I Interview Playwrights Part 271: Margot Bordelon

Margot Bordelon

Hometown: Everett, Washington (about thirty miles north of Seattle)

Current Town: New Haven, Connecticut

Q:  Tell me about BOOzy.

A:  BOOzy is a two-night storytelling event produced by New York theater company Bohemian Archaeology. Five Chicago writers penned Halloween inspired stories that are performed by New York actors. Jordana Kritzer (Bohemian Archaeology AD and director of the evening) is a close friend and colleague of mine. We’ve collaborated on various projects since our Seattle days in 2002-03. She conceived the evening and asked me to submit a story for consideration. My piece “Kryptonite” is about an experience I had four years ago trying to navigate a relationship with an extremely attractive, yet extremely self involved DJ. It’s light. It’s both silly and sexy, with a healthy dose of self deprecating humor.

Here’s some language from the press release that might communicate the tone of the evening more clearly:

BOO(zy) explores the themes of Halloween: from the freakish, gross, and sexy to the rituals of dressing up and acting out. It's not campfire-ghost-stories, and it ain't your grandmother's Halloween! Produced by Bohemian Archaeology, this show reaches into the writer's pandora's box and brings forth the scathing, awkward, and hilarious truth about life.

Five of Chicago’s most twisted and original writers join five of New York’s most talented actors for two nights of Halloween tales (Thurs Oct 28 and Fri Oct 29, 9:00pm at the DR2 in Union Square!). From getting freaked out to getting their freak on these storytellers tell twisted tales to get you in the Hallows’ Eve mood. These stories are accompanied by a live musical soundscape by Ryan Blotnick and are paired with a boozy drink, one that best embodies the theme of each story.

On Halloween night, a young hipster gets freaky with a hot DJ and wonders what happens when the costumes come off (Blood-Orange Martini); a homeless man jams to ‘80s rock with a broomstick (Jack-O-Lantern 'n Coke); a backpacker finds herself surrounded by freaks in the Red Light District of Amsterdam (Green-Eyed Schnapps Monster); and a bike racer dons her superhero cape and rides for her life (Freaky-gin Fizz).

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I just started my first year at the Yale School of Drama studying Directing. So first and foremost, I’m working on readjusting to school life after having been away from it for nearly a decade. Also, I’m working on getting used to New Haven which is quite different than Chicago where I spent the last six years.

In addition to school projects, I’m preparing to co-direct WE LIVE HERE in August 2011, a piece I co-conceived with my best friend and fellow Theatre Seven of Chicago company member Cassy Sanders. It features eight short autobiographical plays written by eight Chicago writers, woven together to create a cohesive piece of theater performed by a versatile nine-actor ensemble.

Q:  Tell me about 2nd Story.

A:  First, some language from their website, because really, I can’t explain it more succinctly than this:

2nd Story is a hybrid performance event combining storytelling, wine, and music that is produced by the Serendipity Theater Collective as both a Monthly Performance Series and an Annual Festival. A typical 2nd Story evening goes something like this: you hang out with your friends and eat and drink and make merry. Four or five times during the night, the lights go down, a spotlight comes up on somebody and they tell you a story.

I first got involved in 2nd Story in the winter of 2006. I saw an event at Webster’s Wine Bar and I was awed by the level of craft, both of the stories and the performers. I’d just started to become interested in exploring autobiographical stories in a theatrical medium and this seemed like the perfect place to begin that investigation. Immediately following the event I introduced myself to the producer and said “I want to do this. How can I be involved?” He suggested I submit a story to the annual festival. I did and spent the next four years writing and performing for 2nd Story. Some of my closest friends and collaborators are artists I met through 2nd Story. In fact, four of them wrote pieces for WE LIVE HERE.

Q:  If I moved to Chicago, what theaters or shows would you recommend I see?

A:  Theater Seven of Chicago! This is my company so naturally I must recommend it first. We’re about to open our fifth season with a production of David Mamet’s radio play THE WATER ENGINE directed by our brilliant Artistic Director Brian Golden. In June we open The Chicago Landmark Project, a festival of ten short world premiere plays about specific Chicago landmarks. As you might be able to guess, a large part of our mission is to create work by and for the Chicago community.

Other fantastic companies to check out: Pavement Group, The New Colony, Sinnerman, Strawdog, New Leaf, Sideshow, Hypocrites, Tuta, TimeLine, Profiles, Dog & Pony. There are so many more I’m forgetting. Chicago is home to a wealth of thriving storefront companies, it’s truly an amazing city to live and create theater in. As for individual artists, I would recommend anything directed by Matt Hawkins, Shade Murray, Joanie Shultz, Seth Bockley, Sean Graney, or Leslie Buxbaum.

Lastly, if you’d never visited the city, I’d say go check out whatever is playing at Steppenwolf. They are the most important and influential ensemble company in Chicago, (if not the United States) and their work is always of the highest quality. I moved to the Midwest to do an artistic apprenticeship there, so Steppenwolf will always have a special place in my heart.

Q:  Besides a writer, you are an actor and director. How do your acting and directing inform your writing and vice versa?

A:  My writing tends to be very conversational which I believe is a direct result of hailing from a performance background as opposed to a literary one. Before I even sit down to write a story I’ll walk around my room and speak it into a tape recorder so that my body can be involved. Thoughts and ideas often spring from physical movement for me. When I direct I like to get the company on its feet as soon as possible after the first or second read through. We’ll go back to the table throughout the first week, but some of the most important initial discoveries come from actual physical doing.

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

A:  I’d like the government and citizens of this country to view theater as a vital form of expression that we cannot survive without, and as a result of that belief, be eager to fund it appropriately…

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Tina Landau, Charles Ludlam, Emma Rice, Mary Zimmerman, Lisa Kron, and Mike Daisey to name a few…

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Highly physical work created by companies or ensembles. The work of the Rude Mechs, Pig Iron, KneeHigh, Lookingglass, 500 Clown.

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

A:  I’m not sure I’m in a position to advise beginning playwrights since I'm not directly pursuing that career path, but practices I’ve observed from successful colleagues are a rigorous commitment to routine, discipline, and fearlessly seeking out artistic collaborators.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  BOO(zy): An Evening of Spirits and Storytelling

Thurs Oct 28 and Fri Oct 29th

9:00pm

Daryl Roth Theatre's DR2

101 E 15th St (@ Union Square East)
To buy tickets, go to:
https://www.smarttix.com/show.aspx?EID=&showCode=BOO18&BundleCode=&GUID=14375435-1f6b-4f9f-bee5-3205d85ae74b

or call 212-868-4444

www.theatreseven.org
www.2ndstory.com
www.margotbordelon.com

I Interview Playwrights Part 270: Ben Snyder

Ben Snyder

Hometown: Bay Area, CA (Tam Valley in southern Marin)


Current Town: Austin, TX

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I'm working on a new play Rivers of January, about three old friends meeting in Rio de Janeiro for New Years Eve.

I'm also working on a musical based on the novel You Can't Win. (I've mainly been writing screenplays these days and beginning to produce films as well.)

Q: After Juilliard you went to Austin to get your MFA. How do you like Austin?

A: Austin is a great place to go to grad school. It's a really livable town. Not a city city, but being in an overgrown town has a lot advantages. Cheap rent. Good weather. Fresh water pools. I'm definitely writing more then I was ever able to in NY.

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

A: As a kid in the 80s I was part of a Capoeira group that performed at culture events around the Bay Area. This was my introduction to the stage. The community center we practiced at was also home to a local chapter of the Nation of Islam. Being a Jewish kid in this environment was also my introduction to race politics. The theater I have created as an adult has always been about the intersections of race, class, culture and power.

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

A: I'd like to find a way for theater to be relevant. Not just in its content but in its presentation. I wish HBO or someone smart produced theater for live audiences but also taped really well so it could be shown on TV or in movie theaters as well. Like what Spike Lee did for Passing Strange. That shit was beautiful. Maybe that would be the death of theater. I dunno.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: My main theatrical hero would have to be Harry Belafonte. He's the best role model I know of as far as fusing arts and activism.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: That's a hard one. It's not really a kind of theater, but specific shows. Passing Strange was amazing to me. I thought August Osage County was pretty exciting. Nilaja Sun is exciting. Danny Hoch is exciting. I loved Billy Elliot the musical. I'd have to say I'm most excited by old shows that are new to me. Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death is exciting theater to me, but it came out in 1971. All My Sons is probably my all time favorite play.

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

A: Advice, hmmm... If you're going to grad schools look into the ones that are funded. Also, realize this will most likely be a hobby your entire life, in that really nobody makes a living as a playwright, so be sure you love it, and figure out how you're going to subsidize your theater habit. Is that advice?

Q: Plugs, please.

A: I'm afraid of plugging shows. I have a few things coming up but if I talk about them too much maybe they'll get cancelled. (I have had some problems with that in the past)

I Interview Playwrights Part 269: Emily Bohannon

Emily Bohannon

Hometown: Sandersville, Georgia

Current Town: New York, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m rewriting a solo piece about the inmates of a Georgia State Prison that I wrote last summer, and I also started a new play last week about marrying someone your parents hate. I find rewriting incredibly difficult, so I like to work on something old alongside something new. Stepping into a first draft feels like falling in love before things get complicated.

Q:  You recently won a NYFA grant. Can you tell me about that?

A:  It’s a funny story, because I applied for the grant as part of an application for a residency that I wasn’t accepted to, and had completely forgotten that I applied when I was notified that I won. I’m actually much happier that I won the grant, and have met some wonderful people as a result of it. NYFA is a fantastic organization with really nice folks that every artist should check out: http://www.nyfa.org. They give grants both to established and emerging writers (like me!), and it encourages me immensely to know that there are people in the world who believe in my writing.

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 was almost held back in first grade because I told my teacher that I could talk to mice. They called my parents to the school for a conference, and when my parents asked me about it, I explained that I was retelling Cinderella from a first person point of view. From then on, I was pretty much always in trouble for talking. I was an only child and spent most of my childhood at flea markets talking to adults, so whenever I had access to children, I bossed them into putting on plays. I remember reading a play in an old Victorian textbook when I was 6 or 7, and then sitting down with a notebook to write a play of my own. Not a whole lot has changed since then. In sixth grade, there was a girl who wrote nasty things in everyone’s yearbooks, so I wrote a play about a girl who writes nasty things in people’s yearbooks and performed it for our class. She watched it and came up to me after class. I thought she was going to hit me, but instead she apologized. It was the first time I saw that writing could affect someone’s point of view, and that’s still what I aspire to with every play I write.

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

A:  Cheaper to produce and cheaper to see. If I had a second thing to change, I’d create more funding for individual artists and small companies, who can do so much more with less money than large organizations. And a third thing would be for more producers and artistic directors to believe that there is an immense hunger for new work in the world, and embrace the unknown instead of producing and reproducing the known.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I have great admiration and respect for the women who have taken me under their wing, particularly Tanya Barfield and Cusi Cram, who have given me a tremendous amount of support and encouragement. Chekhov is and always will be my hero. I’ve always said if I can have a career like Stephen Adly Guirgis, acting and writing and doing both things incredibly well, I’ll die a happy woman. And few playwrights excite and inspire me more than the wildly gifted Katori Hall, who is the only other writer I know writing about the South of my childhood.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The most exciting thing I saw this year was Space Panorama in the Under the Radar Festival at the Public. It proved that you can tell any story you want on a bare stage with a little imagination. I get excited by theatre that invokes noises from the audience — crying, screaming, gasping — especially plays that make me laugh and cry at the same time. I get really excited by structure, and when plays come out of left field with a surprise or reversal I wasn’t expecting. I get excited whenever I’m in a reading at the Lark where there’s a huge variety of work being developed in a supportive environment. In short — anything DIFFERENT. Anything I haven’t seen before, heard before, thought about before. Tell me stories I don’t know, in ways I’ve never seen.

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

A:  Find people who believe in your work, whose work you believe in, and stick to those people like glue.

No matter how broke you are, keep reading and seeing plays. Don't forget movies either; with the instant watch on Netflix, you can watch unlimited movies for less than $10 a month. Find the artists whose work inspires you.

Apply for everything.

Get excited when you see a really bad play, because you’re about to learn something.

Give yourself permission to write really bad first drafts and write things that feel crazy, offensive, and dangerous. Write about the things that terrify you.

Go look at the first page of the first draft of “The Homecoming” in the British Library. Pinter wrote things and crossed them out. A lot.

Question everything you know to be true about the world, and attempt to believe the opposite of everything you believe.

Have a reading for yourself before you invite anyone else into the room, and learn to trust your own judgment about what works and what doesn’t.

No matter what happens or how many bad days you have, just keep writing. If you can’t make one play work, write another one. No matter what, don’t stop writing. If you believe in yourself, eventually other people will, too.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  This would also fall under the “advice” category, but I want to give a huge plug for ESPA, the Einhorn School of Performing Arts over at Primary Stages (http://www.primarystages.org/espa). You will not find a place with more supportive talented people anywhere

I Interview Playwrights Part 268: Cheri Magid

photo by Charise Isis.

Cheri Magid

Hometown: Easton, CT

Current town: New York City and Saugerties, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Juggling a few different projects: The Tavern Wench, a contemporary and fantastic love story inspired by the bawdy tales of Boccaccio’s Decameron; The Virtues of Raw Oysters, about an eighteen-year-old aural smut peddler in the age of the phonograph (Yes there’s a theme—in my other life I write erotica.) And also a musical, The Christmas Windows of 1937, about the birth of the New York City Christmas windows.

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

A:  I remember seeing Guernica when the Picasso exhibit traveled to New York.  They had it set off in a separate room from the rest of the exhibit. I had never scene art like that before, so charged, so alive. But what struck me more than the art itself was the empty space in front of it—that vibrating state of possibilities, of emptiness with this impending sense of being filled. We were the theatre in it—when we walked in we changed the essence of that space, bringing into it our reactions or non-reactions or our need to get something eat. That push or desire to create something—I felt it so acutely even if I couldn’t exactly put it into words at the time.

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

A:  Oh how I wish you could write something and see it up immediately. I think about Jon Stewart’s show and how he and the staff can have an immediate reaction to a speech or a political decision and see it skewed or commented upon immediately. There’s a timeliness that unless you’re doing sketch comedy you just can’t get in the theatre. I wonder sometimes if we’re ruining our own power by that developmental delay.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like messy oblique theatre that doesn’t answer every question, theatre that taps into another world. I think of the Mark Wing-Davey’s production of Caryl Churchill’s The Skriker that I saw at the Public. The breadth of that imaginary world floored me and that opening monologue of virtual nonsense that went on for at least ten minutes was amazingly theatrical. I want to be taken somewhere and to forget everything that pins me to the real world when I go to the theatre. I want it to have that kind of power and magic.

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

A:  Write and write and write and write. And then send out your work relentlessly. When you first start sending out your plays you will hear a whole lot of ‘no’. But if you keep at it, if you study plays and productions that work, if you hone your skills and be your own best editor and then if you send it out relentlessly you will see results. But you need to do both to be a successful playwright; writing and marketing.

I Interview Playwrights Part 267: Jason Chimonides

Jason Chimonides

Hometown:

Tallahassee, Florida. Moved there when I was two – born in Tuscaloosa though, Alabama. I guess I’m a southern ex-pat.

Current Town:
I split my time between NYC and a tiny little place called Indiana, PA where I teach theater at a reasonably sized public school called Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Indiana is about an hour east of Pittsburgh and Jimmy Stewart’s hometown!

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  It’s a thing called serverLove and it’s a bit difficult to describe – it’s set in a “futuristic” paracosmos in which a vast superintelligence called “server” (imagine if the internet became conscious) is exponentially integrating itself with humans at a rate that’s becoming difficult for our species to keep pace with. If you’re familiar with Transhumanism, or The Singularity, Virtual Reality, etc – this topic will not be exactly new to you, science fiction writers have been exploring this terrain for eons…

What I hope will make serverLove fresh, (and why it’s a play in the theater and not a film or novel), is, that as our man made machines become more and more intuitive and “organic” seeming, more natural, then to me it follows paradoxically, that live theater becomes the perfect medium through which to explore “Virtual” reality.

I became fascinated by the idea that an audience could watch onstage characters that existed in an utterly fleshed out, vivid, three dimensional virtual reality world - in utterly fleshed out, vivid, three dimensional time and space - and that the play itself could toggle back and forth between both the “virtual” and the “real” and that if calibrated well, the audience would feel, in a visceral way, all the simulacra folding in on themselves - which is how neuroscientists and philosophers increasingly see consciousness itself and does this make any sense at all…?

Anyhow. Topically, the play examines exponential technological evolution – and its implications for human relationships – but at a completely mundane level: youngish professionals falling in and out of relationships.

All of the characters in the play have been “mated” by server (try to imagine a kind of SUPER E Harmony matching your brain’s “lovemap” with another person’s at the minutest of neuronal levels) and are, in an objective sense, highly suited to each other, yet, despite their consonance, they still find themselves unable to form lasting relationships. The reason? server is always improving. The mating is always gaining subtlety and just like next year’s iPhone promises to be better than this years, there is an ingrain societal expectation that no matter how successful a pairing, one could always do better; The Paradox of Choice.

I’ll stop there.

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



A:  Teaching has actually provided the financial and psychic stability to seriously pursue writing, not to mention it’s given me the necessary time to really grow – I teach only 28 weeks a year! And since I don’t necessarily consider myself a “writer,” first, but more of a “generalist” generally – teaching’s a nice structure for a guy like me to keep his unruly brain occupied.

I write one full length project a year and have done so since about 2003, and balancing these projects with teaching, directing and music allows my creative interests to feed and talk to each other – life becomes integrated and that’s incredibly important to me. I also really enjoy attempting to contribute value to other people’s lives and to elicit growth. One isn’t always aware of the effect one is having on students, but I rest in the illusion that I’m doing some good. And just like in my Playwriting – I no longer read reviews.

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 7 years old I had a “Death Meditation” on my Big Wheel. I knew, intuitively that everything would one day come to an end and yet I simultaneously realized that things were infinite (the ultimate “BIG WHEEL”) - I think it was Joseph Campbell who said “The image of death is the beginning of story…” That day on the big wheel is where mine began.

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


A:  My overwhelming feelings of guilt that I don’t see enough of it, know enough about it or care enough about the medium AS a medium if that makes sense.

I’m 37, when I was in college I was OBSESSED with theater, (in addition to cinema and Brit Pop), I consumed as much of it as I possibly could, had dreams of joining the RSC or starting my own company, etc. Now, in a way, I’ve moved on from it and only enjoy seeing plays as a rare treat. Sure I’ve been burned by seeing a lot of uninspiring professional theater, but simultaneously there are SO MANY other human endeavors that I want to explore and for too long theater has siphoned off too much of my attention: visual art, physics, experimental music, space, Buddhism, neuroscience, are just a few examples of my current “Subject Crushes.”

And though I teach theater, ostensibly, at the undergraduate level, for me, it’s simply a lens, a container through which to view life and to develop as a human. And beyond writing my plays, that’s how I attempt to contribute to the field. Theater is a really great thing to do as a young person! For a certain type of personality, it can be the keystone of a truly transformative education. It certainly was for me.
Beyond that, the central thing that keeps me devoting large amounts of my life to making it is, that, as an art form, it’s open. And most importantly, perhaps: theater = the present.

And it’s always the present…

So what do I want to change about theater? Nothing. I only want to stop feeling guilty for it no longer being the center of my life.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  George Judy, my mentor at Florida State University - now at Louisiana State University. He was the first person who showed me that one could be something other than one of the conventional options the culture offered up. He was and remains one of my greatest inspirations.

I liked Peter Brook and Growtowski and Stephen Wangh and Sam Shepard and Shakespeare and Moliere and a bunch of writers and actors; I still feel that Anthony Hopkins is a soul mate.
Oh, and Morrissey! Can’t forget him! He’s my ULTIMATE theatrical hero!!!

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?


A:  It’s always changing, but essentially I like stuff that’s cosmic in nature. I like stuff that deals with the BIG questions: the ultimate nature of reality, the self, relationships, death, love, inner paths to outerspace, etc. I’m engaged by theatrical inventiveness and endlessly impressed by it, but it’s not what I really care about – at my core, I’m a naturalist and I like (and write) chamber pieces.
I saw “The Aliens” by Annie Baker this spring and that play totally met my test for Cosmic Naturalism. It was clear to me that she writes from an instinctual, intimate, yet ultimate kind of place. There was a moment at the end of the first act where a dude is watching a sparkler burn out and he’s saying something like: “It’s going, it’s going…” (I’m butchering it, sorry) And I thought: “YESSSSSSSSS………THE TRUUUUUUTHHHHHH…….”

The theater that excites me the MOST however currently, the very most, is the play that Phillip Seymour Hoffman directs over 50 years in Charlie Kaufman’s “Synedoche, New York.”

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


A: 
• Play to your strengths and use the writing as meditation – a listening for personal truth, work for yourself first and then invite people to dialogue with your play but don’t operate from a place of trying please anybody – this will only lead to SUFFERING;

• Cultivate a “growth mindset” as opposed to an “outcome mindset” and be comfortable knowing that it will take thousands of hours of practice to achieve ANY expertise at all. This approach will also help you to relax when you’re totally LOST in a script by reminding you that the more lost you are the more possible it is that a truly extraordinary creative discovery lurks JUST beyond your winking “I beam!”

• Don’t read reviews. If they say it’s good it’s not that good, if they say it’s bad it’s not that bad.

• And most importantly, DO IT FOR FUN….. Just for fun. Everything else will follow naturally and if it doesn’t – who cares…? You’re invested in the PROCESS! And the process is the only thing that actually exists.

Q:  
Plugs, please:


A:  serverLove is being read on Oct 18th through MCC playlabs! Marin Ireland and Thomas Sadoski star – Josh Hecht directs!
http://www.mcctheater.org/literary/playlabs.html#serverlove
I’m also in a band called the Cinema Twin, type us in to Facebook or iTunes and listen!!!!

I Interview Playwrights Part 266: Karinne Keithley

Karinne Keithley

Hometown:   A pair: Bishop Monkton, No. Yorks, UK / Los Altos, CA

Current Town:  Modjeska Canyon, CA

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Half the day, building displays for Montgomery Park, or Opulence, which is half museum, half audio-video-operetta. The other half, working on my dissertation prospectus.

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

A:  As a child I did a lot of things repetitively: draw oil pastels of Jupiter, watch the three films I owned on video (Wind in the Willows, My Fair Lady, Guys & Dolls), talk to the peacocks that came from Mr Jones' farm across the street to eat my mother's basil plants, and go to ballet. One of the highlights of my childhood was a hiking trip to the Lake District where we ate Kendall Mint Cakes and I was allowed to stay up past my bedtime to watch Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe.

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

A:  Put the room it happens in always in question, and architecturally make thinking space for different syntaxes of storytelling.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Mac Wellman, Big Dance Theater, Pina Bausch, Sibyl Kempson, Amber Reed, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Deborah Hay.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The serene, bewildering, mind-as-proliferating-multitudinous-scaffold, singing, ceremonial kind.

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

A:  Take anatomically and somatically oriented dance class -- seriously, I think that the best ear arises from kinesthetic intelligence.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Montgomery Park, or Opulence, an essay in the form of a building, at Incubator Arts Project NYC Nov. 4-13, 2010.

I Interview Playwrights Part 265: Rich Orloff

Rich Orloff

Hometown:  I was born and raised in Chicago.

Current Town:  New York City

Q:  Tell me about your new comedy SKIN DEEP.

A:  Several years ago, one of my plays was produced at the Key West Theatre Festival. At a party one night, I met a guy who worked as the front desk clerk at a local clothing-optional resort. The more he told me about his job, the more I knew there was a play there. A few years later, the festival produced another play of mine, and so I spent a few days - and nights - at the resort. I got a lot of material and a good tan, and it was all a tax-deductible business expense! I love my job.

On the surface, SKIN DEEP is simply a fun sex comedy, which I've tried to tell with clever wit and a few surprises. But I wanted to anchor the story in a way so that it'd be more than just a bunch of funny situations. Without giving away any plot twists, I've striven in SKIN DEEP to create moments in which characters have to face the ramifications of decisions they're both making in the play and made long ago. From the best comedies, I've learned there have to be moments when the laughter stops.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  As soon as I recover from SKIN DEEP (which starts performances on Sat Oct 16th), I plan to return to two unfinished projects:

Although it has lots of laughs in it, MEN OVERBOARD is one of my few plays which I've labeled "a play by" and not "a comedy by". It's about three brothers in their 40's, their elderly father, and the 13-year-old son of the oldest brother, who is about to have his Bar Mitzvah. The play explores the concept of "soul murder". If you see someone commit physical abuse toward a child, society agrees one should interact. But what responsibilities do each of us have when we see emotional abuse? This is the most raw play I've ever written, and I spend as much time not writing it as I do writing it.

To balance, I've also been working on a comedy revue entitled JEST DESSERTS. Inspired by the blackout humor of LAUGH-IN, none of the sketches in JEST DESSERT are more than a few minutes long. It's been great to be able to walk down the street, get an outrageous idea, mull it over and write it down. There's not a moment of character development or depth - this one IS just about the laughs.

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 seen you ask that in previous interviews, and I always think, "Boy, I gotta come up with something!" I can think of two moments that helped shaped me as a writer:

At a New Year's Eve party Maura Kosovski gave during my senior year of high school, Dede Endliss and I snuck into the den and watched A NIGHT AT THE OPERA on TV. I had never seen a Marx Brothers movie before, and I was in rapture. Nobody had ever told me that comedy could be such a relentless and anarchic attack on EVERYTHING, including logic itself.

In my junior year of college, I saw my first Frank Capra comedy, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT. After years of only wanting to write comedy as witty and crazy as the Marx Brothers, I suddenly realized comedy could be quiet, about the minutiae of human behavior, and that comedies could charm and touch us through the process of amusing us, instead of stopping to get serious.

I like to think my plays mix those two schools of comedy, the mix varying depending on the play.

One other story, about me as a person:

One summer I was a counselor at a day camp in Chicago, and during a field trip, as all the kids were getting back on the bus, one kid started to run away. I chased after him, and he ran down an alley. I cornered him. There were lots of pebbles on the ground, and he started to throw the stones at me. I kept my distance, so I was unafraid. I didn't know what to do, so I let him keep throwing stones. He kept throwing them and throwing them, until he was exhausted. Then he began to sob deeply.

Ever since then, I've realized that what a person is expressing and what they're feeling underneath can be two radically different things.

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

A:  Ticket prices! Who can afford Broadway or even Off-Broadway anymore? My friends can't - and most of them work in the theater! I'd love to have a play on Broadway someday - but I'd hate to ask folks to pay Broadway prices for anything I've written!

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes and influences?


A:  I think anyone who works in the theater these days is doing a heroic act. The hours are long, the risks are great, and most people (at least in the United States) wouldn't lose any sleep if theater stopped. To continue to create theater (especially if you've done it awhile) takes courage. I feel a deep affection and gratitude towards everyone working in it - regardless of talent.

My influences are way too numerous to mention, but they include the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, and a whole bunch of vaudeville comedians; the playwrights George S. Kaufman and his collaborators, Neil Simon, Joe Orton, Ferenc Molnar (best Hungarian comedic playwright ever!), Anton Chekhov, Noel Coward, Michael Frayn, Lanford Wilson and Terrence McNally; the early films of Woody Allen and Mel Brooks; the sitcoms of Norman Lear and James L. Brooks (Mary Tyler Moore, Taxi, etc.); and the sketch comedy of Sid Caesar, Monty Python and the Second City.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  A lot! I have eclectic tastes, ranging from mainstream musical comedy to the Wooster Group. I just want to be engaged and taken on a ride.

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

A:  Write more than one play. Have more than one theatrical experience. Say Yes unless you can think of a damn good reason to say No. Strive high, but constantly let go at the same time.

Some of the above are lessons I've learned; the last one is one I'm still learning.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Thanks for asking! The Foolish Theatre Company presents SKIN DEEP, a comedy without tan lines, from Oct 16 through Nov 6 at Theatre 54 in NYC. Winner of the Larry Corse Playwriting Prize and a finalist for the Sunwall Prize for Comedy, the play had eight readings and workshops around the country before I agreed to have it produced in New York. (I've learned not to rush the process!) As I participated in readings in New York, Florida, Georgia, Arizona and New Jersey, I also gained the confidence that the play works.

Folks can get tickets at http://www.smarttix.com/SearchResults.aspx?GUID=ccc571e4-c0a4-4a4d-97fd-ba6f0feacc28

You can learn more about my plays at www.richorloff.com. You can learn more about me by offering me drinks.

Next

1.  

As part of MCC Theater's Playlab series:

Monday, October 25, 7:00 p.m.

THE FAT CAT KILLERS by Adam Szymkowicz

Directed by Ethan McSweeney

When Steve and Michael get laid off from their work-a-day “lives,” their heads start swimming with sexy possibilities – i.e., pristine Mexican beaches flush with bikini babes. The road to bikiniville begins with a plan to kidnap their ex-boss, and quickly devolves into a hilariously ill-conceived mission to bring down and destroy The System itself. One CEO at a time.

All readings are at Baruch (151 East 25th) and start at 7pm, followed by the customary hour of mingling, wine and snacks.


2. 

Nerve in London  (production #8)

I Interview Playwrights Part 264: David Simpatico

David Simpatico

Hometown: Palisades Park, NJ

Current Town: New York City

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I tend to work on several pieces concurrently, though I am trying to narrow it down to two at a time. I've just been accepted into a year long opera training program at the American Lyric Theatre, so that entail a series of short projects through the year.

New projects I'm working on right now: an adult horror film version of HANSEL AND GRETAL; organizing my thoughts for WAITING FOR THE BALL TO DROP, a full length play about a year in the life of seven friends; APOCOLYPSE WOW, a vaudeville about the end of the world; and ORACLE a musical fantasy for young adults set in the world of Greek mythology. Oh, I just finished some one minute plays that appeared in the One Minute Play festival, that was a blast.

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

A:  In the fourth grade, I played the title role in our full scale production of MACBETH. My mother made my tunic from a Simplicity pattern, and the day of the cast party, I hid my pants and shirt in my duffle bag claiming someone had stolen my clothes, so I had to walk home in my tunic; that was perhaps the happiest day of my young life, walking home and twirling in my shakespeare tunic. I've been dancing the same dance ever since.

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

A:  I would urge my peers and the next generation to write for the theatre, not for the sofa. The lack of theatricality in theatrical plays is astounding. Use the parameters of the living space rather than limiting the material to what we accept as familiar. Engage my imagination. Enrage me. Anything, just don't put me to sleep.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Caryl Churchill; Tennessee Williams; Euripides; Shakespeare; Franco Dragone; Martha Graham; Zero Mostel. August Wilson. Charles Ludlum.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Visceral theatre excites me; something that expands my engagement beyond the restrictions of my chair. Expand my experience to the four walls of the theatre, to the farthest walls of my heart. Theatre that entertains me, from Maggie Smith in Lettuce and Lovage to the flying acrobatic dancers at the Streb Lab out in Willamsburg. I have had my fill of courtroom dramas and lectures on art, thanks.

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

A:  Take acting classes, perform, get your ass onto a stage and understand from the inside out what you are asking people to do; perform solo, your own material; read the whole play out loud to a small group of friends so you can hear your 'voice' on all levels; band together with friends and put your work up ANYWHERE you can, but stay in the live element; there is nothing that will illuminate the live theatre experience more than actual live performance. Film and video will not teach you what you need to learn as a playwright. And never stop discovering what you don't yet know: push yourself into dark waters.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  new pieces I'm pushing: CRUEL SHOES, an adult backstage musical comedy about a killer chorus boy with four homicidal female multiple personalities (http://www.cruelshoesthemusical.com/)
and THE SCREAMS OF KITTY GENOVESE, a rock opera about the infamous 1964 murder of a young woman while 38 neighbors watched and did nothing (http://thescreamsofkittygenovese.com/)

I Interview Playwrights Part 263: Deborah Zoe Laufer

Deborah Zoe Laufer

Hometown:  Liberty, NY

Current Town:  Mt. Kisco, NY.

Q:  Tell me please about your play Sirens at Humana.

A:  I had the time of my life at Humana. It was the most collaborative process I’ve ever been part of. I went to the early design meetings which somehow, insanely enough, I hadn’t done in the past. It made me really consider the arbitrary walls that are put up in production – who gets to interact with whom. Great designers are so inspiring. And I had brilliant designers on Sirens. They made me fall in love with my own play through their visions. And, being in the room I could help problem-solve and clarify and rewrite. It seems such a mistake that we’re not always invited to work together.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  My new play is about gamers, and the thin line between “real” life and our on-screen lives. It centers around the military’s recruitment of expert gamers to fly remote drones in Afghanistan and Iraq out of trailers in the Nevada desert. These are often teenagers and they’re finding they have worse PTSD than soldiers “in the field.” I Just had a reading at the Missoula Colony in MT, and I’m ready to get out a second draft.

Q:  What else are you up to?

A:  I just started the BMI lyricists workshop!!!! I’m so crazy out of my mind thrilled. I love musicals and I love learning something totally new, and we just had the first class last week and I can’t stop smiling.

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 grew up in the woods. I raised woodchuck, beaver, deer, hawks, goats, ferrets, horses, swans, geese, pheasants, chickens, peacocks. (besides dozens of cats and dogs) I was a witch all through grade school. I was the only Jewish kid in my elementary school, and the only Jew many of them had ever seen. I trained a frog to come to me when I held out my hand. I was odd. And funny. Guess that about sums it up.

Q:  How do you think Paul Simon writes such amazing songs?

A:  Right?? He’s our national poet. If you read Adam’s website Paul, wouldn’t it be fun to work on a musical together? THINK ABOUT IT!

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

A:  Find a writer’s group of people you love and trust and respect.

Write.

Put together readings of your work. Just friends in your living room if you need to. Plays need to be heard.

Don’t say, as I did, “I’m not good at the business part – I’m just a writer.” I thought that was charming and artsy for a long time. But the business part is part of being a writer. And it’s really not as charming and artsy as we think it is to say we’re bad at it.

Don’t become addicted to online scrabble and chess! (As soon as I finish the 50 games I’m playing I’m DONE.)

I Interview Playwrights Part 262: Brian Polak

Brian Polak

Hometown: Keene, NH

Current Town: Pasadena, CA

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  This spring I finished a play titled “Underground” about a subway busker with an infatuation for the Unabomber. This play started off as an hour-long monologue almost five years ago. It has evolved into something decidedly not a monologue.

My wife, Jami Brandli (who is also a playwright), and I participated in challenge with each other during the month of August. We decided to use Facebook as a motivational tool rather than a constant distraction. We would work on a new play each day and update our status with our progress. The idea was to keep us focused on our work by proclaiming it publicly to hundreds of people. I finished a first draft of a play titled “moments before medicine” during the challenge. I’m really excited about it. It’s a two-hander about manipulation, drug addiction and abortion. Not really, but sort of.

Next up is a play about animal cruelty involving a matador who quits in the middle of a bullfight. After that is a play about the death penalty involving a prisoner who can’t be put to death by lethal injection because his veins are too small.

Jami and I are also finishing a TV pilot and a couple screenplays that we’re writing together.

Q:  Tell me about Boston Court.

A:  (I think most people in the LA theatre community see me as a marketing person at Boston Court and not a playwright. I get “Oh, you’re a playwright?” a lot when it comes up.)

I feel very fortunate to be employed full time not only in a theatre, but a theatre I would pay money to visit. Boston Court focuses on new works, although not exclusively. In 2009 we did two world premieres. This year we are doing four. The plays we do are all inherently theatrical, which is something I appreciate. The theater space itself is a perfect canvas for actors, directors, designers and playwrights. I know I work here and am supposed to say this, but if you live in the LA area and DON’T come to see the plays produced here you are really missing something special.

One of the greatest benefits of working here, other than the snacks in the greenroom, is the exposure I have to so many ridiculously talented theatre people. I bend the ears of our artistic directors, directors, playwrights, actors, designers, production manager and technical director as much as I can. I squeeze as much knowledge out of them as I can. And, fortunately for me, we hire talented AND generous people who are willing to talk to me. Sometimes I pretend I’m talking to them for “marketing purposes.” Usually it’s because I’m curious.

Whether you are in the area or not, follow us on Twitter and/or Facebook and you’ll have the pleasure of reading about some of my interesting and inane shenanigans at Boston Court. I’m lucky that part of my job is to be in Facebook and Twitter all the time.

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 the following took place I wasn’t a child as far as age is concerned, but as you’ll see I was still a child mentally. This is a story I have told many times over the years. I feel the need to repeatedly confess…

I was in New York for work many years ago. I had just been dumped. It was snowing. I was depressed, angry and short-tempered. I remember the day like it was yesterday and not almost nine years ago. It was a Friday. There was a blizzard. After work I had to get across town for something inconsequential. The office I was working out of was located on 8th Ave and 15th. The snow was coming down heavily and I was certain it would be difficult to hail a cab. As soon as I stepped out of the door onto the street an available cab approached. I thought I was lucky; my miserable, pathetic life was finally turning around. He pulled over and I stepped in "1st Ave and 1st Street," I told him. The nexus of the universe.

After telling the driver where I needed to go I sat back and sulked like a baby "my life sucks," I remember saying to myself. The cab driver was jabbering about something, but I wasn't paying attention. I figured he was on his cell phone or singing along to a song in a language I didn't understand. After a couple of moments I happen to lock eyes with him through the rear view mirror. He wasn't jabbering or singing. He was talking to me. I leaned in towards the opening in the plexiglass separating us "Excuse me?" I asked. "You shoulda caught a cab on the other side of the street," he barked. Was he serious? He couldn't have been serious. "Are you serious?" I asked. "If you know you have to go that way, that is where you catch the cab." I was dumbfounded. Or flabbergasted. Or flabberfounded. It took me about 2 seconds to lose my shit. "Just drive me where I tell you to drive me," I screamed. He screamed back. I wasn't hearing his words. All I knew was that he was yelling and I was pissed. "Just drive, you asshole." I heard him say something to the effect of "I'll drive you to Harlem and leave you there." I rattled of a series of "Fuck you's" for about 20 seconds straight. What he said in response was beyond my comprehension.

Why was I having this argument? I didn't really understand. I started to realize there was a chance I could end up in Harlem, about a bazillion blocks from where I needed to be, so I screamed "Pull over. Pull the fuck over NOW!" He kept screaming back at me, but he obliged at the next corner. I was out-of-my-mind at this point. As soon as the cab came to a stop I threw the door open and put one foot into the wintery-New-York-street-slush-muck. I looked back at the driver who was still screaming at me, his face perfectly framed by the rectangular opening in the plexiglass separation. I then reached down and grabbed a handful of icey-slushy-muck and threw it directly in his face, punctuated with a "FUCK YOU!" I slammed the door and walked off. Fifteen or twenty steps later I realized what I had done. There was something wrong with me and changes needed to be made or else I could end up in a gutter in with my face kicked in someday. I started to change that day. Today, nearly nine years later, I write about that guy a lot.

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

A:  It is logistically impossible for theaters to have an open submission policy. There are too many plays and not enough time to read and consider them all. I would like to change that.

On the other side of the coin, I’d like playwrights to really figure out if a theater is a good match for their work before sending it out. We are the ones who are creating the stacks of plays that nobody can get through because we’re sending our kitchen sink dramas to theaters looking for musicals.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  My wife is my theatrical hero. Before I met her I was simply dipping my toe in writing while my primary creative impulse was acting. She got me to dive in completely and showed me how to be dedicated to the craft. I may not have ever considered myself a writer if not for her. She is also the first and primary reader of all my work. I trust her opinion more than anybody else. I’d be screwed without her.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Going to theatre is like playing “Duck, Duck, Goose” when you REALLY want the goose, but you just keeping getting the duck. It’s really thrilling when you finally get a goose. I guess what I’m saying is I really like geese.

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

A:  Listen to your work. It will tell you exactly what you need to do next. Don’t be afraid to follow it. It doesn’t matter what you initially set out to write, once you start, the play is in charge. Do what it says.

Live a life. Have fun. Leave the computer at home sometimes. You’re still a writer even if you aren’t writing 24/7.

Read what every playwright said in this space before me. I have learned so much from reading these interviews. I’m sure everybody who follows me will also have fantastic advice. Bookmark this blog.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I have a short story coming out in the anthology “The Commonplace Book of the Weird.” Check it out. Its chock full of HP Lovecraft goodness. The book launch is October 18 at Bar 82 in NYC. More info here: http://www.facebook.com/l/e3a9aMSTB6i2qppTDzjlxmyI2EA;www.commonplacebooks.com/

Boston Court is presenting the world premiere of Jordan Harrison’s “Futura” beginning October 9th. See this play if you are in the LA area: http://www.facebook.com/l/e3a9amjbcG6lezbQo3VGFN3qXag;www.bostoncourt.com/events/62/futura

My wife has a play, “Technicolor Life” being presented at the Ashland New Play Festival October 21 and 22. http://www.facebook.com/l/e3a9ao6gAhFPbapxmqDclMY6QZw;www.ashlandnewplays.org/

I’m on the Board of Directors for needtheater in Los Angeles. They just opened the world premiere of Michael John Garces’ “The Web.” It runs through October 17 at ArtWorks in Hollywood. http://www.facebook.com/l/e3a9aybF_HrJyph-AVCsoJIcK3w;www.needtheater.org/home.html

I Interview Playwrights Part 261: Kate Fodor

Kate Fodor

Hometown: I spent the first half of my childhood in Connecticut and the second in New York City.

Current Town: Doylestown, Pennsylvania. (It’s a long story. A beautiful place and a long story.)

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m putting the finishing touches on a play called Rx, which is a romantic comedy (of a sort) set in the pharmaceutical industry. Or maybe it’s already done and I’ll leave it alone! It’s always so hard to tell. Also, I’m on what might be the last draft of a film adaptation of Elissa Wall’s memoir Stolen Innocence; I’m reading everything I can about the history of the birth-control pill for a play I’ve just started that’s (maybe) called Bedfellows; and I’m thinking in the shower about a musical for young people. I’m also about to take my first-ever playwriting class: Jeffrey Hatcher’s Art of Adaptation workshop in Philadelphia. I’m nervous.

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 narrated everything I did -- in my head and sometimes even aloud. It was third-person, past-tense and pretty much constant. If I was trotting up some steps, I’d think (or say) to myself, “She trotted up the steps.” If I was drifting off to sleep, I’d think, “She drifted off to sleep.” I thought about everything in terms of how it could be told as a story, and pretty much still do.

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

A:  Oh, you know, I guess I’d make it a little less fucking heartbreaking for people. Especially actors.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Margaret Edson is one, because she came in, wrote a gorgeous, heart-stopping, fiercely funny, unbearably tragic play, and then went back to teaching kindergarten, because that’s important, too.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Anything that deeply excited the people who made it. I don’t like slick, I don’t like flippant, I don’t like wise-ass. I’m a post-ironic kind of girl. I want catharsis. I want to believe.

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

A:  This is, oddly, from Cary Tennis, Salon.com’s advice columnist. I stumbled across it when I was procrastinating by looking for a juicy story about someone’s lurid, kinky problems. Instead, there was a letter from a novelist who was thinking about giving up writing, and a beautiful, brilliant response that read (in part):

“Remember that as a writer you must find your motivation internally, not in external rewards, and you work in opposition to the system, not as a supplicant to the system. Whatever contingent truces you have maintained with the system in order to participate in its orderly orgies of consumption and distribution, good for you. But you are not a part of the system. You are a free creative worker. You do not need the system to do your creating. You only need it as a utility to reach your audience, and increasingly not even for that. On the other hand, the system cannot create anything on its own. It can only manage and distribute. So it needs you. It needs you but it is not on your side. Remember that.”

I Interview Playwrights Part 260: Sibyl Kempson

Sibyl Kempson

Hometown: Stockholm. NJ

Current Town: NYC and Tannersville, PA

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Grant applications

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 heard something in my dad's basement one night. It kept me up all night. I was a little kid. It was a like banging, which happened at intervals and culminated in a terrible grinding sound. It scared the living shit out of me. I never found out what it was. I am certain it was diabolical in nature.

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

A:  The idea of what theater is.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Mac Wellman.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that doesn't look like theater and feels like religious ritual.

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

A:  Use your right brain, not your left brain.

I Interview Playwrights Part 259: Gary Garrison

Gary Garrison

Hometown: Orange, Texas

Current Town: Westport, Connecticut

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  For work (at the Dramatists Guild), the first national conference for playwrights scheduled for next June in Fairfax, Virginia. Can’t wait. How cool will that be? Hundreds of playwrights in the same space talking about their art. For my work at NYU, we’re just starting the new semester and I have twenty-four graduate students that I have to pull, kicking and screaming, towards dramatic structure. (Everyone hates dramatic structure. Why? I have a theory . . .)

In my creative writer-life, I’m collaborating on a play with my good friend, Roland Tec, for this really unusual theatre event called Splash. Here's how it works: a play is written in which all characters in the story are meeting each other for the first time. If there are five characters in the play, five different theatre companies with unique casts and directors put the play into rehearsal. A design team designs the production and shares that work with all five theatre companies.

On each day of a public performance, the Production Stage Manager calls one character from each theatre company for the show that night. Actors are kept isolated from each other and meet one another -- like in the play -- for the first time on stage. It's balls-to-the-wall theatre, baby -- not unlike being thrown head-first into the swimming pool (hence, the name, “Splash.”) Everyone involved has to be fearless; I mean, you really have to have actors willing to take a risk few have ever taken. For the audience, it’s a total roller coaster ride; they get to share the excitement, tension and unpredictability of what happens on stage when strangers meet strangers.

The story we’re writing for the event is about the Rubber Rooms in New York City – those ridiculous holding tanks for middle to high school academics who’ve been brought up on disciplinary charges and are waiting trial. I don’t know how much you know about the Rubber Rooms, but they’re rooms spread across the five boroughs that hold hundreds of teachers on full-salary day in and day out. It’s insane! The city’s practically bankrupt, and yet we’re paying for teachers to sit on their asses all day long while the school board is waiting to decide if saying “shit” in class is an educational offense. WHAT? Of course, that’s simplifying it a bit, but not by much.

Q:  You are the Executive Director of Creative Affairs of the Dramatists Guild. Why should every playwright join the Guild?

A:  If nothing else, for the sense of community – to not feel so isolated as writer, no matter where you live. As I travel out and about meeting playwrights, listening to their concerns, talking to them about issues that effect their day to day writing lives, most everyone shares a common thread: that feeling of stark isolation. I mean, writing is a solo sport anyway. But once you’re written, you need to connect to your people, your tribe, if not for professional reasons, for reasons of the heart and soul. So one thing we do well at the Guild is build and foster community.

Probably most importantly, we protect the authorial rights of writers through contract advice and advocacy. What do you do when a director says to you, “I’ll direct your play, but in exchange for the value I bring to the experience, I’d like you to give me 5% of all future profits of your play”? And it doesn’t stop with 5%, believe me: 15%, 20% 30% and on and on. Well, if the director wants a chunk, and the producer wants a chunk, and the producing theatre wants a chunk, if you’re not careful, you’ll have nothing left over (you’d be surprised how often this happens). If you’re a member of the Guild, you just pick up the phone and call the Business Affairs office. We have a – errr – solid response for anyone asking you for money when you make so little money to begin with.

We also have a great magazine; really interesting with articles about the life of a writer, craft, career, trends, etc. And our website (under construction right now) will host member profiles and the ability to upload/download scripts, resume, etc., message boards (looking for a collaborator anyone?), searchable data base of members, reports from different regions of the country – stuff like that. Really helpful stuff for writers in all stages of their careers.

Q:  You are a tireless advocate for and teacher of playwrights. How do you find the energy?

A:  That’s an easy question: I like what I do. When you like what you do, it’s not really work. Yeah, sometimes I get a little crazy (particularly when I neglect my own work, and I often do), but I never feel like I should not be doing this. I love all three equally well: artist, educator, administrator. Yeah, seems to fit my heart and soul, and seems to fit my manic personality.

Q:  What are playwrights doing right?

A:  Writing the stories they want to tell. I know that may sound simple minded, but it’s too easy to be swayed by trends, or a producer’s heavy hand, or a director’s off-handed comment about Act One; it’s too easy to write a play by committee. Writers seem to be driven to tell their own unique stories in the their own unique styles and to allow that work to find the home it needs to live in. Look, a true writer, a real writer just wants to tell his/her stories to an appreciative audience. Who said that had to be Broadway? Or Off-Broadway? Theatre can be made anywhere, and playwrights are finally understanding that plays are only literature until they’re realize by way of some sort of public storytelling. And if that happens to be in a bowling alley, well, so be it.

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 was in a play, Miss Hepplewhite Takes Over, in junior high school. I don’t remember shit about the play, but I do remember that at one point, I had to sneeze into a bowl of cake batter and ruin the proverbial cake. Well, that point came during the performance, and I sneezed a sneeze like no other. Unfortunately, the force of the sneeze was so big that I blew batter up my nose and in my throat, choked and passed out on stage – but not before I heard the audience roaring with laughter. They had to bring the curtain down and call an ambulance. But people talked about me for weeks! That’s all I needed. That’s how I knew I belonged in the theatre.

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

A:  Health care. I know, I know. But I can dream, can’t I? If not health care, at least government support for artists. We could learn a lot from our friends across the pond. Seriously, we have to find a way to take care of our own.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Really? Oh, God. So many. For inspiration: Ibsen and Williams. For wit and comic artistry: Wilde, Moliere, Faydeau, Durang, Simon. For character: Lillian Hellman, Lanford Wilson, Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill, Peter Shaffer. For balls: Caryl Churchill. For scope: Tony Kushner. If I were going to the theatre tonight, I’d like to see a new play by Doug Wright, Lynn Nottage, Martin McDonaugh, John Logan, Carlos Murillo, Lucy Thurber, Anne Washburn or Gary Sunshine. If I could be anybody, or have their career: Theresa Rebeck. She’s a rock star.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Plays that can only really live in the theatre; plays that demonstrate why theatre is theatre – like Coram Boy, Angels in America, Red or The Pillowman.

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

A:  Don’t write “what you know.” Write what you don’t know. You’ll be forced to think harder, deeper, be more honest, research, think, think, think . . . And remember, structure is as much for you as it is for the audience. Nobody would strike out to drive to Hallifax, Nova Scotia without a map or some road signs or something that said, “this is the way, and you’re making progress.”

I Interview Playwrights Part 258: Saviana Stanescu

Saviana Stanescu

Hometown: Bucharest, Romania?

Hmm, Bucharest is actually my birth-town, I kinda hesitate to still consider it my hometown after almost 10 years of living in NYC… a hometown should be a town/city where you feel at home, where you pay rent to have a home :), where you struggle to pay that rent, and that’s New York for me now…

Plus, over there in Romania I spent my childhood raised by my grandparents in Curtea-de-Arges (Arges-Court, the first capital of Walachia), then my parents took me to Pitesti, a sort of Detroit of Romania known for the car industry, although they were making only one sort of cars with an ancient name: Dacia. I went to high-school there. During Ceausescu’s dictatorship of course. Then back to Bucharest for college, revolution, freedom, work, love, writing, fame :)

So I’m not sure which one is my hometown. I guess all of them. I’m a giant snail with her home on her back.

Current Town:

This one is clearer: New York, USA

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I am working on multiple “fronts” as always:

We are in final rehearsals with “Polanski Polanski” (performed by Grant Neale, directed by Tamilla Woodard) for a short run at HERE Arts Center, Sept 22-25.

I am doing some rewrites on ANTS, a new play that I developed at NYTW and will have a staged reading at EST, directed by Daniella Topol, as part of their Octoberfest, on Oct 9 at 7 pm and Oct 10 at 8.30 pm.

I am also re-looking at my plays “For a Barbarian Woman” and “Bechnya” as two directors expressed interest in them. They had developmental readings (Long Wharf Theatre, Lark, Women’s Project) but haven’t been produced yet.

And on top of everything, I am starting a new play at the Lark: “The Rehabilitation of Dracula” (working title) in which a character is challenging the well-spread iconic image of Dracula created by Bram Stoker with some “real” facts about the historical figure Vlad Tepes aka Vlad-the-Impaler, king of Walachia (he wasn’t even the king of Transylvania!), where I am actually from – see answer nr 1.

I kinda want to reclaim this character, Dracula, he has been over-exploited and over-commercialized, I feel the need to add my own fictionalization spiced up with the historical “truth”. Vlad-the-Impaler is still seen as a hero in present day Romania, most of the people are still proud of the way he led the country, with stamina and strength, fighting against the Ottomans and other super-powers, so it’s interesting for me to juxtapose a “patriotic” local image to the one created by the Western world. In a world full of constructed images, is there such thing as the “truth” about Dracula?

Q:  Tell me about your playwriting workshops.

A:  I’ve been teaching a lot lately. First of all, I’ve been teaching at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, in the Drama Department, as an adjunct instructor, for the last 7 years and I love it. I studied at NYU myself (MA in Performance Studies – Fulbright fellow, MFA in Dramatic Writing) and I enjoy the creative energy over there, at Tisch. That’s been my home here in the USA, I came to NYC in 2001, with a Fulbright grant, just a few weeks before 9/11. That traumatic moment made me a part of the NYC wounded fabric, I feel like we’ve been interconnected forever, like two old friends that shared difficult times.

Back in Romania, I was a respected journalist, published poet, award-winning playwright, y’know, sorta established, a big fish in a small vibrant pond. I had to start from the scratch over here, to prove myself again and again, and to do it with an accent… Dramatic living and dramatic writing. Good material for a playwright and a teacher :)

So in the last decade I’ve been teaching a bunch of playwriting workshops/courses here in the USA, but also in Mexico City, Stockholm/Sweden and Eastern Europe. This fall I am teaching at ESPA – Primary Stages and I am really excited to engage that wonderful community of artists.

Now a little self-praise paragraph: I’m a damn good teacher, I care about my students, I care about them learning something, being truthful to their voice, completing a draft of a play, having a product they’re proud of. I always try to organize a presentation of their work at the end of the course, it’s important for playwrights to see their texts presented with professional actors, in front of an audience. That’s the difference between literature and theatre, we as playwrights are part of a team that puts together a theatre show, a play can’t exist only in its literary form, without the actors, the director, the designers, the stage. Well, of course it can, but what’s the point? A play needs an audience, a playwright needs a team that showcases her/his play.

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

A:  Hmmm… my father, a former Balkan champion in high-jump, wanted me to be an athlete too, a champion, so I spent lots of years training in athletics, although my heart was in the arts. However, sports taught me something: to go on when you lose, to go on when you win, to engage in a fair competition, to rely on your team, basically to be a good… sport.

My values in theatre and life are similar. Paraphrasing one of my favorite playwrights, Samuel Beckett: I can’t go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theatre that’s… theatrical.

I like bold, provocative, political, visceral, thought-provoking, risk-taking theatre that’s still dramatic and touching. I don’t care about post-dramatic theatre too much. Or any other post- post- post-… form of anything, I’d rather have AVANT(guarde:) )

On the other end of the spectrum:

I get bored by plays that are just TV dramas or sitcoms put on stage. Too conventional, too talk-talk-talk about relationships, too kitchen&sink… I am much more interested in vibrant theatrical plays about something bigger than the ordinary human commerce of emotions, plays that make larger/bolder comments on socio-political issues, existential turmoil, the irony of history, the global world and its flaws.

Yes, big words that might sound bombastic. But if theatre doesn’t fill them with meaning and depth, politics will never fail to fill them with rhetoric and demagogy…

Oh, and I didn’t mention that I like humor in a play. Dark humor generally. Humor makes bitter pills easier to be swallowed.

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

A:  Well, Lillian Hellman said: “If I had to give young writers advice, I'd say don't listen to writers talk about writing.”

But the author of “Little Foxes” (I just saw it at NYTW, beautiful production, that’s why Lillian came to my mind) also said: “I am a moral writer, often too moral a writer, and I cannot avoid, it seems, the summing-up. I think that is only a mistake when it fails to achieve its purpose, and I would rather make the attempt and fail, than fail to make the attempt.”

I actually really like this piece of advice: make the attempt and fail, rather than fail to make the attempt.

To put it in a less wise “quote-able” form: write if you feel like writing, don’t listen to anyone who tells you that you shouldn’t. That you’ll make more money as a banker, lawyer, doctor, athlete or IT guy. Although… that’s true. You might not make any money, you might end up old, lonely, poor and bitter, crying at the “grave” of your creativity and “wasted” life. But, you know what, whatever the “results”, at least you tried. You created something. You added a little something to the virtual archive of this theatrical universe. And you were true to yourself. That’s the most important thing.

OMG, I sound so wise and boring. Delete the last paragraph. Wait! Don’t.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Come to see “Polanski Polanski” at HERE, Sept 22-25! It’s wild and dark and intriguing and provocative. Well, it’s Polanski!

(more info on my website www.saviana.com in the COMING UP section)

The staged reading of ANTS at EST, Oct 9 and 10 ! Directed by Daniella Topol. Featuring: Polly Lee, Alexis McGuinness, Robert Montano.

Oh, and I have a little one-min play "Boy meets Girl. Or not.", directed by Scott Ebersold, in the New York One-Minute Play Festival in Astoria - a cool festival, curated by Dominic D'Andrea, involving lots of playwrights friends. Sept 25-26.

I Interview Playwrights Part 257: Brian Bauman

Brian Bauman

Hometown:
I was born in a naval hospital in Groton, Connecticut. My family relocated often in my early childhood. My father was a supply officer on a nuclear submarine and the family would trail him as he moved from port to port.. I spent the longest part of my childhood in Burnt Hills, New York.

Current Town:
New York City

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I am writing a new play called A CRUCIBLE which is a riff on Arthur Miller's THE CRUCIBLE. The play's structure is a 9-month school year and is focused on a catholic school's drama club staging the original text. The questions I'm asking in the play are: how does playing a "witch" shape one's adolescent identity and how does it effect a budding sexual self? How and why are young people drawn to theater? How does teen pregnancy relate to quashed sex education programs? How do limited resources create a paranoid artistic society? Who/what is "in charge" of the literary canon, and why?

I recently collaborated with a Los Angeles-based choreographer named Alexandra Yalj for a piece going up at Highways Performance Space on September 12th called Dismantling Self. We re-appropriated text from the infamous spiritual leader OSHO's book Intuition, and combined it with writing I created about stripping & sex work, and the piece moved organically on from there into its present state, incorporating Lexie's personal love letters and more. I'm based in NY, so unfortunately I couldn't be in the studio with the group to watch it grow. I am very sorry to miss it.

I am looking for a place to remount a piece I created with Christo Allegra at the Broad Art Center in Los Angeles in May called ATTA BOY. The play is a two-hander collage-text and conflates popular culture's representations of the Columbine Massacre and the attacks on the WTC. I've always called 9-11 "Columbine for Adults"... it's had the same cultural impact, just on a larger, powerful and much more destructive scale. Essentially, two actors perform for each other (and us) in a quasi-erotic, quasi-repulsive fashion, excerpts and reinterpretations of hollywood films, polemic books, youtube footage, news articles, church bulletins, other found materials as well as my own writing all dealing with the two events. The two actors are on "internet dates", so their identities are as fluid as their source materials are slippery... The whole piece layers and collapses like a loud and beautiful engine on overdrive, and the performance takes place in conversation with installed elegant and austere artwork created by Mr. Allegra (who is my husband, btw). The play is asking a ton of questions about "official narratives" and mass media representation, xenophobia and homophobia in contemporary pop culture & political discourse, sexual violence and violent sex. It all sounds terribly academic but I can assure you that the performance was raw, visceral, sexy and full of impact. We had a full house and I'm very encouraged by the responses we received. We're looking to serve it up in New York next year.

I've also been free-writing over the last several years in response to the art and life of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, building a piece tentatively called F**G*T (VANISH). There's so much to consider in approaching a subject as momentous as his biography, but have been bouncing ideas back and forth with the Paris-based performance artist Ben Evans and LA-based playwright Ricardo Bracho to develop the text further into a more refined project.

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

A:  When I was seven I asked my entire family to proceed from the dinner table and come into the basement. I turned out the lights except for one lamp, put on rollerskates and queued up Joan Jett's cover of Gary Glitter's DO YOU WANT TO TOUCH ME on the record player (from a Ktel record compilation I begged my mother to buy at Kmart). I then performed the song in its entirety in a solid-gold inspired routine for them. Queer theater latent in my pre-adolescent bones.

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

A:  More courage, more risk, more access. (I guess that's three things, but they are interrelated into one giant clusterfuck as far as I'm concerned). I guess they could all be lumped under MORE GENEROSITY.

I have "respect" for "respectable" artists but I have unending, geyser-gushing crushes on playwrights who don't compromise their point of view. A play, as I understand it, is not a discreet object. It's not an insect trapped in amber that you can hold in your hand, nor a delicious amuse bouche before your dinner that you shit out tomorrow. A play is an experience, it's never objective nor should we pretend it ever could be. A play is a culture. It's a loose contract that invites a community of people to deliver it into being (which includes audience...Audience as midwife?)... Plays aren't alive until they are off the page, which is why it's so frustrating that so many incredible, smart, difficult plays haven't been produced. The reason is simple: Fear.

I'm always amazed when articles get published giving voice to "concerned playwrights" who speak out to defend "well-crafted plays" from the corruption of messiness, the erosion of form, and a general "descent" into language experimentation. Isn't there a place for everyone? Who are these people and what in god's name are they talking about? If the "well made play" is such an important and powerful object, why does it need defending?

I love and respect plays from the past...I quite enjoy reading and re-reading "classics", but if you look at hallowed texts objectively and not through an historical perspective, its incredibly eye-opening. The lens of history skews perspective. An experimental play competing with a more traditional new play to see the light of day illuminates this conversation on a micro level. Experimentation gets interpreted as a transgression. THIS and NOT THAT. What's interesting to me is this whole conversation about boundaries...what generic boundaries represent and their incredibly problematic and powerful place in this world.

I encourage Joan Retallack's metaphor of art as wager - that the purpose of art is to open up cracks for new possibilities, as opposed to circumscribing and re-inscribing authorized/regimented boundaries. I highly recommend her book THE POETHICAL WAGER. It's been an ethical guide for me as a playwright.

I write plays as a way to coax monsters up from underneath all this shiny surface simplistic "realism"... my husband describes my plays in terms of horror films, and I guess that is correct. Horror is such a powerful genre because it deals with identifying the uncanny, the unauthorized, the unarticulated. Not "THIS and NOT THAT", but "THIS AND THAT" - Jeckyll AND Hyde...writing is like playing with a powerful ouija board... What comes out is so much bigger than me, I can't contain it and I don't want to.

So far, the only way I've been able to get work up is to produce myself. I started Perfect Disgrace Theater after I finished grad school in 2006 in Los Angeles, and moved to Boulder Colorado. I tried sending scripts out across the country to literary departments but nobody was interested, so self-producing it was. I've done everything - fundraising & development, marketing, publicity, production. I made a big splash in a small pond in August 2007, when Josh and I cast Mike Jones in a production of my play, PORRIDGE. Mike was the male escort who outed Ted Haggard, then head of the National Evangelical Association - a powerful lobbyist organization for the Christian Right. By enlisting Mike in the production of the play, which concerned conflated repressed homosexuality in the military with fashion's stranglehold on contemporary culture, among other things, we created a meta-theatrical coup. In total, I've produced four Perfect Disgrace productions in California and Colorado, but am looking to make PD a thriving NYC-based company, after relocating to the city this year.

As for other potentialities, I'm very interested in what's happening in contemporary dance now. Current dance isn't bound by the same strictures as far as narrative goes, it's much blurrier and subjective, so there's an air of possibility - a practical atmosphere of risk and exploration. The boundaries are permeable. At a show at Dance New Amsterdam or Abrons Arts Center, you don't know what you're going to get until it happens in front of you. I'm particularly moved by artists like Trajal Harrell and Jack Ferver for their courage in plunging into subjectivity and its traps. Both artists make pieces that criticize AS they entertain. It's not one or the other.

"Twenty Looks: Paris is Burning at the Judson Church XS" at the New Museum last winter was so inspiring because it challenged assumptions and implicated its audience in such a profound way. Harrell references Jennie Livingston's film about nyc drag houses in the title as a way to create a desire for certain kind of performance (vogue, anyone?) and completely upends that desire by delivering a highly aesthetic, abstract dance piece with atonal soundtrack in the manner of Judson Church stalwarts like Merce Cunningham. When a hip hop loop finally does arrive, it serves as this great confrontational moment. The performance demanded attention and got it, even as it pushed me to consider identity politics vs. formal experimentation and how and who makes that call about which camp a particular piece falls into. Harrell rejects this kind of polemic and says, it's everything and nothing. "A Movie Star Needs A Movie" created invited its audience into an atmosphere of ironic cheese via popular dance forms, and then made a u-turn and dismantled itself into a naked portrait of alienated and insecure selves. Kudos to Jay Wegman and Ben Pryor for programming these and other performances that rode that edge last year, and to PS 122 for doing it this year.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  All of my heroes push for something larger in their work, are frank and not the least bit precious in their writing, but aren't afraid of ambitiously poetic "reaches" -- layering of metaphors, raising the roof (glass ceiling?) on representation, fucking with preconceptions. They ask difficult questions and avoid simple, pat answers. All of the artists below maintain an elegant complexity, are committed to justice in a practical and get-our-hands-dirty way, and are experimental in both form AND content, which, to me, is a sign of courage and, quite honestly, a necessity.

Jean Genet popped my theatrical cherry and Valerie Solanas loaned me a metaphorical gun.

I've learned more from Josh Chambers than any other director. I've had a tough road getting work staged, but Josh has stepped in often as a game collaborator, and his fearless approach to my plays is an incredible gift. I am very much indebted to his courage.

Luis Alfaro's potent greek-inspired plays are thrilling. I saw his Oedipus El Rey at the Boston Court last spring and it left the whole audience smoldering.

Alice Tuan for her great intellect and fantastic sense of humor.

Everett Quinton for his patience and commitment to a life in queer theater.

I checked out the lost films of Charles Ludlam at IFC last winter. Antony Hegarty and Everett introduced the recently rediscovered gems. Antony gave this beautiful speech about the influence a lost generation of artists destroyed by aids has had on our generation coming into our creative own now, and how beautiful and tragic it is that all these beacons from the 80's and 90's aren't physically present to advocate and encourage us... but the work survived and the work still guides. I think contemporary theater would be a more diverse and interesting art-form if many of the lost experimental artists making work during that period were alive today... either teaching and influencing a generation through faculty appointments, or leading us through example in their own growing canon.

A few years ago, I tracked down copies of all the Dar A Luz performances that Adam Soch burned to DVDs, and I return to them for inspiration again and again. Reza Abdoh's influence touches everything I make.

Suzan-Lori Parks -- her BOOK OF GRACE was not received well, but I thought it was incredible. A parable of contemporary American political quagmire, which is probably why it was so harshly criticized. That play should be remounted.

Romeo Castelluci's work takes my breath away. I saw Purgatorio at UCLA Live and it literally moved me to tears - the work was so insanely powerful, gorgeous, and completely committed to investigating very uncomfortable terrain. Half the audience walked out but those who stayed were greatly rewarded. Though his work is image-based, I feel a very strong connection to what he's attempting to articulate.

Harry Kondoleon's VAMPIRES speaks volumes about american hypocrisy and "morality".

Matthew Maguire's influence on my writing process is bedrock - he taught me to look at playwriting as a conversation with the universe..

David Adjmi's plays communicate gorgeousness and horror. Big fan.

Kevin Killian and his Poets Theater in SF are un-fadeable.

Last but not least - Big Art Group are the kindest and smartest provocateurs in NYC. Every person involved in their company is a complete and total sweetheart, and their work will slit your throat. I am in love with them.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The kind that makes me sweat, tingle, induces tremors and gooseflesh, triggers fight-or-flight instinct. I like work that scares me to death.

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

A:  Write like hell.
Read EVERYTHING you can get your hands on.
Don't be afraid of confusion. It's a writer's friend.
Go swimming and running - get out of your head.
Find blood-siblings, compatriots you respect not for their success but for their bad-ass scripts. Keep these advocates on speed-dial.
Trust your gut.
Keep writing.
Produce yourself, don't wait to be asked to the dance. Produce your compatriots, too.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  On the self-promotion tip:
http://www.perfectdisgrace.com - my theater company.
http://www.solanasonline.com - a webzine i publish with my partner focused on queer artists.

For my peeps:
Jerome Parker's HOUSE OF DINAH will be having a reading this fall in NYC. Location TBA but it will include a full jazz band!
Luis Alfaro's OEDIPUS EL REY plays the Woolly Mammoth next february.
Sigrid Gilmer's AXIOM is a reason to live.
Sibyl O'Malley has a new script called RINGING ARTIFACTS that is melancholy in the best way.
Alana Macias' Zero LIbertad is coming for you.
Trajal Harrell is performing at Prelude for free next week!
PS 122's fall season is going to be KILLER, so get a passport for $55 (which gets you into 5 shows!)
In November, I will be at BAM's NEXT WAVE to devour THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN. Will you?