I Interview Playwrights Part 148: Beau Willimon

Beau Willimon

Hometown:  St. Louis, MO

Current Town:  Brooklyn, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m currently working on two new plays – one that will have a production this fall here in New York, and another that’s a commission for MTC. One of my older plays – LOWER NINTH – is having its UK premiere this fall in London in a Donmar Warehouse production, so I’ll be gearing up for casting and rehearsals soon on that. In terms of film, I’m working on screenplay for Summit Entertainment to star Sam Worthington (AVATAR). TV-wise I just completed a treatment for a new pilot that I’ve been hired to write, and I hope to finish that by the end of the summer. So I’ve got my hands full at the moment!

Q:  You're one of those people who has lived many lives. It seems like every time I sit down with you I find out something new about you. Apart from being a writer, you used to be a pool shark, you used to fly planes, you worked for Howard Dean and wrote at least one speech for Bill Clinton, you went to South Africa on a visual arts fellowship, you curated a festival of Iranian films. How does one person do all these things? What is the obsession you have that I don't know about?

A:  Well you make my life sound a lot more exciting than it actually is. When you condense all those things in a short list it must seem like I’m doing anything and everything but writing plays! But most days I’m alone in my apartment with my cat trying to punch out pages, although I’m usually more successful procrastinating with online Scrabble or Risk.

As for obsessions you might not know about, I guess one of my biggest is maps, and that stems from my love for travel. I own dozens of maps and map-books, and can’t get enough of them. I like to track all the places I’ve been, but I’m more interested in all the places I have yet to explore. One of my favorite forms of travel is good old walking. That started about a dozen years ago when I trekked the Dingle Peninsula and Northeast Coast of Ireland on foot. I fell in love with the solitariness of it, and the way you really absorb your surroundings in a very intimate way. I’ve been doing similar treks ever since.

When I first moved to Brooklyn eight years ago I realized I knew very little about the borough, so I consulted my maps and began organizing walking tours for myself. Over the course of a summer I hit all 80-odd neighborhoods in Brooklyn and have since started branching out into the other three outer-boroughs. And this summer I plan to walk 100 miles through New York over the course of five days – 20 miles in each borough – literally walking from Manhattan to Staten Island on foot. I’ll have to get special permission to walk across the Verrazano Bridge (which has no public walkways), but I’m working on that so keeps your fingers crossed.

Last September I completed an 85- mile coast to coast trek along Hadrian’s Wall in northern England. There was something that attracted me to the idea of following this ancient wall from end to end and seeing where it took me. My ultimate plan (and it may take me 20 years to do it) is to traverse the length of many of the world’s famous (and not-so-famous) walls. Some of these I won’t be able to do on foot because of their length, but among those I’ve singled out are the Gorgon Wall (Iran), Trajan’s Wall (Romania, Moldavia, Ukraine), The Great Wall of China, The U.S.-Mexico Border Wall, the DMZ between North and South Korea, the former course of the Berlin Wall, and Morocco’s long military ramparts in the Sahara. Anyway…as you can see I’m clearly obsessed haha.

Q:  As someone who has successfully written both for the stage and the big screen do you have any tips for a playwright trying to write a screenplay?

A:  Every writer has his or her unique process, but for a screenplay I personally think outlining in advance is extremely useful. With a play you’re rarely dealing with more than ten to twenty scenes, so the structure is more manageable. But with a movie you may have well over a hundred scenes and that can be a bit daunting. Even a very rough outline of the major beats can help keep the structure from getting out of control.

Another thing to keep in mind is that movies (in most cases) are primarily visual, as opposed to plays, which (in most cases) are dialogue driven. So it’s important to really visualize what’s happening in every scene, what you’re actually seeing in the frame. And you’ll find that much of your story can be told without dialogue at all – the way a character cracks her knuckles, or the glance between two lovers, the silent moments film can capture in more detail than the stage.

My friend and mentor, the legendary screenwriter William Goldman (BUTCH CASSIDY, MARATHON MAN, ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, THE PRINCESS BRIDE, MISERY…the list goes on and on) wrote two amazing books about screenwriting which I recommend to anyone who’s writing a movie for the first time. They’re called ADVENTURES IN THE SCREEN TRADE and WHICH LIE DID I TELL? Goldman recounts his personal experiences on the many movies he’s written while simultaneously providing wonderful advice on the craft of screenwriting. An added plus is that the books are as entertaining as they are useful – wildly funny, and at times quite moving.

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

A:  My Dad was in the Navy until I was ten years old. During my first decade on the planet, my family moved every two or three years. We lived in Washington DC, Hawaii, San Francisco, Philadelphia and eventually settled in St. Louis when my Dad retired from the service. Every move meant an entirely new city, a new school, a new community, new friendships and experiences. It meant constantly adapting and re-inventing myself. This fostered a wanderlust in me (see above) and introduced me to a wide spectrum of people and their stories. It made me deeply curious about the world around me. And I think a strong sense of curiosity is important to any writer. It’s what compels us to tell other people’s stories, not just our own. And it helps us ask questions of ourselves and others are that both difficult and unexpected. It’s what helps us tap into the mysteries which breathe life and magic into the stories we hope to tell.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Every type of theater that’s out there – past, present and future. The old stuff and the stuff that has yet to be invented. Every –ism under the sun and everything that can’t be labeled with an –ism. I find it interesting when playwrights rail against a certain type of theater. You have some people who think “naturalism is dead” or others who think the avant-garde is “pretentious.” You have folks writing manifestos as to what theater should and shouldn’t be. I don’t get it. The more types of theater out there the better. The more voices, the more forms, the more stories – they all keep theater alive and exciting. I’m glad there’s so many playwright out there writing completely different stuff than me and each other. Otherwise theater would be boring and homogeneous. My first experiences at the theater were seeing the big musical road-shows that came through St. Louis – like THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN and BRIGADOON – which I loved. But when I moved to New York I fell in love with the Wooster Group and ended up interning there while they were creating TO YOU, THE BIRDIE. I love that the theater has room for both big musicals and the Wooster Group, that it’s diverse and unpredictable.

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

A:  I think the single most important thing is to find the friends and peers you really believe in, and who really believe in you, and stick together. It’s a tough business and a hard life, and you’ll get strength from those people. Nobody can do it alone. When things are going good for you, help your friends out, and when things are going good for your friends, hopefully they’ll return the favor.

On a practical note – we all know that the economics of playwriting are abysmal. There are very few playwrights, even the most established ones, who can make a living just from writing plays. It’s not impossible, but it’s very difficult. If you need to do a day job, I recommend work that’s easy on the brain and leaves you enough energy for your REAL job, which is writing plays. I’ve done any number of jobs over the years – factory work, bussing tables, detailing cars, teaching SAT prep courses, etc. They didn’t pay great, but none of them drained me to the extent that I couldn’t find time or energy to write. Of course, if you’re lucky enough to get work teaching or writing movies or TV, that’s great – at least you’re being paid to do something somewhat related to your writing. But until those opportunities come along, make sure to protect your headspace and your time.

Todd London, who runs New Dramatists in New York, just published an amazing book on the current state of the theater and the challenges of getting new plays to the stage. I recommend it to all playwrights, not just those starting out. It’s published by TDF and is called OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE, THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE NEW AMERICAN PLAY.

Q: Any plugs?

A;  Yes – I plug Adam Szymkowicz! If you’re reading this blog, then you already know what an amazing thing he’s done in conducting all these playwrights interviews. Take an afternoon and read them all if you haven’t already. It’s one of the most valuable resources on playwriting and the theater that I’ve ever seen, and it will introduce you to a ton of great writers you haven’t heard of yet, as well as giving you terrific insights to writers you might already be familiar with. I also plug Adam as a writer of plays, not just a conductor of interviews. Adam’s plays are wonderful – funny, unique, perceptive, exhilarating – so go see one of the many productions he usually has up somewhere in the country, or order his plays from DPS and read them, or both!

I Interview Playwrights Part 147: Greg Keller

 
Greg Keller

Hometown: Manhattan

Current Town: Brooklyn

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

A:  It's called Dutch Masters. It's a period piece. 1992 is the period. It's inspired by a true story. Something that happened to a friend of mine in high school. It's about two young men that meet on the subway, and shortly into the conversation, one mentions he's sticking people up. And that's just the first 6 pages!

Q:  What else are you up to?

A:  I act too, double-threat style. I'm doing the play K2 by Patrick Meyers at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in June. And I'm writing a new play called The Millers. It's kind of groundbreaking in that it's about a family.

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

A:  I like to think my plays are enjoyable for actors to perform. I also like to think they're enjoyable for audiences to watch, but perhaps you've heard otherwise. (Rimshot!). I mean I know the lessons I should be learning from being an actor. Things like, plays should be playable. What's fun for an actor is getting to do something onstage. Not just say things, but pursue something with language. But instead I like to write talky, inactive scenes and rationalize them by saying the characters are pursuing something internal.

To answer that less stupidly, an impactful experience for me as an actor was while I was a non-speaking waiter and understudy in a Shaw play (You Never Can Tell) when I first got out of undergrad. As an opening night gift, one of the actors got a leather-bound manuscript version of the play, with Shaw's notes and corrections and bad crossed-out jokes rewritten in the margins. This blew my mind. Up until that point I had a tendency to think those canonical works just sort of descended from the heavens. "You can't cross out lines from a Shaw play, that's a Shaw play." It reminded me that Shaw is just a guy named Bernie who wants his play to be funny. And that plays aren't meant to be worshipped, they're meant to be irreverently brought to life. I think in both my writing and acting I hope to eschew a kind of preciousness. As Robert Bresson once said, "Don't run after poetry, it seeps unaided through the joins" (I know two quotes and that is one of them. The other is Marx: "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living")

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

A:  In New York, there are these after-school sports clubs for kids that pick you up in a van and take you to where there's grass. On my van, there were a couple kids, like Josh Shermer and Sebastian, who would talk about having sex with their pillows and giving their stuffed animals blowjobs. We're all about 8 years old, by the way. All I could picture was a hairdryer, and combing out my Leo the Lion's mane. So that night at dinner I asked at the table, "What's a blowjob?" My dad said "Look up 'fellatio' in the dictionary". I excused myself from the table and found the definition. "Oral stimulation of the penis". I came back into the dining room and said, "You mean they talk to it?" I don't know what that means about me as a writer but I think it's a funny story.

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

A:  It would be affordable. Both to do and to see.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I'm pretty peripatetic in my tastes. Sometimes I like theater to excite me, but sometimes I like theater that calms me. I like theater that reveals complexity and makes me feel small and sublimely melancholy, but I also like theater that reflects my understanding of the world, and makes me feel all warm inside. I like laughing and crying and thinking and being surprised. I remember in NTUSA's Chautauqua last year when all of a sudden a 30 person dance number broke out to George Benson's "On Broadway", it made me do all those things at once. I like stuff like that but I also love Harley Granville Barker plays and The Starry Messenger where people sit in chairs and talk for three hours.

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

A:  Read plays. Go see plays. Get involved with a company that put on a play you really like. Chances are you'll share tastes with those people and there will be people there that you'll end up collaborating with in the future. It's very important in this bumpy artistic career to have a supportive home that can sustain and inspire you. It's easy to feel like you're on the outside in this biz, so cultivate a place where you're on the inside.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Go see Dutch Masters at The Cherry Pit. May 14-30. http://www.labtheater.org/onstage/lsdp.html

I Interview Playwrights Part 146: Les Hunter

Les Hunter

Hometown: Tucson, Arizona.

Current Town: Jackson Heights, in Queens, New York.

Q:  Tell me about 167 tongues. How did this collaboration work?

A:  Ari Laura Kreith, our director, wanted to have an open developmental process on a new piece about her neighborhood, Jackson Heights, which is the most diverse neighborhood in the world. The name 167 TONGUES is taken from the number of languages spoken here.

 

Ari got together a group of 11 exciting playwrights (including Jenny Lyn Bader, Jennifer Gibbs, Rehana Mirza, Jeffrey Solomon, and Stefanie Zadravec, among others) that represent a broad range of voices. Some of us, like me, live in the area, while others were new to it. All of us went through a kind of crash course in Jackson Heights: we walked around, we talked to locals, and we were given a historical presentation by our dramaturg, Angie Balsamo. Then we drew a large map of the neighborhood and imagined characters that would inhabit this world. For me, this was easy, I know the characters that inhabit Jackson Heights. I told them about my neighbors: like the head of the co-op board in my building who only will let you live here if you profess a love for animals and compliment her Chihuahua, and the Eastern-European bookseller who lives in his van. With Ari and Angie’s help, we writers came up with a long list of other characters, then we went home and wrote scenes about them.

 

Later we came back and to workshop the scenes, and started to find interesting points of connection. If two people used the same character, we discovered which scenes would go first, and why. Then we rewrote. Then we came back together, talked, and rewrote again. Later, when actors started showing up, we did more rewrites based on their feedback. The result is something very collaborative and, I think, quite original. The final piece will involve interwoven continuous narratives with street scenes, movement, and found sounds.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I’m working on a musical for the first time. It’s been exciting because I’m working with the composer Ben Morss who is a great musician just full of ideas, though it’s been a steep learning curve trying to understand the way musicals work.

 
Q:  Tell me about Brooklyn Playwrights Collective.

A:  BPC is a Brooklyn-based, playwright-centered project that some friends and I started five years ago to workshop, develop, and occasionally produce new plays. The group has an open format, anyone can come and workshop their play. It’s kind of like the AYSO of playwriting (“everyone plays”). Not everyone, however, gets to produce work with BPC. There’s a little bit of a socialist model at work here: the more work you put in to the group the more production you get out of it.

 

For the last few years, BPC’s major production event has been an annual festival of new plays that each year responds to a different theater practitioner. The person that we write new works in response to is picked in alphabetical order. So the first year we wrote new short plays responding to Artaud, and we called it “Cruel and Unusual.” The next year we produced “Beyond Brecht,” followed by “Confronting Chekhov.” This year BPC’s festival was called “Dramatizing Dante,” which I unfortunately didn’t get to take part in.

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 a sixteen I went to go see Angels in America at Centennial Hall, the performing arts center at the University of Arizona. I was mesmerized; I loved it. I walked out a different person. I wanted more. Unfortunately, tickets were sold out for the only performance of part two the next day. Desperate, I managed to sneak my way in by assertively walking past the ticket taker—I tried to look like I belonged there—and it worked.

 

Not only was the experience of seeing Angels my “ah ha!” theater moment, when I decided I wanted to work in the theater, but the act of weaseling my way in served as one of my first lessons in the theater. My first few years of writing no one would produce my work, so I did it myself. I still do lots of leg work for my own shows. I’ve had to follow the model I established by sneaking into Angels when I was sixteen: if I can’t get in the old fashioned way, I take matters into my own hands.

 

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

 

A:  The single biggest issue in theater is its slow, general decline in popularity as an art form. For example, it’s terrible that The Ohio Theatre is closing, that’s an important playhouse that supports amazing new work. I don’t know what’s to be done about the decline that we’ve seen. So much of it has to do with new technologies and shifts in the way people take in information. I’m excited by a lot of the ways that people use technology in theater, but I think we need to remember what makes theater theater: the immediacy of the actor in the presence of the audience.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you

A:  I love words and language, so heighted language plays are exciting for me. I also like theater that’s aware of it’s own theatricality. It’s important to me that a piece has a reason to be theater, and not television or some other genre. Will Eno’s work, for instance, amazes me.

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

A:  Read your blog’s tips on “Advice for Playwrights Starting Out.” Subscribe to “The Loop.” Find some friends who will help you put up your work. You may have to put up their work too, in the process.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I’m really excited to see Erin Browne’s TRYING at Bushwick Starr and Gary Winter’s COOLER at The Chocolate Factory.

I Interview Playwrights Part 145: Anton Dudley

Anton Dudley

Hometown:  Montreal, Quebec.

Current Town:  Brooklyn, New York.

Q:  Tell me about the play you have coming up at Theater Row.

A:  Several years ago, before the media had really focused its attention on the AIDS crisis in Africa, I saw several articles appear in the back of some high end women's fashion magazines about women and AIDS in remote parts of the continent. I started to question the context of where our information about the rest of the world came from. I am constantly amazed how, as Americans, we have to completely victimize a community before we start to take action to care for them (think of how civil rights movements were/are galvanized around slavery, AIDS, natural disasters, rape, etc.). I think it is our nature to objectify the "other" - I wanted to obliterate the idea of "other" altogether in this play and really understand what it means for us to share the planet equally as human beings.

Q:  What else are you up to?

A:  My pop musical TINA GIRLSTAR (written with Charlie Sohne and Brian Feinstein) is being developed by commercial producer Olympus Theatricals. My cabaret musical THE RE-HYDRATION OF EDITH PILAF (written with Charlie Sohne and Keith Gordon) is currently in development. I am under commission from the Cherry Lane Theatre to write a new work, and I recently completed two new plays, one which was developed with MCC Theatre and Partial Comfort Productions, the other at the Lark Play Development Center, co-written with Arthur Kopit. My play GETTING HOME which premiered at Secondstage Theatre Uptown will be published next year in an anthology by Vintage Books.

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 had a stuffed bear named Teddy and a stuffed cat named Kitty . . . one of my favorite puppets as a child was a unicorn - a woman in the grocery store asked me his name, I responded Horny - the group of adults around me laughed hysterically and I went home and cried. My Mum said maybe he could have a more formal name in public, so I named him Prince Albert - this got an equally vicious guffaw. From then on when I was asked his name, I would answer, "you have to get to know him really well first, only then will I tell you."

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

A:  Abolish entirely its relationship to commerce.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theatre that is cheaply produced and embraces the coexistence of beauty and horror, humor and pain.

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

A:  Work constantly, do everything you can in theatre: direct, act, design, produce, choreograph, and for fork's sake read: all of this will make you a better writer. Find an artistic home or two where you can always return when you doubt yourself. Make a lot of friends, real ones, it's a small world - chose to love and be loved.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Sorry, I'm not a doctor, but I hear Propecia works pretty well.

I Interview Playwrights Part 144: Aaron Carter

Aaron Carter

Hometown: Bowling Green, OH

Current Town: Chicago

Q:  What are you working on now?


A:  I'm working on the second draft of my play THE BOOK OF ASTAROTH. It's about a young mixed-race kid obsessed with a graphic novel called, yep, The Book of Astaroth. In the play, he tells the story of how he meets the author the the novel. In the process, he reveals the story of his parents divorce and the roles that race and religion play in his life.

I've also started research for a possible new play triggered by reading about the recent cancer cluster at The Acerage. I think it will be about the intersection of private enterprise and government. We'll see.

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 the first Christmas after my parents divorce. My father had bought us three kids matching bikes. This was a very expensive thing for him to do - our family income had suddenly been split into two single incomes, and my dad faced periodic layoffs at the factory. The only problem? None of us really wanted bikes. But I remember running interference with my brother and sister and making sure that we acted like it was the best Christmas ever. That it was perfect and was exactly what my father had hoped/planned it would be.

That role as mediator --whether it be between my siblings and my parents, between my black heritage and my white heritage, between religion and the secular-- and the need for a mediator to be able to access other points of view... that is at the heart of my playwriting.

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


A:  Well, if I could magically move us closer to the center of the cultural conversation, I would. I don't necessarily want to be as central as television or pop music. There's some freedom in operating at the fringes. But if theater was considered more of a vital part of how we as a culture figure out who we are and what we do, that'd be exciting.  Somehow related is my desire to overcome that part of theater's self image that can confuse political speech with political action. Maybe if we were actually closer to being a vital part of the cultural conversation we wouldn't feel the need to make grand statements about how theater can foment revolution. Don't get me wrong: I love politically engaged theater. I just think if we're serious about change, our work starts by performing a challenging play, it doesn't end there.

Q:  You're the Literary Manager at Victor Gardens which means you probably read a lot of plays.  Has the way you write changed since you took on this job?  How?  What plays have you read recently that you've fallen in love with?


A:  Yes, I do read a lot of plays. I think the biggest change to my writing process (besides having far less time to write than I used to) is that I am a lot harder on myself. I have a much clearer sense of what it takes to stand out in the giant stack of slowly churning submissions, and frankly I'm not sure that I've written something yet that reaches that level. I remember the first year on the job, I had the opportunity to revisit a play of mine for a workshop unrelated to VG. When I re-read the play, I had a mind-bending moment when I realized that I would've passed on my own play had it been submitted to me. I didn't make my own cut.

I've recently been quite taken by The Aliens by Annie Baker. I also re-read Evie's Waltz by Carter Lewis and found it even more emotionally penetrating on the second read. And I'm really hoping that Joel Drake Johnson's The Boys Room will be on a Chicago stage soon.


Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Visual, theatrical, intelligent and honest theater excites me. I also like theater that complicates or challenges the social-political status quo. I'm talking the status quo of the theater world, by the way. I think far too many of us have a far too low of an opinion about the views of the "masses." And as a result, we create pieces that embody viewpoints that we in theater take for granted and assume that we're "challenging" the "everyday folk." Work that actually reflects the complex and contradictory political and personal lives of working class folk (as opposed to what trust fund kids who have spent their entire lives in unpaid theater internships followed by a funded bohemian lifestyle THINK of working folk) is exciting to me.

The most amazing thing I've seen recently was The Method Gun at Humana. Developed by The Rude Mechanicals, it was a stunning feat of emotional and physical risk. I don't know if there will be other opportunities to see it, but if you get a chance: SEE IT.
 
Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?


A:  I'm not sure about self-production (I mean, I think its a great idea but I don't do it myself so I can't very well advise it). At the very least, find good actors you trust to read your work out loud. You've got to hear it a few times before you start submitting it. Target your submissions - be honest about whether or not the work has anything to do with the theater's production history. If you work in theater as your day job, find a way to make non-theater experiences, people and work a part of your life. Stay informed, but don't just hear an NPR story and write a play. (Yes, I'm talking to me there). If you're writing about something outside your experience, do enough research to earn the right to write about it. If you're young and just starting out, do an internship if you can afford one. Its worth noting that a diverse background of non-theatrical experiences always outweights theater experience when it comes to my review of internship applications at VG.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I wouldn't be a good lit manager if I didn't plug our current show at VG: The Lost Boys of Sudan by Lonnie Carter. Gorgeously realized, a lyrical beat-poet blizzard of language and imagery. Check it out. And if you miss that, up next is the hilarious Jacob and Jack by James Sherman.

I Interview Playwrights Part 143: Jerrod Bogard

Jerrod Bogard

Hometown: All over- I'm an Air Force brat.

Current Town: Astoria, New York City

Q:  Tell me about the production of Noah's Arkansas you have coming up.

A:  Noah's Arkansas is a piece of theatrical realism. It's the story of a blue collar guy in a small southern town who finds himself suddenly with a teenage son on his doorstep and his elderly father trying to sneak into his grave. It gets belly-laughs in spots, and it manages to jerk a few tears too. The talent on this project is amazing. What a strong ensemble! And the set is going to be spectacular from what I've seen so far. Wide Eyed Productions really does go above and beyond, and I'm so stoked that they're working on my play.

Q:  What else are you up to?

A:  Funny you should ask, I've got a new musical in the works. My composer, Sky Seals, and I are working on a very serious rock-musical about the War in Iraq. It's called GRUNTS. The first number from the show is going up this this weekend (April 8-11) at the Players Theatre Loft.

Q:  You started out as a puppeteer. How does that color the way you write plays or how you see theater?

A:  Love that question! I actually started as an actor, and then I came to puppetry, and then to playwrighting. But puppetry has had a major influence on my writing as well and directing. Puppet shows are usually the essence of simplicity when it comes to story, and that's a beautiful thing, because all stories, no matter how seemingly complex, should be very simple. Puppet theatre gave me that gift of "keeping it real." Also, it has completely freed me of any notion of the impossible. In puppetry- if you can dream it, you can do it, and most likely for less than $20.

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 4-years old I would scribble circles and lines onto blank paper and show it to my mother. I'd say, "What does this say?" And my mother would glance and say, "that's says nothing, Jerrod." And I would get very upset at this. I'd cry, "I want it to say something!!!" And even though I've learned to write since then, I still find myself in the same mind set... I want it to say something!!!

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

A:  The price tag. It's a crime that people can see five movies for the price of a partial-view seat to one live play. Theatre is a vital art- but at a luxury cost. Professional theatre should be affordable to the masses. A sense of entitlement from many and a maladjusted system of values in this country has caused American theatre to be an artistic money pit instead of what it could be- a national treasure.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Well told stories told well. I just saw Our Town at the Barrow Street Theatre. There's a masterpiece done masterfully.

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

A:  Ha! I feel like I'M a playwright who's just starting out. But I can say this- if you surround yourself with people that you respect, people who you feel lucky to know and work with, then you'll be headed in the right direction. Treat those people well, and write for them. They'll return the favor.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I'll be acting in Henry VI part 3 this July at the 13th Street Theatre, another production of Wide Eyed in conjunction with Columbia University. It's going to be amazing!

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.

I Interview Playwrights Part 136: Kathryn Walat

Kate Walat

Hometown: A small town in Massachusetts

Current Town: New York

Q:  Tell me about this opera of Paul's Case you're adapting.

A:  “Paul’s Case” is a short story by Willa Cather, about a high school boy in 1906 Pittsburgh, whose father pulls him out of school when he spends too much time hanging around the opera house, and makes him get a job at a financial office. One day Paul steals all the money, takes the night train to New York, and blows it all on a weekend at the Waldorf Astoria—and then jumps in front of a train. It’s a great story, perfect for opera. I’m co-writing the libretto with composer Gregory Spears, who is also a good friend, so it’s fun that the collaboration grew out of that friendship and it helps that we know each other’s work well. And opera is a very cool medium: more poetic and spare than playwriting, but with similar questions of characters development and dramatic structure.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I’ve recently finished a first draft of a new play entitled GREEDY, set in New York during the heat of last summer, partly about the fall-out of the financial crisis. It deals with greed and desire and loss both in personal ways, for the four characters, but also in terms of our nation. One of the characters looks like Barak Obama; there’s also bits of Strindberg’s MISS JULIE mixed in. And there’s a band—I think—I haven’t exactly figured out how that fits in, but even before working on the opera, I’ve been very interested in music and how it works with non-musical theater. My previous play CREATION also deals with music, but more in terms of structure and rhythm and theme, rather than being written into the script or production.

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 young, maybe 5 or 6 (so young I barely remember it), my family and I were visiting a farm, and we were part of a group of people being shown around the dairy barn. The farmer giving the tour asked if anyone wanted to try milking a cow, and everyone was surprised when I immediately raised my hand—no one else in the group did—and I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into, but I was like: of course I want to try this. I was so small that I wasn’t really being able to do it (you actually have to squeeze and pull pretty vigorously to get the milk to come), but my parents say that it was then that they knew I was going to be an adventurous child. I think as a writer, or with starting a new play, you don’t ever really know what you’re getting yourself into, but in a sort of primal way, you just want to do it.

Q:  What is the purpose of theater?

A:  I don’t know that it has to have a purpose. It’s art—it’s entertainment. I do like how theater is fantasy and reality at the same time; it can make people feel and think and connect with other people. For playwrights in particular, I think it’s also an intense way of sharing part of your self with an audience.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Right now I’m excited about seeing plays that use theatricality and structure in interesting ways. That’s something that always jazzes me as I write too. And it also sets playwriting apart from, say, writing for television or film, where the medium has more prescribed forms. Something that has been fun about working on the opera is that I don’t really know what I’m doing, so I’m exploring new theatrical possibilities, seeing what you can do once you add music. But at core, I’m most interested in plays that I can connect to on an emotional level—usually through the characters. To me, it’s about people, both theater and making theater.

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

A:  Write a lot. See and read a lot of plays. And meet a lot of people, because it will feed you artistically, and so that you can collaborate with them. Also, listen to your instincts, in terms of your plays and your career; take the time to know yourself as an artist and person, and that will make the work better and getting there more interesting.

Coming Up Next

A reading of Incendiary

That's the one about the female fire chief/arsonist who falls in love with the detective investigating her fires.  In case you missed the readings at Ars Nova or South Coast Rep or LAByrinth or the workshop production at Juilliard.

April 5 at 7pm at Jimmy’s no 43

http://www.stu42.com/

A reading of My Base and Scurvy Heart

A brand new play about pirates I will hear for the first time that day.  I still have a great deal of this play to write.

April 15 at 4pm at 59E59

http://primarystages.org/readings

A production of Nerve in Philadelphia

April 8-May 2

http://www.azukatheatre.org/

Also have you seen my new rocking website?  www.adamszymkowicz.com

Have you bought your copy of Pretty Theft yet?

http://www.amazon.com/Pretty-Theft-Adam-Szymkowicz/dp/0573697213/ref=cm_lmf_tit_5

Have you seen my 135 and counting interviews with playwrights?

(below)

I Interview Playwrights Part 135: Paul Mullin

Paul Mullin

Hometown: Baltimore

Current Town: Seattle

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m sort of half working on a play about consciousness. As soon as I say that I can hear someone saying, “But aren’t all plays about consciousness?” And the answer is, yes, they are; but this one would be literally about philosophical and scientific explorations of consciousness, which have sort of failed miserably over the last several decades. Or I should probably say, they failed brilliantly, since while they haven’t brought us any closer to explaining how consciousness works or even really what it is, they have succeeded in framing some mind-blowing questions. I want to find a way of dramatizing those questions and make an audience’s collective head spin the way mine has spun researching the subject.

Last year I finished a farce and it was the hardest thing I have ever written. So I’m not sure I really have the energy required to tackle a full-length play. That’s why I say I’m only half-writing it.

I am also currently involved in a community-wide effort to advance locally grown plays in Seattle and through that effort help bring the city to its rightful standing as a world class theatre town. I have begun a series of essays on the subject and am posting them at my blog called Just Wrought. (paulmullin.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:  Well as the youngest of a moderately large Irish Catholic family I got to watch my brother and sisters play parts in the church musicals that I was too young to join. I loved it. I also remember as a kid that I felt a particular thrill when I used my toy type writer to bang out short scripts that I dreamed we would perform in our basement. Later I loved seeing my sisters play roles in their junior high school productions. I still believe my sister Margaret’s performance of Gollum in THE HOBBIT is the best portrayal of that character ever. My sister Mary was one of the dwarves and I remember playing with the wooden sword that I believe my brother made for her in my step dad’s woodshop. My whole family loved shows and show business, but compared to my siblings I joined the game late, since it wasn’t until the 10th grade that I first got on stage as Puck in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM. Being on stage felt natural, powerful. I scored an acting scholarship to the University of Maryland, and within months of being there, I started working on my first full-length play, PHILOSOPHES, which my brother still maintains is my best. Maybe that’s because back then, I didn’t have a computer of my own, so whenever I had finished writing out a play longhand in some spiral bound notebook, I would catch a ride up to Baltimore county and spend an entire weekend at his apartment typing the play into his computer so I could then print out a proper script. He probably feels a strong ownership over the plays that were first typed on his computer.

Q:  On your blog you seem (as most every playwright I've ever met seems) unhappy with the role of the playwright in today's theater. If you could change one thing, what would it be?

A:  We need to rescue the role of playwright from that of supplicant. The very language around the process has grown poisonous. We are asked to “submit” our plays. We shouldn’t be submitting anything. We should be leading, not begging a relatively newly minted caste of artistic administrators whose job seems to be to watch what all the other artistic administrators are doing and hew as closely to that as possible. I would reverse the trend of placing artistic directors and directors at the top of the decision-making hierarchy and return playwrights to their rightful places as the premiere progenitors of plays.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I catch a huge thrill when I sense that the audience is galvanized by the ephemerality of the experience. When they experience not only the thrill of the performed story, but the understanding that what they are witnessing will never be witnessed in exactly the same way again. I love theatre that exploits this. Conversely, I am deeply bored by theatre that merely attempts to offer offer craft in place of heart, or stories better suited to a flat screen or the pages of a book. I love theatre where the audience gets that they are responsible finally for putting it together, where passivity is banished and replaced by engagement and community. So you could say my favorite kind of theatre is community theatre.

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

A:  Work hard. Expect no success on terms other than your own. Ever.

Do not expect to make a living but do it any way. What if William Carlos Williams had whined about having to be a doctor for forty years? Well, actually, he did on occasion whine about it, but we got many amazing poems from him anyway, and the fact that he brought over two thousand babies into the world isn’t anything to shake a stick at either. (So fuck that traitor Ezra Pound.)

Understand the tradition you have joined. Never cede your place in the hierarchy. Directors did not come into existence until the 19th Century. Artistic directors not until the 20th. Only actors outrank you in seniority in the tradition. So treat them with respect. In fact, act on stage as often as you can, but at least once in a while, whether you are comfortable doing it or not.

Q:  Any plugs?:

A:  If you have a theatre that has any technical chops, consider doing my farce, Gossamer Grudges, because farce will kick your theatre artist ass as like a spin class in a sauna.

Keep an eye peeled for the next edition of Seattle’s Living Newspaper: The New New News. The last one we did about the death of the print version of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer got lots of national attention, both locally and nationally (here’s a link to story about It’s Not in the P-I on NPR’s On The Media: http://www.onthemedia.org/episodes/2009/11/20/segments/144826.)

And lastly, know that Seattle’s exploding. We will lead theatre where it needs to go. This is not empty rhetoric. I eat empty rhetoric for breakfast. Really. Ask around. Anyone who knows me will tell you I actually do. It’s not very nutritious, but it’s fun, like Fruit Loops.

I Interview Playwrights Part 134: Kirsten Greenidge

Kirsten Greenidge

Hometown: Arlington, MA

Current Town: West Medford, MA

Q:  What are you working on right now?

A:  Currently I am working on a play called THE LUCK OF THE IRISH, which was originally commissioned by South Coast, but it passed on it. It's been recommissioned by the Huntington Theatre Company here in Boston and I am thrilled--and grateful to Lisa Timmel and Peter Dubois and Charles Haugland at the Huntington-- about that. I am also working on a short adaptation of a Brothers Grimm fairytale for a theatre company here called CompanyOne, as well as a commission from La Jolla called MILK LIKE SUGAR.

Q:  What was it like to be playwright in residence at Woolly Mammoth?

A:  I loved living in DC and going in to Woolly every day. The experience was only odd because one of the grant's guidelines was that the playwright had to spend a set number of hours at the theatre itself. Most plays aren't written this way. You write your play, a theatre is into it, they have you do a reading or workshop and if they still like it and have money and have a slot, they produce it, and THAT is when you lurk around the theatre. Instead, I was being asked to be in the theatre each day which was wonderful on paper--as in AHHH the PLAYWRIGHT is here with us--but a little strange for me because I found it very hard to write there. At first my desk was in the main office with everyone, but then I asked to have my desk in the basement, in the green room. This was much better, but not very inspirational. I would go in to the theatre from 10-6, travel back out to Oakton, Virginia where I was living, and then write at night. I tried to see as much theatre as I could, but I was pretty strict with myself about writing and reading every day, even if the pages were crappy, so basically I was in front of a computer all day, every day the whole six months I was there. If I was not in front of a computer I was reading scripts for Woolly and I absolutely loved this part of my time there. I wish I could do it with every theatre. I am quite proud I got to point to Noah Haidle's play VIGILS and say DO THIS! And the next season, there it was. I'm not naive enough to think it was all my doing, but I do remember coming in with two or three of his plays and saying to Howard and the rest of the readers "Woolly has to know this writer." Howard was really committed to reading all the work that was coming in, so he devised a kind of insane reading schedule where a bunch of us read a play a day every day, then came in each week and reported on them. I got to meet Rebecca Taichman this way and that relationship has been wonderful. In addition to all that, I liked sitting in on rehearsals of other new plays being done there. I love watching rehearsals because for a playwright they are kind of these secret things. You only go to yours and see how yours work, and to be honest, mine don't always go the way I would like, or how I'd hoped. So I like to see how other people work and by going to rehearsals that aren't mine, I can relax and breathe in the process in a way I can't if I am rewriting and nervous the thing is gonna sink like its got a thousand holes.

Q:  Can you tell me about your grad school experience?

A:  I went to Iowa. The first year I applied I got rejected from everywhere but the second year I reapplied to Iowa because it had said "We like you but you're too young, you need more experience." So I thought, well, I will reapply for the next few years and maybe in six they will let me in. It took only a year. I was so convinced I had to go there, I didn't even realize it was a three year program. I also needed health insurance and they had a good plan with all those university hospitals around there. I loved it (both the program and the coverage). I can't imagine going anywhere else. There were times I was lonely, cause basically Iowa City is in the middle of nowhere, if you are used to say Boston, but I got a ton of writing done and I think there is a cohesiveness to the writers there in terms of personal bonding because it is so isolated. One huge obstacle though was having enough actors of color to do my work who were able to embrace plays that were not Realist dramas. That was hard. But to this day I consider my Iowa friends to be some of the best writers and best theatre people I know.

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 used to be a gymnast. My friend, playwright David Adjmi, says all my gymnastics training helps with my writing because I can be disciplined and can sometimes let failures spur me on. I remember when I was eight I began to get kinda good at gymnastics and I started winning things. One day my coach was trying to get us to do dismounts off the beam. They were not hard, she just wanted us to stick them a certain way. She knew I could do it the way she was asking, and I knew I could do it the way she was asking. So she asked me to do it and I was very proud, and I got up there and did it, and kinda fell on purpose. I have no idea why. She excused everyone and had me go over to her and she said "Why'd you do that?" And I said "I don't know" and she said "You're good, you're one of the best on this team, but you give up easily. You don't always try hard enough. You can't do that or you won't be the best anymore." Or something to that effect. I was mortified. I was terribly embarrassed. But I got it. And it is something I think of often, even if I don't practice it. I can be a lazy writer. I hate traveling. I like rewriting but have to psych myself up to do it. Instead of printing stuff and proofreading it I will make excuses like I have to go to Staples and buy more ink and paper before I touch a word. I hate the phone so I am horrible at setting up meetings and keeping in touch and I self sabotage a lot. When I feel myself slacking, I think of my eight year old self doing stupid stuff to get attention when I should have been doing the work to get better. It's the same now. I need to remind myself to hunker down and do the damn thing, or else what is the point? If I really want to "fall on purpose" I should just get a day job with health insurance and stop all this crazy playwrighting stuff right now.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I am an easy audience member. I love a good story. I also like to laugh. I actually don't see very much theatre so I just get excited to see something, no matter what it is. But I particularly love plays that make me lean forward, that challenge me to look inside myself, even if what my inside self is thinking is "I wish I'd written that."

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

A:  Keep writing no matter how often you get rejected. Embrace the work. It will always be there, unlike the praise or the criticism.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Mmm....Next up is the GRIMM adaptation here in Boston this July. Then will be BOSSA NOVA at Yale Rep, and then MILK LIKE SUGAR next summer...just enough to keep this new mama hopping.

Peter Bellamy's portraits

http://pswbportaiture.blogspot.com/

Playwrights and others

I Interview Playwrights Part 133: Derek Ahonen

Derek Ahonen

Hometown:  Chicago

Current Town: New York City

Q:  Tell me about your show Happy In The Poorhouse now playing.

A:  It's a huge Coney Island love story with loose women, meek men, and a belly full of dreamers, optimists, gangsters, and MMA fighters. It's really a throw back play our company wanted to do out of love for works like, THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES and A HATFUL OF RAIN. It's a big love letter to another era but it's set in the current day. Both press and audience are responding very strongly to it in ways we never expected. I guess there's a lot of untapped need for more plays like this. It's been an amazing run so far!

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  My play, AMERISSIAH, is opening in June at the same space with a lot of familiar faces. I'm also directing that baby. It's a beast of a play that after HAPPY IN THE POORHOUSE I feel like i need to physically get myself in way better shape to direct it. But it's also very fun and explores the boundaries of people with Messiah Complexes.

Q:  Your theater company is called the Amoralists. Are you all amoral?

A:  No! We all have a very strong moral infrastructure and we love people more than anybody else we know. That's why we're called the Amoralists, because we love humans too much to trivialize their complexities in our work. Hey man, the pedophile, abusive drunk, prostitute, police officer, and man-hating lesbian all have wants, needs, and childhoods full of unfulfilled dreams like anybody else. I leave the teaching of morality to the Priests. I'm for the teaching of humanity baby!

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 was a Children's Theatre Director and she put me in all of her plays as a kid... God bless her. I loved being on stage, but what i really loved was being in a theatre with a bunch of people all working together for a unified goal. I loved just sitting backstage and seeing everyone get along and crack jokes. People need extended families. I write about families and the individual's primitive need to connect and feel appreciated. All my characters would be super happy if a theatre company took them in and told them they were special.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  First, it has to be funny. I don't like anything that goes more than a few minutes without a laugh. Second, it has to have emotional substance. I hate irony and too cool for school shit. Fucking feel something ya bitch! Third, it has to move. I can sit through a 5 hour play that moves like a racehorse ten times easier than a 20 minute one act that moves like a snail in the dirt. Outside of those three things, i'll go on any journey a team of artists wants to take me on. Oh yeah... and i love great acting. I like talented and skilled wounded people playing normal wounded people.

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

A:  Write stuff you want to see. That's it. This business if full of empty promises and useless smiles. Just write shit you can read on the subway that makes you feel like your life is worth a damn. Also, listen to actors during the rehearsal process. Always trust them when they want to dirty their character. Never trust them when they want to clean up their character.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I don't have them yet. I'm the only one in my company not losing my hair.