I Interview Playwrights Part 304: Anna Moench

Anna Moench

Hometown:
Baltimore, MD. The Greatest City In America.

Current Town:
New York. A place that would look like a douchebag for claiming to be the greatest city in America on every public bench.

Q:  Tell me about your upcoming show at EST.

A:  It's called In Quietness, and it's about a former CEO who has left her job to follow her recently born-again husband to a Southern Baptist seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. She's the type of person who doesn't know how to fold a sheet, so she enrolls in the seminary's Homemaking B.A. program. The play explores the difficulties of fitting oneself into a box, whether that box be gender, religion, profession, or social expectations, and why, given how difficult it is, we all try so hard to do it. The production is a part of Youngblood's Unfiltered series, which is an annual assortment of studio productions of full lengths by Youngblood writers.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I'm also a member of the 2010 Emerging Writers Group at The Public, where I'm working on a play called Hunger. The play takes place in rural China, and it explores what the landscape of life is like out there right now, and how that is as much shaped by the country's tremendous upheaval during the past century as it is by its hopes for the next one. The plot revolves around minghun, a traditional burial practice in which bereaved parents will buy the corpse of a girl to bury with their dead son in a joint wedding/funeral ceremony to ensure that he is not lonely in the afterlife. The living are played by puppets, and their puppeteers become their souls in the afterlife once they die. I've been working on this piece, the research or writing false starts, for over two years now. It has been an exercise in perseverance. But the writing is finally moving now, which feels great.

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

A:  Once as a kid I came downstairs for breakfast and found my mom cutting my dad's hand open with a razor blade over some paper towels on the kitchen table. Apparently some lead shot that had been lodged in there for years after an old hunting accident. That morning it had been bothering him, so he asked her to cut him open and get it out. Doctors, man. In retrospect it seems strange that an 8 year old would be not at all disturbed by this. I think I had cereal and watched. As a writer I think that interest carries over...I like the visceral clockwork that keeps us breathing and swallowing and shitting so that we can think our lofty or stupid thoughts. One of my plays, GORMANZEE, stages the strangulation and evisceration of a shaved gorilla (puppet) and a nearly naked human (actor) while a chimpanzee (actor) fear grins and runs around screaming, fruitlessly searching for escape. My company produced it at The Flea last summer and I assumed it would be a real thigh slapper. But judging from the appalled silence on a few nights, some audiences were traumatized. Especially the little kids who came thinking it would be a puppet show. Yikes. I do feel a little bad about that. But I still think it's the funniest thing I've ever written.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater is like a drug, isn't it? The more I consume, the more I need from it. Story used to be what moved me, and I still love (and to some extent need) a good story, but now I'm hooked on visuals, particularly the use of puppets and objects. Force me to see life in a dead thing, force me to love that dead thing, force me to mourn the death of a thing that never lived, and you are forcing me to be conscious of the act of being human. Also, I like solving puzzles. I like ambiguity without vagueness. I really like laughing, I like hilarious characters that show me a good time. I like elegant transitions and messy interactions. I like shocking shifts in visual perspective. I like seeing something that expands how I see everything.

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

A:  1. If you live in a place that has a theater scene, then it is my opinion that you should see plays and read other stuff. Scripts are blueprints for plays, and although I know I'm supposed to like reading them, I just don't. Maybe that's bad advice, but so far I don't think I've been screwed by it. I think my time is better spent reading outdated manuals on how to be a secretary in 1963, advice columns, fundamentalist blogs, recipes for fertilizers, the Wikipedia pages for massacres I never knew happened, poetry, the Bible, the dictionary, obituaries, the epic origin stories written on organic food packaging, and the sentence on the side of the Domino's sugar box (seriously, check it out, it's weird). Get a news site to email you all the articles about some random country every day for a year. Become an armchair expert on something. It will probably start to show in your writing. Or even better, you may end up at some horrible party where some insufferable person is talking out of their ass about North Korea or whatever and you can be like "SHAZAM! I know everything there is to know about North Korea, fool!" That has never happened to me, but I haven't given up hope.

2. Try to get enough fresh air.

3. Read all the other advice from the other playwright interviews on Adam's blog. They have all already said all the stuff that first came to mind when I started answering this question.

4. Read Anne Lamott's "Bird By Bird." It will make you laugh and feel better about everything.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  The other shows in Unfiltered are fantastic!
-Sweet Forgotten Flavor by Patrick Link (running now, don't miss it!) is set in this beautifully timeless, placeless, sideways fairy tale-ish world that quietly and brilliantly elevates the conflicts at work among its characters. Really wonderful.

-The Sluts of Sutton Drive by Joshua Conkel is yet another winner from an incredibly talented writer. It's dark, twisted, and hilarious. Jaded suburban moms drink cleaning products to deal with the bleakness of their existence.

The first Sunday of every month is Youngblood's Brunch series, which is brunch+new short plays around a theme+drinking. Don't miss it!

Upcoming

Production of Nerve in Anaheim, CA  Jan 28-Feb 27 
(9th production of the play, 10th-12th coming soon)

http://www.chancetheater.com/

Production of Deflowering Waldo in Rochester, NY Feb 4-13 
(5th production of the play)

http://www.staszpruitt.com/

Reading of Save as part of How Soon Is Now with Packawallop in NYC  Jan 31

Benefiting the Trevor Project

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=53914824269&ref=ts#!/event.php?eid=185706811459427

Reading of Elsewhere in West Virginia Feb 9

http://www.gvtheatre.org/

Reading of Temporary Everything, Croton On Hudson, NY  Feb 11

http://www.hudsonstage.com/

Reading of Hearts Like Fists, Boston, MA Feb (TBA)

http://www.hollandproductions.org/

I Interview Playwrights Part 303: Martin Blank

Martin Blank

Hometown: Bethesda, Maryland

Current Town: Bethesda, Maryland

Q:  Tell me about Avenue of The Americas.

A:  I find as a playwright that A always leads to C. Avenue of the Americas was the first play I ever wrote. It is a story about a woman who escapes a mental institution to write television advertisements that become dangerously successful. Avenue of the Americas has been produced, but not in New York City. One of my other plays, The Law of Return, had a reading at ArtEffects Theatre Company in New York City. They told me the night before the reading they had extra time in the space and asked, "Is there anything else you want to hear too?" God love them. They did readings of both plays back to back. Kristin Cantwell, an amazing actress, who gave my work to ArtEffects in the first place, and Phil Newsom, a brilliant producer and director at ArtEffects, loved Avenue of the Americas. Kristin and Phil are producing it on their own Off Broadway at The Tank Theater. For me, as always, A leads to C. 

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  A new comedy, No Rest for the Wicked. It's a dark, comic spin on Rip van Winkle. It's getting a reading at the Kennedy Center in September.

Q:  How would you characterize the DC theater scene?

A:  Exciting. Very. A vibrant Fringe festival giving birth to lots of young companies doing great work, including many new plays. Plenty of "old school" shops putting on new plays too: Woolly Mammoth, Arena Stage, and so on. An awful lot of seasoned as well as talented new theater people. The theater scene in DC has never been better.  

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

A:  Like a lot of us, when I was four I put on shows in my living room. They were magic shows. I wrote and produced them. I got all the neighborhood kids to perform them. Siblings and parents would come. We charged one dollar for admission. Even at age four, I knew to pay artists.

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

A:  You can fill a library with what I don't know about theater. Or life. I do know that a lot of folks in our business are in hard times now. Still, anyone reading this is a creative person. My wish is that people in our business think creatively about how to put on theater in a sustainable way. The tide that goes out comes back. I want American theater to be bullish again.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Actors. Brave, gifted, folks.   

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Anytime I see a play, no matter the style, budget, whatever, where an audience has been moved in some way and, based on that experience, will likely go see more theater.

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

A:  Take one good acting class. Read all the time-plays, anything and everything. Take the two plays you love most and physically type them. It will save you years. (Paddy Chayefsky did this, it worked out okay for him.) See as many plays as you can. Every day, whatever happens, try to see the glass as half full. And the last thing should be obvious.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Production of Avenue of the Americas January 21 to February 6 at The Tank Theater in New York City. Reading in Washington, D.C., of No Rest for the Wicked at the Kennedy Center in early September. And Adam,  you're a terrific and busy playwright. Thanks for doing these!

I Interview Playwrights Part 302: Paul Thureen

Paul Thureen

Hometown: Grew up on a farm 10 miles north of East Grand Forks, MN

Current Town: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

Q:  Tell me about your upcoming remount of Buddy Cop 2.

A:  Buddy Cop 2 is our play about Cops, Christmas and Racquetball that we premiered in May at the Ontological-Hysteric Incubator. We’re bringing it back for a quick run for PS122’s COIL festival. We’ll be at the Atlantic Theater Stage 2. It’s a super fun, dark, sad, strange play.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  Well, we have the very beginnings of three new plays so after Buddy Cop 2 we’ll hop back into development mode.

Also, Buddy Cop 2 is coming out from Samuel French in just a few weeks and we’re happy to report that Manbites Dog Theater in Durham, NC will be doing the first licensed production in June. It’s the first time someone ELSE has done one of our shows . . . which is totally exciting and bizarre because we’ve always written for ourselves as performers.

Q:  How do you and Hannah write together? What's your process?

A:  Once we’ve found the little thing that’s our main core starting point, we spend a period of time collecting things; research, images, objects (very important), songs . . . and that transitions into generating a big mass of text sort of riffing on these early ideas and inspirations. At this point Oliver (our director and the other third of The Debate Society) and Hannah and I are really focused on creating the world of the play which is sort of the most important thing to us; the flavor and feel of the place and its mythology.

From our feeling of what that world is and the writing we’ve done, we start to shape the story and characters. We’ll do in-rehearsal work with Oliver, then Hannah and I write and bring stuff back in, repeat repeat repeat. Hannah and I will give each other little writting assignments and when we read, we’ve usually ended up magically filling in the gaps of what was missing in the other’s writing.

It definitely starts out as a very intuitive process. As we get closer to production, then we look back at what we have, how it’s (hopefully) kind of instinctively lined up and then at that point do a little bit more shaping and building from a more intellectual/dramaturgical perspective.

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 guess this is more of an origin story than a single event, but my mom was a Norwegian professor and writer and my dad a farmer and I think it kind of makes sense that that made me. My mom was always SUPER creative and viewed that world with very childlike eyes for an adult . . . she still does actually. So dragons would be leaping out at us from the ditch when we’d be riding in the car and things like that. She also read to me and my sister a lot and had us do “hot pen” writing exercises from a young age. And then my dad was more quiet, super hard working, but also with a sort of dry, pragmatic Midwestern sense of humor. On the farm you just have a lot of time alone, inventing things, climbing on (dangerous) farm machinery, creating your own little word outside. I just reread your interview you did with Hannah . . . and she talked about setting up little dioramas in her mom’s antique shop window . . . so it strikes me we grew up in very similar ways in very different places. And I think that sense of play still really flavors our work . . . even when we’re making something very adult or sad or dark.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I studied for 3 months in Moscow and those guys are just such committed artists; doing what they do even in the worst of times and working so hard with much fewer resources . . . and still there’s this super commitment to playfulness and excessive creativity. There’s always a point where Oliver’s staging, and we’ve written something crazy and impossible that has to happen on stage and we can’t figure out how to make it happen and we joke, “Um, we’ll just use real magic”. And I think the Russians believe in that. So . . . “Russians” is the answer I guess.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Sometimes I see plays and think, “That was good . . . but would have been better as an episode of This American Life (or Law and Order. Or a book. Or a tone poem.) and there’s nothing really wrong with that . . . but I get so excited when I see something stunning or delicate or that really rocks me that could only happen in theater.

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

A:  “Turn on your nerves” as they’d tell us in Russia so you’re absorbing things that are interesting or make you feel a certain way in the world. Be open to finding inspiration in anything. Look places no one else looks. And be super honest and critical with yourself: Is this REALLY what I want to make, or is this something just in the style of what I think I SHOULD make. Work hard. And then . . . try to get out of the way of yourself and trust your intuition.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Buddy Cop 2 at Atlantic Stage 2, January 8th-13th (go to thedebatesociety.org for the details)!

I Interview Playwrights Part 301: Yusef Miller

Yusef Miller

Hometown: Houston, Texas

Current Town: New York, NY

Q: 

What are you working on now?

A: 1) Writing a new play.

2) This week, I begin rehearsals for my ten-minute dark comedy, called Breakfast. Synopsis: ..eggs and muthufuckin' bacon will not be the start of glen's morning. his wife, harriet, has pop tarts on the menu, the shit they've overlooked for 19 years...

Q: How can we support your work?

A: By attending my ten-minute dark comedy, called Breakfast. Building on a sold-out inaugural year in 2010, The Fire This Time Festival continues its mission of supporting playwrights of African-descent and exploring challenging new directions for 21st century theater.
All Season Two festival events will be held at Horse Trade Theater Group’s Red Room (85 East 4th Street between 2nd Ave and Bowery).
Join us for an evening of ten-minute plays:
• The Scorpion and the Fox by Jesse Cameron Alick
• The Eternal Return by Christine Jean Chambers
• Exodus by Camille Darby
• The Bitter Seraph of Sugar Hill by Marcus Gardley
• Breakfast by Yusef Miller
• Third Grade by Dominique Morisseau
Showtimes
• Thu - 01/20   7:00 PM
• Fri - 01/21     7:00 PM
• Sat - 01/22     7:00 PM
• Sun - 01/23   2:00 PM
• Thu - 01 27    7:00 PM
• Fri -  01/28    7:00 PM
• Sat - 01/29     7:00 PM
• Sun – 01/30   2:00 PM
Tickets ($15) are available by calling Smarttix at 212-868-4444 or online at www.horseTRADE.info (on "The Fire This Time Festival Panel on the left)


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 an Artist-born child who retained narratives of the unrequited dreams of a family, a community, a race. Initially, it was important for me to run for my own story, or at the least, to wait out the storm. Poetry became my first expression of my existence. It validated my purpose in the storm; and in articulating it, validated the people and the stories. I write plays from within the storm. I’m still validating. I’m experimenting with different styles and forms of validating.

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

A: I wouldn’t touch the mainstream theatre community. I wouldn’t know where to begin, other than total reformation. What I would do is slip a pill into the drinks of every Black Playwright, Black Producer, and Black Audience Member. This pill would have several effects. 1) it would identify our “oneness with each other.” 2) it would identify our “oneness with God.” 3) it would create within us courage and wisdom, unprecedented. 4) it would recreate in us a LIFE OR DEATH resolve. 5) it would advance how we contract our creativity. 


Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: I endeavor to be my own hero. I owe it to me and my experience.



Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Allegories. 



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

A: The origins of your art is YOU. Be courageous, for all of us.

300 Playwright Interviews (alphabetically)

Rob Ackerman
Liz Duffy Adams
Johnna Adams
Tony Adams 
David Adjmi
Derek Ahonen
Zakiyyah Alexander
Luis Alfaro
Lucy Alibar
Joshua Allen
Mando Alvarado 
Sofia Alvarez
Terence Anthony
Alice Austen
Rachel Axler
Annie Baker
Trista Baldwin
Jennifer Barclay 
Courtney Baron
Mike Batistick 
Brian Bauman
Chad Beckim
Nikole Beckwith 
Maria Alexandria Beech 
Alan Berks
Brooke Berman
Susan Bernfield
Jay Bernzweig
Barton Bishop
Lee Blessing
Jonathan Blitstein
Adam Bock
Jerrod Bogard
Emily Bohannon
Rachel Bonds
Margot Bordelon
Deron Bos
Hannah Bos
Leslie Bramm
Jami Brandli
George Brant
Tim Braun
Delaney Britt Brewer
Erin Browne
Bekah Brunstetter
Sheila Callaghan
Darren Canady
Ruben Carbajal
Ed Cardona, Jr.
Jonathan Caren
Aaron Carter
David Caudle
Clay McLeod Chapman
Christopher Chen
Jason Chimonides  
Andrea Ciannavei
Eliza Clark
Alexis Clements  
Alexandra Collier
James Comtois
Joshua Conkel
Kara Lee Corthron
Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas
Erin Courtney
Cusi Cram
Lisa D'Amour
Heidi Darchuk
Stacy Davidowitz
Philip Dawkins
Dylan Dawson
Gabriel Jason Dean
Vincent Delaney
Emily DeVoti
Kristoffer Diaz
Jessica Dickey
Dan Dietz
Lisa Dillman
Zayd Dohrn
Bathsheba Doran
Anton Dudley
Laura Eason
Fielding Edlow
Erik Ehn
Yussef El Guindi
Libby Emmons
Christine Evans 
Jennifer Fawcett 
Joshua Fardon
Catherine Filloux   
Kenny Finkle
Kate Fodor 
Sam Forman
Kevin R. Free
Matthew Freeman
Edith Freni
Patrick Gabridge 
Anne Garcia-Romero
Gary Garrison 
Madeleine George
Meg Gibson
Sigrid Gilmer 
Peter Gil-Sheridan
Gina Gionfriddo
Michael Golamco
Jessica Goldberg
Daniel Goldfarb
Jacqueline Goldfinger
Christina Gorman
Craig "muMs" Grant
Katharine Clark Gray
Kirsten Greenidge
Jason Grote
Sarah Gubbins
Stephen Adly Guirgis
Lauren Gunderson 
Jennifer Haley
Christina Ham
Sarah Hammond
Rob Handel
Jordan Harrison
Leslye Headland
Ann Marie Healy
Julie Hebert 
Marielle Heller
Amy Herzog
Andrew Hinderaker
Cory Hinkle
Richard Martin Hirsch
Lucas Hnath
David Holstein
J. Holtham
Les Hunter
Sam Hunter
Chisa Hutchinson
Arlene Hutton
Laura Jacqmin
Joshua James
Julia Jarcho
Kyle Jarrow
Karla Jennings
David Johnston
Nick Jones
Julia Jordan
Rajiv Joseph
Aditi Brennan Kapil
Lila Rose Kaplan  
Jeremy Kareken 
Lally Katz
Lynne Kaufman
Karinne Keithley 
Greg Keller
Sibyl Kempson 
Anna Kerrigan
Boo Killebrew
Callie Kimball
Johnny Klein 
Krista Knight
Andrea Kuchlewska
Larry Kunofsky
Deborah Zoe Laufer 
J. C. Lee
Young Jean Lee
Dan LeFranc
Andrea Lepcio
Steven Levenson
Barry Levey
Mark Harvey Levine  
Michael Lew
EM Lewis
Sean Christopher Lewis
Jeff Lewonczyk
Kenneth Lin
David J. Loehr 
Matthew Lopez
Stacey Luftig
Kirk Lynn
Mariah MacCarthy
Laura Lynn MacDonald
Maya Macdonald
Cheri Magid
Jennifer Maisel
Martyna Majok 
Kara Manning
Ellen Margolis
Ruth Margraff
Sam Marks
Tarell Alvin McCraney
Daniel McCoy 
Ruth McKee
James McManus
Carly Mensch
Molly Smith Metzler
Charlotte Miller
Winter Miller
Lin-Manuel Miranda
Rehana Mirza
Michael Mitnick
Alejandro Morales
Desi Moreno-Penson
Dominique Morisseau
Itamar Moses
Gregory Moss
Megan Mostyn-Brown
Paul Mullin
Julie Marie Myatt
Janine Nabers
Peter Sinn Nachtrieb
Brett Neveu
Qui Nguyen
Don Nigro
Dan O'Brien
Dominic Orlando
Rich Orloff 
Jamie Pachino
Kristen Palmer
Tira Palmquist
A. Rey Pamatmat 
Peter Parnell
Julia Pascal
Steve Patterson
christopher oscar peña
Brian Polak 
Daria Polatin 
Craig Pospisil
Jessica Provenz
Michael Puzzo
Adam Rapp  
Theresa Rebeck
Amber Reed
Daniel Reitz
Molly Rice
Mac Rogers
Elaine Romero
Lynn Rosen
Andrew Rosendorf
Kim Rosenstock
Kate E. Ryan
Kate Moira Ryan
Trav S.D.
Sarah Sander
Tanya Saracho
Heidi Schreck
August Schulenburg
Mark Schultz
Jenny Schwartz
Emily Schwend
Jordan Seavey
Christopher Shinn
Rachel Shukert
Jen Silverman
David Simpatico 
Blair Singer
Crystal Skillman
Mat Smart
Alena Smith
Tommy Smith
Ben Snyder
Lisa Soland
Peggy Stafford 
Saviana Stanescu
Nick Starr
Deborah Stein
Jon Steinhagen
Victoria Stewart
Andrea Stolowitz
Gary Sunshine
Caridad Svich
Jeffrey Sweet
Adam Szymkowicz
Daniel Talbott
Kate Tarker 
Lucy Thurber
Dan Trujillo
Alice Tuan
Jon Tuttle
Ken Urban
Enrique Urueta
Francine Volpe
Kathryn Walat
Michael I. Walker 
Malachy Walsh
Kathleen Warnock
Anne Washburn
Marisa Wegrzyn
Anthony Weigh   
Ken Weitzman
Sharr White
Claire Willett
Samuel Brett Williams
Beau Willimon
Pia Wilson
Gary Winter
Stanton Wood
Craig Wright
Deborah Yarchun
Lauren Yee
Steve Yockey
Kelly Younger
Stefanie Zadravec
Anna Ziegler