I Interview Playwrights Part 213: Anna Kerrigan

photo by Amy Wadsworth

Anna Kerrigan

Hometown: I was born in San Francisco but moved to Los Angeles when I was one.

Current Town: New York City

Q: Tell me about The Talls.

A: The Talls is a play about the Clarkes, an extremely tall family living in the Oakland Hills in 1970. Just as the family patriarch, Mr. Clarke, launches his campaign for City Comptroller, the family receives news that Mrs. Clarke’s best friend has been severely injured in an automobile accident. Isabelle, the eldest sister, and Mr. Clarke’s new campaign manager, Russell, are left to take care of the house and the three younger siblings while their parents sit at the hospital. A Brown University bound graduating senior and hopeless hippy, Isabelle maximizes her brief freedom by seducing Russell. The Talls takes place over 24 hours.

The Talls was inspired by my mother’s enormously tall family. She’s the eldest and shortest of seven kids who range in height from 5’9” to 6’11”. I have this one aunt who’s 6’2” who worked at Saks Fifth Avenue when I was a kid and at the time I just thought that was the most awesome thing ever – but as I got older and started looking around I realized that most women never get that tall and it must be pretty hard. I am fascinated with the idea of this gargantuan and physically freaky family attempting to fit in and gain acceptance in a community where everyone wants to be normal. Apart from the height issue, the fact that they live in the same place that my family did, and that they’re Catholic – well, apart from all that the family doesn’t really resemble my actual family that much.

My wonderful friend Peter Cook directed a reading of The Talls recently for Bloodworks, Youngblood’s reading series. We were both pretty psyched afterwards and people seemed to really dig it.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  The big thing that has been monopolizing my life in a wonderful way for the past year, is my first feature film, Roost – which just wrapped in late May.

Here’s the blurb from my website about it:
“Camden is thrilled to meet Alice, the half sister she never knew. In an effort to bond, the sisters and their significant others take a trip to Lionshead, the family estate in Massachusetts. Tensions build and ultimately explode over a week in the country.”

I wrote and directed the film as well as played one of the four leads. We shot in the Berkshires at this amazing two hundred year old estate that was donated to the production by my wonderful friend Cathy Deely. We had a tremendous amount of support up there – it was a low budget production and everyone was really generous with us. Bar owners would literally just hand us the keys to their establishments and walk away – the Red Lion Inn donated a cottage for our actors – everyone was cutting us deals right and left. It was a real contrast to working in New York where if you’re a film crew everyone’s first impulse is to hate you.

Our crew was amazing, our cast was amazing (Austin Lysy, Brooke Bloom, Sam Rosen, Darren Goldstein, Ned Noyes, Peter Cook…) - now that I’m editing and looking at all these peoples faces every day I am really appreciating their performances.

I’m also working on another play called Paradigm from California - it’s set in Berkeley, California in 1984. It’s about a half baked but well-meaning, amateur philosopher in his forties and his relationships with his teenage protégés. During a brief stint as a high school teacher, he met these two lost kids who look to him as a sort of father figure. When the play picks up they’ve been living together for quite some time and have written a 500 page political/philosophical/bullshit manifesto and are waiting to hear back from publishing companies. His sexual relationship with one of the kids begins to fracture their small “family” – while his world falls apart, the teenage kids have a real coming of age.

I’m also working on a TV Pilot set in Los Angeles where I grew up and incubating another play set in Asheville, North Carolina.

Q:  Tell me about Jack Fish Films.

A:  Jack Fish Films is my production company.

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

A:  This is a personal story that I find funny, tragic and compelling.

When I was in Kindergarten my Dad was working in Germany on a movie and my mom, my sister and I were living in my paternal Grandmother’s house in Reseda, California. Even though my grandmother was a bit of a grouch and I’m sure my mother had quite a time dealing with her, my sister and I loved living there because there was this huge yard with eucalyptus trees where we would find salamanders and play with rabbits and chickens that escaped from our neighbors’ places. Another joy of the backyard was Uncle Harold’s house – he literally lived in a shack that he furnished with a lot of Army Navy Surplus stuff. He was a vet, loved to watch Bonanza and basically just sat in his little shack smoking and drinking all day long and watching television. For a kid, it was a fun place to hang out because it was like a miniature house and Uncle Hal kept root beer in the fridge for our visits. My sister Lily and I would go to his place, open a root beer and then draw on his bare back. He’d sit watching TV shirtless, we drew a line down the center of his back, I took one side and Lily took the other and we’d draw cartoon dogs and funny faces and landscapes and whatever we wanted to. This was always the highlight of our day.

Eventually, we moved out of Grandma’s house – she developed Alzheimer’s and turned into a completely different person – and we moved into our own house in Chatsworth, which was even deeper into the San Fernando valley. A year or so into living there, my Uncle Hal came over to hang out with us and I found myself very shy around him. It suddenly struck me that he was a pretty sad dude. He sat down on one of our lawn chairs – he was extremely heavy and unhealthy at this point - and complained about his feet aching. One of my parents suggested that I massage his feet (I was really into massages as a child) and I blurted out “No!”. He looked at me with such hurt and rejection – I felt terrible but stubbornly refused to change my mind.

This memory nicely distills a few things that my writing tends to include: lonely, and misunderstood characters, strange families, perverted sweetness and the push and pull between empathy and repulsion for the people and places a character comes from.

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

A:  I would make it cheaper.

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

A:  I feel like I’m just starting out! Be patient, open but not dependent on feedback, and get a low stakes day job.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  If you want updates about Roost you can go to my website www.jackfishfilms.com or join my Roost facebook page.

Also, if you’re out in Martha’s Vineyard this summer, go see my boyfriend Sam Forman’s play “The Rise and Fall of Annie Hall” at Vineyard Playhouse (July 22nd-August 7th). Sam, who has seen the play performed twice now (once in DC and once in New York) is playing the lead role himself this time. When I was running lines with him, he kept freaking me out with his good acting. There’s really no one like that guy …

I Interview Playwrights Part 212: Luis Alfaro

Luis Alfaro

Hometown: Pico/Union, Downtown Los Angeles, California

Current Town: Little Ethiopia, Los Angeles, California

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  A pageant play about Pentecostalism in California and a commission for Hartford Stage about the Puerto Rican and Ethiopian communities. I am dramaturging a lot these days for a group of emerging playwrights and directing for a young theatre company, East L.A. Repertory and an older one, Company of Angels. I am working on a presentation about Art and Spirituality for Loyola Marymount College. I was hired by a nun so I am a bit terrified at the moment. I am also preparing an acknowledgment ceremony for the Durfee Foundation, which funds leadership in the non-profit sector.

Q:  I heard great things about Oedipus El Rey. Can you tell me about that?

A:  Sure, it’s been an amazing ride. I started at Homeboy Industries, a gang prevention network in L.A. and happy to have it produced through support from the National New Play Network. I wrote the first draft at the Getty Villa in Malibu working with a Greeks scholar, Mary Hart. I had one scene and seven actors waiting for me, so everyday I brought in a scene until my ten days were up! Went on to the Magic Theatre in San Francisco with Loretta Greco, then Boston Court in L.A. with Jon Rivera and next year at Wooly Mammoth with Michael John Garces. I started by writing about where I thought the new kingdoms were - the fast growing California State Prison system and its alternate societies. I was thinking a lot about young Latino men, gang culture and our ability to defy these destinies. But I ended up with a love story! What happens when your passion is larger than the world you live in?

Q:  How do you manage to balance your teaching life at USC with your playwriting life?

A:  Well, one thing about my career is that I have always been compartmentalized. One part is professional/regional theatre and the other is community work; community-based theatre, volunteer service and a multitude of other notions of giving like sitting on boards, panels, advisory councils, etc. I was raised super Catholic and super Pentecostal, so the idea of service is central to what I do. I believe most in mentorship and that is what I think I do best at USC. I started as a poet, then in the avant-garde performance scene, both of which rely on the experimental, so coming to professional theatre felt like a natural progression with my activism. One thing I have done in the last few years is to work for the theatre that is producing my play. I spent a year at Borderlands in Tucson doing workshops, a year at Hartford Stage interviewing people, I did a one-man show fundraiser for the Magic, and three amazing months at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival giving speeches, community interactions, meeting doctors, migrant workers, etc. The balance is not always easy or successful, but the attempt has been extraordinary.

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

A:  Well, I don’t think you are going to like this one, I don’t, but it’s the necessary one. I was born and raised in what was considered the poorest and most violent neighborhood in L.A. – Pico/Union – an area of downtown that is unique in that it is territory to two notorious gangs. One night my brother and I were baby-sitting my two younger siblings, I must have been ten, my mother was at prayer service and my father was at the racetrack, when a man came running down our street with a piece of a pool cue sticking out of his chest! He fell on his back in front of our house. Our dog, Lobo, pounced on the poor dead body and my brother took my siblings and ran for cover, but I couldn’t look away, I was mesmerized. It was truly awful and not the worst thing I had seen in that neighborhood, but it was the first time that something clicked about image, story and that I might be poor. It was an awakening to say the least. It was opera (although I didn’t know what that meant yet). That night I wrote a five-page essay and I gave it to my teacher, who gave it to my principal, who expelled me for a week. Now, both of my parents were farm-workers and associated with the United Farm Workers Movement, so we helped at a lot of protests and demonstrations, and I knew that if powerful people wanted you to shut up – I was onto something. I never stopped writing after that day.

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

A:  The lack of access. I go see a lot of plays at small theatres in L.A. and I work my ass off to be able to afford it, I don’t know how a young artist does it. It’s essential to find your tribe and to get someone to see your work, criticize it and celebrate it, but it’s hard to afford it!

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I don’t have a formal education but I was mentored by some amazing people - Maria Irene Fornes gave me discipline, C. Bernard Jackson at the Inner-City Cultural Center gave me consciousness, Scott Kelman at the Wallenboyd gave me the freedom to risk and fail. Gordon Davidson and my ten years at the Mark Taper Forum, although intense, gave me a computer, printer and money to produce and pretty much let me fail and succeed my way. My time with Paula Vogel, Mac Wellman, Luis Valdez, Len Jenkins and John Steppling was short but profound. I love so many people in the theatre that it would be crazy to try and name them all, but the heroes in my head right now are Chay Yew, Lisa Peterson, Brian Bauman, Rachel Hauck, Chris Acebo, Annie Weisman, Jessica Goldberg, Lui Douthit, Tracy Young, Raquel Guttierez and the beautiful Julie Marie Myatt.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  These days I look for virtuosity anywhere I can find it; in the language, direction, acting, lighting design, etc. I just saw a modern opera by the great O-Lan Jones in a dilapidated old car showroom in Culver City, California. 11 librettists, 18 singers, 32 scenes and that kept me awake with wonder. I went to the Hollywood Fringe Festival and saw a small beautiful site-specific piece in a park that took place at a hopscotch court surrounded by all of these Latino kids that were stealing focus and thrilled to see something in their environment. That really excited me.

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

A:  Hm, well the rewards of writing are so personal and require great risk. Writing from a place of passion, desire and welcoming failure will yield a different reward than what you might think. Write in spite of…

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Truly excited for the career that Tanya Saracho is having in Chicago and at The Goodman. I just saw Brett Neveau (I never know how to spell his name) at the DePaul showcase and he told me about the Royal Court, so kudos to him. I’ve been mentoring a young Indian director, Nathan Singh, a go-getter who is directing an opera with Oliver Mayer. I also mentored a young Indian playwright, Shane Sakhrani, who has a fantastic comedy about India today. He is back in Hong Kong and I can’t wait to see what happens to that play. I have been working with two emerging playwrights Julie Taiwo Oni, a young Nigerian-American writer and Donald Jolly, a Gay Black writer who both write experimental plays about race, I want them to not get beaten down by the lack of risk theatres are taking these days. And someone in New York give Brian Bauman a job, I love him. His work scares and excites me.

I Interview Playwrights Part 211: Jonathan Caren

Jonathan Caren

Hometown: Los Angeles

Current Town: New York

Q: Tell me about Three.

A: It’s a play about a couple having a baby, dealing with fears of the unknown, and a spiritual healer who tries to right their ship. I just read it at The Partial Comfort Retreat and it’s being done at the PTP/NYC AFTER DARK SERIES at the Atlantic Theater’s 2nd Stage Tuesday July 20th at 10:30PM, directed by Kate Pines. I’ve never had a baby, but I’ve certainly been afraid of birthing things, like plays for instance.

Q: What else are you working on?

A: Evan Cabnet will be directing my play Friends In Transient Places this fall at Juilliard. It’s a series of interwoven stories that take place on an airplane journey from one terminal to another. It’s an experiment in theatricality, something I tend to usually shy away from, but I’m excited for the ride.


Q: You have a background in TV. Most people usually transition the other way.

A: I tend to do things backwards, though I don't see TV as the end-all. I co-wrote a pilot in 2008 and worked on a CW show before coming to Juilliard. But I was still doing local theater in LA for years (in fact, I produced one of YOUR plays, Adam) and my play Catch The Fish, won Best Play at the NY Fringe in 2007. Writing for TV is hard as hell and requires a different skill set. I admire TV writers' abilities to re-write and try to carry over that mentality to playwriting.

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

A: In an ideal world, going to the theater would be like going to group therapy. You watch a play, talk about it after, hang out, and decompress from your daily grind. I think Ars Nova does that best.

The thing I’m loving most about theater in New York is the sense of community here. A lot of people seem to know each other and “hanging out” means “working on a play.” That doesn’t happen as much in Los Angeles. For me, doing a reading, or putting on a production is an excuse to socialize in a creative environment. So I guess if I were in charge, I’d slash ticket prices in half, and turn every lobby into a bar that offers free Eugene O’Neill Jello Shots, whatever that means. And if you don’t feel like you’re a part of the community, put your ego aside and go volunteer somewhere. Everyone needs help. Trust me, you’re needed—as long as you’re not creepy and trying to force your agenda onto the people you’re helping.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Winnie Holzman, taught me everything I know. She wrote Wicked, and created My So-Called Life. I was her assistant for two and a half years. I’m pretty enamored with my class at Juilliard. Josh Allen, Nick Jones, Fia Alvarez and Fernanda Coppel.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Stuff that makes me want to call my ex-girlfriends and apologize for being an douche bag. Also, Greg Keller’s Dutch Masters’ blew me away.

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

A: I’m just starting out! I spent years afraid of being a playwright. So my advice is, don’t do anything I do, like worry about how much your play sucks and waste time comparing yourself to everyone else.

There are two caps to wear, the business cap and the creative cap. You can’t wear them both at the same time. If you wear your creative cap while doing business, you get too emotional over all the rejection you’re going to face. If you wear your business cap while being creative, your writing will sound like you’re trying to sell it and you won’t write what you love. So literally, imagine you’re wearing different caps. I will say from a practical standpoint, I recommend getting involved at ANY level you can and trying to find the people who you fall in love with and to have creative babies with. Then get yourself a healer.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: Go see the play Fia is directing, Notice Me! Come to my play Friends in Transient Places in the fall. And read Adam Szymkowicz’s blog!

I Interview Playwrights Part 210: Jennifer Haley

Jennifer Haley

Hometown: San Antonio, TX

Current Town: Los Angeles, CA

Q:  Tell me about Breadcrumbs coming up at CATF.

A:  Breadcrumbs opened this past weekend at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival, which is a gem of an event that came to my attention only a couple of years ago. The Festival, under the leadership of Artistic Director, Ed Herendeen, produces five new plays every summer in a beautiful, civil-war era town in West Virginia, just outside of Washington DC. Over twenty years, Ed has developed an amazingly loyal audience, who often come over a weekend to see all the plays (and once again - all new plays); by the time I showed up for opening, Breadcrumbs in its 199 seat theatre was almost sold out for all of its 16 performances!

Laura Kepley, a super talented colleague of mine from graduate school, brought my play to Ed’s attention and directed it for the Festival. The play is about a reclusive writer of modern fairy tales who is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and must rely on this somewhat untrustworthy younger woman to tell her final story - an autobiography. Laura and I were lucky to score a couple of amazing actresses, Helen Jean Arthur and Eva Kaminsky, both based in New York City, to play the roles. I spent the first week of rehearsal with them, doing some final re-writes, then came back three weeks later for the production, which I loved.

It was also a rare celebrity-fest for us playwrights, who are made to stand and show our faces at all events, including right before our own shows. I normally prefer to lurk anonymously in the audience, listening to unfiltered feedback and melting away if the show falls flat, but realized the value when one theatre-goer after another approached me to talk about the show, talk about their family members suffering from dementia, and share how touched they were by the play. As I found myself saying over and over again what an important part of the play they are, I realized how fervently I believe it.

Q:  Tell me please about Neighborhood 3!

A:  I unwittingly hit a nerve with this play, which gave my career a long-prayed-for bump. (Heh heh, when I found out it was going to be produced by the 2008 Humana Festival, I was most tangibly thrilled by the fact that I would not have to go through the expensive and time-consuming process of marketing it on my own . . . printing it out, writing targeted cover letters, shlepping armfuls of heavy envelopes to the post office, etc.) It began as ten minute play about a boy addicted to a disturbing video game, and a mother’s schizophrenic attempt to pry him away. This was stuck to the end of a series of meditations between suburban parents and adults, written in the doldrums of my first year out of graduate school. Over two years, through development opportunities, readings, a bout of my own World of Warcraft addiction, and the help of many generous artists, I managed to turn this Frankensteinian collection into a single story, and was ultimately thrilled with Kip Fagan’s direction of the Humana premiere on Michael Raiford’s terrifying, shiny black set!

The play is still being produced by local theatre companies around the country, and, most gratifyingly, by high schools. This past Spring there was a student-produced production at the East Brunswick School of the Arts in New Jersey; one of the teenagers involved sent me production photos on Facebook, a couple of which are now featured on my web site, www.jenniferhaley.com. What I have found most exciting about this play is the conversation it has sparked between generations.

I am currently working with a young film production company in Los Angeles on ideas for turning it into a screenplay. It’s been fascinating to twist the story around, to explore it as a single-protagonist piece as well as an ensemble piece, to cast it in different genres . . . horror, psychological drama, thriller, etc. I like this company because their main interest in the script has to do with the disconnect between parents and children, which is the heart of the piece. Neighborhood is one of a handful of possibilities for their next film to produce - but I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I am heading to New Haven for a week to work with Page 73 on a new play called Froggy. I wrote the first draft a couple summers ago, and am glad someone wanted to do some development on it, as that’s often the kick in the ass I need to continue a project.

Froggy came about because I wanted to write a play in the style of a graphic novel . . . I had no idea what that even meant before I sat down to write it . . . but what came out is the noirish tale of a woman determined to track down her vanished ex-lover when she sees him as a character in a video game. She plays the game and goes in search of him while also exploring through memory the roots of addiction and obsession that bound her to him in the first place.

I wrote the play in InDesign using “panels” of action that denote memory or scenes from the video game. The main character is played by three different actresses - one who tells the story in voiceover, one who plays the woman, Froggy, as an adult, and one who plays her as a twelve-year old girl. I have often been asked by those who have read the piece how I actually see it staged, and although I can say it would involve projections, microphones, killer lighting design, and music, I myself do not know how how some of what I’ve written would actually work. That is what we’re going to be playing with in New Haven. Thanks to Liz Jones and Asher Richelli at p73, I’ll be working with a wonderful director named Matt Morrow, a lighting designer, and several actors to start figuring this out.

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, one story jumps to mind . . . I was sitting on my front porch, a little girl about five years old, playing with a big, plastic race car. An army caterpillar came rippling along, and out of sheer curiosity about whether its blood was yellow or iridescent green (it was usually one of the two), I ran him over with the car. Just then, my mother came out the front door and recoiled. She asked me, “How could you do that?” And I suddenly felt a flood of shame and confusion for taking that small creature’s life so casually. I think writing has become a way to satiate my curiosity about the way life works without committing acts of violence . . .

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

A;  Well I could make lists of things like wanting more inspired theatre spaces and for the regional theaters to produce more new plays; however, I’m a pretty firm believer that creating great things in spite of adversity and trusting that the rare, perfect alignment of resources will arrive with work and faith and patience are key to inspired art and an inspired life.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  My current theatrical hero is playwright Luis Alfaro, whose play, Oedipus El Rey, I recently saw at the Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena. He’s my hero because he gave me the kind of theater that excites me, which is:

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The kind that causes some kind of paradigm shift within me. In this case, it was taking a Greek play that’s always felt a little musty to me - a textbook piece - and reworking it so that I got its heart. Luis was aided by an inspired production and wonderful actors who brought to life the passion between Oedipus and his mother (I’m often a little repulsed by love scenes on stage - they feel strained - but these were something else), and sparked my deeper understanding of a young man’s hubris.

(Luis is also approachable, kind, and a teacher of young playwrights . . . I always admire the person within the artist.)

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

A:  Write only what interests you, try new things with every play you write, produce your own work in the beginning (get your favorite peeps involved), and prepare for years of investigation . . .

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I've got to plug my writers group, The Playwrights Union (www.playwrightsunion.com).  These folks are amazing writers and generous people - they are a huge reason I find it fulfilling to be a playwright in Los Angeles.

Alas, no shows on the immediate horizon, but someone do a second production of Breadcrumbs, okay? Don’t let it fade away just because it’s had its world premiere, okay??

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