I Interview Playwrights Part 91: Rajiv Joseph

Rajiv Joseph

Hometown: Cleveland, Ohio

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I tend to work on a few things at once. I’m working on one play about sports book gambling, another one about gangsters in New Delhi, and then a couple other plays that, at this point, are too soft and unformed to describe in any coherent way.

Q: You are one of the writers who won the Whiting award this year. Congrats! Can you tell me about that?

A: A huge honor, and totally crazy. I actually had never even heard of the award before, and I got a call telling me I’d won it. I thought it was some friends messing with me. Basically someone nominates you for it, and you don’t even know it until you win. It’s an incredible award that will literally buy me more time to write.

Q: Can you tell me about your play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo?

A: It started out as a 10 minute play that I wrote at NYU and that nobody really liked, so it sat in my desk drawer for 2 years. Then I brought it to the Lark Playwrights Workshop and spent the next 3 years developing it through the Lark, which got it to a point where Center Theatre Group in LA wanted to to do it at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. They’re now going to remount it at the Mark Taper Forum in April.

The play takes place in Bahdad during the war. But it also takes place in a ghost world that is wedged into that reality. The ghost of a Bengal tiger roams the streets looking for God, a dead Marine haunts his best friend, and the ghost of Uday Hussein torments his former gardener. So it’s a ghost story, and a war story, and a story about translation and topiary and gold-plated weapons and lepers. I had the great fortune to have Moisés Kaufman direct the play. And we had this genius, brilliant cast.

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

A: Seth is the LeBron James of agents. He’s got a wicked handle, he sees the court like no one else, he will kill you from downtown, or he will post up and overpower you inside. Sometimes I have nightmares about him. He is that awesome.

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

A: I liked to play in the mud.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I guess I want a play to take me into a dream state. I’m excited by any theatre that does that, and that doesn’t wake me until the end.

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

A: I struggle when I try to write what I think a “play” is supposed to be. So my advice is, just write what you think would be cool. And go easy on the stage directions.

I Interview Playwrights Part 90: Carly Mensch

Carly Mensch

Hometown:  Harrison, New York.

Current Town:  NYC, Hell's Kitchen.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I just finished two new plays. The first, Oblivion, is about moral relativism Or rather, how we teach ourselves single-entendre principles in a morally relative universe. The play starts with a lie - a high school teenager lies to her parents - and quickly expands into larger questions of belief and guidance (where we go to for answers to big questions). The play is also about Pauline Kael, former New Yorker film critic, and how young artists can worship older artists almost religiously. It's also quite simply about a family. How this one lie pokes a crack in the life of a seemingly put-together liberal family. In general, I'm obsessed with questions of generational differences. How one generation is different from the last, how certain sensibilities and world-views get passed down or replaced, how parents teach their children and vice versa.

The second play I wrote with a specific space in mind - Ars Nova. For those who don't know Ars Nova, it's a sort of old-school vaudeville cabaret theater. Red velvet curtains, bar in the back, very intimate. I wanted to write a two-person play that used the performative aspect of the space and I came up with the idea of historical reenactments, turning the theater into a sort of museum. I'm deeply amused and intrigued by historical reenactments - this idea that if you put on a costume and talk in a hokey accent that history becomes present-tense. I based the museum on one of my favorite museums in New York - the Lower East Side Tenement Museum - so I could explore issues of immigration and personal reinvention. There's also a love story and a bunch of philosophical smack-downs about why we study history and how our generation is culturally bankrupt. I won't say any more.

Q:  You're going to head to LA soon to write for Weeds. Are you excited? What kind of car are you going to buy? What are you scared of and what are you looking forward to about LA?

A:  Yeah, they hired a scrappy kid to write for a sexy drug-dealing mom, go figure. I'm very excited. I really like the show and the questions they're investigating - moral gray areas, modern parenting, what's up with the whole Mexican drug scene. I'm also really excited about writing as part of a team, getting to see how other people think through plot and character. I don't have a car yet. I don't even know how one procures a car - I should probably look into that. In terms of what I'm afraid of, I'm scared of losing theater. The theater community is so geographically specific - once you leave New York, it just sort of disappears, or rather, you disappear from it.

In general though, I think TV is up to really good things right now. A lot of shows are taking on socially relevant stories in artful and deeply entertaining ways. Most importantly, they're finding their audiences. Theater can learn a lot from TV instead of just carping about its seductive qualities. I think we owe it to ourselves as storytellers to figure out where our audiences are going and why and to reevaluate what's specifically theatrical, what absolutely positively has to be on a stage and not anywhere else. Everyone says that, but still people keep writing psychological dramas that would be better off on a screen.

David Foster Wallace wrote an amazing essay about TV called "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction." I urge everyone to check it out.

Q:  You worked in the lit offices of Playwrights Horizons for quite a while. How did that inform your playwriting?

A:  Working in a lit office, you realize literary managers aren't evil gate-keepers hellbent on quashing the hopes and dreams of aspiring playwrights via form letters. They're smart, thoughtful, caring people who spend countless hours reading scripts and doling out free dramaturgical advice. I found it very encouraging to learn that when a play gets read by a theater, it really gets read. A human being takes the time to grapple with it and figure out what the playwright is trying to accomplish. Not only, but working at a theater you learn that rejection isn't personal. A lot goes into curating a season; it's not simply "we like this play, we like this play, we don't like this..." which is often how the process appears from the other side.

At the same time, the job arms you with a descriptive vocabulary that can be detrimental to the creative side of your brain. You get very good at slotting plays into categories ("a talky, schematic issue play" "a self-consciously, meta-theatrical slim satire"). I found myself censuring myself before even trying out an idea. So it's an amazingly gratifying job and a great place to learn how to read a play, but as a playwright, you can't spend too much time in that position.

Q:  Can you tell me what it was like to have a play in Humana? Had you been to Humana prior to that or was it your first time there?

A:  Every playwright should go to Humana. Apply a million times until you get in. It's such a nurturing and empowering place to do theater; they treat writers like rockstars. I went there at 24 with my first play - I had never had a production before, never been to the festival - and they put my play on the mainstage in a 600-seat theater with a balcony. Sean Daniels, the director, turned our rehearsal space into a sort of kiddie romper room of experimentation; I ended up rewriting the ending about ten times. The script was definitely flawed, but the production made up for it in heart I think.

There's also something to be said for theater festivals. The energy, the variety, the drinking. It reminds you that your play isn't the only play that exists, that it's part of a larger thing called Theater. I saw the Civilians' show, Beautiful City, maybe five times. I saw Gina Gionfriddo's show twice.

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

A:  For most of my childhood I was convinced I never actually went to sleep. That I was the only person on the planet who didn't partake in this basic human activity. One day my parents showed me a picture of myself sleeping in the backseat of our car. It was pretty enlightening.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I'm really into theater collectives right now. Experimental companies taking on big, messy ideas with singular visions. Elevator Repair Service. The T.E.A.M. The National Theater of the United States of America. The Civilians. I just saw Sleep No More by the British theater company Punchdrunk, which was an experience. I'm convinced that the future success of theater lies in groups of people, not individuals. They're able to circumvent the slog of the development process and create theater on their own terms. They're also coming up with the some of the most gutsy and powerful material right now, not to mention work that is visually arresting and super fun to watch.

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

A:  Be ambitious - aim high, overshoot, mess up, try again. Theater needs bold storytellers right now. We need thoughtful people taking on big questions. With every bad play that gets produced, theater dies a little. We become a little more irrelevant. So be hard on yourself. Write every play like it's your last. If you're writing about five loafers on a couch, throw it out. Look outside yourself. Ask questions. Write the conversations you want to be having with society at large. Think visually, not just about words on a page. Think about the audience. Entertain them, respect them, challenge them. Don't write a play you know has already been written. Read a million books. Go on crazy adventures. Take strange jobs. Fall in love with older writers and then try to write better than them. Fall in love with theater and then write a play that redefines what theater is.

Q:  Any plugs?

A:  Rent a car this winter and go see Elevator Repair's Gatz at A.R.T. - see the marathon six hour version, don't split it up. I saw Gatz last year in Troy, New York and it was the single-most thrilling piece of theater I have ever seen.

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/.