I Interview Playwrights Part 314: Jeff Goode

Jeff Goode

Hometown: Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Current Town: Hollywood, California

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I just finished my first summer as a Visiting Professor at Hollins University's graduate playwriting program in Roanoke, VA. It's a very intense program that emphasizes bringing in guest professionals to work with students. So even though it's a fairly new program, I was amazed at the level of talent and ambition in the students who decide to go there. We're going to see a lot of working playwrights coming out of that program over the next few years.

Back in L.A., I just became Playwright-in-Residence for the newly re-launched SkyPilot Theatre Company. An accomplished actors company, they recently decided to refocus their mission on developing new plays.

Naturally, I promoted myself to Playwright-in-Chief and recruited a team of ten playwrights to write the entire next season. Modeled after successful original works companies I've worked with in the past (q.v. No Shame Theatre, below) the playwrights wing will be tasked with creating a body of work that provides meaty roles for the acting company, and in return, they will have carte blanche to develop their dream projects from conception to production with the full support of a company trained to work in new plays.

Our first show as a writers company opens February 5th. REWIND is a slate of 10 new one-acts that gave the writers the chance to work with our actors and directors for the first time and explore our new space at the Victory Theatre.

After that, our first next main stage show SALOME GONE WILDE is a collaborative adaptation which employs all of our playwrights and lyricists. We just got the script and it's pretty fantastic. I will be directing with artistic director Robert William Rusch.

We've also launched a New Play Reading Series. We will be adding a dramaturgy wing in the spring. And I'm working to create a pipeline to publication, and establishing relationships with sister theatres in other cities so that developing a project with SkyPilot becomes a springboard to future productions.

For example, my new Prop 8 play THE EMANCIPATION OF ALABASTER McGILL will premiere this season at both SkyPilot and Studio Roanoke before going to publication in 2012.

Other projects include FURSONA NON GRATA, a new furry play, which will debut at a convention this spring. And XMAS 2, which is set to open in December.

Speaking of Xmas, I am writing my first full-length opera THE CHRISTMAS OGRE with composer Jonathan Price to premiere at Southern California Lyric Theater.

And speaking of opera, we just received a grant to produce Jonathan's AESOPERA (mini-operas based on Aesop's fables with libretti by, among other folks, ME!)

But enough about me. Let's talk about No Shame!

Q:  Tell me about No Shame.

A:  How did I know you were going to ask me that?

No Shame Theatre began in the back of a pickup truck in the parking lot of the Theatre Building while I was a student at the University of Iowa. Created by Todd Ristau and Stan Ruth, No Shame was originally a forum for young actors to get a chance to be onstage. Of course, that meant we mostly had to write our own material.

Basically, anyone who showed up a half hour before showtime with a piece to perform was automatically in the show that night. It was, and still is, completely uncensored and wildly eclectic and became a fantastic training ground for writers, because you didn't have any filter between yourself and the audience. There wasn't a professor or a director or a literary agent to decide which pieces would or would not work. You just had to have the guts to get up in the truck and risk falling flat on your face.

And the incredible thing is that given that opportunity, most of the writers simply learned how NOT to fall on their faces on a regular basis. And because no one was screening out the material that seemed too risky, the overall show was both extremely cutting edge AND wildly popularly. The theatrical bi-fecta: total artistic freedom and unrepentant commercial success.

The original No Shame is now in its 25th season, and has spawned branches in a few dozen of cities. Last year, we opened new No Shames in Las Vegas, Lynchburg and San Luis Obispo. (Visit www.noshame.org for links to a No Shame Theatre near you.)

Q:  What can a student studying playwriting with you expect?

A:  I think you learn writing from writing, so we do a lot of in-class exercise and writing experiments. Also, most of my own learning has been experiential, so I try to recreate situations where I learned a lot, rather than simply lecturing about things I already know that I think you should know, too.

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

A: Write!

Self-produce!

What are you waiting for?

Success breeds success. Not the other way around.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  www.jeffgoode.com

I Interview Playwrights Part 313: Elaine Avila

Elaine Avila

Hometown: Wherever my family is…the road….places I’ve lived and consider home: Vancouver, BC, Canada; New York, New York; Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, California…



Current Town: Albuquerque, NM



Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I recently completed a new draft of Lieutenant Nun, based on the true story of a woman conquistador. The play had a wonderful premiere, in a site specific production with a cast of twelve, directed by Amiel Gladstone of Theatre SKAM, won awards, was published…ran for two years… but I’ve turned it into a new play…with four actors. I’m excited by the intensity of the new draft.

I’ve been workshopping Jane Austen, Action Figure and Other Short Plays with the marvelous Heidi Carlsen, and some inventive, generous actors at the Women’s Project in New York, where she is in their directors’ lab. The play was recently accepted into Playwright’s Theatre Centre National Colony in Vancouver, BC where I had the pleasure of working with more inventive, generous actors and dramaturg D.D. Kugler. He is the former president of LMDA, the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, and introduced me to structural strategies you can use in linking short works that bounce off of each other…This work has translated into Spanish (Jane Austen, figura de acción, … y otras obras cortas) and about to premiere in Panamá.

I was recently asked to speak in Nanjing, China about American Playwrights, 1970-2010. (I told them about the Canadians too…) it was a profound experience to describe my culture to students in China…to have deep, heart to heart conversations with them about Maria Irene Fornes, feminism, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Eileen Chang, free speech in America/Canada, Tennessee Williams, Suzan-Lori Parks, Erik Ehn, Chay Yew, Eugene O’Neill, Alice Tuan, David Henry Hwang…I am writing a short, non-fiction piece about the experience. I continue to explore my Portuguese roots—a new development over the past three years—in plays, poems, non-fiction, fiction.

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


A:  My Dad took me to see Barnum and Bailey Circus when I was three. I remember a clown giving me a feather. It was frightening, exhilarating, crossing from a magical world into my own. I later found out the clown gave me the feather because I was crying-- an elephant had been cruelly beaten by its trainer for trying to get a peanut. I also remember being scared by a devil, beating the aisles with a broom, in a theatrical presentation in my Catholic church as a young girl. Theatre crosses and creates worlds, terrifies, heals.

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

A:  We keep telling the same stories about what is wrong with the theatre. I believe in advocacy, and in busting open doors for women and people of all cultural backgrounds. But sometimes we forget that what we are doing matters, right where we are. Broadway and Off-Broadway are ultimately, just a few blocks. It is a great bummer when people think that their region, their work isn’t as important as what is happening on Broadway or television. We have nullified the power of theatre—its localness, our community, the writers that live among us-- with our thinking.

I wonder what would happen if we could realize we do matter, that the opportunities we do have are beautiful, are important.



Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?


A:  Hallie Flanagan, director of the Federal Theatre Project-- part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA)-- during the depression, who supported innovative projects and bringing them to people in America who had never seen theatre. Tim Miller, who is funny, exhilarating, compassionate…while facing political darkness (especially in the U.S.) head on. He writes/performs great pieces, inspires students across the nation, and creates homes for work (P.S. 122, Highways). Kathleen Weiss, who ran the women’s theatre festival in Canada for many years, literally launching dozens and dozens of artists, while being one of the most excellent directors in the nation. My colleagues at Tricklock Theatre Company in Albuquerque, New Mexico who band together to create amazing work, again and again. Mac Wellman—both his writing and how he enjoys helping his students realize their dreams. I believe the future of theatre belongs to those who have not yet spoken—characters, communities, writers who are getting up the courage to tell their stories—a truly heroic act. The future belongs to the audiences and producers brave enough to listen to and support these stories.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?


A:  Theatre that crosses borders, experiments, embraces the circus, has bold design, theatre with heart. I’d rather see something shooting for an exciting target (and maybe missing) than something safe and well done.

The Book of Grace by Suzan-Lori Parks opened a conduit in me that still runs tears…Maria Kitizo by Erik Ehn, Wonderland by Chay Yew, Jose Rivera, Mac Wellman, Caridad Svich, Charlottee Meehan, Christine Evans, Luis Alfaro, the grad students I work with at the University of New Mexico, the students in the LEAP Playwriting Intensive at the Arts Club Theatre…a program I founded in Canada now run by the marvelous Shawn Macdonald. Brian Bauman’s play Atta Boy in the East Village or Sigrid Gilmer’s plays at Cornerstone…Alana Libertad Macías work in Austin, Texas…my theatre community in Vancouver, BC….

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

A:  Suzan-Lori Parks once said to me, “be a great writer, why not?” It seems simple, but like a zen koan if you keep thinking about it. You realize what is in your way, that it is movable. Master trumpet player and teacher Bobby Shew says “talent is the removal of obstacles.” (I hate it when people say ‘you’ve either got it (talent) or not.” Lots of people have talent.) And Shew means the removal of all kinds of obstacles—like “I can’t afford a trumpet” or “I can’t make the time to practice” or “I live somewhere where there aren’t any gigs.”

The best thing I figured out after grad school—“give what you want to get.” Also like a zen koan.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Tricklock Theatre Company’s International Revolutions Theater Festival, Albuquerque, NM, USA. Push International Performing Arts Festival, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Erik Ehn is about to have premieres of his plays on genocide, at La Mama in New York and across the U.S. in 2012. Watch for the work of Brian Bauman, Alana Libertad Macías, Sigrid Gilmer.  Here is my website: elaineavila.com

Two of the MFA students in my program at the University of New Mexico are having New York Premieres:
WINNER, KCACTF 'QUEST FOR PEACE' NATIONAL AWARD
Riti Sachdeva's PARTS OF PARTS & STITCHES at NYC's NewBorn Festival the first Saturday in February.
http://www.mtworks.org/newborn.html
‎2011 NewBorn - Maieutic Theatre Works, MTWorks
www.mtworks.org
MTWorks' mission is to birth new plays inspired by playwrights and regions outside of New York, that question the boundaries of our society, humanity, and individuality.

Georgina Escobar's THE RUIN
UPCOMING: THE RUIN @ Manhattan Rep Theatre; Feb 23-26
http://fourthwallproductions.intuitwebsites.com/about.html

I Interview Playwrights Part 312: Ashlin Halfnight

Ashlin Halfnight

Born: London
Grew up: Toronto

Current Town:  New York

Q: Tell me about your shows up right now.

A:  There are three plays running right now under the umbrella title, Theater in the Dark, With Lights. Lathem Prince is an overtly sexualized adaptation of Hamlet, Laws of Motion follows 4 New York stories during the 2008 financial free-fall, and God's Waiting Room is a purgatory play, loosely inspired by Master and Margarita.

Kristjan Thor is directing all three... I'm really incredibly lucky to have such a brilliant collaborator at the helm, and the casts are filled with such amazing, talented people... generous and intelligent artists who are a privilege to have on board.

Q: What else are you working on?

A:  Well, I'm really excited about a few things - first, a holocaust survivor play that I hope to finish this spring, and second, a play that stars mostly child actors that I've been working on for about a year... and I have a film that's in negotiations up in Toronto - a road trip movie that's set partially in Northern Ontario.

Q:  Can you tell me a little bit about Electric Pear, who you are, what your mission is, how you came to be?

A:  Electric Pear was started when Melanie Sylvan and I had a good collaborative experience with God's Waiting Room the first time around - in 2005, with PL115 at the Fringe, and in Budapest. Electric Pear has been around for five years, and I'm really proud of the work we've done, both developmentally and production-wise. We try to be open, inclusive, and welcoming in our approach - to build community and foster connections between artists. In terms of material, we tend to be just outside the mainstream, accessible, but with a twist - say, an international influence, a cross-genre collaboration or influence, or just something unexpected.

Q:   Have you written at all about your career as a pro hockey player? Adam Bock has a hockey play.

A:  Actually, I have never written about my career in hockey. And I've never read or seen (or heard about) Adam's play... I'll have to look into that! I'm woefully disconnected from the theatrical hockey world! Resolution for 2011, I guess....

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

A:  As an 8th grader, I peed my pants in a downtown Toronto video arcade... and went from trying to be cool and tough to suddenly wanting my mom and dad.

I value family and friends. I try to see the humor in things. And I try to be humble, to remember that our bodies do (and will) fail us... that nobody is too cool or smart or powerful to find themselves standing in a pool of their own urine at some point or another.

Q:  What is the purpose of theater?

A:  Tough question. Does it come with a free soapbox? I think, these days, the purpose of theater is to gather people in a room to experience something first hand, together. It used to be that theater provided the primary outlet for the dissemination of dangerous ideas; it was a great stage for commentary, the avenue of rebellion - but these days, the internet, television, movies, political speeches, philosophy books, and historical documentaries all do the grunt work of changing, challenging, or educating the world in a more effective and wide-spread fashion than theater can.... it's a question of sheer numbers... the instantaneous and pervasive nature of these other media (and the fact that Actors Equity bars any of its members from appearing on the internet or in filmed versions of plays) dictates that the reach of theater is ever-lessening.

This is not to say that plays about social issues are a waste of time - they aren't - but if we're honest with ourselves, the actual reach of these plays - the actual effect - is minute compared to, well, a YouTube video of a young man testifying about something like the legitimacy of his two-mother family. And that's okay... because we shouldn't demand that kind of "coverage" from our theater...

What theater is, perhaps, is the last bastion - along with live music and dance - where people gather to go through something together. This is rare and important, in my view; it might not be an overstatement to say that it is a crucial component in the survival of compassion, communication, and accountability in our society.

Theater has already died a thousand deaths, and lived to tell about it. But with conversation, debate, storytelling, shared meals, listening, and even human touch being eradicated from the daily existence of the majority of the world's technologically enabled societies, theater stands increasingly alone, really, as one of a very few places where people are present and generous, and attentive to the details of the human experience...

Or not... but either way, I really like Shakespeare in the Park.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like to be surprised and challenged. I don't care if it's funny, disgusting, crude, horribly sad, or whatever else... I like to be in the moment - for the duration - and then I like something to think about afterward.

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

A:  Develop a trade that pays cold hard cash. You need to eat. And you need to be free of financial anxiety in order to write. Plus, it will keep you connected to the world at large, which is pretty much essential to a playwright.

Q:  Any plugs?

A:  Come check out the shows! Time Out called our casts "a downtown supergroup of actors" and Martin Denton gave both Laws of Motion and Lathem Prince a rave review...a very wise, very compassionate, and unexpectedly and joltingly profound play.- nytheatre.com

Visit the website -
theaterinthedarkwithlights.com

I Interview Playwrights Part 311: Charlotte Meehan

Charlotte Meehan

Hometown: New York City (from 20 on); Connecticut, New Jersey, Long Island on a rotating basis from birth to 20.

Current Town: Sharon, MA

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m working on a play called Real Realism that I’ve been gearing up to write for two years now. This “gear-up” has involved keeping a list of lines heard in my daily life, dropping in on internet gossip chat rooms, reading very bad dollar store books and supermarket tabloids, and god-knows-what else. The play shows characters tangled in a string of non-sequiturs from which they cannot emerge due to a compulsion to respond to anything said with whatever thought that randomly appears regarding their own immediate need.

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

A:  Oh boy. That’s a can of worms. Suffice it to say that my father was a leader in the John Birch Society and my parents were pre-Vatican II die-hard Catholics who refused to change with the times when the Church became a kinder, gentler religion complete with guitar strumming and the Mass spoken in English. The effect this has had on me as both writer and person is that I have developed a mutinous soul and find the restraints of form quite irritating and sometimes even insupportable.

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

A:  I don’t want to change theatre (aside from the hope that my own plays contribute something new), but would love to see the American theatre establishment expand its scope. There are so many necessary, exciting plays being written that deserve a place on the large stages of our country. It would be my dream come true to see producers invite their audiences in for conversation with playwrights whose works challenge the status quo formally, politically, and aesthetically. I have experienced such conversation with Trinity Repertory Company’s top donors and, believe me, we are lucky to have the support of such serious theatre goers who deserve to be presented with the full array of brilliant writers working in the contemporary theatre.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Then: The Greeks and Samuel Beckett.
Now: Mac Wellman and Hélène Cixous.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I want to be surprised, dragged through the mud, moved to tears, unable to sleep that night, made to laugh until my stomach hurts, and most of all I want to leave the theatre in a state of bewilderment. Caryl Churchill’s The Skriker, Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, a small rickety production of Ionesco’s The Chairs, Mac Wellman’s Antigone, James Scruggs’ Disposable Men, Joseph Chaikin’s Firmament, Pina Bausch’s Palermo! Palermo! and countless other works have excited me enough to want to live forever. I have experienced many art exhibitions as theatre too, and love theatre that incorporates the visual as more than illustration. Bill T. Jones’ recent dance theatre piece, Serenade/The Proposition, is an example of total theatre that makes me swoon.

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

A:  Work hard. Read a lot. Go to the theatre all the time. Have more ambition for your developing aesthetic than for worldly success. Make friends with directors you respect. Send your plays to theatres that produce the kind of work you like. Be true to your own voice.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My new play, Crazy Love, a cross between Noel Coward’s line drawing comedies and François Truffaut’s Jules et Jim, is madly funny and awaiting production. Should anyone reading this interview be interested to read it, please visit: http://www.charlottemeehan.com/contact.html and I will send you off a copy.

I Interview Playwrights Part 310: Marisela Treviño Orta

Marisela Treviño Orta

Hometown:
Lockhart, Texas. The BBQ capital of the state, thank you very much.

Current Town:
San Francisco, California.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Several things, all in various stages of development. I often think it’s like plate spinning (there’s a visual for you). Late last year I finished up rewrites on my play Woman on Fire, a re-telling of Sophocles’ Antigone set along the U.S./Mexico border. I’m now in the process of sending it out (so cross your fingers).

This year I decided to create a work plan  for myself to keep all my projects moving and so far it’s working. At the moment I’m in the middle of rewrites for my play Heart Shaped Nebula.

Heart Shaped Nebula is a play very close to me. I say that because there’s so much I love in that play: science, astronomy, Greek mythology and half of it takes place in the Texas town I lived in before I moved to California.

Later this year I’m going to shift gears to work on a series of “grimm” Latino fairy tales.

Q:  You were a poet for many years, how did you transition to playwriting?

A:  I fell into theatre while working on my MFA in Poetry at USF. I joined El Teatro Jornalero! (Day Laborer’s Theatre) as their Resident Poet. ETJ! was comprised of Latino immigrants and they focused on developing social justice plays.

I started hanging out at their rehearsals because I found their physical exercises inspiring and my poetry muse need to be fed. I wrote poetry, took pictures and ended up becoming a sort of Girl Friday for the theatre. Meaning, I designed programs for their play, then started recording their performances and even once ran a rehearsal.

After a year of watching them develop and write a play, I got curious about playwriting. Luck would have it that just as playwriting was beginning to pique my interest, playwright Christine Evans came to USF. Christine came to teach an introduction to playwriting course and collaborate with ETJ!. I took Christine’s class and with her encouragement submitted my first play, Braided Sorrow, to the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. That was in 2005. After participating in the festival I started to think of myself as a poet and a playwright. But some time around 2006 I began to work almost exclusively on plays.

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

A:  It’s two stories actually. They’re different sides of the same coin.

In one I’m a first grader telling my parents the kids at school can’t pronounce my name. “What do they call you?” my mother asks. I reply, “Marcy,” like the Peanuts character. It’s a lie. I want to fit in and that’s the name I wish they’d call me. My mother questions me further and I feel that something is not right. That my desire to fit in, to nonchalantly take on a new name, is somehow a wrong to my parents and to myself.

The second story is a woman, an acquaintance of my parents, who asks them, “Why doesn’t she speak Spanish?” Still a child I internalize this, I interpret the question as “Why has she chosen not to speak Spanish?” I feel inadequate.

As a third generation Mexican American I spent my adolescence coming to terms with how I straddle two cultures, how I exist in a liminal zone between the two. I came to understand the power of names, of language. My experience isn’t unique. I grew up with scores of friends in school and college who shared the same cultural experience and awareness.

As a writer I’ve used poetry and plays to continue my exploration of cultural identity. I ventured into playwriting specifically to write about social justice issues that affect the Latino community. Since then my work has evolved. Now the plays I’m working on explore other interest areas (science, mythology, folklore), but one thing remains the same about my plays.

Actually it’s two things.

Almost all my characters are Latino and the majority are women. I think we all write ourselves into our plays, consciously and unconsciously. For example, you could say my characters have “less-than-common names” (Soraya, Miqueo, Yolot, Septimo, Dalila, Lalo), like me. I’m very intentional about character names. I guess it’s a way of honoring my own.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  My first theatre hero was Christine Evans. Taking her class is what got me excited about theatre and the possibility of playwriting.

I also take great inspiration from Christine’s work as a playwright. Her work is visually striking, poetic and often political—all things I strive for in my own work. Other playwrights whose work I greatly admire include: Sarah Kane, Jose Rivera, Marcus Gardley, Julie Herbert, Bertolt Brecht, Suzan-Lori Parks, Octavio Solis, Federico Garcia Lorca and Euripides.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  As a poet and as a playwright I’m very image-driven. Therefore I’m excited by theatre that takes into account the entire sensory experience that theatre is. I especially love theatre that doesn’t reign in its imagination, but rather lets it run loose on the stage.

And I love the idea of the emotional world of the play impacting the physical world. I wouldn’t call it Magical Realism, but rather moments of magic and wonder.

There’s something spectacular about live theatre. When you’re watching television or a movie you know they’re using CGI or editing to create moments of magic, but in theatre it happens right before your eyes. In a time when we’re all very desensitized to the world around us, it’s those theatrical moments that tap into my own child-like sense of wonder. I think that’s an amazing gift.

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

A:  I think you blogged about this subject once and reading that post was really helpful to me, especially your first point: it can take 10 years for your career to start moving. That was like lifting a weight off my shoulders.

As for my own advice, I recommend developing a yearly work plan. Give yourself monthly goals, year-long goals and then map out the work you want to accomplish each month. And don’t forget to give yourself deadlines for those goals. I’m finding it very useful for keeping myself on track. Like many artists, I have a full-time job, so carving out time for writing is a challenge and I’m finding that the work plan is helping me move all my projects forward and I have a better sense of the overall big picture of my work. My work plan includes both writing goals and lists out all the places I want to send my plays, i.e. festivals, theatres.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I definitely want to give a shout out to theatre here in the Bay Area. We have such a varied and exciting scene with theatres of all size from large regional stages to scrappy companies that are barely a few years old. Some of the theatres I frequent include: Crowded Fire, The Cutting Ball Theater, Impact Theatre, Magic Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, Shotgun Players, and Sleepwalkers Theatre.

Also I have to say there are some wonderful organizations that support playwrights here in the Bay Area, including: Playwrights Foundation (where I’m one of several Resident Playwrights ); Playground (which has a writers pool of 36 playwrights); and Theatre Bay Area.

Lastly, I want to plug the playwright community out here. I’ve always found my fellow playwrights to be very supportive and open. For the past few years I’ve been co-hosting the Bay Area Playwrights Pub Night with playwright Tim Bauer.

A few years ago we came to the realization that despite the best intentions we never had the wherewithal after a show to go get drinks and catch up. So we decided to dedicate an evening to just hanging out. And we thought inviting all the playwrights we know would be a great way to keep tabs on one another’s work. Now the pub night happens about 3 to 4 times a year and we rotate through the city—each pub night in a different pub in a different neighborhood. Our first pub night for the year will be February 26th at Valley Tavern in Noe Valley. If you’re reading this and you’re in the Bay Area, come on out, the invite is open to all playwrights and theatre peeps.

I Interview Playwrights Part 309: Quiara Alegria Hudes

Quiara Alegria Hudes

Hometown: Philadelphia. West Philadelphia, to be precise. But I have a foot in many Philly neighborhoods including North Philly (el barrio, where my cousins live) and South Philly (the Italian Market, where my aunt and uncle work and live) and Malvern (the burbs) where I lived on a horse farm for a few years.

Current Town: New York.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I'm wrestling through act 2 of a new musical adaptation. It's based on the Mexican novel Like Water for Chocolate, written by Laura Esquivel. It's hot and romantic and very sensual. It's a highly theatrical piece so I have to think visually as well as with my literary brain. I've been writing it standing up for that reason. It helps. I am also gearing up to "bake off" the first draft of a new play. It will be the final installment of my "Elliot Trilogy," begun with Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue. It's a play about nostalgia and sentimentality, with Puerto Rican folk music interspersed throughout. So far I've double-dared one other writer to create a first draft on the same deadline with me. I'll order beer and pizza and we'll read our new drafts aloud at the end of February.

Q:  Tell me about Welcome To My Neighborhood.

A:  In 2005 I wrote a 10-minute play for People's Light and Theatre. The task at hand was to write about Philadelphia for their gala celebration. I find 10 minute plays difficult in terms of plot and character. There's not enough time for me to explore. So I created a tone poem of sorts, alphabetized, about the alphabetic streets of el barrio in North Philly. I thought it would make a good children's book, and Arthur Levine at Scholastic agreed. They published it in August with meditative illustrations by Shino Arihara.

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

A:  Half my childhood stories stem from SEPTA, Philly's public transportation system. I was always shuttling from school to Aunt Alice's to Abuela's to piano lessons to Quaker meeting to the Art Museum (free admission on Sundays). There are buses, an el, a few subway lines, trains, and trolleys in Philly, and I knew them all and I rode them all frequently. They came infrequently and they took a long time and so my imagination would just run wild while I sat there. I'd stare out the window, watching the neighborhoods change block-by-block, like shifting DNA. Row homes, mansions, juvenile detention centers, parks. I saw a man puke on the trolley, I saw a young women be verbally abused by her boyfriend on a bus, I myself received my favorite all-time love note (from my future husband, then boyfriend) on the Broad Street Line. One time I was on the trolley and for some reason the brakes didn't work and we SLAMMED into the trolley in front of us. Everyone flew out of their seats onto the floor, and though no one was hurt, two people yelled out, "I'm calling Allen Rothenberg!" simultaneously and then everyone burst out into laughter and applause. That's probably the most Philly story I could tell.

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

A:  1. Productions would last forever. They'd never close. And the best, most electric, most on performance would be what everyone saw each night, and what every performer experienced each night. So tonight, for instance, I could've said to my daughter, "Let's go catch Zero Mostel's closing night performance as Tevye." (In reality I showed her the DVD track of "Tradition.") 2. I'd create a time-machine device so that any audience member could go back in time and hear the first draft of a play they love or are confused by, read aloud around a table in a blind reading--that is, the actors have never read the play. There is something so magical, so raw and unhinged about first drafts and first reads. Before the polish and intellect take over. When it's a piece of writing from the gut. 3. I'd be a fly on the wall of every playwright I love for one day. I'd spy on how Mamet and Sorkin and Churchill pace, type, handwrite, and eat banana nut muffins. 4. High school students would read and study classics, but they'd produce and perform their original works and the works of their classmates.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Paula Vogel has an incredible amount of knowledge about theater, surpassed only by her child-like love of play and her pure pure writing. I wish I could turn a phrase or imagine a scene like Sarah Ruhl, Rajiv Joseph, or Annie Baker. I just read a play by a writer named J.C. Lee which convinced me that science fiction can not only work onstage, but can make me cry like a baby. I love Franz Xaver Kroetz's play Through the Leaves. August Wilson: he's so decadent and he marched to the beat of his own drum without wavering. I'd love to take Jose Rivera to lunch one day and ask him a lot of questions about writing and life.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that makes me laugh, cry, furious, embarrassed. The only sensation I hate in the theater (and in life) is boredom. Don't give me middle of the road. Give me a strong point of view. (My least favorite writing that I've done is in plays where I didn't swing for the fences enough.) I like poor theater. Overly literal sets always strike me as lost opportunities. I also love playwrights whose voice lead to a distinctive body of work so you can hear a line and go, "Yes, that's a Lynn Nottage play" or "Ah, Nilo Cruz, how I've missed you..." I love extremes: meticulous plays steeped in the virtuosic minutiae of experience and language (I'm thinking of Annie Baker's The Aliens here) and I love big huge theatrical ambitious messes that push form (I'm thinking of Thornton Wilder's Skin of Our Teeth and Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play here). And the theme of mortality is pretty much what sticks in my mind and gut.

I saw Complicité perform their play Mnemonic at the National Theatre in London. A wooden folding chair turned into the puppet of a dying man before my eyes. I will never forget that moment--watching the "chair" gasp for breath in an arctic landscape. I will also never forget a father burying his child in Sarafina! Her grave was a simple square of light that grew darker with every pantomimed shovel of dirt. By the end the stage was just black.

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

A:  Have a strong point of view. Have a strong voice. (Even if you're being very soft, be strong in that choice.) Be virtuosic with your imagination and your language. Be a craft junkie. Study it. Master it. Break it. Study the great plays, and think about form within them. The wider range of work you know, the wider your toolbox. Study the masters of the abstract arts: dance, visual art, and music. Go see Alvin Ailey and Baryshnakov. Go to the Romare Bearden exhibit at the Whitney. Go to hear Schubert Piano recitals and Etta James at SOB's. Bring your notebook with you. When I lived in London for a few months, I brought my notebook to the Tate Modern on a weekly basis. The virtuosity of other forms can serve as a perpetual high bar for playwriting. And finally, self-produce.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  The tour of In the Heights continues until April 3. Visit intheheightsthemusical.com to see if it stops in your city. Beyond that, keep your ear out for my next play, Water By the Spoonful, which will open in fall 2011. It's about addiction and recovery, with nods to Coltrane.

I Interview Playwrights Part 308: Kait Kerrigan

Kait Kerrigan

Hometown: Kingston, PA

Current Town: New York

Q:  Tell me about your show going up at Goodspeed.

A:  My writing partner Brian Lowdermilk and I have been working with producers Beth Williams and Broadway Across America on a 5-person musical called The Unauthorized Autobiography of Samantha Brown for several years. Goodspeed is the next step in the process. It's not a full production. It won't be reviewed and it won't have an official opening so we'll get a full month of performances to play and fine-tune. We begin performances on August 4th and run through August 28th at the Norma Terrace Theater - which has a turntable so I'm thinking we'll make use of that.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  2011 is pretty crazy. We just released our first album (Our First Mistake) and we're in the process of doing a concert series in New York called "You Made This Tour" - which is named for our fans after they raised 35K on our kickstarter campaign. We're also going to the MacDowell Colony to work on a new musical about the Irish Republican Army based on Shakespeare's Henry IV and then I hop out to Northern California to work on a production of my play Imaginary Love.

Q:  Tell me about Primary Stages' ESPA. What can a student in your class expect?

A:  You'd probably get a better answer from some of my students. I have a lot of students who have taken my classes three and four times and they're really progressing. I think the most important thing I can offer as a workshop leader is deadlines. The difference between being a writer and not is pretty simply the ability to finish something so I force that on them. Once you know you can finish something, the whole world opens up for you. In fact, I'm restructuring my first-level class to reflect that. The final product of my first level class is a treatment for full-length musical. But I want to create a mid-point deadline that has them each write a 10-minute musical. I kind of kick my students' asses. Otherwise, I wouldn't be earning my paycheck, but I try to create an environment where the critique is always constructive.

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'm going to tell you the first story that comes to mind. When I was three or four, I got really interested in god. My mom was agnostic, my grandmother was a lapsed Catholic, and my grandfather - who took me to church on Sundays and fed me pancakes afterwards - was Protestant. I was a very literal kid and I started asking my mom a lot of questions about where people come from and how God made us. I think my mom probably talked to me about science and, like, cell formation. But I was really preoccupied by the idea of how bones got inside skin. I couldn't understand how God (or anyone) could put the bones inside without there being seams. A couple weeks passed, and I came running into the dining room. I was so excited. I show my mom the palms of my hands. I said, "Look! I found the seams!"

I guess the reason that story comes to mind because I get really stuck on things I don't understand, things I can't name. Honestly, it doesn't even matter if I name it incorrectly. The naming of it, making something feel like it makes sense, is all that matters. And that's sort of what writing is for me.

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

A:  I wish theater gave audiences more credit. I also wish there were a more porous relationship between theater and popular culture. That's two things...


Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I met Sondheim when I was 14 and I asked him to sign my cd. He told me that I was the only person under the age of 40 who knew who he was. I was devastated and I almost wrote him a letter to tell him how wrong he was. (As I said, I was a pretty literal kid.) Lynn Ahrens and Steve Flaherty were mentors of mine and Brian's and I think they were some of the best teachers I ever had.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I think the most exciting thing is when a play or musical HAS TO BE a play or a musical. I also love mongral forms, which is probably why I love writing musicals so much. I love when pieces attempt to stretch the boundaries of what has been done before. BRIEF ENCOUNTER, THE BURNT PART BOYS and VENICE are the shows this year that really moved me. In the not too distant past, pieces that really moved me include THE FOUR OF US, RUBY SUNRISE, CAROLINE OR CHANGE, CLYBOURNE PARK, LOOKING FOR THE PONY, and THE SEVEN. But probably the most exciting piece of theater that has happened in the past couple years was documented in film EXIT THROUGH THE GIFTSHOP. That film changed the way I view art, commerce, theatricality, and the age old plot twist.

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

A:  Finish your drafts. Don't be afraid of rejection because you will be rejected. But often the people who reject your first play or musical, remember your name and are excited to read the 2nd one you send. And then, sometimes they're moved by your second piece and they commission your third.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  THE UNAUTHORIZED AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SAMANTHA BROWN is at Goodspeed from August 4th through August 28th. We also have concerts at Le Poisson Rouge on Feb 7 and March 27 and another concert at the Canal Room on Feb 28th. And my play IMAGINARY LOVE opens at the Hapgood Theatre in Antioch, CA on June 3 and runs through the end of the month.

I Interview Playwrights Part 307: Bianca Bagatourian

Bianca Bagatourian

Home town: Tehran, Iran

Current town: Los Angeles

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I'm currently completing the third draft of a play about the late historian, Howard Zinn, with whom I had the honor of working with for a couple of years. It's a multi-media piece with interviews and recorded voices and as it takes place in a radio station. I'm having a lot of fun adding 60's and 70's music to 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 remember a story - I’m not sure it explains who I am but it did seem to confirm one particular thing – the end of my stage career!

I was 7 and playing the prince in my boarding school production of the King and I and all I had to do was hold my head up as I bowed, being careful my crown didn't topple over. Now this crown was a rubber ring from the gymnasium and sure enough, the king entered and I did a deep bow and off flew my crown landing with a thud on the floor and rolling straight off the stage and into the bemused audience. I was mortified.

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

A:  If the world was my oyster and I could juggle it around and rearrange the globe: I’d do more east coast theater on the west coast. I’d do more European theater on the east coast. And I’d bring more Middle-Eastern stories to the Western world.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  What I admire most is brave writing.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Brave theater. I don’t mean to be redundant here but I genuinely think a brave, true, courageous voice in any artistic medium is rare and exciting.

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

A:  I’m not sure I’m one to give any advice. All I know is that it works best for me to love what I’m writing. Someone asked me the other day how I pick my subject matter and I said I write about things that make me throw up. This is not a contradiction. I write about things that make me sick to my stomach as that is what is important to me as a person. Then HOW I write about it – the writing process, the form, concept, etc. is what I need to love. As an example; for years when I would drive by nuclear power stations or hear about power plants on the news, I would hold my breath. It was just a knee-jerk thing because it would just make me feel so dirty and gross and my body didn’t want to take any of it in. So I started paying attention to this kind of thing and listening to my inner voice and writing about upsetting things like animal testing, things that made my blood boil, things I hated. But how I wrote about them was what I had to love. i.e. for the animal testing script I made my main character a man who had turned into a bunny from the drugs he tested on himself and he was our narrator who hopped around the stage and told the story through acrobatic movements and from the point of view of a rabbit. This I liked a lot.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Can I plug my brother who just wrote a huge Hollywood film that will be coming out next year – The biopic of the late rapper, Tupac Shakur.

I’m looking forward to my upcoming trip to Rwanda in order to integrate Rwandan genocide stories into my genocide play based on 800 hours of eyewitness testimony from the Armenian genocide. The hope is to demonstrate the universality of this sickening crime which incomprehensibly continues to this very day.

And more currently, next week I’m producing a reading of the winner of the $10,000 Saroyan Playwriting Award that is run through my non-profit at the Los Angeles Theater Center with a fabulous cast. (www.armeniandrama.org).