I Interview Playwrights Part 205: J. C. Lee

J. C. Lee

Hometown: New York City, NY

Current Town: Berkeley, California

Q:  Tell me about your trilogy that Sleepwalkers is producing this year.

A:  The trilogy is called This World and After and consists of 3 plays, all of which will be opening in San Francisco in 2010-11. The first is This World Is Good, followed by Into the Clear Blue Sky and The Nature Line.It all started sometime in 2006 when I was writing a new play for the Williamstown Theatre Festival's leapFROG program and found myself amazingly frustrated and exhausted and devoid of all hope in myself (hella emo, kids) - it was a sort of emotional apocalypse and wound up opening up my writing to the imaginative potential of the end times. There's something incredibly "death cultish" in Western culture; our constant obsession with being punished for the guilt of our existence pervades much of our social fabric largely thanks to religious philosophy. It became a focal point in my work for many years and helped churn out these plays. Plus you can write whatever the hell you want if the world is coming to an end.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  There's this insane ridiculous thing I wrote called Pookie Goes Grenading which will be featured as part of the Bay Area Playwright's Festival this coming July - it's a play about a troupe of dorky high school kids who embark on a sort of epic quest to produce the world's greatest film and wind up becoming terrorists along the way. I'm also working on a commission from the Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Performing Arts to write a play that allows high school kids to, you know, actually play high school kids in real time. That play's tentatively titled The Inexplicable Disappearance of Hector Villaraigosa and is slated for production in February 2011. Other than that there's a film project on my plate and my unending blogging.

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 spent my summers on the Jersey shore (fistpump) and my older cousins one time convinced me to cover my entire bike with ornaments in the hope of coming one step closer to be the super hero I'd always longed to be. I did it and took the bike to the top of a concrete ramp in the street. Proudly I launched myself downward only to have the ribbons and cards taped to the bike jam up the chain and freeze the wheels. I flipped over the handlebars and tore open my arm. Seeing a bone jutting through the open skin, I screamed like a mad man and my cousins fled. That serves as a pretty apt metaphor for everything I do.

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

A:  Our penchant to condescend. We take ourselves and our art way too seriously and fail to realize that there are plenty of people quite content to never step foot in a theatre and they're totally normal and intelligent. It's our job to give them a reason to come, and that reason can't be pretentious academic bullshit. We must rediscover the joy of telling stories again and be eager to share that joy with others. Our complaints about funding cuts and lackluster attendance only reflect our inability to communicate the excitement of our craft.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Shakespeare - he's the ultimate working class bad-ass. Tony Kushner for helping me realize that one could be a citizen apart from an artist. Jose Rivera and Caryl Churchill for constantly blowing my mind. Tony Taccone for running a theatre that never fails to do relevant, incredible work. And David Mamet for being himself no matter what the other kids say.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I really love Shakespeare when done well. Watching the RSC tackle King Lear with Ian McKellan at its helm changed my life. Beyond that, I'm always excited by well structured but imaginative work that doesn't try too hard - why people always think imagination and structure are in conflict is sort of beyond me. I loved Lisa Kron's In the Wake and Naomi Iizuka's Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West (both at Berkeley Rep).

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

A:  You'd better be doing it only because there's nothing else in the world you can do, because if there is something else, you should probably do that. It's likely to be easier and have greater social benefit and pay more than being a playwright. If it's the only thing you can do, then do it with intelligence, grace and honesty. Don't try to be original. Don't try to be clever. Don't be afraid to still shit you think rocks and make it your own.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Definitely check out the Brother/Sister Plays in the Bay Area next year. Not to mention Scapin at ACT and, if you can manage it, get to NYC to check out Signature's revival of Angels in America. That's enough theatre to merit loin-girding, no?

I Interview Playwrights Part 204: Ruth Margraff

photo:  David Little-Smith.com

Ruth Margraff

Hometown:

I grew up all over Ohio and Michigan staring up at my Dad preaching brimstone in tiny churches full of grieving widows. Mrs. Aho for example. Was an Ishpeming widow who screwed the piano stool up too high for me to reach the pedals when I played the ofratory in 2nd grade. So she landed in my play THE CRY PITCH CARROLLS which is a nativity set in a nostalgic nuclear winter. Spent my 20s as a New Yorker, trying to hustle through the skyscrapers and scrape by. Learned a lot from a bum on Thanksgiving who ranted and raved as he jumped down to get a sandwich from the subway tracks. There was a rich and lonely widow in my building who bashed her mouth on the lobby door and ended up in my play WALLPAPER PSALM. I kept leaving New York for Providence, Austin, Dallas with a few stints in Minneapolis and out to LA and then years abroad but I didn’t know what I was missing until I found Chicago.

Current Town: Chicago

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I just recorded a 2nd album with CAFÉ ANTARSIA so we’re working on the mix and release of that. I’m touring and recording also with a rock band FEVER IN THE FUNKHOUSE so I’m playing more organ and honky tank piano and jamming with Kenny Withrow of the New Bohemians who is our lead guitar player and I love the soul-splaying lyrics of Nikos Brisco. I’m tackling some Tolstoy with Bonnie Metzger, starting to conspire with Little Jack Melody/Steve Carter who is the bass player for Brave Combo, something classical with O-lan Jones, finishing a trilogy of martial arts operas with Fred Ho into a book, just starting to work with Trap Door Theater on my Ottoman/Greek opera for next season and tearing through the sculpture gardens on my bike which is how I meditate.

Q:  Tell me please about Cafe Antarsia.

A:  CAFÉ ANTARSIA ENSEMBLE is…very Balkan/Greek boudoir sort of lyric portraiture set in operatic miniatures. It’s dark and gypsy and the passion is thick as blood. There are icon paintings like this in the mountain monasteries of Crete where the nuns get drowsy and you have to know how to cross yourself to get in and you have to cover your hair. You can see where the Ottomans fired into the paint where the wood is torn and yet you see something almost figurative there. The shape is not at all like a mirror – but it holds a sort of power over you that makes you want to light a candle and stay there in the quiet of it as the blazing sun goes down and the wind starts to howl to the darkness. I’ve called it working-class opera for a while because we do everything by hand - making the props and costumes and hauling them around on our backs through trains and flights. We’ve toured all over the world, and the music of the marketplaces settles like dust on our shoes.

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

A:  It was hard to remember all my sins to avoid eternal damnation when I started taking communion so here were a few:

Saying the devil blew me off the porch when I ended up with a tooth through my lip.

Eating all the scallions and lettuce after a flash flood out of the garden. They always said I ate like a rabbit. Was it my sister or me falling asleep on a landing between staircases? And finding the cauliflower at my Aunt’s house – I just remember all the kittens were dying, my cousin was covertly slicing open leather chairs and pulling up my dress to look under it and getting his mouth washed out with soap. Some of this ends up in ALL THOSE VIOLENT SWEATERS.

Opening my eyes during communion and seeing the kid in front of me gutting the stomach of a skunk pin from Avon and scooping out the wax perfume. A later bottle of Sweet Honesty inspires a few lines in FLAGS UNFURLED.

And most regrettable: dressing up in all black and hiding in my brother’s closet while he stole a look at the forbidden television. I tapped on the door all through the program and then jumped out and scared him into a palsy – he was hyperventilating, he was dying and shrieking and I was tearing off the mask and saying no really look, it’s just me. It’s me.

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

A:  We would be more like Europe and Russia and India where theater is part of the culture so we wouldn’t scream at it like an alien in our backyard. We would treat it as art and be entertained by it as art rather than TV’s bratty stepchild. We would not be afraid of art or calling something art. We would enjoy parsing a play out intellectually in a cafe the next day or for the next few years rather than consuming it like a cheap hamburger in the moment. Theater would be more like music. Theater would be more like poetry which is how people talk if you really listen to people not induced by reality-programmed reality. Theater would attract the best minds and souls of our generation. Theater would be colder in terms of its ideas and hot as hell in sensuality. We’d have less of what I call “swollen protagonism” plays and more noticing of our swollen antagonism in the world. I would change a lot about theater as you can see and I kick at its pillars almost every day with every muscle because I have a deep love almost spiritually for the theater. One thing that has never changed about me is that I’m in my bones a rebel and always slightly outside of what I’m in.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  My sisters are from Dah Teatar in Belgrade with Barba and Grotowski as my brothers, Roma gypsy musicians like KAL and my teacher Djula Milosavljevic (Juliano Milo), Greek blues singers from tavernas in Crete and mainland Greece at the end of the Ottoman Empire. I admire the Brechtian/Weimar cabarets, Robert Ashley, Atom Egoyan’s early films, Dadaist manifestos, Picasso, Sartre… I line up with the neo-cubists in terms of language

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=%2Fjournals%2Fthe_drama_review%2Fv053%2F53.3.margraff.html

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The kind where I can see the raw labor – not the slick soulless high-tech expensive kind. Theater that shows us the tragic flaws and ecstasy of living, the sweat and tears sprung from a heart that aches because it is so unbearably wide open. I love plays that are thick with poetry so you have to pay rapt attention. Ivo van Hove’s MORE STATELY MANSIONS, Ken Prestininzi’s CHASTE which I just saw twice at Trap Door, Erik Ehn’s early musicals at BACA Downtown, Oksana Mysina in K.I. FROM CRIME, Reza Abdoh’s QUOTATIONS OF A RUINED CITY, Ozen Yula’s TREACHERY IN THE NEAR EAST, Nick Cave, Little Feat, Saban Bajromovic, a stunning play by Mattei Visniec I watched from an opera box in at the National Theater of Cluj directed by Mona Chirila which made me convinced I was born in the wrong country and there was a mistake, I should have been Romanian.

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

A:  Get off the beaten track of playwriting. We’ve built in systems that churn out a pulp of American playwrights from which a few squeeze themselves to the top by writing the same story over and over. They are fought over by the same handful of cowardly theater capitalists. This work is dead. It has no real vision and is an instant gratification product that - as it expires - because of its toxic packaging and waste - will do great harm. Be singular and seek out the obscure even as you embrace the world. Read books not blurbs and sound bites. Try to figure out what happened pre-19th century and 10 minutes ago from contradicting points of view. Think long, strange, horrifying and ecstatic thoughts and spend a lot of time in solitude and with strangers and your family to find out who you are. Travel on long trains away from everything you know – not as an imperialist but as a pilgrim. Name yourself an artist not a wannabe celebrity. Don’t walk on people’s necks on your way up the scaffolding. Rich or famous or nobody you still have to sleep at night.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  SEVEN now touring Sweden, going to Istanbul in the Fall, introduced by Hillary Clinton in New York this Spring. http://sevenplay.org/

http://www.unt.se/kultur/politiker-debuterar-i-almedalen-983073.aspx

http://www.hollywoodlife.com/2010/03/13/meryl-streep-hillary-clinton-women-world-summit/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-28/hillary-clinton-joins-daily-beast-summit/


CAFÉ ANTARSIA ENSEMBLE playing July 31, 2010 Zebulon Café 9pm (Williamsburg, NYC) http://www.zebuloncafeconcert.com/ , August 13 opening for Patrice Pike (Chicago) TBA and Sept 3 at the Kessler Theater (Oak Cliff/Dallas) http://www.thekessler.org/


FEVER IN THE FUNKHOUSE playing Aug 26, 2010 Stubbs with the New Bohemians and Kevin McKinney from SoulHat (Austin); Aug 27 Last Concert Café (Houston); Aug 28 All Good Café anniversary (Deep Ellum Dallas); Sept 4th Jack's Backyard (Dallas)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1NoX_UZLgQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-876l_8paY

July 1-18, 2010 (Los Angeles) very cool "trashy" opera I worked on awhile back with ingenious composer O-Lan Jones set to open July 1st at an abaondoned car dealership warehouse in Culver City
http://www.overtoneindustries.org/

Recent publications:
http://www.ruthmargraff.com/html/publication.html

Recent work with Theater Without Borders:
http://tcg-2010.conferencespot.org/talks/5835

http://www.brandeis.edu/slifka/actingtogether/casestudies/margraff/curator.html

I Interview Playwrights Part 203: Kirk Lynn

photo by Rino Pizzi

Kirk Lynn

Hometown: San Antonio, TX.

Current Town: Austin, TX.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Focus. Patience. Prayer. Magic. Honesty. Sobriety. Being a good husband. Being a good friend. Reducing the amount of time between my mistakes and my apologies. Calmness. Anger management. Time management. Reading. Staying ignorant.

HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH is a commission I’m working on with my friend and longtime collaborator, Melanie Joseph at the Foundry Theatre. It’s intended to be a performance constructed entirely of questions. What is money? How did I get into so much debt in my 20s? I’m just about to have my first child and I want to ask what I should teach her about money and value and addiction. Melanie is wondering about retirement savings, the global economy and, in general, how much is enough.

THE ANIMALS is a more traditionally narrative play about a middle-aged couple deciding to live like wild animals within the confines of their home. This means living without electric lights or alarm clocks, going to bed when they’re tired, waking up when they’re hungry, and attacking one another whenever they’re overcome with sexual desire. I think it’s pretty funny and really sad. I want it to feel like Uncle Vanya feels to me: wild, unworkable, holy and true.

I’VE NEVER BEEN SO HAPPY is a western operetta I’ve been making with my company, the Rude Mechs, for several years. Peter Stopschinski composed the music and wrote some of the lyrics, Lana Lesley and Thomas Graves are co-directing the piece. We just met a new animator, Miwa Matreyek, thru CTG in LA and it’s nice working with someone new. It’s nice to get to know someone. It gives us all a chance to be new to one another. We’re all going to see the A-TEAM tonight at the Alamo and afterwards we’re going two-stepping at the Broken Spoke. Join us, if you get this in time.

THE WRESTLING PATIENT is getting a new draft this summer. It is a play I was commissioned to make a few years ago about the life of Etty Hillesum and I still haven’t got it right.

THE METHOD GUN has to go back into rehearsal because we can’t have an open flame on stage on the East Coast tour this next year because of the fire caused by that rock band, Great White, in 2003 at that nightclub in Rhode Island.

Q:  How do you and Rude Mechanicals work together?

A:  The artistic directors are just about to go on retreat. Madge Darlington, Thomas Graves, Lana Lesley, Sarah Richardson, Shawn Sides and me. We do it at least once every year. We talk a lot. And usually we swim and play ping pong. We discuss what we’re in love with, what we’re reading, what we’re looking at, the plays and performances we’ve seen, the music we’re dancing to these days. We also talk about what we want to do, what skills we want to learn, who we want to talk to, where we want to travel.

We try to find common areas of interest and then it’s simply a matter of creating a container for all those interests and desires. Ideally the container is a great evening of performance that people will pay money to see.

I think it’s important to say that we don’t vote. We work by consensus. We either agree or we don’t. In that way you could say that there’s never any compromise. There’s an awful lot of love and patience in a group of fairly bizarre and strong personalities.

Each performance is created in an entirely different manner. It’s beautiful. I honestly believe we’ll be making theatre together when we are 90 years old. I pray for that. I pray they do, too.

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 go to the barbershop with my dad on Saturdays and spend the first part of the day watching cartoons in his little booth while he cut people’s hair. When the good cartoons were over my dad would give me a little job, sweeping or picking up trash from the back lot for a dollar. When I thought I was finished I would come get my dad and he would inspect my work. I almost never passed the first inspection. Not because my dad is especially tough, but because I was (and am) really impatient to get my dollar. Usually I would work just a little longer and then my dad would relent and I would take my dollar down to Winn’s, which was a five and dime, and I would buy something to play with for the rest of the day. I remember once buying a pad of paper and a pencil so that I could be a private eye and keep track of clues. For lunch we would go down to the Royal Pharmacy. Everyone there knew my dad which I thought was really cool. Then we would work a little more, my dad cutting hair and me looking for clues. At the end of the day my dad would sweep up and I would hold the dustpan and then we would go home. Typing it up now it sounds to me like I grew up in the 50s in the middle of the 80s in a small town in the middle of San Antonio, TX.

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

A:  I am casting a magical spell over all true theatres to protect them from experts. The moment an expert enters a theatre, or the moment someone becomes an expert while inside a theatre, he or she will be transported to a classroom, or a lecture hall, or a marketing firm, or anywhere in the world where an expert is truly needed or desired. This magical spell will ensure that only novices, beginners, children, wild animals, lunatics, lovers, penitents, addicts, hobbyists and deeply dedicated artists can be in the theatre. The mystery is in exile in the presence of an expert. It’s only in the presence of a student that the mystery can reveal itself. I may never get to be in a textbook, but as long as I get to stand beside my best friends in presence of the great mysteries once or twice a year for as long as we can manage, I’ll be happy. I think people try to sound like they really know what they’re doing because they’re scared or embarrassed or desirous of more acclaim. That’s why I do it. But those times when I really manage to place myself in pursuit of what I don’t know, what I don’t have, what I’ve failed to accomplish or understand, what I need, what I can’t live without, what I’m dying for the lack of—those are the times when I’ve really been true to the infinite possibilities of live performance. I wish all experts would disappear from my life. Just casting this spell is probably enough to qualify myself for removal from the mystery for a good long time. I’ll have to earn my way back by disagreeing with myself, being embarrassed, ambivalent, regretting that I ever said anything.

I don’t know that I would change anything about the theatre.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Young Jean Lee, Annie Baker, Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver, Anton Chekhov, David Greenspan, Melissa Kievman and Brian Mertes, Terry Galloway, Dayna Hanson, Gaelen Hanson, Deborah Hay, Paul Lazar, Dario Fo and Franca Rame, Bruce Nauman, Jo Brainard, Jay De Feo, and Richard Huelsenbeck. That’s who came to mind.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I learned a lot from a Double Dagger show I saw last year in Austin. At very same moment the band let this wild punk rock get loose from their instruments, the lead singer rushed forward and started touching the faces of the crowd really tenderly and sweetly. At the end of the night they sang this great song, “Vivre Sans Temps Mort,” which ends with the lines, “There’s no way we’re going to die tonight. If we shout loud enough they can’t turn out the light.” It felt like the leader singer was casting a spell of protection over the audience and I’m still alive, so maybe it worked? It was one of the best pieces of performance I’ve ever seen. I’d like to make a piece with them someday.

I generally love dance theatre. 33 Fainting Spells (back when they were together) and Big Dance always. I love bobrauschenbergamerica. Rubber Repertory did a show in Austin called THE CASKET OF PASSING FANCY in which 500 offers were made to the audience and when you heard an offer you liked you raised your hand and they performed it for you, or with you—everything from being buried alive, to spending the night in a flop house, to an act of true love and devotion.

I like new work. For me, the canon is just a history of the avant garde. Everyone is always trying something new.

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

A:  Keep starting out. Don’t become an expert. We need what you know. We’ve barely begun to explore the theatre. We know almost nothing about it. Produce your own work. Craft is essential, but don’t confuse it with art. Risk complete failure and embarrassment. You have nothing to lose.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:

MARY-ARRCHIE THEATRE CO PRESENTS
CHERRYWOOD: The Modern Comparable by Kirk Lynn
Directed by David Cromer
JUNE 24 until AUGUST 8, 2010

BURN LAKE by Carrie Fountain
Available from Penguin Books
Winner of the National Poetry Series

The Moment I Knew

A great new blog from Andrea Ciannavei in which she asks theater artists to


Describe the moment you knew you were meant to work in theater.

She asked me first.  You can read it here:

http://themomentiknew.tumblr.com/

I Interview Playwrights Part 202: Tanya Saracho

Tanya Saracho

Hometown:

This is a tough one. In my heart; in my tongue; and when it comes to those memory clips in my head (which are now starting to skip because I play them so much) my hometown is Los Mochis, Sinaloa in the Northwest of Mexico. Los Mochis means land of the terrestrial turtles. I don’t remember seeing many turtles in Mochis but I’ve always imagined turtles when I think of that place…(ok, my eyes just started watering which is telling me I need to go home and see my grandparents who are not doing so well. I am having the silliest reaction answering this notion of “home.”) When I am in Mexico, I claim my Sinaloense identiy, even though I left there very young. (The Sinaloense Spanish/Dialecto (indigenous) mix is still in my tongue so I claim it. Words like “huachapori,” (pot sticker) “bitachi” (wasp), “tatahuila” (to go around in circles/dizzy) and plebe (kid)) So, Los Mochis is my hometown.

But my home would maybe be the border town of McAllen, TX, my gateway to the United States and everything that entailed: Pop culture, otherness, English, Mexican-Americans who didn’t speak Spanish, the Border Patrol, twizzlers (yuck), Garbage Pail Kids, Ralph Macchio (my first obsession)… My mother still lives there, so that is home. Home is where my mother is. Home is where we gather for Christmas. Home is where we perform our old and new rituals as the clock turns on the New Year. That’s home. And I don’t go back enough. I’m a bad daughter. (Ok, here come the tears again. Why is this first, seemingly simple question so hard for me to answer right now?)

Enough of “home.”

Current Town:

Chicity. Mycity.

Studs’ city.

Capone’s city.

Cisnero’s Mango Street City.

The Jungle, that city.

The 1968 Democratic convention city.

The city of iconic truants like Ferris and the Cooley High kids.

Michael Jordan city.

Oprah city /strike that/ Oprah land.

Second City city.

Kanye’s and Common’s city.

Lupe Fiasco’s city.

Chicity. Mycity.

I have never lived longer anywhere in the world than I have lived in Chicago, Illinois. Same apartment I moved into the weekend I moved to Chicago 12 years ago. Roscoe Village Represent! (Ok, if you know anything about Roscoe Village, you will know why that is the silliest thing to say.)

Q:  Tell me about your play coming up at the Goodman.

A:  It’s called “El Nogalar” a play inspired –you know, loosely based on— Chejov’s “The Cherry Orchard.” I’ve taken most of the dudes away (we had to keep that one guy who buys the orchard, but trust me, I tried to get rid of him too) and I focus on the women of the Cherry Orchard, which have stayed with me since I first encountered the play. So it’s a five person version…ah, version sounds too much like an adaptation, no…it’s a five person interpretation? I don’t know…I don’t want to commit to these terms. It’s a five person cast, four females, one male. It takes place in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon in a finca called Los Nogales which contains a nogalar or pecan orchard….grove. Pecan grove. I’m not good about talking about my plays. Sorry.

It touches on what’s going on in that northern state in relation to the United States. You know, narcotrafico, loss of land, of culture, shifting identities. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking and it doesn’t deal with all that yet (I’m still in the middle of rewrites) but that’s what I want it to deal with. Oh, and ex-pats. And class. Big time. How could I forget “class,” that’s what attracted me to Chekov in the first place!

This play was a Teatro Vista commission, the first for the company so I better get it right. I adore this company, they have not only watched me grow as an artist but they have had a big part in that growth and I have written “El Nogalar” thinking of some of the actresses in this awesome group. Kris Diaz and I are resident playwrights at Vista and I think you’re going to see some cool stuff coming from us, with this ensemble in mind. Oh, and the Goodman production is a collaboration between the two companies. Kind of a dream situation if you ask me.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  Well, instead of answering these questions I’m SUPPOSED to be working on my Steppenwolf commission which is due in days. I can’t talk about it, not because I’m being coy or trying to seem mysterious, I just mean I am incapable of talking about it because I have no idea what I’m doing. Don’t mistake that for me NOT knowing what I’m doing. I just can’t describe it at this point. I’m just swimming in a vat of lips and assholes right now and I can’t seem to start making a cylinder shape.

Ok, that hotdog analogy was the worst analogy I have ever come up with. (I don’t even eat meat!) I don’t even know how we ended up there but I’m going to go with it, because I that’s obviously how I’m feeling.

Ok. So there’s the vat of flesh I’m currently swimming in and this project in the horizon with Aboutface Theater titled “The Good Private,” about Albert Cashier (could we Wikipedia him on here so you see the photos? He’s my obsession!) who was a transgendered civil war soldier who served the northern army for 2 years and was even a POW who escaped and continued to live his life as an upstanding citizen of central Illinois society until his death. Cashier was born Jennie Hodges, a poor Irish immigrant to America. I’m obsessed with Cashier right now. I’m a little scared because I’ve never done a historical drama before, but hey, before Mango Street I’d never adapted a musical version of the biggest American Latino classic either, so I guess I’ll learn as I go once again, you now?

(And what do these two projects have to do with Latinidad? Nothing! That’s why am I SOOO SCARED of them. But I kept saying I didn’t just want to be viewed as a LATINA playwright, didn’t I? Well, there you go. Now I gotta put out and shut up.)

Q:  Who are your favorite Chicago artists and teatristas?

A:  Right now for me the people make the institutions so I’ll answer you initial question this way.

Well, right now I am in awe of the talented writers who make up the No Name Ladies’ Playwriting Group Laura: Jacqmin, Dana Fromby, Sarah Gubbins, Marisa Wegrzyn and Emily Schwartz, this group is going to be written about as definitive of Chicago Theater. You’ll see.

Oh, I was just at TCG and I attended a panel of Chicago playwrights: Tracy Letts, Rebecca Gilman and Lydia Diamond (not alphabetical order, just the order they were seated) and it blew my mind. Not just their collective resumes or their aesthetic but just for how fiercely they rock Chicago and the Chicago vibe. And of course, come on, their work is genius.

My girls Nambi Kelley and J. Nicole Brooks; they’re important voices in this city. Actors make the best playwrights sometimes. Just a theory.

Josh Rollis, Andrew Hinderaker: hotness.

The one whose trail of crumbs I’m trying to follow, Brett Nevue (ok, I know he’s got a 902something zip code right now, but he’ll forever remain a 606 to me)

Ok, so I’m being totally playwrightcentric right now.

Sean Graney is not just a brilliant director but dude can write too. (see, still with the playwrights…)

Lady Kimberly Senior. She’s gravy.

Mr. Derrick Sanders.

Ann Filmer is building an empire. You’ll watch, she’s going to take over. She’s got that combination that is so seldom seen in the theater, amazing artistry coupled with business savvy.

Mica Cole, she will run Chicago Theater one day, just you wait.

Tony Adams, another good business man who is a terrific artist and thinker. I mean, this dude is a thinker. In fact, this is a whole ‘nother category, the “thinker-artist” joining Adams you got the whole 2am crew- Nick Keenan, Dan Granata and all those guys making noise on Twitter. Throwing big ideas out for the world to catch at 2am.

Oh, and to expand on the definition of theater into performance, Chris Piatt and his Paper Machete Saturdays. Oooh, that’s the hotness. Is there a smarter brain in this city? I’m in love with that brain.

And of course there’s the actors, Cliff Chamberlain, Jon Hill and James Vincent Meredith are a trio of favorites. I could go on and on about that triumvirate. Oh, and the majestic Alana Arenas. Fierce. Phillip James Brannon is takin’ over the city. Usman Ally and Desmond Borges, you want those two dudes in your play, they got the midas touch! Oooh, you know who we have to watch out for? Christina Nieves. Mark my words. I think she’s going to cross barriers. Oh, my god Karen Aldridge; royalty. The “Sandras” Delgado and Marquez who are beyond gifted, I could write for them all day long.

Ok, this list has gotten a little crazy. But I got love for my city and if you would catch me on another day, I might have a slightly different list bubble up. I love Chicago artists. That’s all I got to say.

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

A:  Oh, come on, this is such a huge question. This is a monolith of a question. I’m not a thinker like that, I can’t answer this Goliath question.

Access.

Opportunity for those on the margins.

Multiple voices and perspectives.

Hybridity.

Respect for our complex identities.

We are no longer a singular nation. (Shoot, we’ve never been that nation, we just got spoon fed the notion) We don’t have that black and white, Ed Sullivan show point of view anymore so why does so much of our theater reflect that antiquated singular voice? And why is it so male? This is not me griping or just quoting Rebeck to quote Rebeck. Seriously. Why is it so male, even when it’s female?

But again. I’m not a thinker so…

Oh, wait! Yes. I know what’s missing in the American Theater!

Nudity. Not enough nudity!

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Mr. Farr, my high school drama teacher. A kind of abusive tyrant monarch who gave me the thick skin I wear around today. Dude was a jerk, but he gave me my work ethic. He was violently murdered a couple of years ago and I wish I would have gotten a chance to say “thanks.”

Caroline Eves. She gave me courage. Maria Irene Fornes, my first real playwriting teacher; changed my life. Luis Alfaro, he made me actually think I could do this whole theatre-making thing. Martha Lavey, have you seen her in action? Fierce. I’ve seen her in a conference room. Fierce fierce fierce.

That’s on the micro.

On the macro: Milcha Sanchez-Scott, Sabina Berman, Cherrie Moraga, Caryl Churchill, Jose Rivera, Migdalia Cruz, Tony Kushner, Moises Kaufman, Anna Deveare Smith, Nilo Cruz, Danny Hoch, Lynn Nottage, the luminous Terrell Mccraney, Tennessee Williams, and Chekov. Each one formative in his/her own way part of my make up.

Oh, and big and little brothers I look up to: Kris Diaz and Jorge Ignacio Cortinas

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I love when I leave the theater shaking. When the lights come up and you realize that you are somehow dented by the experience, changed. I watched “Angels in America” at a formative time, both episodes on the same day, and it left me dented. I was trembling like a leaf. I’m sure I didn’t understand what I was watching but it reconfigured me and that part I still understand. “I Am My Own Wife” left me a hot mess too. Injured. So did “Ruined.” It left me a little…well, ruined. Those are all views from the margins, but told in a visceral, real sort of way. Folks on the perimeter, looking in; I like that kind of theater. Show me what’s off center. And devastate me. I can take it.

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

A:  If you build it, they will come. Just put it up, however you have to. If it’s worth seeing, they will come. Oh, and create a supportive community for yourself, a network, a fertile ground encased in safety made up of colleagues and friends whom you trust. And when the “big voices” start coming at you like missiles, go back to your community, to your circle, your cipher and listen to them. They will have or back.

Q:  Plugs, please:



A:
Reading of “El Nogalar” at the Goodman Latino Theater Festival, July 17th at 2pm http://www.goodmantheatre.org/season/10latinofest.aspx

And two readings of “Mala Hierba” (I’ve never been this excited about a play I’ve written!) in Chicago and NYC, August 2010. I’ll tell you a little bit more about those when they send out the press release.

“El Nogalar” at the Goodman Theatre in coproduction with Teatro Vista, directed by Cecilie Keenan, Spring of 2010

I Interview Playwrights Part 201: Daria Polatin

Daria Polatin

Hometown: Brookline, Massachusetts

Current Town: Brooklyn and Los Angeles

Q:  Tell me about the play you have coming up at Cape Cod Theater Project.

A:  GUIDANCE is a play about a new high school guidance counselor who becomes obsessed with helping his students. He also gets involved with one of the parents, the ‘no child left behind’-like politics at the school, and has an Advil addiction. The play is a comedy on the surface, but is also about people struggling with loss and diving into relationships to distract themselves, rather than deal with what’s really going on underneath.

Q:  What else are you up to?

A:  I’m working on a play about my dad’s life growing up in Egypt called THE LUXOR EXPRESS, and developing some TV ideas.

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 in fifth grade I was in a play written in German about the phases of the moon. Being tall, I played the full moon. We were performing the piece in front of my whole elementary school. At one point I forgot my lines, and it being a play in German—and me being ten—I didn’t know how to improvise. Since I didn’t think the rest of the school would notice or even know what I had been saying, I quietly moved off stage, and told two classmates—who were playing clouds—to go on and do their scene. They refused. They made me go back out on stage, and the German teacher mouthed my lines to me. I think that experience made me want to be able to create what I want to say.

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

A:  More developmental support—both artistic and financial—for early career plays and playwrights. The gap between writing a draft of a play to a production is so huge and challenging to bridge, that I believe there really needs to be more ferries to help playwrights across. A lot of developmental support has dried up in the last few years, and it’s really sad to see. I think re-investing in artistic development would help create better and more exciting work for theater now and in the future.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I’m a junkie for good story…

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

A:  Just keep writing and rewriting. It’s easy to think and talk about writing, but the only way to get better at it is to practice. Also, have your actor-friends read stuff out loud—it will really help hear what’s on the page—what’s coming through and what might be missing. I also read my plays out loud to myself, just to make sure the words feel right when spoken. I usually do this before anyone else hears or reads the play.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  If you’re near Cape Cod, come check out GUIDANCE. (http://www.capecodtheatreproject.org/) We’ve got a great cast together, and the ever-talented Mark Brokaw is directing.

200 playwright interviews

Delaney Britt Brewer

Alice Tuan

Alice Austen 

Jeffrey Sweet 

Dan LeFranc

Andrew Hinderaker

Brett Neveu

Christine Evans 

Jon Tuttle

Nikole Beckwith 

Andrea Lepcio

Gregory Moss 

Hannah Bos

Steven Levenson

Molly Smith Metzler

Matthew Lopez

Lee Blessing 

Joshua James 

Chisa Hutchinson

Rob Ackerman

Janine Nabers

Cory Hinkle

Stefanie Zadravec

Michael Mitnick

Jordan Seavey

Andrew Rosendorf 

Don Nigro 

Barton Bishop

Peter Parnell 

Gary Sunshine

Emily DeVoti

Kenny Finkle 

Kate Moira Ryan

Sam Hunter 

Johnna Adams

Katharine Clark Gray

Laura Eason

David Caudle 

Jacqueline Goldfinger

Christopher Chen

Craig Pospisil

Jessica Provenz 

Deron Bos

Sarah Sander

Zakiyyah Alexander

Kate E. Ryan 

Susan Bernfield

Karla Jennings

Jami Brandli

Kenneth Lin

Heidi Darchuk

Kathleen Warnock

Beau Willimon

Greg Keller

Les Hunter

Anton Dudley

Aaron Carter

Jerrod Bogard

Emily Schwend

Courtney Baron

Craig  "muMs" Grant

Amy Herzog

Stacey Luftig

Vincent Delaney

Kathryn Walat

Paul Mullin

Kirsten Greenidge

Derek Ahonen

Francine Volpe

Julie Marie  Myatt

Lauren Yee

Richard Martin Hirsch

Ed Cardona, Jr.

Terence Anthony

Alena Smith

Gabriel Jason Dean

Sharr White

Michael Lew

Craig Wright

Laura Jacqmin

Stanton Wood

Jamie Pachino

Boo Killebrew

Daniel Reitz

Alan Berks

Erik Ehn

Krista Knight

Steve Yockey

Desi Moreno-Penson

Andrea Stolowitz

Clay McLeod Chapman

Kelly Younger

Lisa Dillman

Ellen Margolis

Claire Willett

Lucy Alibar

Nick Jones

Dylan Dawson

Pia Wilson

Theresa Rebeck

Me

Arlene Hutton

Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas 

Lucas Hnath

Enrique Urueta

Tarell Alvin McCraney

Anne Washburn 

Julia Jarcho

Lisa D'Amour

Rajiv Joseph

Carly Mensch

Marielle Heller

Larry Kunofsky

Edith Freni

Tommy Smith 

Jeremy Kareken 

Rob Handel

Stephen Adly Guirgis

Kara Manning 

Libby Emmons

Adam Bock 

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Liz Duffy Adams

Winter Miller

Jenny Schwartz

Kristen Palmer

Patrick Gabridge 

Mike Batistick  

Mariah MacCarthy

Jay Bernzweig  

Gina Gionfriddo

Darren Canady

Alejandro Morales

Ann Marie Healy

Christopher Shinn

Sam Forman 

Erin Courtney

Gary Winter

J. Holtham

Caridad Svich

Samuel Brett Williams

Trista Baldwin

Mat Smart

Bathsheba Doran

August Schulenburg

Jeff Lewonczyk

Rehana Mirza

Peter Sinn Nachtrieb

David Johnston

Dan Dietz

Mark Schultz

Lucy Thurber

George Brant

Brooke Berman

Julia Jordan

Joshua Conkel

Kyle Jarrow

Christina Ham

Rachel Axler

Laura Lynn MacDonald

Steve Patterson

Erin Browne

Annie Baker

Crystal Skillman

Blair Singer

Daniel Goldfarb

Heidi Schreck

Itamar Moses

EM Lewis

Bekah Brunstetter

Mac Rogers

Cusi Cram

Michael Puzzo

Megan Mostyn-Brown

Andrea Ciannavei

Sarah Gubbins

Kim Rosenstock

Tim Braun

Rachel Shukert

Kristoffer Diaz

Jason Grote

Dan Trujillo

Marisa Wegrzyn

Ken Urban

Callie Kimball

Deborah Stein

Qui Nguyen

Victoria Stewart

Malachy Walsh

Jessica Dickey

Kara Lee Corthron

Zayd Dohrn

Madeleine George

Sheila Callaghan

Daniel Talbott

David Adjmi

Dominic Orlando

Matthew Freeman

Anna Ziegler

James Comtois

I Interview Playwrights Part 200: Delaney Britt Brewer

Delaney Britt Brewer

Hometown:  I don’t really have one. I moved around a lot as a kid. But, now one set of folks lives in Fayetteville, NC and the other re-located to Birmingham, AL.

Current Town:  New York City.

Q:  Tell me about Wolves:

A:  Wolves is a project I’ve been working on and adding to for the past three years. It started with a one act I wrote when I was at home for Christmas and tipsy off of some deadly mixture of Diet Coke and Godiva liquor – basically any old thing I could scrounge in the house. I wrote the whole short play in about two sittings. It’s the story of a couple that hits a mythically large wolf on the side of a highway with their car on New Years Eve. Time jumps back and forth between the accident and a New Years Eve party the couple attended earlier in the evening. The spring after I wrote it, it was staged for the Sam French One Act play festival and I really liked it but couldn’t figure out how to give it a life beyond the one act form. Then I had an idea to extend it by writing another complimentary piece that would be a kind of variation on a theme – different characters but the setting and time would be the same as in the act before. And, the character and image of the Wolf would be present in both. I worked on that piece during my fellowship with the Dramatist Guild. Recently I’ve added a third section that’s a monologue from the perspective of the Wolf that will be played by a kid. The whole piece is going to be up at 59e59 this August for three weeks and I’m really excited to have the chance to work on it and see it up on its feet in its entirety.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I just finished a draft of a play I started in a workshop I took with Jon Robin Baitz this past Spring. I gave myself the challenge of having a play with a lot of characters but only one setting. The play is about a group of friends from college whose re-union weekend upstate takes a dark turn due to a massive snow storm and an over population of deer. I’ve purposely given all of the characters the names of actors whom I’d want to play the parts so that I can keep their voices clear in my mind. But moreover, they’re actors that I would want to develop this play with over a period of time, who really understand my voice and tone and I love their work as well. Also, recently I got an awesome gig writing a short play for teenagers who are in the Stella Adler acting program this summer, which I’m doing with you Adam and a bunch of other really fantastic writers. We had a meet and greet with the actors a few weeks ago and they’re so impressive. They’re all way more keen and grown up and savvy than I was when I was a teenager. I think I was spending time kicking cans to other cans and singing Pearl Jam songs to my hand when I was 17. I have an ongoing project, as well, with my two friends and collaborators John Peery and Candace Thompson whom I’ve known since I was in college. It’s a video project that we all write, develop and perform in called OtherPeeps (otherpeeps.com). It’s a low-fi, home-spun story about three degenerate room mates who live in a haunted place. So, far there’s been a vortex in our shower, a yoga cult on the roof, Scientologists, a claymation hoagie, Imelda Marcos, a man that’s also a lamb named ManLamb, dinosaur intestines, a re-imagined scene from the movie Misery, and other adventures. And, I play a little boy named Cricket and there’s real hair glued to my face. We just got a grant from the Experimental TV Center, so we might take this show on the road. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for 6 Flags.

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 think my parents really supported my weird fascinations and obsessions while I was growing up. They ranged from the musical Annie, to the British royal family, to Lamborghinis (I had a big book on them), and the biggest one was the Rocky movie series. I was fanatical about the movies, especially Rocky 4 wherein Rocky single handedly breaks through the iron curtain with his fists. For Halloween my mom went to painstaking lengths to humor my Rocky fetish and made me a costume in tact with gloves, shiny boxing shorts, and a sweat shirt that read “Lil’ Rocky”. Thanks Mom.

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

A:  You know, I always feel like theater works best, and this might sound really hokey, when it’s not a commodity. It’s really an ill fit for an art form that’s basically a captured moment. It’s hard to wrap a bow around that. I think that theater works when it’s a communal experience, like church or a rally or a meal. I went to a dinner at my friends’ house last night and I didn’t hesitate going over there because the meal didn’t have a sophisticated marketing strategy, or Julia Roberts wasn’t going to be at the table eating corn as promised, or one person at the New York Times didn’t like the fish or thought the charcoal was disappointing. I wish there was a lot more funding that freed up theaters from capitalist constraints and allowed plays to be a little messier and braver and not stuck in development purgatory. I really believe that the only way to see if a play works or doesn’t is to see it up on its feet.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Honestly, I love Angels in America. I think it’s epically emotional and made a statement that humans can survive a disease that no one thought you could survive at the time it was written and produced. Also, I love and try to read and see and learn from Caryl Churchill, Mac Wellman, Tennessee Williams, Young Jean Lee, David Adjmi, Chekov, Sarah Kane, and many, many more. Oh and I heart Amy Sedaris. I want to eat her cupcakes one day.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like seeing different kinds of theater than what I tend to write and do. I saw one of the most amazing pieces of theater ever last summer at PS122 by this writer/performer named Marie Brassard called Jimmy. The story was simple and beautiful and spectacular and her performance was one of the most riveting I’ve ever seen – it stuck with me. I try to see and appreciate as many different forms of live performance as possible, from kitchen sink dramas to Radiohole. ‘Cus it’s all theater.

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

A:  Work and Live. Seriously. In the end, what is most important is the work you do and finding people who want to work with you and believe in what you’re doing. And, live. Go to neighborhood slip n’ slide parties. Have a cocktail. Or, a mocktail. Eat ribs. Or, tempeh that looks like ribs and uses the same BBQ sauce. And, most certainly shake your booty. Don’t get too caught up in the schmooze factor. It’s necessary, but in the end not necessarily. Because, if all you’re focused on is who’s who and what got what review and who’s being produced – then your work sort of turns into a case of “The Emperor Has No Clothes”. Or, worse. He has no pants. He’s a weird pant-less dude talking at you at a party and he’s mildly aroused, but by something someone is saying four conversations down.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  -Go see Wolves this August, from the 4th to the 21st: http://kidswithguns.com/

-Watch OtherPeeps: otherpeeps.com

-Go see Gormanzee and Other Stories at the Flea July 7th- 25th. Anna Moench is an effin’ genius and can ride a bike better than Lance Armstrong.

-See Shells Returns! At the Joe’s Pub on July 13th. A cabaret act performed by Roslyn Hart and created by her and Nick Chase. It’s some savagely funny stuff. -Watch Michael Cyril Creighton’s online show Jack in the Box: http://www.youtube.com/user/MCCreighton . It’s hilarious.