Have you seen this yet?

Sorry to interrupt your playwriting interviews but you should check this out if you haven't yet.   Greg Mosher on the perilous state of arts organizations.


Gregory Mosher at CafeArts from CUarts on Vimeo.

I Interview Playwrights Part 85: Jeremy Kareken

Jeremy Kareken

Hometown:  Rochester, NY - Brighton, but I went to Penfield schools.  Needlessly complicated, but there it is.

 

Current Town: New York, NY - in the leafy neighborhood of Sunnyside Gardens, Queens 

 

Q:  What are you working on now?

 

A:  Finishing up two work-for-hire pieces - one a musical about the funeral of the most foul man who ever lived (or died), and a 3-d Monster Movie my friend Producer Norman Twain hooked me up with. 

 

Q:  Tell me please a little bit about your two headed challenge play.

A:  It's sort of based on a true story, so I'll start with that.  My collaborator was asked by one of his third year undergraduates if she could pursue a rather strange final project - that she inseminate one of her own eggs with chimp sperm and carry that creature to term, in her own womb.  It started at this little group lecture that EST/Sloan gave as a way to inspire playwrights about science.  And Lee Silver, the scientist and professor in question, told this story (among others).  Afterward I screamed at him "THAT'S YOUR PLAY."  And we became fast friends.  We proposed to Sloan the very play that won the Guthrie competition, and the late, missed Curt Demptster kind of flipped for it.  The people who didn't flip for it were the Sloanies.  One of the people close to the situation told me that the Sloan scientists were actually offended and that our play was anti-science.  Well, then I knew we had something, so I sent it for other grants, first and greatest among them was the Guthrie/Playwrights Center Two-Headed Challenge grant, which offered 10k for a team consisting of a playwright and a non-theater person.  Lee and I applied and won with this Oleanna-esque play about identity as a sex and as a species.   

 

Q:  What was your time at the Inge Center like?  My wife was there this past year and she had a great time.

A:  I loved it.  Peter Ellenstein is one of the most supportive people in the business, and the community really enjoys our presence.  It's a part of America theater people rarely see - the Red part.  I was actually in something of a free speech controversy there, where the Principal of the high school was miffed that I had a blog and that I used some frank language on that blog.  I was careful while I was there to not mention the blog to my high school class for just such a reason but another teacher had to go and open his/her big fat mo--- oh, it was a lot of fun, actually.  I learned I enjoyed being on the front page of a daily paper making obnoxious comments.   I was there with Carson Becker, from Chicago originally, and I'm so glad I met her - she's one of the people who make me feel better just thinking about her.  I hope she reads this; it's been forever.

 

Q:  You are Republican.  What's that about?  The reason I've always thought there weren't many Republican playwrights is that as a playwright our job is to see the world through other people's eyes and sympathize with them and in my opinion the defining characteristic of a Republican is the inability to do that.  Would you care to comment?

A:  Adam, you make me laugh.  So you can sympathize with all people except the nearly 50% who vote Republican?  I'm a big "get out of my life" kind of guy when it comes to the government, so I guess that makes me more libertarian than Republican, but I don't own a gun or a bong, so I feel out of place at those cocktail parties.  Some people think it's because I'm just a contrarian, and since I live in NYC there are more liberals for me to argue with.  I suppose there's some truth to that.

It's not an easy time to be a Republican, I know, but I certainly don't see the Democratic Party offering better ideas at the moment.  They seem marginally worse - continuing the same freedom-bashing as the Bush administration while spending an extra 10 *trillion* dollars.  No, I'm not really what one would call "pro-life" but sure I think the state has some say in life-or-death definitions, if not decisions.  And I'm certainly pro-gay-marriage since I value marriage - so why shouldn't everyone benefit from it?  To me the best institutions are the small ones, and I can think of no better institution than the buddy system.  Sure, it's as flawed as people are, but it's certainly better than being alone.  And there's no intelligent reason for denying those benefits to committed gay couples.

Sure, our party has its problems with morons that think that, say, a ghost invented all of mankind 6,000 years ago, but liberals have this moronic ideal that all men and women ARE equal, not that they're created equally under the law.  And what we're learning about genetics and evolution is proving that this just isn't so - that men and women are different, that people have different intelligences, different susceptibilities to disease, different values of human life.  And to me any dogmatic person can't imagine that people would think differently from they, liberal or conservative.  

 

Q:  Can you talk about your day job?  Is it fun?

A:  I have a few day jobs, one of which thank God is writing.  The others are a lot of fun - I teach writing at NYU and I'm the entire research team for Inside the Actors Studio.  The third day job is the toughest and most rewarding - being a dad.  As the artist in the family I'm the primary caregiver for the kids, so that means I'm making the breakfast and dinner and getting the kids and the wife off to work and school, respectively.   

 

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

A:  Ooh.  Toughy.  I remember my parents yelling at me about something, when I was about four, and I screamed back "check your calendar!" They were kind of taken aback and asked why? "It's be kind to childrens' day!" They laughed and the trouble was over.  It was my first improv.  And my first acting gig. And my first writing gig.  And it got me off the hook.  The soft, funny answer turneth away wrath.

Then there was this other time - my father, an attorney, was furious at me (hm. trend.) and he demanded I write him a letter of apology.  I gave him one that explained my side of the story, and he sent it back corrected with red marks and I couldn't leave my room until I did it right.  I learned that I could honestly write fiction, the fiction that I was contrite, and I learned that I would never be censored again.  

 

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The kind that plays with the form of theater - How I Learned to Drive was a spectacular way to tell a story, taking advantage of how suggestible an audience can be.  What a thrill ride. And I have a special fondness for Ayckbourn and Stoppard.  They lull you into this middle-class sense of comfort only to rip the rug out from under you.  Dinner with Friends did that... polite and sweet and then - wham!  Chekhov does that well, too.  But I guess that's not very experimental - oh, I just love good shit.

I'll tell you what doesn't excite me - I'm sick of seeing TV After-School-Special theater - you see it on Broadway lately.  Yes, great, you're a minority - or you've been abused - or you're a disabused hippy -  and you've finally made it, or you finally got the respect you deserve, or you got killed by a cold, soulless society, but jeez, isn't there a way to tell the story that's not this vanilla upper-middle class naturalistic scene after naturalistic scene and exclamation of theme at the end?

The internet is changing the way we think.  Biology is changing the way we're BORN.  And we're stuck doing Free to be You and Me and calling it "powerful."  I shouldn't be seeing pledge drives or commercials in the darkness when the scenery is being changed.  And it's especially ironic when I see such amazing TV these days, done by playwrights.  I watch the Wire, and Hung and Friday Night Lights and wonder why and how these giant corporations are taking these chances on amazing playwrights and producers in NY keep producing the Royal Family. 

 

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

A:  Prepare to be starting out for 25 years.  You never stop just starting out.  And prepare to have homework for the rest of your lives.  

 

Q:  Plug for your two headed play and any other plugs?

A:  Yes!  This coming July the great literary director (and the great director) Michael Bigelow Dixon is directing The Sweet Sweet Motherhood (the two-headed challenge play) at Here! It stars this amazing new actress who did the piece in Minneapolis, and I think I have a pretty amazing dude as the other actor.

I Interview Playwrights Part 84: Rob Handel

Rob Handel

Hometown: Poughkeepsie.

Current Town: Pittsburgh.

Q:  You're the head of the Dramatic Writing MFA program at Carnegie Mellon. I want to start out by asking you to plug your program. What can you tell me about it? How is it different from other programs? How long have you been teaching there? How do you approach teaching playwriting?

A:  I’ve been in this position since August 24, 2009. I was charged with recreating the program, which has been intense. I honestly believe the program is ideally positioned to be a juggernaut. First, we’re part of the CMU School of Drama, the oldest degree-granting theatre school in the country. My program is centered on constant collaboration with the astonishingly successful directing and design graduate programs, and the intensely competitive undergraduate acting conservatory. (It feels like you’re simultaneously in Fame, Slings and Arrows, and Wonder Boys.) The MFA writers work with these collaborators in multiple weekly classes as well as the New Works Series.

Second, the faculty is full of working professionals in all disciplines, not a bunch of dusty academics. It’s also in the midst of an infusion of new blood right now, including Marianne Weems, who recently came on as head of the grad directing program.

Third, Carnegie Mellon is an amazing place. We’re surrounded by the CMU computer animation people, the CMU robot people, the CMU digital privacy people, the CMU geoengineering-to-combat-climate-change people... These people are changing the world. It creates pressure to make really good plays.

Having devoted the past seven years to 13P, I’m interested in nurturing leadership. I’m teaching a class called “Envisioning a Theatre,” in which students examine revolutionary movements in theatre; write manifestos of their own; and build a plan for starting a theater company.

Q:  What are you working on now? You have a play in the works?

A:  I’ve been working on a big play called A Maze. (It used to be called Infinite Space, and before that it was called Captivity Narrative.) It’s about a girl recreating her identity after eight years held captive in a suburban basement, a band recovering from addiction and a hit song, and an outsider artist writing a 15,000-page comic book. I’m also working on James Boswell and Elvis Presley. (Those are two different plays. At present.)

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

A:  My parents took me to the 1976 revival of My Fair Lady. The houses along Wimpole Street were painted on a scrim, so at the beginning of every scene in Henry Higgins’s study, you would first see the street, then the study would be lit so you could see Henry and Eliza inside, through the scrim. Then, before the dialogue began, the curtain would be pulled off, all the way across the width of the St. James Theatre stage, with this prolonged, mechanical shower-curtain sound. I was fascinated by the scrim because it created an illusion (The street vanishes! Here’s the indoors!) and then immediately punctured it (It’s a curtain! WHSSSKK!). This phenomenon has never ceased to draw me back to the theatre. It’s not about tricking the audience, but rather inviting us to play along.

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

A:  You really can’t take a step without an MFA from Carnegie Mellon. Other than that:

Send Your Plays Out. Everywhere. All The Time. I’m constantly frustrated when writers tell me they didn’t bother to take advantage of a submission opportunity because only famous writers get produced there, or only boring writers get produced there, or blah blah blah. You must remember that these places all have script readers. Who are script readers? Surly interns. Who are surly interns? Young theatre people. LIKE YOU. Who will love your scripts? PEOPLE LIKE YOU. In the early 90’s, after moving from Chicago back to the East Coast, I got a call from a former reader for a company that had turned down my play. She had kept the script for years, and her boyfriend had been using it for an audition monologue. She had now joined the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, which was producing projects in a festival at HERE that year. It ended up becoming one of my first NYC credits.

Also, produce your own work. For advice on that, see the “Try This At Home” page at 13p.org.

Q: Anything else we should know about you?

A: My last name is pronounced han-DELL. But I never correct people.

Q:  Any plugs?

A:  13P’s production of Julia Jarcho’s American Treasure starts November 21. In The Next Room. What Once We Felt. The Lily’s Revenge. Creature.


Plays by Rob

I Interview Playwrights Part 83: Stephen Adly Guirgis

Stephen Adly Guirgis

Hometown: NYC

Current Town: NYC

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m living in Adam Rapp land -- where it’s possible to do 85 million things and do them all really fucking well -- except I’m not Adam, so I’m more or less fully expecting my whole world to come crashing down any minute now. But I’m trying. I got a new play for LAByrinth that’s in second draft. Another new play that’s big and crazy that’s at about page 40. A screenplay draft of a boxing film that needs to get turned in to the producers pretty much yesterday. A new play that I’m directing for InViolet Rep called Kiss Me on the Mouth by Melanie Maras that goes into tech this week. I’m one of the new artistic directors of LAByrinth, so I’m helping to run my theater company. I’m also taking care of my dad. And maybe pitching a pilot. And I’m acting in a short film. And trying to get in shape and maybe quit smoking. And I’m rehabbing my back which is a major undertaking that I should be taking more seriously. And I teach sometimes. And I’m learning how to produce. And I have another new play I wanna get started on. Now, if I was Adam Rapp, I could do all that in a weekend plus front a rock and roll band, write a novel, get drunk, end poverty, and make love with my girlfriend. But I got no girlfriend. And I got about 8 brain cells left. I ought to have my head examined. Again. But these are all luxury problems. Other than hanging out on a beach for the rest of my life smoking weed and maybe learning to surf, there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing. So I guess -- shut up and do it. I admire Adam a great deal, not just for his talent, but for his willingness to give himself to it. There’s a great quote from Shaw in the lobby of New York Theater Workshop. And there are certain artists working today who really seem to embody that quote. There are many. Adam is one of them. Phil Hoffman is another. Tony Kushner. They do the work. 
        

Q:  You are now one of the three Artistic Directors of LAByrinth.  There aren't many playwrights who are also ADs.  How are you liking it so far?  What are the main challenges?

A:  Yeah. I’m one of the new AD’s at LAByrinth along with Mimi O’Donnell and Yul Vazquez. It’s one of those jobs where you really got no idea how much of yourself has to go into it until you actually start doing it. It’s endless, totally challenging, and very time consuming if you wanna try and do it really well. The LAByrinth is a family, and it’s my family -- so I definitely feel the pressure to wanna serve it as well as I possibly can.  It’s funny, we’re just getting started, and I already and often feel overwhelmed by the scope of the task and the amount of personal responsibility that it entails -- but then I think about Barack Obama and my brain just explodes! Running a non-profit theater company in NYC is like a joke compared to the tremendous, mind blowing, epic, and relentlessly complex and multi-facted responsibilities and pressures that our President is entrusted to manage 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The man came into office resembling a young Sidney Poitier, and I’m pretty sure if he serves 8 years he’s gonna leave looking like Redd Foxx. I admire him so much for even getting out of bed in the morning... I don’t know how it will go trying to be the best writer I can be while also trying to be a capable artistic director. I think it helps to have heroes and models and to aim high. As a writer, Tennessee Williams is a hero to me. I’ll never be Tennessee Williams, but I can aspire to that thing in his work that is sublime and that serves to move and inspire me. As Artistic directors, John Ortiz and Phil Hoffman served our company in ways most company members don’t even know about. They were tremendous and selfless leaders. The Group Theater is an obvious and lofty theatrical model to aspire to. The Public Theater. The Donmar Warehouse. The old Circle Rep. LAByrinth is a kind of constantly evolving entity made up of a family of multi-disciplinary artists. I see the job of Mimi, Yul, and myself as being one of sustaining and maintaining the company’s foundation while also acting as facilitators in the growth and nurturing of new voices, new audiences, and new work. Thankfully, we don’t have to do it alone. We have a 115 members and a great board and audience base to lean on. We’ll need all the help we can get.    

Q:  Can you tell me a little about how you got started with LAByrinth?  Did you write beforehand or did you join as an actor and start writing while there?

A:  I went to college with John Ortiz and Liza Colon-Zayas. I wrote a little, but not seriously. I was an actor and still am. After college, John formed LAB and asked me to audition. I’m not sure I passed the audition, but I think John talked them into it. At some point, John encouraged me to write something. I wrote a little one act that David Zayas and Dave Anzuelo acted in that was directed by Charles Goforth and produced by LAB in any evening of one-acts down on Franklin street. I guess it went well, so guys like John and Dave Deblinger and Charles and Paul Calderon kinda pushed me to keep writing, so I did. Phil Hoffman acted in an early play of mine and we got close. Eventually, Phil directed a play of mine, and Mike Batistick wrote an article about us in Time Out magazine, and a lot of people came to see it. After that, I was more or less branded a writer. The process of accepting that I was a writer continues to be ongoing, daunting -- and I’m embarrassed to say -- sometimes painful.. Acting is a tremendously difficult thing to do really well, but I find the pursuit and the practice to be thrilling. When I’m acting, I know who I am and I’m okay with it. Writing is more difficult, less thrilling, and way lonelier. And in order for me to write, I find I have to engage in behavior that matches up pretty exactly with the symptoms of major depression. And when that’s happening, I don’t think my brain can tell the difference. And that sucks a lot sometimes. The upside of writing is that it is a tremendous outlet for a barrage of feelings, emotions, struggles, and inner debate, and, when it is rendered well, it can be a worthy form of service and occasionally even a source of fleeting moments of satisfaction and joy... I think my take on the whole writing thing is probably intrinsically tied to my early childhood as a first born son and to my religious upbringing as a Catholic. Jesus Christ and John the Baptist are pretty much the coolest guys in the New Testament: a pair of relentlessly selfless idealists -- one of whom got beheaded, the other merely nailed to a cross to save all of mankind. Tough acts to follow. Not much room for improvement. But spacious accommodation for shame and guilt. Somewhere in my journey, I became aware that I was given some aptitude for writing, so I felt and feel an obligation to use it as well as I can until it goes away. And I always fail. Or think I fail. I know this sounds retarded. Someday I’ll learn the distinction between humility and humiliation. I’m guilty and innocent of both. But perhaps this is a subject of real interest only to me... and a qualified professional. Next question, please.
      
Q:  I know you're in the middle of a whole slew of readings right now at the Public.  You want to plug that?

A:  Why, yes! Barn Series and Live Nude plays at the Public Theater thru November 5th. Free! Www.labtheater.org


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

A:  My mother always told me she didn’t care if I grew up to be a garbage man or the President -- as long as I was a loving and decent person. I found her words to be genuine and beautifully well intentioned -- but who knew that being a loving and decent person would take so much work!

Another time, I had to go to my survival job and I didn’t want to go, and I was having real trouble forcing myself into going, so I called my mom because I knew she would be able to talk sense into me and get me to go in to work. I told her what was going on, she paused, and then said; “Honey, quit that damn job and follow your star”. So I did. And I have never worked a straight job since.
    
Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I favor tremendous heart over tremendous skill -- though it’s preferable to have both. True heart, true risk, and true commitment reduces me to tears, and inspires the hell out of me when I see it on a stage. I think that to do anything well, it should cost you something. It’s like that James Brown song; “Paid the Cost to be the Boss”. Great actors, great writers, great artists -- the great ones -- one way or the other, they paid the cost to be the boss. And maybe they don’t get to be boss for a life time, but on that night, or that one show, or when they wrote that play, they were the boss. On any given night in NYC, there are actors and playwrights paying the cost to be boss. There are too many examples to cite, and plenty we don’t even know of cuz we weren’t there. And it’s easy to tell who paid the cost from who’s out there trying to ride for free -- or at a discount. Or who’s pretending to pay the cost. When we go to the theater we are always paying full price because we, as audience, are giving away two hours of our lives that we are never, ever, going to get back. So when we are engaged in our work as practitioners, then what cost is the fair one to pay other than the full one? Straight play, comedy, “experimental”, musical, tragedy, puppet show, farce -- it’s all the same thing. Try to do it great. Pay the cost. It’s important. And the world will thank you. 

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

A:  Work begets work.... Put it up in your living room if you have to... Schedule actors and a reading, and then write some scenes or the play. If you know they’re showing up no matter what, then you’ll feel like an idiot if you got nothing for them to read... You can be as fucked up, self-doubting, self-hating, and self-deprecating as you want, BUT IF THERE’S NOT SOMETHING inside of you that honestly believes in yourself as a writer -- however small that something may be -- if it not there, then, it’s gonna be tough -- and maybe tougher for your audience than it is for you....What else?... Sit down. Stay down. If you do those two things, something will happen.... Lastly, Believe. Because why the fuck not?
  
Q:  Any other plugs?

A:  LAByrinth’s 18 Appeal. Donate 18 bucks to LAB. Please.
Www.labtheater.org

LAByrinth’s Annual Benefit. Celebrity Charades. 12/7/09. Www.labtheater.org

Kiss Me On the Mouth
by Melanie Angelina Maras
Directed by Stephen Adly Guirgis
Performances: Nov 5th - Nov 21st
InViolet Rep @ Center Stage NY
48 West 21st St, 4th Floor
or call (212)-352-3101

I got a new play I’m working on, and it may have a couple of public readings in December during Play Time at New Dramatists.

New Dramatists
424 west 44th
(212) 757 6960

I Interview Playwrights Part 82: Kara Manning

Kara Manning

Hometown: Philadelphia, PA and a spell in Milwaukee, WI

Current Town: New York, NY

Q: Tell me about the readings at MCC and the Rattlestick.

A: Earlier this month, I had a reading of Killing Swans at Rattlestick as part of the literary department's October series. Denis Butkus, Daniel Talbott and Julie Kline have been incredibly supportive and I'm very grateful. I've been ferociously working on rewrites of the play. It had a workshop in June via one of LAByrinth Theater's intensive retreats at Bard College, and it was a great gift to take the play to its next step at Rattlestick. It's the most challenging, vexing thing I've written thus far, given its political genesis: Tony Blair's incomprehensible trust of George W. Bush and their relationship. My tendency is to write character-driven plays that roll around in the mud of betrayals, disdain and disappointments. Carnage of the heart. It's a tricky balance, this political/personal pas de deux, which I'm still trying to untangle with this piece. Ethan McSweeny, whose work I deeply admire, directed - his inventive production of Jason Grote's 1001 utterly blew my mind several years ago. The cast was comprised of fiercely gifted actors who constantly inspire me: Martha Plimpton, Samantha Soule, Peter Gerety, Adam Rothenberg and Brennan Brown. It was truly the most terrifying and rewarding reading I've ever had. And I finally know what in the hell to do with the play. I think.

Coming up on November 9th as part of MCC Theater's Playlabs at Baruch College, there is a reading of my extremely new play Sleeping Rough which the fabulous Wendy McClellan is directing. It's the first that I've worked actively with a structured monologue form along with dialogue, yet I didn't want a monolithic slab across a page. So I've structured them so they almost resemble lyrics; brisk, elongated, active. There was a workshop of the play's first 20 minutes last November at Hampstead Theatre which was dreamy. London feels like home. Last fall I spent nearly a month there thanks to dear friends who lent me their flat. My intense love for the city, the chance to be a flâneur again, traipsing down Cork Street or the Fulham Road, began to inform the character of Joanna. I arrived in the U.K. just two days after Barack Obama won the presidential election so it was surreal to experience the aftermath through British eyes. At the same time, they were marking the 90th anniversary of Armistice Day and I was deeply moved by the coverage of that event as well as the media's more focused attention on British Armed Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Q: Can you talk about your day job? Does it contribute to or get in the way of your playwriting?

A: Oh, how long did it take me to get this questionnaire back to you? Ages. Yes, the demands of my day jobs are a continuing source of anxiety where my playwriting is concerned. I have so little time and it kills me. I'm lucky to have jobs I like at companies I admire, especially in this dismal economic climate. This summer I became a web editor/on air interviewer at WFUV/The Alternate Side and it's uplifting to work with such a terrific group of people. My background has mostly been in the music "industry" - Rolling Stone, MTV, a trio of radio stations. Plus I'm the literary manager of the Irish Rep - a superb theatre with a unique identity - which enables me to champion playwrights and actors. I have an array of other jobs, ranging from talent booking to freelance writing. But it's an exhausting schedule and I'm juggling a lot. So I'm determined that my weekends are devoted to writing, though I never have a quiet stretch of time to let a play stew and chatter in my head. The writing of a play doesn't only take place at the MacBook, but in those walkabouts you take, your discoveries, the scribbling you do in your head. The space between the words. I wish I could spend a day at MoMA.

Q: What else are you working on?

A: After I finish rewrites on Killing Swans and Sleeping Rough, I have a TV spec script to complete. And a new play to begin which feels too embryonic to discuss.

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

A: My parents used to listen to the cast album of Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris quite a lot, so by the time I was five, I'd memorized the bleakest, most politically outraged and romantically fucked-up lyrics - all written by a brilliant, likely alcoholic, Belgian chainsmoker. I believe I learned the word "fuck" from the song "Timid Frieda." I've no idea where my infatuation with the U.K. began. Perhaps with The Beatles or seeing "To Sir with Love" or reruns of "The Avengers" on television, but it's always been, oddly, my spiritual home and hopefully, one day, my real home. When I was in third grade, my mother was called into a school conference because I insisted on spelling words as if I were some Mancunian urchin - "colour," "grey," "theatre," "favourite" - and I'd vigorously argue when my teacher would mark them as misspellings. On the plus side of third grade, I vividly remember the confluence of music and writing for me. We were asked in an art class to write or draw whatever came to mind whilst listening to Aaron Copland's "Billy the Kid Suite." To this day, that first impression of freely galloping across a page with a pen, unrestricted, still lingers ... as does the importance of music in the conjuring of those words. All of my plays are born within a particular piece of music - e.g. Mind the Gap is Underworld's Second Toughest in the Infants and dubnobasswithmyheadman and afterdark is Miles Davis. I can't write without music.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I decided to quit my job at Rolling Stone and study with Anne Bogart at Columbia University when I saw the SITI Company's The Medium at NYTW. It was a watershed moment for me. Her direction, writing and insights continue to invigorate me daily. She's been a mentor and my most inspiring teacher. I'm most attracted to the darker, more menacing, emotionally brutal and often political palette of writers like Harold Pinter, Caryl Churchill, Enda Walsh, Martin McDonagh, Samuel Beckett, Tony Kushner, Bug-era Tracy Letts and friends Mark Schultz, Gary Duggan and Stella Feehily. The richly-drawn, flawed, luscious characters conceived by Tennessee Williams, AIan Ayckbourn, Sharman MacDonald and David Hare and friends like Stephen Belber, Kara Lee Corthron, Roy Williams, Laura Wade, Courtney Baron, Gary Sunshine, Neal Bell, Rebecca Cohen, Stephen Guirgis and Brooke Berman. I'm forgetting dozens of other fabulous people and apologize. I relish watching gifted ensembles at work on good scripts, like the recent Broadway run of the Old Vic's brilliant production of Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests, Annie Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation or Lucy Thurber's Killers And Other Family.

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

A: Avoid journalism as a day job choice. Winter Miller will back me up on this! While it seems to make sense, you're a writer writing, it's draining. It guts you creatively. And the job market is grim. Find a gig that might inspire an angle of your writing that can serve as a catalyst ... or you can forget about at 6p.

Don't be afraid to survive in an unconventional way. Travel as much as you can. Study acting. Actors will teach you about your own writing in ways you've never imagined, but in turn, it's essential to understand their process. Learn what it takes to stand in front of others and do a scene or improvisation, the way words that are not your own feel they tumble from your mouth. Learn to move. Harold Pinter and Shakespeare were actors. That should be reason enough to take a scene study class.

Rewriting is as important as the writing of the first draft. Rip apart and reevaluate. I wasn't pleased with Columbia's playwriting department for many reasons, but I did learn the valuable adage "kill your darlings" from Romulus Linney, who left in my second year. You know that line that you love to death because it's so clever - but it never quite works in the scene? Cut it.

Q: info for reading, please:

A: The reading of Sleeping Rough will be on Monday, November 9th at 7p as part of MCC Theater's Playlabs series at Baruch College, 25th Street between Third and Lex.

http://www.mcctheater.org/literary/playlabs.html

Q: Any other plugs?

A: The Irish Rep's production of O'Neill's Emperor Jones - Ciarán O'Reilly bravely took on a very difficult, controversial play with a sterling cast. I'm very excited about the SITI Company's production of Antigone at Dance Theatre Workshop next week. I've not seen it yet, but I know Liz Duffy Adams Or, at Women's Project, directed by Wendy McClellan, will make me very happy. As well as the spring WP production of Sheila Callaghan's terrific Lascivious Something. Very curious see MCC Theater's import of Alexi Kaye Campbell's The Pride which goes into previews in late January. And the Druid's production of Enda Walsh's New Electric Ballroom which I did a reading of at the Irish Rep back in 2006. If you don't know Enda's writing you must; Disco Pigs at the Traverse in 1997 and the Irish Rep's Bedbound in 2003 were two of the best productions I've ever seen. His manipulation of language is violent, visceral and masterful. He reminds me to try harder.

I Interview Playwrights Part 81: Libby Emmons

Libby Emmons

Hometown:
Grew up in the Boston suburbs, NYC summers and winter breaks, and Philadelphia, PA.

Current Town:
Brooklyn, NY

Q:  You just won the Clubbed Thumb Biennial Commission. Congrats! Please tell me a little about the play you're writing for it.

A:  It's to be a play called Zeropia about Marta, an urban planner, and her trusty assistant Amy. They decide to plant a zero-emissions, zero-carbon footprint utopic eco-town. Alot of things can go wrong with that scenario, and I'm sure they will. Hopefully it will also be funny. Mostly I'm having fun with the research so far.

Q:  What else have you been working on?

A:  I'm working on a short film project with collaborator and friend Jacquetta Szathmari called Malcolm & Margerie, starring David Marcus, Dame Cuchifrita, Jody Christopherson and Greg Zenon. Also working on a play for that I'd like Blue Box to produce, working title Ashling & Enora, and of course Sticky.

Q:  Can you talk a little about Sticky?

A:  Sticky is just about the most fun I've ever had in theater. It's 10 minute bar plays, staged in bars, and music. People seem to really like it too, from artists to audience, so that's pretty gratifying. When David Marcus, husband and collaborator, and I started the project with Dave Scholnick at Bar Noir in Philly in 2000, it was for the sole purpose of doing theater frequently, inexpensively, and with the people we liked to work with, like Amanda Schoonover and Jeremy Chacon. It's still mostly about that, but now there's a hell of alot more people, and we don't have to rehearse in our apartment. Sticky would not exist if it weren't for the artists who keep wanting to do it.

Q:  How did you like MFAing it at good old Columbia?

A:  I liked grad school. I probably wouldn't have gone to Columbia if it hadn't been for the encouragement of Eduardo Machado, who was great to study with. I liked having time off from working full time to write full time, and learned alot. At Columbia I was also able to take courses in producing and management, so that was useful. And I liked my classmates quite a bit.

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

A:  In middle school my dad and step-mom decided I wasn't allowed to write anymore. They had their reasons, and I spent alot of time in my fantasies instead of in my actual life, but among these reasons was that an idle mind is the devil's playground. After that I spent alot of time feeling like a rebel, writing short stories and poems in secret, and when I walked home after dark from my friend's house across the street I always thought the devil was chasing me.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Lately I'm really into theater of immersion, which Sticky is, and which I find really engaging. As an audience member, I'm tired of sitting in my chair and keeping quiet.

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

A:  Write what you want to see, produce your own work, submit everywhere, create and seek out the community of artists you want to work with.

Q:  Any plugs?

A:  Sticky. November 13th & 20th, Bowery Poetry Club, 7 pm. Also live webcast of same at www.bowerypoetry.com. And Stage Blood Is Not Enough, which I have a little play in and is otherwise terrific as well, produced by Junta Juliel and RKP, 2 nights only at The Duplex, October 22 & 29, 9:30 pm