I Interview Playwrights Part 89: Marielle Heller

Marielle Heller

Hometown: Alameda, CA which is in the East Bay Area.

Current Town: New York

Q:  Tell me about your upcoming show, Diary of a Teenage Girl. 

A:  The Diary of a Teenage Girl is a play that I have adapted from the graphic novel by Phoebe Gloeckner.  It's the story of a fifteen year old girl who is growing up in the 70s in San Francisco who is sleeping with her mother's boyfriend.  That's the short answer.  Really to me, it's the most honest coming of age story of a young girl I have ever come across.  It pulls no punches.  It's a look into the mind of a really precocious, really curious teenager, who is exploring her sexuality, and learning about herself through sleeping with her mother's boyfriend.  It's not a black and white story of pedophilia, nor is it a lolita story.  It's looking at a really complicated situation purely from the persective of the fifteen year old girl- through her fifteen year old lens, only further complicated by the time and place in which she lives.  And surprisingly, it's really funny.

Q:  How did you come to adapt this graphic novel?

A:  Well I read the book, which my sister gave me for Christmas, I closed the cover and immediately called the publisher and just babbled something about wanting to make this into a play.  I didn't really know what I was talking about.  And after many months of correspondence with the publisher and eventually Phoebe, who seemed pretty on board, I got patched through to her agents who promptly shut me down.  I got no after no.  It didn't look like this was going to go any further, but one day I realized I wasn't willing to give up on this.  I had never known so surely that I wanted to work on a project before, so I just called the publisher back and told her I wasn't going to take no, I didn't think she had taken me seriously, and I wanted a chance to show her what I wanted to do with the book.  I ended up doing a pretty extensive presentation for her, and eventually got the theatrical rights to the book.  That process took about 10 months.  And from there, I had to actually start writing!

Q:  Is this your first play? What challenges did you find in adapting someone else's work? 

A:  This is my first play, and the project which has gotten me into writing in a real way.  It's been immensely challenging to adapt this book which I so revered (I understand now why people say it's easier to adapt a bad book than a great one).  I felt such loyalty to Phoebe's work, but I had to get over that eventually.  It just wasn't serving the play.  And since then she and I have had great conversations about what adaptation means.  She essentially had to adapt her personal diaries in order to write this novel- condense characters, fudge dates and timelines, etc., and she was the one who actually pointed out to me that I went through a similar process with writing the play.  It's like the story has gone through two major meat grinders and has come out the other side... and it's been especially exciting to see that she still recognizes her story in the play.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I've gotten into writing screenplays.  It's been amazing because Diary kind of came along and swept me up into this new world, and opened up a whole different path to me that I hadn't really considered before.  I have started writing with a partner, Cailin Goldberg-Meehan.  We have one completed screenplay, which is about two nerdy fifteen year old girls (I clearly am working out some long buried issues from my childhood) who are overacheivers, and have never really socialized, who try to turn their social status around in one day, and make out with the boys of their dreams, and everything goes terribly wrong.  It's a funny teen comedy about girls. And we're working on a number of other scripts.  It's been really wonderful. 

Q:  You're an accomplished actor. How has your acting experience informed your playwriting or vice versa? 

A:  I think that everyone who works in the theater is constantly studying story.  And whether it's conscious or not, we are all aware deep down how story functions, and what drives it.  I realized I knew a lot more than I expected about what works and what doesn't, especially about how things sound coming out of actors' mouths, and how dialogue flows and beats need to build.  It was easy for me to imagine myself in the play and consider that I would be the one feeling the pain if the play dragged.  But I feel like really I'm just learning about this whole new craft of writing, and it's a journey that's got a similar timeline to acting: you're never done!  And since writing, I'm sure my perspective as an actor has shifted.  How could it not?  It's probably just made me way more of a wise ass (just kidding... I hope).

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

A:  When I was 12 years old my family went fishing at a trout farm and I fell in.  I remember seeing all of the fish swim away from me in all directions, and feeling them slime up next to me.  I emerged soaking wet and so embarrassed.  My dad, who had recently seen Dancing with Wolves, called me Swims with Trout all summer.  Maybe I've never recovered.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Just when I think I know what type of theater person I am, it changes.  I love theater that tells stories we haven't heard before, that is somewhere really honest and vulnerable even to the point of painful awkwardness.  I love just seeing people really try and really put themselves out there.  I guess the only theater I don't like is lazy theater (you know who you are). 

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

A:  Start writing, or composing or something. It will only help.  It's so difficult to be an artist who has to wait for other people to tell you when you can create.  Find ways to make your own projects, whether by writing them or whatever.  Just don't only spend your time auditioning because it will crush you. 

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

A:  God I have no idea.  Just watch yourself with feedback, monitor it if you can.  Notice when you aren't open enough to it, and when you're too open to it, and constantly check yourself on it.  It's such a fine balance, and can affect everything. 

Q:  Plugs please:

A:  Diary is going to be coming to New York in March to 3LD co-produced by New Georges.  Check out our website: www.Diarytheplay.com and come and see the show!

Below is perhaps the best play trailer I've ever seen.  --Adam




www.thediaryofateenagegirl.com

I Interview Playwrights Part 88: Larry Kunofsky

Larry Kunofsky

Hometown: Far Rockaway, NY

Current Town: New York City. All other East Coast Creative Types are in Brooklyn.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  My latest play, "Social Work (a nightmare)" is a dark, DARK comedy about a social worker named Brenda who works at Bellevue, and this guy she meets on the Internet, Donovan, a romantic narcissist - they meet, hook up, and turn each other's lives into hell. They both kind of medicate themselves through this relationship (don't try this at home), and this changes how Brenda deals with her co-workers and patients, and it leads Donovan, who was never good at paying his bills on time to begin with, to go into debt, get evicted, go crazy, and enter the terrible system that Brenda knows all too well about from work. The play touches upon issues of race, class, sexuality, how love is a kind of madness, anti-depressant medication, and the health care system. I'm casting this play as we speak/write. I need to get back on the DIY self-producing-playwright horse.

Q:  Can you describe the pilot you just wrote?

A:  WILL WORK FOR FOOD is a half-hour comedy set at the Big Apple Crunchy Granola Food Collective. You know the big food co-op in Brooklyn? The famous one? The good one? Crunchy Granola is not that food co-op. Crunchy Granola is the F-Troop, or the Island of Lost Toys, of food co-ops. Magda and Dan, former lovers, share co-manager status at Crunchy Granola. She's the smart one, but he's the one who gets promoted to Manager by the trust fund kid who subsidizes the co-op. Comedy, romantic tension, left-wing smugness, junk food fetishes, Brooklyn-envy, and the spillage of quinoa ensue.

Q:  Can you talk a little bit about your Old Testament cycle?  How many plays are in it?  How many have you written so far?  What prompted you to take on this ambitious project?

A:  My ongoing work-in-progress is called THE GENESIS TAPESTRIES, which is a cycle of plays that riffs on the Book of Genesis. And I think "riff" is the operative word here, since I'm not trying to adapt the Bible. These are original plays based on my own (perhaps idiosyncratic) associations with the source material. These aren't religious plays, nor are they anti-religious plays. These are secular plays that deal with the present absence or the absent presence of God in our lives.

I've written three plays in the cycle so far. One was an Adam & Eve story set in the Great Depression. Another was a Cain & Abel play about a director who murders a playwright as they try to put on a play about the creation of the world. The other one was about Abraham's attempted sacrifice of Isaac, the themes of which bring up a lot of emotion for a lot of people. There will be at least ten plays altogether. I try to stagger out this project between every other play I work on, so I have no idea when I'll finish it. I don't mean to sound all August Wilson-y, but this project could be how I spend the rest of my life.

Obviously, I'm a little bit obsessed with the Old Testament. It's so trippy, dark, strange - oozing with Bad Love. The love that's in the Bible is often SUCH bad love. Really crazy love. Overwhelming, addictive, treacherous love. Everyone in Genesis seems to love either the wrong person, or love the right person in the wrong way. And no one feels that they themselves are loved enough or at all well. And it just seems so arbitrary! Here's a book about the creation of the world, and yet so much in the world is chaos. This one is loved because he's hairy, that one's loved because he's smooth. God loves you more than he loves me, so come over here a second while I introduce this rock to your face, and on and on like a Blues song. And the primary example of Bad Love in all of this is... God. Jealous love. Wrathful love. Mixed-message-sending love. Bi-Polar, bitchy, my-way-or-the-highway love. It's a little intense. The themes of the plays in this cycle are still taking root and growing, but this Bad Love business has a lot to do with it.

So, in answer to your question: No.

I guess I can't really talk a little about this project. I had to say a lot. Sorry.

Q:  How many plays have you written?

A:  Uhmmmm.... I don't want to tell you my Magic Number because it makes me look crazy.

I've only had a few of my plays produced, including, most recently, "A Guy Adrift In The Universe," and "What To Do When You Hate All Your Friends - an anti-social comedy." When people find out how many plays I've written and how few I've had produced, they kind of look at me funny. You know how in Annie Hall, when her fancy family looks at Woody Allen, and he can tell that they're seeing a Hasid with red beard and peyes and everything? It's kind of like that. Except it's not about being a Hasid. Anyway, I've written a lot of plays.

Part of the challenge of writing a new play for me has always been to write something that seems unstageable. Making the impossible possible is what excites me most about theatre. And perhaps that's why my play that requires dozens of live cats onstage, and my play for forty-five actors remain unproduced.

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

A:  One day in fourth grade, I fell on my head after being tackled to the ground (by accident and without malice), and received a pretty serious concussion. I had to wait in the doctor's examining room in my underwear, which that day happened to be Green Lantern Underoos.

One major effect of the concussion was extreme disorientation. The other major effect was that I thought I was The Green Lantern.

I didn't realize I was in a doctor's office, I just knew that I wasn't at my grandmother's house, and assumed that someone was holding my grandmother hostage. I saw myself in the mirror, wearing my Green Lantern Underoos, and I thought, oh, this is my uniform. For I Am The Green Lantern. And I ran out into the waiting room, screaming "Bring my grandmother unto me! For I am The Green Lantern!" And then women and children screamed and ran away from the weird kid in the green underwear.

The amazing thing about believing that you're The Green Lantern while in the throes of a serious concussion is that you remember what it felt like to be The Green Lantern for the rest of your life. Vividly. As if it had been real. I remember looking in the mirror and seeing The Green Lantern. I can feel what it was like to wield my Power Ring, even though no such Power Ring existed. I WAS The Green Lantern!

Writing for the theatre, or performing in theatre, or even watching theatre when it's especially good, is a lot like being The Green Lantern. It is so not real, and yet the realest, most vivid experience you will ever have.

Q:  You are a voracious reader and also a bit of a film geek.  Who are your favorite filmmakers and novelists?  Who are the underrated novelists and filmmakers I don't know but should know?

A:  I'm on a Don Carpenter kick now, trying to read all his books now that I just found out who he is. Hard Rain Falling, just reissued, appears on the surface to be a crime novel, but on a deeper level resembles something that Camus would have written, had Camus been American and not been killed in a car crash. It deals with prison life and being marginalized, but the characters' triumph over despair is more energizing and oddly life-affirming for me than a thousand musicals. I found a rare Don Carpenter interview somewhere online in which he talks about decreasing his vocabulary in training for what was then his next novel. His intention was to leave his language unadorned and unmasked so that the reader would get the emotional meat completely raw. Me For That! I so admire writers like Don DeLillo and Lorrie Moore, whose every sentence has jewels in it, but this other sensibility speaks to what I try to do as a playwright - giving it to you naked.

My status as a major Film Geek is on the wane. You'll still find me at Film Forum, particularly for older, black & white films, but I spend a lot more time reading comic books. When I see movies these days, I think about how comics sound better in my head as I read them than movies do as I watch them. The colors suit my eyes in comics more than the colors in most films do. (It makes me want to leave more room in my plays, to allow the audience more opportunity to be the creators.)  The Graphic Novel, as a form, is now where Film was in this country back in the Seventies. I think everybody should go back to calling them Comic Books, but that could just be my thing.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The kind that breaks you into tiny pieces, but also gives you the hope and desire to pick up the pieces and put yourself back together again.

Some examples of this are "Everything Will Be Different" by Mark Schultz and "Now That's What I Call A Storm" by Ann Marie Healy and "Scarcity" by Lucy Thurber.

Also, plays that suck your brain out with a straw and then give you back enough of your brain to realize that your old brain wasn't working anyway, and that you need to fix your brain. The reigning champion and true master of this kind of work is Wallace Shawn. He should be a verb. As in, "OMG, that play just Wally-ed me!"

Oh! - Here's something else from my weird childhood: I used to have this recurring dream that my uncle chained up my house to his truck and drove away while the house kept breaking into bits. I was always in the house in the dream, really scared, but also laughing at the craziness of it. That's kind of what I look for when I see a play now.

Q:  Are you doing Critical Mass?  Can you explain what that is for those who may not know?

A:  I'm planning on riding along this month, even though it'll probably be too cold for rational people. Critical Mass is a monthly ride/rally (not just in New York, but in lots of major cities) in which bike riders take over the city. In NYC, the ride always starts at Union Square and then takes a different route every time, encompassing the whole of Manhattan and ending up in another borough. I've been on the ride as we've commandeered the Westside Highway, the Brooklyn Bridge (seriously: the whole bridge - nothing but people on bikes!), and Central Park. It is SO MUCH FUN, and you see the city and think of its people in new ways. One of my favorite sensations is to look around after the ride has ended and see only its remnants, when there's a kind of twilight between the dwindling of bikes and the reemergence of regular traffic, as if it were all just a dream. And then I go home and take a long, hot bath.

Critical Mass is so connected with how I think of myself as a playwright and general-dude-around-town in New York City. I've been wondering how to write about it for years. I'll get back to you when I figure out how to get all those bikes onstage.

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

A:  Beckett, when asked why he wrote for the theatre, once said: I Write For The Theatre Because I Hate The Theatre. I thought that was so Bad Ass and Hard Core when I first read it, but seriously: don't be like that. Only do this kind of work for the love of the work itself. Every positive drive that you have for working in the theatre that extends beyond yourself - love, passion, the desire to connect - is the engine. It's also the vehicle. It's also the path. It's also the journey. And it will be the destination.

And another thing, if you don't have a natural inclination towards humility, Fake It 'Til You Make It. Something will genuinely humble you along the way, anyway, so practice humility until you get it right.

Q:  Any plugs?

A:  I'm co-writing - with fellow playwright and dazzling bon vivant Marie Giorda - another TV pilot called "Dylan & Dylan" (think Freaks & Geeks meets Richard Linklater's Slacker). Marie and I are hoping to go out to LA and sell ourselves together. I want Marie to know that there's no one I'd rather write about Jews and Christians growing up in Austin in 1988 with than her. Also, Blair Singer has inspired me to pursue TV work, so kudos and/or blame goes to him.

The upcoming NY stage production I'm most excited about is of a new play called The All-American Genderf*ck Cabaret by Mariah MacCarthy. Look for this play. Seriously. It's going to matter to a lot of people. If you heard it from me first, thank me later.

The best script I've read recently is The Heart In Your Chest, by Kristen Palmer. This play is like an Edward Hopper painting from the future. Any really cool NY downtown theatre company would be so much cooler if they produced this play. Szymkowicz, my respect for you increased exponentially when you married her.

I have, in my day, co-founded two theatre companies, both of which fell apart. This makes me feel like one of those guys who likes being married, but keeps getting divorced. And so my deep and abiding respect goes out to playwrights who have helped run and maintain independent theatre companies devoted, on the one hand, to their own work, and on the other, to the work of a larger community. The two NY-based people/ companies that come to mind are August Schulenberg/Flux Theatre Ensemble and James Comtois/Nosedive Productions. So if I have any true powers of plug, let my plugs help fuel their fire.

A last, quick plug to anyone who has read this whole interview. I went on and on about stuff, right? I don't get interviewed a lot, so I got hyper-stimulated. To those who read it all: You're Terrific.

I Interview Playwrights Part 87: Edith Freni

Edith Freni

Hometown: New York, NY

Current Town: New York, NY, despite numerous desperate attempts to escape over the last year.

Q:  Can you tell me about your show Bottoms Up! at EST?

A:  Sure thing. Bottoms Up! started as a ten minute play that I wrote for a Youngblood Sunday Brunch back in ‘05. The short version was about an unhappy married couple stuck in a lifeboat after their cruise ship sinks. Florencia Lozano and Grant Shaud were in that first incarnation of the play and they made me totally fall in love with the characters so with some prodding from my director, Mark Armstrong, I expanded the short into a full length. The full length takes place on a cruise ship and shows how the couple ends up on that dingy. Kip (Grant’s character) is hoping that a romantic cruise will help reignite the passion in his marriage but his wife, Dee (Flo’s character) is just not having it. She’s on the cruise to get a tan and drink pina coladas and is in total denial that there’s anything wrong with their relationship. Then they meet this older couple, Phil and Loraine, who want to help them out and craziness ensues. It’s the closest I think I’ll ever get to writing a “sex farce.” The play is supposed to be funny so hopefully people will laugh on Sunday.

Q:  What else are you working on?
 

A:  I’m working on a newish draft of my play Total Power Exchange in prep for a reading at New York Theatre Workshop on November 23^rd. I’ve been developing that play for seemingly ever with Victor Maog. It’s about sex slavery and the internet and all sorts of other ghastly things. I’ve also been writing a lot of short fiction lately and I’m busy at work on a TV pilot, which is something new for me. I’m very excited about that.

Q:  Can you talk about 24 Seven Lab and what you do?

A:  Absolutely! The 24Seven Lab is a developmental workshop that I co-run with Sharon Freedman and Sarah Hayon. We’ve been in business since 2004 and we just started our tenth workshop round, which we think is very cool. We try to hold two workshop rounds per year and we bring in four playwrights per round to work on VERY new pieces. A lot of the time, playwrights will come to us with an idea and say, “I don’t know if this is anything but I’d like to give it a shot.” We meet every week for three hours with the writers and a small group of actors and two dramaturges. We’ve been very fortunate to work with some exceptional playwrights like you(!), Zayd Dohrn, Annie Baker, Lucy Thurber, Tom Diggs, Lucas Hnath, Sam Marks and the list goes on and on and on. The fellows this session are Chad Beckim, Melissa Ross, Sam Hunter and Jessica Kahler. We’re starting the grant writing process right now, which is daunting but exciting and we’re expanding our programming constantly. Last year we held our first ever 5-day writing retreat and we’re doing it again this spring. Our website is severely in need of updating but people can feel free to check us out at www.24sevenlab.com.

Q:  I'd love to hear about your boxing.  What do you like about it?  How has it changed you?

A:  For full disclosure, I should mention that I’ve been out of the gym for a little over a year now. I miss boxing all the time and all of my amazing team mates who are still out there kicking ass and taking names. I boxed for about six years with Lee Shabaka’s Team Freeform Women’s Boxing Club. If you’re in the know when it comes to the New York (and national) amateur boxing scene, you know Lee and his girls. I started training with Lee for fitness and it took a while for me to decide I wanted to compete but ultimately, it felt like a natural progression—you start on the bag, then you spar, then you compete. Although most folks are happy to stop with the sparring! I’m naturally pretty competitive and strong of mind and body, but it’s easy to feel tough and invincible when you’re just training—things change when the fight is a reality and you’re standing in that box staring down some chick who’s sole intention is to beat you senseless. I was always really good with the physical stuff, always a very technical fighter but at the end of the day, I wasn’t really out for blood and if you’re not out for blood, you don’t win fights. That’s not to say I didn’t win my share of fights, but I’m not a natural-born killer and ultimately, I didn’t want to get hit anymore. But I am so glad to have had the experience and I will always be proud of what I accomplished. Boxing definitely made me tougher, stronger, and more of a “finisher.” For now though, I’m happy with my regular Bikram yoga practice and have been enjoying the benefits of Bikram Yoga NYC’s workstudy program since last spring.

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

A:  Oh wow. I’m writing all of this sitting at a desk in my childhood bedroom, which my mom is in the process of converting into her office and I’m listening to all the sounds of the neighborhood and realizing that all of my work has probably been informed (to some extent) from growing up on the first floor of a pre-war building on the Upper West Side. I’ve always written and I’ve always wanted to be involved with theatre. It’s just been “it” for me since I was little little. I guess--going off on that a bit--that I will never forget this travelling Shakespeare troupe that used to do shows in the Westside Community Garden on 88^th Street and how they came through once when I was like three or four and did some bizarre Shakespeare mash-up, which included one of their actors stabbing himself repeatedly in the chest with a plunger. I just thought that was the best thing I’d ever seen. Sorta the dictionary definition of “theatricality.”

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?
 

A:  Hmm…refer to previous question! It’s going to sound lame but I like theatre to be not boring. I’m not really into anything that is “subtly beautiful” or “quietly disconcerting.” The last play I saw that made me sit up and think, “Damn, that’s interesting” was Thomas Bradshaw’s “The Bereaved.” And it wasn’t just cuz PCP produced it! When you see a lot of theatre and read a lot of plays and have written a lot of plays and have taught playwriting and have gone to millions of readings and sat through trillions of workshops, at the end of the day you’re just like, “please don’t put me to sleep.”

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

A:  Always be writing. That’s the obvious one. Get jobs that are not theatre-related. Even if you’re one of the lucky few who doesn’t have to work, you should still work. Every experience is an experience to draw on when you write. Also, be cool. Be the kind of person that other people want to work with. There’s a time and place for ego and it’s generally when you’re accepting your Tony, Pulitzer or Oscar. All other times, be humble but don’t be a push-over. Stay true to your voice and vision and don’t let anyone railroad you into make cuts or changes you don’t think serve your play. Oh, and make friends with directors who get you and your work—they will serve you well and be a shoulder to cry on when you’re feeling down about your new play that no theatre will touch.

Q:  Plug for Bottoms Up and any other plugs:
 

A:  Please come see my reading of Bottom’s Up! this Sunday November 8th at EST. 549 West 52^nd Street, 2^nd Floor. It features an all-star cast including Grant Shaud, Florencia Lozano, Peter O’Connor, Erin Darke and Polly Adams and is directed by the awesome Mark Armstrong. For reservations: 212. 247.4982

Also, if you want to learn more about The 24Seven Lab, please email us at literary@24sevenlab.com or check out our weird little website at www.24sevenlab.com. If anyone wants to give us money, they can and should visit our donations page on Fractured Atlas: https://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/contribute/donate/354

I Interview Playwrights Part 86: Tommy Smith

Tommy Smith

Hometown:  Seattle, WA

Current Town:  New York, NY

Q:  You're one of those playwrights that bridges the gap between midtown and downtown theater. Where do you think your sensibilities lie?

A:  I like writing plays, about all kinds of subjects and sometimes the people in them do more aggressive things, and those are the ones that make it downtown.  The midtown ones are the relationship dramas and ones concerning history.  But its nice to have the availability to play at different venues.  Its good to learn how different audiences of different types listen to a play.  And sometimes you're just sad and you have to write a play to bring everyone down to your level. It's harder  to produce those ones, though, because who wants to go out in New York and get infected by someone's fictional sadness?  (About 35 people a night, it turns out.)

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

A:  My dad lit a bonfire in the backyard one day.  This was when you could do stuff like that, just burn things in the back yard.  Bonfires were pretty common.  And I think he was throwing some random things on the fire, and it was getting dark, and he threw this one big can on the fire but didn't realize it was filled with gasoline, or maybe he did, but there was this big explosion -- I was standing up the hill from it and it shook me, the sudden shock of a ball of fire rocketing up into the air, and I can remember my mom screaming at my dad because she thought there was shrapnel from the explosion but he was okay.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like stuff that makes you realize you're *there*.  Richard Foreman's "Idiot Savant" and Taylor Mac's "The Lily's Revenge" are two shows that I've seen recently that really pull you into their worlds.  I'm a fan of the Beckett, of course, and Pinter.  I was going to rattle off all the theatre that I *don't* like, but someone else out there probably likes musical theater or political dramas so I won't say anything.  Against my better judgment (and monetary status) I find myself drawn towards weirder material, confusing narratives, plays that don't work.  I love watching plays or films that fail because you learn more from them.  And there will always be *one* thing that you end up taking/stealing from the experience.

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

A:  You might as well keep writing what you like because the pay scale is going to stay the same.  You know that weird feeling you get when you know you're writing something that you don't want to write?  Listen to that.  And writing a play is a really easy way to tell everyone your secrets disguised as characters talking, so take advantage of that too.  Also, everyone likes songs, so be sure to put a lot of those in your plays.  Try not to write with stage directions and see where that gets you.

Q:  Any plugs?

A:  Well I have a couple things coming up.  My short play STRIP is being presented at Sticky (the plays-in-a-bar thing) on Nov. 13 at the Bowery Poetry Club @ 8:00p, starring Beth Hoyt and directed by Kip Fagan.  I'm co-creating and directing DUTCH A/V with Reggie Watts for IRT Theater, Nov. 27-Dec. 2 @ 8:00p.  I'm working on my play THE WIFE at Lark Theatre with May Adrales and we're presenting a workshop Dec. 10 & 11 @ 7:00p.  And if you're in Seattle at the end of January, I'm workshopping my play SEXTET with Washington Ensemble Theater, directed by Roger Bennington. I have all this and other stuff (including full texts of my plays) at http://smithsmith.wordpress.com/.

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