I Interview Playwrights Part 209: Sofia Alvarez

Sofia Alvarez

Hometown: Baltimore, MD

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A;  Working on revisions to my play, THE FISH BOWL that will be part of Juilliard’s Playwright’s Festival in September and directing Blair Singer’s NOTICE ME that starts performances at the Wild Project on 7/19.

Q:  Tell me about NOTICE ME – how did you get involved in this project?

A:  Blair is a client of my former boss at CAA and we became friends when I worked there. Earlier this year we were having lunch in LA I asked him what was going on with NOTICE ME – I play I’d always loved. He told me he wanted to do it in New York with “kids.” I immediately called my friend Daniel Grossman who runs FOGLIGHT, a production company that produces theatre, music videos and independent films, that was four months ago - we open next week.

Q:  Do you identify more as a writer or a director?

A:  I identify as a writer but I love directing and will continue to do so for as long as I have the opportunity - they fill different creative needs for me.

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

A:  Both of my parents are writers so I fear I may bore you with all of the stories I could tell here but I will say that when we were very young- my brother, sister and I would entertain ourselves with character based improv games we made up with titles like “Dark Bar”, “Carpet Salesman” and “Child Molester”. The latter in which my sister Amelia, in a Tony worthy turn, would wear our grandmothers large, yellow “molester glasses” and beg my brother and I not to “take her shades” when we put her in prison.

Also, most members of my family were very sharp and creative teasers, as the sensitive youngest I developed a thick skin from an early age – I think this shows in my plays – which are ultimately sympathetic beneath a prickly exterior.

Q:  Is that how you would describe your writing – prickly and sympathetic?

A:  Sort of - I am currently at Juilliard and in my mid-year review my professor Chris Durang told me that what he sees in all of my plays is a combination of psychology and humor – which was exciting to hear, as that is how I would describe them as well.

Q:  Who are your theatrical heroes?

A:  Maria Irene Fornes. FEFU AND HER FRIENDS is my favorite play and I directed a production of MUD for my thesis in college.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like theatre that is emotional without being sentimental. Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of THE SEAGULL directed by Ian Rickson on Broadway and Jez Butterworth’s JERUSALEM, also directed by Ian Rickson at the Royal Court come to mind. Also, there was a reading of Bash Doran’s KIN at the Pacific Playwrights Festival that totally blew me away - I can’t wait to see the full production at Playwrights this season.

Q:  You had a play at the Pacific Playwrights Festival as well, correct?

A:  Yes. My play BETWEEN US CHICKENS was one of the other readings.

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

A:  Apply to everything and don’t second guess yourself based on other people’s opinions, you know better than anyone else the strengths and weaknesses in your own writing.

Q:  Plugs, please:

Come and see NOTICE ME 7/19 – 8/1 at The Wild Project. www.noticeme2010.com

I Interview Playwrights Part 208: Kevin R. Free

Kevin R. Free

Hometown:
Greensboro, North Carolina, though I am officially an army brat. My family lived in Texas, Virginia, Kansas, Illinois, Kentucky, and North Carolina all before I turned 6. But I lived most of my life in North Carolina.

Current Town:
New York City

Q:  Tell me about the play you're putting up in this year's NY Fringe.

A;  A Raisin in the Salad: Black Plays for White People is a sketch show about culture and how it’s created. Or, rather, WHO creates it… I think my goal is to make people laugh about race & identity by using stereotypes, pop culture references, and absurd images. It’s a series of connected sketches that add up to a collage – a decidedly American quilt, if you will – that depicts how I relate to the world (or did at the time the seed for this show was planted).

Q:  What else are you up to?

A:  At the moment, I am directing 16 incredibly talented kids aged 10 – 15 in a production of Godspell in Westchester, at Broadway Training Center. I’m also directing Tracey Lee in her solo show for FringeNYC, Standing Up: Bathroom Talk & Other Stuff We Learn From Dad …And I’m narrating a great book right now - Any Known Blood, by Lawrence Hill.

Q:  You worked with the New York Neo-Futurists. Tell me more about them?

A:  I am still an ensemble member of the New York Neo-Futurists, FYI. I am taking a break for a while, but I could go back in 2011.

Everything I know about myself as a writer, I learned first as a Neo. We don’t play characters and we don’t ever pretend onstage. Because we acknowledge the audience as part of the show, the show is visceral and immediate and dangerous, when we get it right. The show to which I am referring is, of course, Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind (30 Plays in 60 Minutes). We write and perform all the plays and most of them are under 2 minutes. The plays are so in the moment that many people mistake the show as improv (but it aint). Anyway, I discovered when I started writing as a Neo-Futurist, I discovered that I had a lot to say – about myself – but I never really wanted to say it. A Raisin in the Salad: Black Plays For White People is actually an expanded, extrapolated piece that started as a series of plays in Too Much Light…

Q:  You're an acclaimed actor with an amazing voice who acted in gigantic hits like Susan Gets Some Play. How does your acting inform your writing and vice versa?

A:  Acclaimed? Moi? Thank you!

My first real taste of being myself in all my crazy glory onstage was in Too Much Light... and that's what I want now, all the time. I wrote great plays for myself, and others wrote great things for me. The more I did and wrote for TML, the more I realized that I can be that free in all my auditions. And my acting informs my playwriting, because I'm always looking to write something in which I can cast myself (because I'm so acclaimed & have such an amazing voice). Speaking of acting, when are you writing a play for me? Call it "Kevin gets some Soul," or something. Maybe?

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've a few stories, I think:

My first voice teacher, Phyllis Tektonidis, an international diva, taught me my first audition song, which I used from 10th grade until my first year of college. It was “Swanee.” I honestly had no idea that I was singing a minstrel song. It’s Gershwin! I still cringe when I think of what the black people who saw me sing that song were thinking about me.

When I was five, I mocked my cousins for the way they pronounced my name. They were southern, so to my five year-old-raised-on-army-base ears, they called me “Kay-yuh-vee-yin.”

My high school chorus teacher, before opening her front door for me, told me that normally she didn’t “let black people into my house, but I figure you’re not black - you’re just wearing makeup…” (I know that was a racial slur, but was it also a gay slur, as well…maybe?)

I tell those three stories to say that in my adult life, as an artist, It is important to me not to sing minstrel songs, literally and metaphorically; to embrace where I come from, rather than revile it the way I am tempted to; and to make it clear that I identify as black, regardless of the way I talk, the way I sing, or the way I dress. I am also gay. So there. I remind myself of all that in my work, because, even with all my anger and sadness, I’m happy to be who I am.

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

A:  It would be that we all recognize our power within the theater machine. Not so much that we are in control of other people, but that we have power over ourselves. We can make choices. Actors can decide what roles they don’t/do want to do; playwrights can tell the stories they want to tell; theatres/companies can find ways to present work that will find an audience. And, likewise, audiences who don’t have a theatre-going lifestyle will recognize the power in attending theater, if for no other reason than to figure out how to change theater.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I’m inspired most by people that I know: the people who create theatre on a shoestring budget; who have no representation, but write and perform and anyway, the people who create and maintain theatre festivals; and most of all -the children with whom I work year-round, who create theatre based on their lives.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Oooooooh I love me a dangerous comedy, honey. I like when plays and performers are just at the edge of crazy. I want to see something immediate and close to the bone. I also love seeing theatrical magic onstage. It’s easy for me to buy it, if I can see the wires showing.

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

A:  Well, I feel like I am just starting out, so I feel a little foolish giving advice. But I will say this: if you receive great feedback about your work, which opens a door into your psyche about how you work or about your writing quirks – and it rings true to you, LISTEN TO IT. Then listen to all the feedback you receive to discover whether that feedback is informed by the original feedback. For instance, if someone says to you, “Hey, Spike! Your endings are never resolved.” And if you believe that to be true – and you like that about yourself – then perhaps all the rest of the feedback you receive about how you have no point of view plays right into your endgame. Feel me?

Q:  Plugs, please:

A: 
www.kevinrfree.com - that’s me…

Godspell Broadway Training Center, July 30, 31 at 7:00 PM & August 1 at 3:00 PM Tickets & More info: www.broadwaytraining.com.

Tracey Lee’s Standing Up: Bathroom Talk & Other Stuff We Learn from Dad in FringeNYC at the Players Theater, August 13 – 29. www.tleestandingup.blogspot.com. Check back for our official dates!

A Raisin in the Salad: Black Plays for White People in FringeNYC at the Players Theater, August 13 – 29. www.blackplaysforwhitepeople.com Check back for our official dates!

Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind (30 Plays in 60 Minutes), every Friday & Saturday at 10:30, Kraine Theatre - www.nynf.org

I Interview Playwrights Part 207: Ken Weitzman

Ken Weitzman

Hometown:
Great Neck, NY. I’m a Great Necker.

Current Town:
Bloomington, Indiana. I teach at IU.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m working on an adaptation of a non-fiction book by Lars Anderson. It’s called Carlisle vs. Army. It’s about a 1912 football game between the Carlisle Industrial Indian School and the Cadets at West Point. Barely 20 years after the massacre at Wounded Knee, Native Americans and the US Army were squaring off on the football field. Jim Thorpe, arguably the first celebrity athlete, was on the Carlisle team and Dwight Eisenhower led the Army team. It’s a great story to work with. I’m also working on a play about a western water rights deal gone awry.

Q:  You've done quite a bit of teaching. How do you manage to balance your teaching and writing lives?

A:  The difficulty of time aside, I’d say they balance each other. Teaching is important to me - to support myself and my family, yes, but also for fun, for inspiration, for having to articulate in the simplest terms what I do, why I do it, and what its value is. If all I did was write, I'd go crazy.

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

A:  Hmm. I don’t know, lots of random stupidity. When I was around preschool age I think, my brother got a cassette recorder as a gift and he, my sister, and I made recordings. I remember at some point yelling over and over into the recorder, “sock in the eye!” I don’t know why. But it cracked up my siblings, which delighted me. There was something about the word play, the pun, the sound of those particular words together, the violence of it, the repetition, the exuberant idiocy - I’d say that’s all in my writing (and my personality I suppose.)

Though nowadays, as a father, I think more about the childhood(s) of my two sons and how to communicate to them some vision of the world and what it is to be a human being. So I’d say my writing is somewhere between that and “sock in the eye!” Perhaps the tension between the two?

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

A:  One thing? I’m not sure. Certainly the price to attend. But I hesitate to say that because I can’t say I know how to fix that. But less costly theatre would certainly alter many things.

Also, the critics. I wish the whole idea of the “review” was abolished or transformed at the very least. I wish those covering theatre never gave their opinions on what they liked or deemed worthy. I wish they were more like reporters in their approach - giving context, the story of the experience of being at the play, including the experience of the audience around them, interviews with them, with the artists, the artist’s peers, etc. etc.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  How about influences? Albee, Miller, Shanley, Adele Shank, Allan Havis, Les Waters, Caryl Churchill, Erik Ehn, Amy Freed, The Atlantic Theater Company, Young Playwrights Inc.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theatre that re-orders everyday logic, and the metaphors we use to understand our existence, so we see things in new ways. That’s a terribly written sentence but I’m leaving it anyway. I like theatre that’s for the audience, not just for the people on stage. I like plays that are energetic, exuberant, vital, playful. I dislike it when plays are lazy or take shortcuts in their storytelling. I prefer simply produced plays in smaller venues.

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

A:  Misinterpret your influences. Or, less coyly, don’t shy from trying to emulate those people and those works that influence you most. You couldn’t imitate or truly steal them even if you wanted to – because they’ll be filtered through the prism of your own experiences/world view/individuality. That being said, read a lot and see a lot of theatre so that you have influences. And get involved with theatre companies so you can meet people and hopefully find collaborators who help guide and inspire you, and whom you trust.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Two productions in winter 2011.

The Catch at Denver Center: http://www.denvercenter.org/shows-and-events/Subscriptions/DenverCenterTheatreCompany.aspx#catch

Fire in the Garden at IRT: http://www.irtlive.com/shows_and_tickets/season_preview/

I Interview Playwrights Part 206: Michael Golamco

Michael Golamco

Hometown:
The San Francisco Bay Area from the peninsula to Marin County to all points in between.

Current Town:
Los Angeles! As a Northern Californian I used to hate on LA, but I have to say that this city’s really grown on me.

Q:  Tell me about Year Zero that went up recently at Second Stage and Victory Gardens.

A:  Year Zero is a play about a sixteen year old kid that loves Dungeons and Dragons, hip hop, and talking to a skull. It’s a dramatic comedy about the Cambodian Genocide, and there aren’t a lot of those around so I felt like one needed to be written.

The play world premiered at Victory Gardens alongside my pal Kris Diaz’s The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, which is one of my favorite plays of the year. Seriously, have you seen this thing?

Anyway, Victory Gardens is full of wonderful, caring people, and Year Zero grew immensely as a result of that premiere. Plus have you had the hot dogs in Chicago? Amazing. The foie gras hot dog at Hot Doug’s is incredible. Beyond that Chicago is a great place to do work -- they really embrace you and make you feel at home. It’s perhaps the most welcoming city I’ve ever worked in.

The second production of YZ took place at Second Stage, alongside Chad Deity again. Dude, what are the odds? Anyway, I love working in New York. I have a lot of friends there and it feels like a true home base. Any time you need to, you can go lounge at the library at New Dramatists and just read a book and leave the cares of the world outside. And Second Stage was an awesome place to work on the play -- it felt like a true second production in that the play got a lot tighter and more focused. They really take care of you as a playwright there, and we had a lot of fun working in the rehearsal room. Will Frears (our director) is a hilarious, really smart guy.

Q:  Tell me please about Cowboy v Samurai going up at Jobsite in FL this August.

A:  Cowboy is best described as “Cyrano de Bergerac with race as the big nose”. There is also a ninja in it, or rather a man who thinks of himself as a ninja but really isn't a very good one. All plays should have ninjas.

Florida’s great! I think the folks that are doing it are great as well! Also, Cowboy should also be coming back to Minneapolis later in the year, from what they tell me.

Q: What else are you working on?

A:  I live in LA so I’m required by law to write for the screen as well as the stage -- otherwise I might get deported to another state. I’m not kidding -- there’s a guy that comes over twice a week to scan my hard drive.

So I’ve sold two features so far this year, and I’m continuing to do film work while I move into TV writing. Theater-wise, I’m working on a commission for South Coast Rep, plus a couple of other things that are rattling around looking for cohesion. Also I want to get a dog in the next couple of months. I know, I’ve been talking about getting a dog for years, but I think I’m finally going to pull the trigger. I’m probably going to name him/her Spaghetti or Omelette or Egon.

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 ten my dad brought home a Commdore 64. You should’ve seen this thing: Beige. Yeah, remember when computers were beige?.. A big old keyboard with the entire computer built into it. It used CASSETTE TAPE DRIVES to store data. Here’s the Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64

Anyway, I used to mess around with that thing for hours. Back then magazines like BYTE and Compute had programs printed in them that you would type into your computer, line by line, and run. This was before the Internet or modems even. I would spend days doing that, taking the programs apart and modifying them and seeing how they worked. How to change them. I taught myself how to program in BASIC doing that, which translated to C, Java, PHP, later on. I may be the only playwright that is also a subscriber to the Apple iOS developer program. But who knows -- maybe Sam Shepard’s working on an iPhone app in Objective C right now…

Anyway anyway, those formative experiences taught me a lot about structure, elegance, keeping things simple and precise. A lot of that knowledge transferred to writing and storytelling. It sounds kind of kooky and a bit demystifying, but I think programming and creative writing are linked in a lot of ways. In one activity you’re writing code that compiles for machines; in another you’re writing code that compiles for humans.

That sounds totally nerdy. Please don’t take my lunch money, I need it to buy milk so I can grow.

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

A:  The economics problem. Expensive tickets, (in)accessibility. At the same time, the nuts and bolts of the enterprise itself is, by its nature, a very expensive and time-consuming process. Plus how do you pay playwrights a living wage, etc., etc.. A lot of the stuff that’s covered in TDF’s Outrageous Fortune.

This is a devil of a problem that I don’t have a solution to. But something needs to change. It’s going to take all of us putting our heads together as a community. Good work needs to get out there, and there are things that theater can do that no other medium on earth can do. I’m pretty sure we’ll figure something out -- I’m an optimist about it.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I’ve always loved Neil Simon’s plays. There’s a comedic wit and charm present in them that I really admire. I think that there are some very smart people working in the theater right now: Adam Rapp, Sarah Ruhl, Lynn Nottage, Guirgis, Julia Cho, Lloyd Suh. Confession: Sometimes I like reading plays more than I like seeing them (because I can study the intricacies of the language in my own time, etc., etc.), and I always get a kick out of reading these guys’ plays. Maybe that’s because I can cast them in any way I wish in my imagination.

Also actors are my heroes. I’m talking about the ones that work their asses off because they love doing what they do. I’m specifically talking about actors who will bake delicious cookies for everyone and bring them to a Saturday rehearsal. You know who you are, and you are my hero.

You know who else are my heroes? Stage managers, designers, house managers, ushers, and everyone else that keeps the whole shebang going.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Stuff that, while I’m watching it, gives me a sort of out-of-body experience. I love theater where the energy is so palpable that it’s contagious. I think it’s the one-to-one live nature of the thing -- when I see really good theater I connect with it on a visceral, autonomic level. I hope that doesn’t sound too weird. I really get energized by it.

I usually have a good time watching any theater. If people care enough to be up there, giving a hundred percent, then I’m usually there with them from the audience. Doing that stuff’s hard.

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

A:  I think the thing that helped me a lot when I started was to just shut up and listen. Take peoples’ notes, understand them and see where they’re coming from. Be open minded. Don’t close up or get defensive. Also, write a lot and send your stuff out to every contest, call for material, etc., that’s out there. Get eyes on your work. Keep writing new work while you’re waiting for a response. Do new drafts of the stuff you’ve got. The things that you’re writing now, even if they become drawer plays, will probably inform your later work in important ways. If you have questions contact me through my website: www.michaelgolamco.com. It may take a while for me to respond, but I’ll do my best.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Red Dead Redemption on the XBOX 360 is a mighty fine video game. I just got to Mexico in it, you should check it out. Also, Fallout: New Vegas is lookin pretty good. It comes out in the fall. Oh you know what else is really good? Plants Vs. Zombies on the iPad. Though once you get the watermelons that freeze zombies (“wintermelons”) it gets a bit lopsided.

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.