK RIDE (SOHO Rep). I think it’s as much about where I am in life, as anything else that defines what I’ve responded to. I would also add that I admire plays that find an elegant image or gesture that ripples with meaning, such as Ionesco’s RHINOCEROS or Frish’s FIREBUGS, both about fascism of course. I thought Susan-Lori’s AMERICAN PLAY did that wonderfully.

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

A: No secret: Have a fucked up childhood and call me in the morning.

Q: Any plugs?

A: It would be a conflict of interest to plug my play COOLER at the Chocolate Factory in April, or Julia Jarcho’s (13P #9) play AMERICAN TREASURE at the Paradise Theater in November, so I’ll recuse myself from plugging them. But I would like to plug Heidi Schreck’s CREATURE in October and Emily Devoti’s MILK next spring.

I Interview Playwrights Part 62: J. Holtham

J. Holtham

Hometown: Leonia, NJ*

Current Town: New York, NY

Q: Tell me about the play you're having read at EST.

A: Household Name is a big, old-fashioned comedy. For a long while now, I’ve been fascinated by the work of Philip Barry (The Philadelphia Story, and especially Holiday) and I wanted to write a comedy like that. Lots of characters, something about class friction and manners, but with a modern sheen to it. Around the same time, I became similarly fascinated with Martha Stewart. I know, I know. But it’s not like a “Martha Stewart” play. It’s really about her daughter and what it’s like to have a mother who has re-invented herself. I thought it was interesting that Martha Stewart and Hillary Clinton are neighbors in Westchester County and somehow it just came to me. I finished a two-act draft of it last year, but it was missing something. So this version will be three-acts, with a new love interest. And more jokes and slapstick.

Q:  This is a gigantic reading series. Can you tell me about it and how it came about?

A:  Octoberfest is actually one of my favorite events of the theatrical year. It’s been a staple of EST’s season for more than 20 years (I believe). Basically, for one month, the theatre throws open its doors and lets the membership run roughshod over the staff. There are nearly 100 projects, on two stages for three or four weeks, all member-generated and not curated at all, just scheduled. If you’re a member of EST and get your form in on time, you’ve got a slot, two performances for whatever you want to do. I’ve always used it as a challenge, a deadline to hit. Most of my plays have been finished specifically for an Octoberfest reading.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I’m still in the midst of a big writing jag. I’ve written about it a bit at my blog, http://jholtham.blogspot.com, though the summer slipped away from me. I’m trying to write four new plays this year. I’ve finished two and really want to finish two more by the end of the year. The next play in the hopper, which I’ve started, but gotten stuck on, is called Anarchists: A Comedy. It’s about a widowed suburban woman who invites a bunch of radicals into her home ahead of a G20-type meeting. Then hilarity ensues. I’m determined to finish it this November, once the Octoberfest dust settles.

Q:  You've been affiliated with EST for a while. Can you talk about how they have supported you (or you them)?

A:  EST has been my artistic home basically as long as I’ve been in New York. It was the first place I worked, the first place that said to me, “We like you, we like your work, here are the keys, do what you want.” They took chances on me, coming to New York from a less than first tier college (SUNY New Paltz in the house! Go Hawks!), and treated me like a full-fledged artist. Youngblood, their emerging playwrights program, was the first place I was in the company of other writers and felt like I belonged. Most of everything I’ve learned about professional theatre, good or bad, I learned there.
They also took a chance on me, even though I was a playwright, as an administrator. Those jobs usually go to directors, but working with the EST/Sloan Project for five years and running Youngblood for two years gave me insights into the development process and the inner workings of a theatre that more people, and especially more playwrights, should get. While it was sometimes frustrating, regularly exhausting and more than occasionally utterly insane, it was never boring and almost always fun.

Q:  Are you still working in the lit office at NY Stage and Film? What's that like?

A:  I worked for New York Stage and Film for two great summers on the Vassar campus. If EST was the crucible where I was molded as a young theatre professional, SAF was where they dunk you in the cold water and you toughen up or shatter. The work was incredibly intense in a short period of time (the whole season there is about eight weeks) and just plain staggering. But the most amazing things happened there. It slides under the radar, I think, overshadowed by places like the O’Neill as a developmental program and Williamstown as a producing theatre, but it does both things exceptionally well. I watched plays come in, get taken apart and then put back together. The basic philosophy of SAF is so much about the needs of the project that they really put the artists in the driver’s seat and allow them all kinds of latitude. One project we brought up when I was there was a big musical. The creators got together a few days before the cast came up and realized they needed to take the story in a different direction. Now, we’d spent a month casting this thing, brought all of these high-wattage Broadway people up to Poughkeepsie, set up this whole workshop that was being sold to the public as a big deal, but when the creators said we need a couple of days, we sent everyone away, let the writers hole up in a studio with a piano and do what they needed to do. There aren’t a lot of places that take those kind of chance.

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

A:  When I think about my childhood and how I got started on the path of writing, I think about this old Buck Rogers comic book I had. It came out around the time of the old series with Gil Gerard and Erin Gray (one of my first crushes, natch). One Saturday, I was left to my own devices in my dad’s apartment, with only the comic book to amuse me. I’d read it a million times and loved it, but I wanted more from it. So I took my safety scissors and cut out the pictures I liked from the comic book (the fanboy inside of me dies a little bit at the desecration). My dad had this big old Persian rug, and I arranged the pictures on the design on the rug, in a new order, telling a different story. I like to think that way about writing. We all know the old saw: there are only seven stories in the world. We’re all taking bits and pieces of things we love and re-arranging them in some new fashion.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I’m a structure junkie. Really, I’m a sucker for it. You give me a gun in the first act and then some clever way for it go off in the third and I’m happy. It doesn’t all need to wrap up in a tight little bow, but if the ending feels inevitable and shocking at the same time, that’s the holy grail for me. I’m also a sucker for a good joke, well told. I like “actors” plays: a good speech or two, some physical comedy, a well-earned “aw” moment, a good fight, and a lot of drinking. That’s the recipe for a good play, if you ask me.

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

A:  Two things:
1) Write, a lot, while you still have the energy. Don’t worry about making it perfect. Get it down, get it done and, most importantly, get it up. Find like-minded souls and do shows, productions of first drafts, if you can.
2) Do things other than theatre. It’s really easy, especially now that there are so many undergrad and grad training programs, to do nothing but theatre for most of your adult life. Resist that temptation. Take dull day jobs. Cultivate hobbies and weird friends. Collect stories from outside of our little world. And then bring those stories to the stage. We need more real life in our make-believe.

Q:  Link please for your reading at EST:

A:   http://www.ensemblestudiotheatre.org/schedule_by_date.html
PS- I actually forgot! I’m doing a new one-act play as part of Octoberfest After Dark, a mini-festival within the festival put together by Lynn Rosen. It’ll be boozy and fun!

Any other plugs?
Check out my blog! I like it when people read and comment!
http://jholtham.blogspot.com

*Technically, I was born in Brooklyn. I moved to Leonia when I was ten, and my parents have long since moved out, but it still feels like my hometown.

J. on playscripts.  http://www.playscripts.com/author.php3?authorid=76

I Interview Playwrights Part 61: Caridad Svich

photo credit: Ann Marie Poyo

Caridad Svich

Hometown:  Philadelphia, PA

Current Towns:  New York City and Los Angeles

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  new play commission from NYU's Graduate Acting Program and Mark Wing-Davey (Chair) entitled RIFT. The piece goes up Dec 2-6, 2009 at Tisch Shubert Theatre directed by Seret Scott. Performances are open to the public and tix will be sold on smarttix.com RIFT is an epic story about lives torn by war and its aftermath, by abuse and damage, profit and trade, and the intimate search for beauty and grace. Gender, border, and culturally crossed, RIFT explores the fate of the human animal in a dislocated world and asks the question: how can a body that is torn find a way to heal itself and transform, and thus resist the tyranny of power? It's a violent, erotic, dream-like fable.


Q:  Can you tell me a little about No Passport?

A:  NoPassport is a Pan-American theatre/performance/media alliance and press, which I founded in 2003. The alliance is devoted to action, advocacy and change toward the fostering of cross-cultural diversity and difference in the arts with an emphasis on the embrace of the hemispheric spirit in US Latina/o and Latin-American theatre-making. NoPassport exists a virtual and live forum for the exchange of work and dreams, a live network between theatres and the academy, and a mobile band of playwrights, directors, actors, producers and musicians. The mentoring of younger artists is also a key component of NOPE's (as we playfully call ourselves) mission. NoPassport Press is a division of NoPassport that aims to bring new, challenging playscripts, translations, essays and theatre criticism to the field. Among the works we've published so far: collections from John Jesurun, Amparo Garcia-Crow, Anne Garcia-Romero, Matthew Maguire, Oliver Mayer, Alejandro Morales, single edition text of Antigone Project by Lynn Nottage, Karen Hartman, Tanya Barfield, Chiori Miyagawa and myself. The texts are published print-on-demand and are available from amazon.com and the like. For queries: NoPassportPress@aol.com

Q:  Can you tell me about your translating work? What sort of challenges are inherent in translating someone else's work?

A:  I've translated nearly all of Federico Garcia Lorca's plays and some of his poems as well as works by Julio Cortazar, Calderon de la Barca, Lope de Vega, Maria Zayas Sotomayor and contemporary plays from Mexico, Cuba, and Spain. I've also adapted for US English a Serbian play entitled Huddersfield. Translation is a parallel career and a huge part of my creative life. There are many, many challenges to the art and craft of translation, chief among them the kind of intense cross-cultural work involved linguistically and theatrically. Translations are also temporal acts. You translate it for the audience of today, but who knows how the audience of 50 years from now will respond? It's always a gamble and each decision about word choice is fraught with myriad possibilities. Ultimately you are as respectful and as in the moment with the work as you can be, but it's really a neverending process, if you let it be!


Q:  You also are a frequent editor of books and journals. How did you get drawn to this type of work?

A:  I've edited Divine Fire: Eight Contemporary Plays Inspired by the Greeks (BackStage Books) and Trans-Global Readings: Crossing Theatrical Boundaries (Manchester University Press). I've co-edited Out of the Fringe: Contemporary Latina/o Theatre and Performance (TCG), Theatre in Crisis? (Manchester University Press), Conducting a Life: Reflections on the Theatre of Maria Irene Fornes (Smith & Kraus), and Popular Forms for a Radical Theatre (special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review, Routledge, UK). I'm contributing editor of the international journal TheatreForum, associate editor of Contemporary Theatre Review, and founding editor of NoPassport Press. Right now I'm in midst of editing the collection Out of Silence for Manchester University Press, which should be in print late 2010, if all goes well. I was drawn to this type of work because it allows me to sustain a different kind of creative conversation with scholars and practitioners; it also allows me to advocate for the works of emerging scholars and the publication of not as well represented voices for theatre and performance in a very pro-active way. I love words in print and I love critical exchange, and my work as editor really lets me move between the arts and the academy in a manner that is spiritually rewarding. It also is the kind of work that really makes me focus on the layout of text, how pages are marked and makes me think about language and form in a way that I find vital and challenging.


Q:  Can you tell me a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person?

A:  Hmmm...well, my mom has saved all the tracings I used to do as a child. I loved books and stories so much that I'd actually the illustrations (of children's books) onto paper and then invent my new stories to these illustrations and write them down! Even when I was five years old, I was re-making texts!

Q:  Many of your plays have songs in them. Chuck Mee said, and I hope I'm getting it right, that if you don't have a song in the first half hour of a play, you can't have a songs in that play. In other words you should let the audience know early on that there will be music in the play or otherwise it will be jarring. I recently ignored this when writing a play, perhaps to my own detriment. Do you have any rules self-imposed or otherwise about how you put songs into your plays?

A:  I love songs, and how they can function in a text - as commentary, window into an emotional moment, setting a scene, etc. I love the human voice lifted in time and space. When I write I always leave the possibility of song open in the work. If a song appears, I let it. If it doesn't, then I know it's going to be the kind of play and play-world that doesn't allow for that kind of 'lift.' Sometimes I start with song forms in mind when I write. Alchemy of Desire/Dead-Man's Blues began as a play where I wanted to work with the blues form. Fugitive Pieces and Thrush both began with my interest in folk songs and alt-country. 12 Ophelias began in part with my love of bluegrass and the high lonesome sound. Iphigenia...a rave fable began with my interest in techno, trance and house music and sampling. Lulu Ascending deals in part with cabaret and torch song genre. Prodigal Kiss was written with the Cuban bolero a and guaguanco in mind. The Booth Variations was written in part to work with the symphonic form. There are so many ways to work with songs in the theatre, esp in plays with songs. In The House of the Spirits, I knew pretty early on that songs connected to ceremony would be part of the play (wedding, harvest time) but also lullabies the women in the play sing to their children. In terms of rules, I think letting the audience know early on that there will be live music or at very least live vocalization is important, even if it's through the sound-scape of the play. But I've sometimes broken the earlier is better rule, and decided to surprise the audience with a song late in the play. Ultimately I think what's important is the songs feel organic to the overall vocabulary of the play you're making!

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Work that surprises me, that re-awakens me to form and/or content, that challenges expectations of all kinds. My taste is pretty eclectic and egalitarian. I don't privilege uptown over downtown or vice versa. I hate categories. For me, witnessing a piece of theatre/live performance is about deep human engagement - whether it be intellectual, emotional, spiritual or all three. I'm always looking for work that will make me see things differently.

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

A:  Write, write, and write, and then rewrite, and rewrite. Plays are strange beasts. Writing for the theatre is a humbling profession. The work is always being tested and judged. Every night. Don't settle. Stay true to your vision. But also listen, deeply, to the world around you and to what the people you trust have to say. Be open to the beauty of an invitation to make work.

Q:  Any plugs?

A:  The House of the Spirits, based on the novel by Isabel Allende, continues at Main Street Theater in Houston, Texas until October 11, 2009 (www.mainstreettheater.com); it also continues in open run repertory in its Spanish-language version at Repertorio Espanol/Spanish Repertory in New York City under Jose Zayas' direction through the 2009-2010 season (www.repertorio.org). 12 Ophelias (a play with broken songs) continues at Trap Door Theatre in Chicago, Illinois until October 31st, 2009(www.trapdoortheatre.com). My new play Rift runs December 2-9, 2009 at Tisch School of the Arts Grad Acting, 5th Floor. (www.smarttix.com) The next NoPassport theatre conference is February 26-27, 2010 at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and related venues. Save the dates! In print: "American Playwrights on Language and War in Iraq: A NoPassport (theatre alliance) Virtual Roundtable" with David Adjmi, Christine Evans, Charlotte Meehan, Lisa Schlesinger, Christopher Shinn, and Naomi Wallace, Moderated by Caridad Svich in Theater Vol. 39, No. 3, published by Yale School of Drama/Yale Repertory Theatre.

I Interview Playwrights Part 60: Samuel Brett Williams

Samuel Brett Williams

Hometown:
I was born and raised in Hot Springs, Arkansas. At eighteen, I moved to Arkadelphia, Arkansas, and lived there until I moved to the New York City area just over four years ago at the age of twenty-three.

Current Location:
Hoboken, New Jersey

Q: Tell me about this reading you have coming up at Ars Nova. What's the play about?

A: I’ve wanted to write about corporations and fraternities for a while, but I couldn't find a story to support either topic. Then, I was in Italy last summer -- literally on the steps of the Coliseum, wishing it was run more like a corporate enterprise. No joke, I was in a long line with my uncle (who is from Sicily) and I was thinking a corporation would make the process a little more efficient. They would have specific windows for tours and specific windows for walk-throughs. They would have some process that moved us along a little faster -- I mean, Disney World kind of sucks, but they do keep the lines moving! Anyhow, long story long, once I could take the corporate side -- argue for and against big business -- then I knew I could start. I didn't want the play to be a one dimensional diatribe against Wall Street -- we have blogs for that. That's part of the reason I set it in a Frat House. I see those places as kind of breeding grounds for the big swinging dicks, or vaginas, on Wall Street. I read somewhere that every CEO from the financial district who was fired during the whole meltdown was a former Frat Boy. Also, there is something exciting and disgusting about fraternities -- two prerequisites I always need to write!

Q: Isn't Ars Nova great!?

A: Right out of grad school I went to the O'Neill with my play THE WOODPECKER. That was the first time I felt the theatre community saying, "Welcome." Emily Shooltz was my dramaturg there and when I saw the application for Play Group online, I knew I wanted to be involved. I have been overwhelmed with how nurturing and supportive they have been. They in a sense have welcomed me into New York theatre.

Q: Can you talk a little about your Playwright in Residence status in New Jersey last year?

A: The National New Play Network is amazing. Every young playwright should find a way to get involved. In 2007-2008 they gave me a residency at Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey -- that coupled with some other money from writing allowed me to live off of theatre for a year or two, which was not something I thought I was going to be able to do right out of grad school. The NNPN also sent me to the Kennedy Center to workshop my play THE REVIVAL (which Project Y will produce in the city this summer, hopefully at 59e59). And, I'm currently just finishing a commission they gave me to adapt the New Testament book of Revelation into a play.

Q: Can you talk a little about the Helen Merrill Award you won last year?

A: I was in rehearsals for THE WOODPECKER -- more specifically I was at a bar across the street from Cherry Lane -- when I received a call from a woman, who began explaining the Helen Merrill Award to me. I thought she was asking for money, so I almost hung up, but then she got to the point where I was getting twenty thousand dollars. I will never receive a call like that again. I cried. I mean, three years earlier I was working in a bookstore in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. I could only work thirty-nine and a half hours a week, because they didn't want to give me benefits. I bet I didn't make twenty grand that entire year. I went to the Algonquin where Chris Durang talked about my writing and gave me an award. I guarantee I will never have a happier moment in my life.

Q: You write a lot about where you grew up. I'm someone who can never really write about a place. Places just don't stick with me in the way they stick with some people. Can you describe what it is about that place that keeps you writing about it?

A: I write a lot about where I'm from, because I'm still trying to figure a lot of things out. I went to a Methodist Church, I was enrolled in a Southern Baptist school from kindergarten to my senior year, then I went to a Southern Baptist University for undergrad. My family is VERY religious. I remember going Soul Saving with my friends after basketball practice just because it was the thing to do at the time. I wouldn't trade my childhood for anything -- it made me who I am -- but, I am still trying to understand it, and that certainly comes out in my writing.

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

A: When I was in junior high I first started writing, really writing, and it confused me. I didn't know where the words were coming from or why I was doing it. The work wasn't any good, but it was honest and violent and pretty disturbing for a twelve year old. I would hide my notebooks under my bed, like they were pornography, because I was scared I was going to hell for what I was doing.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I love pointed irreverence, like McDonagh or Mamet.

I love the experience of Fornes.

And my king of kings is Kushner. I love, absolutely love, to experience the power of his mind. Sometimes I just pick up his plays and sit inside them, if that makes any sense.

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

A: I don't buy into the whole magical aspect of writing. Like anything truly rewarding, it's hard work. You can not control whether other people will like what you have written or not. You can only control the words (in LA you can't even control that). Do it every day, and do it well -- respect the integrity of the story, and do not write just to get produced. Admit that if you don't know what your play is about, you might not have anything to say.

Q: Details about your reading with Ars Nova, please:

October 5 at 7pm. The brilliant Sam Gold will be directing. Come and have a beer with us!

I Interview Playwrights Part 59: Trista Baldwin

Trista Baldwin

Hometown: Seattle, WA & Brooklyn, NY

Current Town: Minneapolis, MN

Q:  Tell me about your play DOE 2.0 that you presented at the Playwrights Center. How did this collaboration come about?

A:  DOE was in the 2006 Tokyo International Festival through an artist exchange between Japan and the U.S. My play was translated into Japanese and the director for the project was Shirotama Hitsujiya, who is known for creating her performance work with her company Yubiwa Hotel. I arrived in Tokyo a week before the Festival presentation and Shirotama had been rehearsing already. When I arrived she had basically 'written' a new beginning and ending for my play. I had heard that Japanese directors take some liberties with scripts,  so I expected there could be some interesting choices, but these new scenes did change the meaning of the script. I wasn't mad, I was provoked. I wondered how the translation itself may have altered the meaning. How were these Japanese artists interpreting my script in a language I don't speak? Shirotama's bold epilogue and prologue allowed me to find out how she was interpreting my play. I absolutely loved this process, and I really connected with Shirotama. She and I work with similar questions about life and death, sexuality and female experience.

Many Japanese in the audience of DOE told me that they did not feel that it was a foreign play. They felt like it could have been Japanese. I was really intrigued by this, especially by the implications of a shared female experience, across cultures that seem very different, especially in gender and sexual expression.

I went back the U.S. hankering to work with Shirotama again, and desiring to explore what might be "Japanese" about my work. I've never felt Japanese. But this experience made me wonder about cutural intersections.

In 2008 she was in New York on a fellowship and that allowed us to develop the idea of creating a NEW piece together, based on the existing piece, written by me. We're springing off the play we connected on, collaborating with both Japanese and American actors, who perform on stage at the same time in a kind of parallel life - there is an American Jan and a Japanese Jan, speaking English and Japanese, with the shared language being physical. DOE 2.0 is the working title for this collaboration, which we are developing over three years, between our countries.

Q:  How long have you been working on this show?

A:  We've been collaborating on the outline of this new DOE for a little less than a year. We'll be working in the room together for just two weeks., with a bi-lingual cast, beginning work on this new script together.

Q:  You are one of those people who went to Minneapolis for a Jerome and stayed. It's such a beautiful city. How did it lure you in?

A:  Money. Crickets. Really, it's been the fellowship and grants that have kept me here, and now I have a lovely teaching position. I've also had a child here, and this is a good place to have one of those, a good place to take your kid to the park after a writing session in a cafe. I kind of feel like the place kidnapped me. I don't necessarily feel like it is home here, but there is a good life here. I've never imagined myself in this part of the world - I'm a coastal person - but there are lakes, there are crickets, trees, co-ops, tattoos, great coffee shops, bike trails like you wouldn't believe, a strong community of writers and theatre artists...and a means to make a living as a playwright.

Q:  The first thing I saw in MN was a play of yours. Later that year, I saw a much different play of yours. Both wonderful but very different kinds of plays. What is the common thread that you see in your work? What makes a play a Trista Baldwin play?

A:  I'm interested in different means to tell different stories, with form following content and all that, so I do write different kinds of plays. Though... I think I'm doing that thing where I'm telling the same story, in different bodies from different angles. The story that I'm telling has to do with loss of innocence; with the place where innocence meets experience. By innocence I mean authentic self. I suppose I'm obsessed with corruption of authentic self.

Formally, the majority of my work might fall into the category of surrealism. I used to think I wrote some American version of absurdism, (if I have to put labels on it) but as I teach more literature, it seems to me I'm some kind of textual surrealist; the simple and recognizable suddenly bends, transforms into something heightened, spiritual. The place where our world meets the Other world…where base humanity meets the humane. The place where there is a terrible, beautiful ache for more. That’s the place that I write from, and that’s what I hope a “Trista Baldwin play” is.

Q:  What are you working on next?

A:  DOE 2.0 will continue in Tokyo in December, and then in New York in the summer. I’m also reworking American Sexy and I've started on a piece called The Surrogate, which pays tribute to Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman, one of my favorite plays.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theatre that scares the piss out of me. Like seeing a Van Gogh painting in the flesh - that scares the piss out of me. Anything where I can feel the great need of the creator behind the creation.

And sweat. I get excited by sweat. I like to see physical endurance as well as a fighting spirit in the script. Skill and exertion, that excites me.

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

A:  Well. First thing: if you don’t need to be a playwright, for goodness sakes don’t do it. It’s a ridiculous thing to do. But if it’s something you need to do then say what you need to say and keep saying it, saying it, saying it. America is very “short term gain.” But playwriting is like a very long distance race. It’s not speed but endurance. Many others in the race will get tired and they will stop and they won’t be a playwright. If you keep going, you will.

And as you’re doing that, you should also produce your own work, or let friends produce it; find a way to get your scripts moving in front of an audience, don’t let them rot in your drawer, and keep writing through rehearsal and after opening night. That’s my ten cents.

I Interview Playwrights Part 58: Mat Smart

Mat Smart

Hometown: Naperville, Illinois. Southwest suburb of Chicago. Where I developed an incurable disease called being a Cubs fan.

Current Town: Minneapolis.

Q: You just had a reading at Ars Nova. Tell me about this new play.

A: It's called A BED THE SIZE OF PORTUGAL. It's one of the craziest full-length plays I've written -- full of impossible stage directions and natural disasters. It's about newlyweds who are beautiful and in love, but she snores so bad he can't sleep and he's losing his mind.

Q: You're in Minneapolis for another year for a Jerome Fellowship. What projects are you planning for the long winter?

A: I just finished my first two-person play, so I think I'm going to try writing a ten-actor historical piece about a short-lived glass manufacturing company in Iowa City in 1880. I'm also going to read a few of the books that I've been meaning to read, and then burn them for warmth. It's a different kind of cold here.

Q: You went to grad school at UCSD. How was that?

A: I loved it. UCSD only has one or two playwrights per year and does a full production of each writer each of the three years -- then brings in ten theatre professionals from around the country to the see the work each year. It's the perfect way to get three polished scripts and get introduced to the "real" world. The other departments are fantastic -- great actors, directors, designers, stage managers -- and they all work on your show each spring. On top of that, the weather is perfect. And the kettle corn at Petco Park is the best in the major leagues.

Q: Why do you like sports so much?

A: I like that in a three-hour baseball game only one or two split-second events determine who wins and who loses. I like watching Carlos Zambrano pitch against Prince Fielder and know that I'm watching two of the best in the world try to beat each other. I like not knowing what's going to happen. I like that any at bat or any game could, technically, last forever.

Q: What is it like to date a dramaturg?

A: It's hot. H-O-T. A great dramaturg can save you time and help you become a better writer. A great girlfriend can make everyday feel like a gift. Sarah Slight is both a great dramaturg and a great girlfriend and so that makes me very, very lucky.

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

A: My dad worked for thirty-five years at Fermilab -- a particle physics lab outside Chicago. When I was a kid, I used to go into work with him on Saturdays. I'd see these big machines that were smashing atoms and trying to figure out if the universe was going to keep expanding, stop, or collapse back in on itself... I think it got me interested in big questions.

Q: What is the purpose of theater?

A: To ask big questions in visceral, dramatic, visual, funny and weird ways.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: The kind that makes people yell, gasp, cry, sigh, laugh -- things that any Cubs game at Wrigley does.

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

A: Don't use courier font. Don't keep rewriting your first play over and over. Drink coffee in the mornings, Red Bull at night and don't sleep until you get it out.

Q: Any plugs?

A: Look out for my play THE FOLLY OF CROWDS in NYC at Slant Theatre Project in November. And also THE 13th OF PARIS at Seattle Public Theatre and The Warehouse Theatre in Greenville, South Carolina in the spring.

I Interview Playwrights Part 57: Bathsheba Doran

Bash Doran

Hometown: London, England

Current Town: New York City, USA

Q: You have a children's play going up at South Coast Rep this season. Can you tell me a little bit about it and how you came to write it?

A: It's called Ben and the Magic Paintbrush and it's based on a Chinese myth about an orphan who finds a paintbrush that brings whatever it paints to life. It was a story read to me when I was very young, and I remembered it because the image of a painting developing an independent life and leaving the canvas always stayed with me for obvious reasons. In my hands it becomes a story about two little kids who find this magic paintbrush and have to escape the unbelievably evil clutches of one Mrs. Crawly who wants to trap them in a dungeon and paint gold. It was extremely liberating to write - you can be so extreme in the form - truly evil characters, truly good, disguises always work, sleeping pills make you pass out, language can be so playful - it's a totally different sort of storytelling. It taught me a lot. In particular, it was excellent to be forced to be plot driven and to be very clear about what the story is. There's lots of jokes for grown-ups in there too. I even managed to slip in a portrait of a difficult marriage (my speciality, I've decided). I wrote it because they commissioned me - after they saw my adaptation of Great Expectations for kids.

Q: Your play Parent's Evening is going up at the Flea soon. Can you tell me about that play?

A: It's a portrait of a difficult marriage...It's about a deeply narcissistic but very endearing couple the night of a parent-teacher conference. The first half is before the conference. The second half is after. Suffice to say - things do not go well at the school.

Q: What else are you working on? Lucy Smith was raving about a new play of yours. You want to tell me a little bit about that?

A: I just finished the first draft of a new play - I've been working on it for just about a year on and off - and I am also excited about it. Whenever I write a play I send bits to Lucy. From her reaction, I can pretty much tell if I am on the track I want to be on or if I need to swerve.

Q: What are the differences between American and British theater?

A: I'm not sure that there are fundamental differences - although both the British and the Americans often seem to like the idea that British theater is inherently "better." I do think that England has a 500 year old canon to congratulate itself upon. America doesn't have that - and I think that a consequence is that Americans are more obviously invested in "new writing" and "new American voices" which I find interesting - there's a certain nationalistic streak caught up in the concept of production. The British actors I have worked with are more comfortable approaching a text cerebrally, but I haven't worked there enough to make a confident generalization in that department. It was an impression I got. But generally speaking I have seen dreadful and wonderful theatre in both places and about the same amount of each in each.

Q: Like me, you studied playwriting at both Columbia and Juilliard. You want to tell me a little about your experiences there?

A: Columbia was an incredible experience for me - Eduardo Machado who taught playwriting there at the time became and still is a mentor to me. He was the first person who made me feel like I really might be able to write and he has an incredible ability to read a play and say something like "you went off on page 56, and it doesn't come back until page 86". In my experience, he's always right. I have tremendous respect for him. He's unorthodox and if you are paying eighty grand for an education (which I wasn't, I had a scholarship) then you might get frustrated, you might want specifics, it dirties the whole process really. But for me - working with him was a miracle. I also somehow got Columbia to commission me to write an adaptation of Peer Gynt for the graduating acting class of my year and Andrei Serban directed it. Someone asked me recently what the best production I've had is - and I realized that for me it was that one. And being in rehearsal with Andrei was such an education and a joy. At one point he dressed the actor playing "the boy" in a gorilla suit, watched the scene, and whispered to me "I don't know what it means, but it's primal, yes?" Right there was one of the most succinct lessons in theatre-making I've ever had. Because who cares what it means? But of course, generally people are like "but why, but why, explain." I'm not sure that truths have an explanation. Truths speak for themselves. We recognize them instinctually. That's what makes them true. And the class I took with Anne Bogart - the collaboration class - learned a huge amount. And generally speaking it was a wonderful time for me - I had just left England, I had committed to playwriting properly, and experimentation was encouraged. It was fantastic.

Juilliard was also wonderful but in a totally different way. It provided such access. Access to great actors, to readings, to people in the profession. There was an emphasis on the practical working environment I could expect to encounter. It was very important to me in that way. And it opened doors for me that Columbia just didn't. Chris and Marsha were incredibly nurturing, and supportive, and funny and wise and honest. I had a great time, I wrote a great deal. It was all much more grown up.

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

A: When I was little I got to go and see a production of Peter Pan staring Lulu and John Nettles. Someone we knew was involved and I got taken backstage afterwards which was unbelievably exciting. I looked in a drawer on the set, and I found Peter Pan's shadow. It was made of pantyhose. That impacted me greatly.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Anything where the theatrical experience is organic - music, design, acting, direction, text. Which means, irritatingly for me as a playwright, the work I have responded to most recently is devised by companies. Gatz just blew my mind. And The War Horse, which is coming to Broadway I think, was just unbelievable. I also love things that feel truly actor driven - Steppenwolf's work for example. The play, even a great play, is the beginning. Everyone else should take it further. I also like to draw a distinction between contemporary plays, and political plays. I am a fan of the former, not the latter. With very few exceptions (The Normal Heart, being one) I can not stand theater designed to articulate outrage at political event. They lack complexity, and I have noticed that audiences tend to leave the theatre practically congratulating themselves for having attended - as though going to the theater were a political act. Going to the theater is only a political act if the play you are seeing has been banned. Susan Sontag said “So far as we feel sympathy we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence. To that extent it can be (for all our good intentions) an impertinent – if not an inappropriate – response. To set aside the sympathy we extend to others beset by war and murderous politics for a reflection on how our privileges are located on the same map of their suffering, and may – in ways we might prefer not to imagine – be linked to their suffering, as the wealth of some may imply the destitution of others, is a task for which the painful, stirring images supply only an initial spark.” I find this to be such a brilliant and important observation that I learned it by heart to hiss at people who don't agree with me.

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

A: Flashback scenes seldom work out.

Nice Review of NERVE in NC

Here

Pretty Theft now available

at Sam French