I Interview Playwrights Part 142: Emily Schwend

Emily Schwend

Hometown: I had a nomadic childhood, but: Dallas, Texas, more or less.

Current Town: Brooklyn

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I'm working on a new play that takes place in Carthage, MO.  It's my third Carthage play (the other two are CARTHAGE and SOUTH OF SETTLING).  Maybe it'll be the last one?  I've sort of fallen in love with the place -- or maybe now it's just the idea of the place since it's been a couple years since I was there.  I've also become dependent on the cast of characters I have living in Carthage who pop in and out of each of these different plays.

I just wrote a thriller play, which was a lot of fun to do.

I'm also writing a zombie flick because, well, because I love zombies.  And zombie movies, although my script is hyper-naturalistic and sincere and lacks the slightest shred of camp.

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

A:  All right, this story:

When I was eight years old, my family and I were living thirty minutes outside of London and my parents took me to see my first show -- Cats.  Which I loved, by the way, because the target audience for Cats is eight year old girls.  I mean, come on, it is a musical about cats -- that's eight year old girl crack.

So I saw Cats and then I went home and I wrote a very derivative play called "Mia and the Tiger," which my 2nd grade class put it on after school a few weeks later.  But the thing is, I had never seen a proper play before so I called it "a musical but without music!" and I totally thought I had invented a brand new thing.  Like, I thought I had invented playwriting.  You're welcome, writers.  

Then, of course, my world broadened beyond the size of a, well, a very small world, and I was shocked to learn that someone else had thought of it first.

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A:  Well, I've been waiting for that revival of Cats for a decade or so, now.  That's a joke, but I obviously will go and see it when it happens.  

I guess my real answer would fall somewhere between people being able to afford to have a career in theater and people being able to afford to see theater.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Most plays that are produced well and with a lot of heart can win me over.  I'm getting a little tired of the culture of super-hip, detached irony that crops up in some new plays (and movies and books and music, etc. etc.).  I guess I like stuff that isn't afraid to be brazenly sincere or heartwarming or sad.  Is that too square?  A friend of mine always says she waits for that "punch-to-the-gut" moment when she sees (or reads) a play.  So I guess I like theater that... punches me in the gut.

Q:  You're in Interstate 73.  Can you tell me about that?

A:  I joined Interstate 73 -- Page 73's writers group -- this year, which has been immensely helpful in my first "transitioning into the real world" year out of school (I was an undergrad at Tisch until 2007, and I graduated from Juilliard last year).  Also, P73, in general, is pretty awesome.  They have an annual fellowship that's pretty incredible, they produce new plays that haven't been workshopped to death, and Asher and Liz are both true supporters of new work.  You should definitely get to know them if you're an emerging writer.

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

A:  Appreciate and support your writer-friends.  They will probably be your biggest champions, your cheapest therapists and your most readily available drinking buddies.  Also, writers in general, or at least the writers I know and love, are such weird, funny, strange, and brilliant people.  Find these people and stick to them like glue.

And get a day job that you actually like.  It's possible, I swear, and will immensely improve your financial, mental and emotional stability.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Page 73 is doing a reading of CARTHAGE next Monday (4/12), that the brilliant Davis McCallum is directing.  7pm.  311 W. 43rd St. 8th floor.

This spring, Page 73 is also producing my friend Sam Hunter's wonderful, strange play, JACK'S PRECIOUS MOMENT.  His play *also* takes place in Carthage, MO.  We are putting that town on the map, you guys.  

Here's a link for P73 goodness.

Finally -- and this is just totally rad -- Christine Jones does this amazing micro-theater project called Theatre for One.  She has a ten-day Times Square residency this May, where her T41 booth will be set up and (I'm guessing) hundreds of one-on-one performances will take place.  I've written a couple pieces for her in the past, but experiencing it as an audience member is a real trip.

I Interview Playwrights Part 141: Courtney Baron

Courtney Baron

Hometown: Dallas, TX

Current Town: Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about the play you're having read at Primary Stages soon.

A:  Broken Heart Syndrome. Four years ago, I read an article about this syndrome, essentially it is heart attack symptoms brought on by an extreme stressor, often linked to the death of a loved one. After days of emotional stress and the constant surge of stress-related hormones can impair the heart’s ability to pump. The play is about two characters who experience very different kinds of heart break and their unlikely connection. I am a sucker for a mind/body medical condition.

Q:  What else are you up to?

A:  I’m working on a couple of screenplays, pitching TV and looking for someone who wants to workshop my play with music (songs by the supremely talented Juliana Nash) about four soldiers on leave from Iraq... Anyone?

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

A:  When I was seven or eight, there was a news blitz in Dallas about random kidnappings. I don’t know if there was actually more than one incident, but all over the news were warnings about kids being snatched. I started carrying a steak knife with me when I walked to friends houses in my neighborhood. I would try to conceal the knife up my sleeve and then hide it outside the neighbor kid’s front door before going in. The news mentioned a van, so every time a van would pass by I would immediately walk to the front door of whatever house I was passing along my path. I remember clearly that I wasn’t just afraid of some kind of nonspecific evil, I had created very specific identities for these potential kidnappers. What kind of clothes they wore, what kind of families they came from, why they wanted a kid so badly (I was only 7 or 8 so my reasons were much more about loneliness, than perversion), what they ate for dinner. I had very complete pictures and I think that’s why I was so afraid. They weren’t monsters, they were real people. And now, I think every play I’ve written was born out of reading an article or seeing a news story and then creating these specific profiles of the people who are involved. And certainly this story explains why I write the way I do and also why I can watch marathons of Law and Order: SVU.

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A:  I feel like a lot of people I know classify going to theater, going to the movies and watching tv as similar experiences. I wish that people would say: “I have to go to theater because the experience I have in the live theater is unlike any other experience I can have anywhere else and it is exhilarating.” I think about this every time I sit down to write, and while I have far from come up with a way to make the plays I write exclusively theatrical, I think it’s important to keep trying. If people were excited to go and experience a story in a way that was completely different from the way they experience a story when they watch a movie, I think they’d go to the theater more. I also think it needs to be cheaper, but that’s a whole different problem.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  If I cry in the theater, I’m thrilled. And I like to be surprised, whether it is simply about a really believable of a love scene (which I think is one of the hardest things to stage, and I don’t just mean sex) or witnessing some spectacular Robert Wilson’esque stage picture or watching one of Lucy Thurber’s plays and feeling like what is happening on stage is actually dangerous. The surprise of something on stage feeling true or beautiful in a way I never imagined.

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

A:  Read and see as many plays as you can. I’m a little obsessive, so if I find a playwright I like, I read their whole body of work immediately. But I’ll tell you there is something amazing about seeing how a playwright works his craft in different ways from play to play, like reading all of Strindberg or Caryl Churchill or all of Sarah Kane’s plays-- amazing. And you have to be nice to everyone you work with, theater is collaborative, if you can’t play nice: write a novel (although then you have to play nice with your editor, but you get my point.)

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Well, of course, the Primary Stages reading series of course, you can find info about my reading on April 20 at 4p at 59E59 Theaters and the readings of my very talented cohorts: David Caudle, Darren Canady, Tommy Smith, Adam Szymkowicz, Alex Beech and Bekah Brunstetter at www.primarystages.org. Brooke Berman has a memoir coming out called NO PLACE LIKE HOME. I haven’t seen it, but I bet Annie Baker’s new play THE ALIENS at Rattlestick will be great. And I’m pretty excited to see Michael Greif’s production of A WINTER’S TALE this summer in the park.

I Interview Playwrights Part 140: Craig "muMs" Grant

Craig "muMs" Grant

Hometown: Bronx, NYC

Current Town: various couches between NYC and LA.

Q:  Tell me about the play you have coming up with LAB.

A:  The play is entitled Paradox of the Urban Cliche. I titled it first. Haha... I love words and putting them together so that they just sound good coming out of my mouth. It is what i love about being a rapper. Words. Language. And everything I can create with them. To be able to move the crowd. So wait, where was I? Oh my play, Paradox, yes... It is an urban No Exit basically. I am a very amateurish admirer of philosophy, particularly existentialism. It started a long time ago in catholic school and when my mother had me in church 4 days a week. Everybody seemed to just be going through the tradition motions. But that's a longer story. Paradox is born from two poems I had written some years ago. One called, In the Last Car Can't... and another called Now and Later. Sarte's existential question about essence as opposed to existence and which came first also looms over the play. Sometimes I look at paradox and I wonder if I may be trying to do too much with it since it is my first play. Is the rapper in me paying too much attention to form? Is the existentialist in me too young in his study to really answer the questions I'm posing in the play? WTF? I guess we'll see.

Q:  What else are you up to?

A:  Well, Im so ready to script lock Paradox so I can get to work on my next play, Playing the Rags. At least i think thats what I'm calling it. I've got a screenplay I'd like to get underway, a graphic novel, Vengeance of the Confident Cockroach and a memoir at some point. But before all that writing I'm contemplating doing some recording. I've got an unusual idea for a niche hip hop album and I think I'm going to do it. Hehe...

Q:  How do you find your acting informs your playwriting and vice-versa?

A:  I am a very impatient writer I think now when it comes to working with the actors. I know exactly what I want. I tend to over write their action and even structure the sentences so that the actors can't say it any other way but the way I want them to say it. It annoys the hell out of my director. I am, because of writing my first full length play, a much better actor. I appreciate the moments a lot better and can see the entire canvas of a script much clearer now.

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

A:  I remember being in Sunday school at about 7 or 8 and listening to the story of the garden of Eden. The teacher told us that if Adam hadn't eaten of the apple of the tree of knowlege we would be living in paradise. I got very emotional about that. I thought just because he ate the apple we were all doomed to suffering and having to make hard choices in our lives. I remember crying uncontrollably. My mother asked me what was wrong when she was taking me home. I told her and I don't really remember what was said but she dismissed me and my reasoning for being so upset. That is the type of writer I am. I believe.

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A:  I'd figure out a way to make a monlogue just as exciting and mind numbing as an explosion or a pair of boobies on a movie screen. Also I'd lower ticket prices. Wait, nah....

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like to go to the theater and watch a play that pushes the evelope. It tackles the topics no one wants to discuss. I hate revivals. I am very much a futurist and want to see theater remake itself for the 21st century.

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

A:  Write. Oh and go to a Tennessee Williams festival. and read. Everything.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Check out my blog: gorealer.blogspot.com
And come see Paradox of the Urban Cliche in rep with Greg Keller's Dutch Masters at the Cherry Pit, 155 Bank street. NYC running May 14th- 30th. Oh yeah...

I Interview Playwrights Part 139: Amy Herzog

Amy Herzog

Hometown:  Highland Park, NJ

Current Town:  Park Slope

Q: Tell me about the play reading you have coming up at Soho Rep.

A: The play is called 4000 Miles. It’s about a young man who stays with his grandmother in Greenwich Village for a few weeks following a crisis. She’s an old communist, he’s a belated hippie, and they’re both dealing with grief and figuring out how to be roommates. It’s my second play about this character Vera, an old New York lefty based on my grandmother, Leepee. Leepee is funny, dry, sassy, and devastating at ninety-three. I try to do her justice. My director is Pirronne Yousefzadeh, and we’re on our way to a wonderful cast.

Q: What else are you up to?

A:  The other Vera play, After the Revolution, is going up this summer at Williamstown and next fall at Playwrights Horizons. The play is about three generations of leftists, inspired by my dad’s side of the family. It takes place in 1999, which was a time that for various reasons the American Left was being asked to do some self-examination, and it was a really tough time for my family. My grandfather had recently died after a long illness and some questions were popping up – quite publicly – about his past. I didn’t fully understand what was happening at the time, but I was aware of this pervasive sadness and disappointment that was partly about disagreements within the family but also about what had happened to the Left since my grandparents were young and sure that the revolution was on its way.

Carolyn Cantor is directing both productions.

In other news, I’m performing my solo show, Love Song in Two Voices, at the Emerging America Festival at the Huntington in May. Portia Krieger is directing and teaching me how to act. That one’s about my mom. Because fair is fair.

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

A:  Oh dear. I can tell just by reading that question that I will write something I regret is on the internet in ten years…

Well, what the hell, this was third grade and my class was doing a zoology unit. Our assistant teacher, Mr. Hogan, announced that we would create a play in which every student would play a different animal. But get this: there would be one human. A young woman decides to become a zoologist and the plot is born. Those of us with acting aspirations auditioned for Mrs. Lefelt, the English department chair. The sides were from a dramatic adaptation of Rumpelstilstkin, and as I remember it was a very emotional scene. We were whittled down to two – it was me versus Alexis for the lead. Alexis would later be Lucy to my Sally, Ms. Hannigan to my Annie, the Witch to my Little Red. Oh, Alexis, where are you now? I am delaying the painful revelation that Mrs. Lefelt ultimately chose Alexis to play the human. I was to be one of twenty-five representatives of the animal kingdom. I would have to make a costume out of construction paper and tell Alexis about the salient features of my species. This would not do. I approached Mr. Hogan and offered to write the play, and because it meant he didn’t have to or because I was obviously going to be a pain in the ass about it he agreed. In my rendering of the story we had outlined as a class, there was one important addition: the protagonist had a sister –the sensible, buttoned-up foil to Alexis’s impractical dreamer. I remember one of my lines, which I wrote for myself all in caps: “THIS TIME YOU’VE REALLY GONE OFF THE DEEP END!!!” If anyone resented my flagrant hijacking of the collaborative process, no one said anything to my face.

That is the story of my first play.

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A:  I would just make it way way cheaper, that’s all.

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

A:  Be patient. Be happy for your friends and colleagues. Avoid reading theater news; read novels instead.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I’m so excited for Annie Baker’s new play at the Rattlestick. It’s called The Aliens and it’s really wonderful. www.rattlestick.org

I Interview Playwrights Part 138: Stacey Luftig

Stacey Luftig

Hometown: Metuchen, NJ

Current Town: New York, NY

Q:  Tell me about your operetta that's being workshopped soon.

A:  Actually, it’s not a workshop—we're getting a full production in Portland, Oregon, with a 35-piece orchestra! Story of an Hour is based on a short story by 19th century writer Kate Chopin, who is probably best known for her novel The Awakening. I wrote the libretto and Michael Valenti composed the score.

I'm so happy Michael asked me to work on this project. His music is lush, and the story is both stark and subtle. Josephine must tell Louise, her sister, that Louise's husband has died in a train crash. When she hears this, Louise goes through a surprising emotional transformation—an awakening, really—that ends in a shocking way.

Chopin’s tale is just three pages long, so we expanded it by developing the relationship between the sisters. We also created a specific time and setting. That's because the operetta, while it stands alone, is also part of a three-act evening called A Christmas Trilogy, and each act takes place on Christmas eve, in the same mansion in Bath, England. Act I is an opera set in the 1700s, with a libretto adapted by Michael from a 17th-century play. Act II—our piece—is an operetta set in the 1800s. And Act III, set in the 1900s, is a musical comedy, with book and lyrics by Joe DiPietro, and music, of course, by Michael. So it's one set, four actors, three centuries, three styles of music theater.

Q:  How is writing a musical or opera different from writing a straight play as it relates to your working process?

A:  As a playwright, I'm completely in charge. Which is great…and kind of scary. But having a collaborator means having a co-creator, critic, and cheerleader right there with me during the dreamy, vulnerable parts of the process that as a playwright I have to face alone. Plus, it means I have someone else who’s as jazzed about the project as I am, someone to please, someone to argue with. All very useful.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I'm writing lyrics to an original musical set in Ghana. This time I have two collaborators—Jennie Redling is writing book, and Phillip Palmer is composing the music. Jennie lives nearby, but Phillip is now living in South Africa. So that means lots of MIDI files, PDFs, and Skype instead of sitting in front of a baby grand and turning the pages. The story is about a 16-year-old girl from a small village who wants to become a teacher, and it involves sexual slavery and AIDS. Which may sound a little depressing. Yet the show is actually high energy, filled with joy and humor, not to mention great music and a powerful story. I’m excited to be immersing myself in a culture and in rhythms so different from my own.

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 dad wrote for television and theater. He loved what he did. That alone was influential. When I was twelve, Dad was writing, directing, and producing a kids' program for NBC called The Everything Show. He asked my sister and me to read his scripts and tell him what we thought. (He paid us a dollar a week for the privilege, too.) He said to us, "My friends will tell me, 'Sure Don, great, it's great.' I count on my family to tell me the truth."

I took this responsibility very seriously. I saw my ideas and suggestions make their way to the show—my ideas, on TV! After that, I always assumed I'd end up living in New York, writing scripts. Recently, I had two scripts of my own produced for a kids’ TV show. I wish Dad could have seen them.

And when someone asks me to edit his or her script, I still see it as an honor.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Almost anything if it's done really well. One of my all-time favorite pieces is Love's Fowl, which is an opera for adults about Chicken Little, sung in Italian, with subtitles, and performed entirely with tiny puppets built on top of clothespins. It's hilarious, and oddly moving. I also love intense, spare productions of classics, like David Cromer's take on Our Town. Then again, big, bold, stylized theater with huge production values—like the opening sequence of The Lion King—well, that just sends me. Stop me now—I could go on and on.

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

A:  If you're not already an actor, take an acting class. See and read every kind of theater you can, even if you think it's not a style that interests you. Find a good playwriting teacher. Finally, allow yourself to write terrible first drafts. You can always fix them. And they may not be so terrible after all.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Story of an Hour, music by Michael Valenti, premieres May 22 in Portland, Oregon: http://portlandchamberorchestra.org/wordpress/buy-tickets/american-feast.

Understood Betsy, a family musical, with music by Mary Feinsinger and additional music by Robert Elhai, opens July 9 in Columbia, Missouri.

I Interview Playwrights Part 137: Vincent Delaney

Vincent Delaney

Hometown: Minneapolis

Current Town: Seattle

Q:  You got a couple things coming up in New York this summer. Can you tell me about Ampersand and T or C?

A:  Both plays were spawned by relationship terror. Ampersand is a comedy about husbands and wives cloning each other. It’s a three hander, so a fun workout for actors, playing multiple versions of themselves.

The style is brutal farce, with more than a touch of Feydeau: fast pace, surprises, mistaken identity, lots of humiliation and quick exits.

I’d say the play asks two questions: how far will we go to be married? And if I sleep with your clone, is it really cheating?

T or C is stylistically at the opposite end of the spectrum, but is also based in terror. It’s about the parents of a school shooter, meeting up in the New Mexico desert a year after the crime. Sheridan wants to hide, his wife Jane tracks him down.

The third character is Soledad, a local teen who’s a gifted poker player, in every sense of the word. Her relationship with Sheridan ends up being wickedly undefined but also funny.

This play asks, can we ever really know our children? And if not, what does that make us?

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  Working on two more comedies. One is called Three Screams, about the people who keep inexplicably stealing Edvard Munch’s Scream. It’s about obsession, jealousy, and artists.

The other is about a playwright who fakes his own death in order to finally get produced, then works incognito as a stage hand on the production. He has to watch as everything gets rewritten, and he can’t step in. When the rewritten play is a big hit, I think he kills himself for real. Not sure about that ending yet.

Q:  If I came to Seattle tomorrow, what shows or companies would you suggest I check out?

A:  Most exciting theatre in Seattle is happening at Seattle Public Theatre and New Century Theatre Company. Two nimble, lean companies that are all about the actors and the text.

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A:  Take the money out of the equation. Regionals should do five times as many plays each season, run each one for two weeks maximum, and build a community to rival film and television. I have no idea how that could happen.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Danger and complexity. Characters that can’t be summed up. Scripts that point us in odd directions and make no effort to offer solutions. Breathless poetry that is never about itself, but keeps rushing forward. Small spaces where the seats feel like they’re part of the set.

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

A: Always assume the audience is smarter than you are. Leave a play for a month and come back to it. Have some really physical hobbies.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  In addition to NCTC and Seattle Public, I adore the Workhaus Collective in Minneapolis, the Virtual Theatre Project, and Florida Stage. These companies exist for plays and playwrights.

Exciting new directors: Hayley Finn, Makaela Pollock, Meredith McDonough.

Exciting established directors: Lou Tyrell, Rita Giomi, Joel Sass, Ben McGovern.

If you need a dramaturg: Liz Engelman, Sarah Slight, Polly Carl.

Smart actors who love new plays: Sally Wingert, Josh Foldy, MJ Siebert, Sarah Malkin.