325 Playwright Interviews

Daniel Keene
James Carter
Josh Tobiessen
Victor Lesniewski
Abi Basch
Matthew Paul Olmos
Stephanie Fleischmann
Chana Porter
Elana Greenfield 
Eugenie Chan
Roland Tec 
Jeff Goode
Elaine Avila 
Ashlin Halfnight 
Charlotte Meehan 
Marisela Treviño Orta
Quiara Alegria Hudes
Kait Kerrigan
Bianca Bagatourian 
Kyoung H. Park
Honor Molloy
Anna Moench 
Martin Blank
Paul Thureen
Yusef Miller
Lauren Gunderson
Jennifer Fawcett
Andrea Kuchlewska
A. Rey Pamatmat
Sean Christopher Lewis
Rachel Bonds
Lynn Rosen
Jennifer Barclay
Peggy Stafford
James McManus
Philip Dawkins
Jen Silverman
Lally Katz
Anne Garcia-Romero
Tony Adams
christopher oscar peña
Lynne Kaufman
David J. Loehr
Julie Hebert
Aditi Brennan Kapil
Elaine Romero
Alexis Clements
Lila Rose Kaplan
Barry Levey
Michael I. Walker

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

I Interview Playwrights Part 325: Daniel Keene

Daniel Keene

Hometown: Melbourne, Australia.

Current Town: Melbourne, Australia.

Q:  Tell me about The Killing Room.

A:  The play was commissioned by One Year Lease. My brief was simply to write something based on the story of Thyestes. I focused my work on the idea that tyranny devours its own. I imagined a world in which oppression had triumphed, where there was no one left to resist the cruelty and dominance of the ruling elite. And yet these rulers still have the urge, the desire to dominate. The only victims that remain are themselves. They devour each other.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I am currently writing a play (another commission) for the Melbourne Theatre Company, who premiered a play of mine at last year’s Melbourne International Arts Festival. Once that’s finished, I will be starting work on an adaptation of Goethe’s Faust for Theatre de la Commune in Paris.

Q:  How would you characterize Australian theater?

A:  Energetic, intelligent, highly skilled, adventurous. There is a strong European influence in Australian theatre, and quite a few of our major directors often work in Europe. Indigenous theatre has established a strong place in the culture and continues to grow and exert its influence. We have an extremely strong design culture (lighting, set design and sound) that sets the bar very high. The best Australian theatre (and there is a lot of the best) is fearless, with very broad horizons. I know I’m painting a very rosy picture, but I genuinely believe that at this moment in time Australian theatre is some of the best you’ll see anywhere in the world. A generational change is happening. There are young, well-trained and highly skilled artists working in all aspects of theatre; and they are connected to each other through a generous culture of exchange and debate.

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

A:  The theatre needs to attract a younger audience; it needs to speak to the desires and the concerns of young people. And it needs to be brave enough to confront the brutalities and hypocrisies of the contemporary world. These things are happening, but they need to keep happening.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  The list is long, and various. Here are a few: Beckett, Pinter, Mamet, Miller, Chekhov, Kroetz, Fosse, Churchill, Kane, Ibsen, Shakespeare, Brecht, Barker, Koltés, Müller . . . .

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theatre where something ‘happens’, that is part of my experience of reality not an escape from it. Theatre that effects the emotions and the intellect.

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

A:  Read plays, anything you can get your hands on, read plays continuously. And read poetry, of every kind. Go to the theatre as often as you can, see every kind of theatre that you can, including dance

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  
theatrenotes.blogspot.com will tell you everything you need to know about Australian theatre.

I Interview Playwrights Part 324: James Carter

James Carter

Hometown: Canton, IL

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about Feeder.

A:  “Feeder: A Love Story” reveals Jesse & Noel, who meet online, fall in love and get married. They share in a lifestyle called feederism. Typically, one partner feeds and assists the other partner in gaining weight. It’s sexually stimulating for both, and it’s a fringe subculture struggling to obtain acceptance. The play is about communication, acceptance, media, and of course, love.

The play is a transmedia storytelling experience told on multiple platforms – stage, blogs and Twitter. The audience can visit http://www.jessennoel.blogspot.com before the show (or after) to find out more about the characters.

It’s a leap of faith to depart from a traditional play format, but so far it seems to be working. People from feederism blogs, groups of transmedia storytellers, and theatergoers are all attending the show, which means we’re expanding terraNOVA Collective’s (http://www.terranovacollective.org) audience base and web traffic.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I’m researching for a play about memes, or memetics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme). It’s a time consuming process asking questions like: What is creativity? Do we drive it, or does it drive us? Is there free will? Light stuff.

Transmedia storytelling will certainly be an aspect of it, but I’m not sure in what fashion, yet. The stage play/experience is at the center, and then I’ll build the other media elements once the story is firm.

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 high school, I wrote poetry, plays, and short stories. Once, I created this teenage wet dream fantasy playboy short story featuring all my friends as characters. More like bizzaro versions of my friends. It was episodic, and I even illustrated a few comic panels. It was dirty, uninhibited and extreme. I wrote a new chapter every day, and I read it to my friends at lunch. We all sat around howling at the sophomoric silliness, and my friends couldn’t wait for the next chapter the following day. It was the first time I entertained with my writing.

My parents found the notebook containing the story, and they were mortified. I grew up in a very conservative household, and I didn’t do anything “bad” – no drinking, no drugs, and no breaking curfew. I created the story to act out all the badness I wanted to be. The shame I had when my parents confronted me about the story was intense. I understood why they were so angry, but I didn’t understand what was wrong with what I wrote.

Something cracked open in me that day – people aren’t always going to like what I write. They might be offended, they might be angered, but there are others who will wait eagerly for the next chapter. Those are the people for whom I write.

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

A:  Every artist, administrator, and laborer would be paid what they’re worth.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I have tons of theatre makers I admire: Athol Fugard, Diane Paulus, Jordan Roth, Danny Hoch, Lily Tomlin, and Scott Morfee.

However, the true theatrical heroes of the world are people like my mother, Ilene Carter, who taught high school theatre for years. All teachers who work to instill love of the arts and cultivate the next generation of artists are my heroes. We need to make arts education a priority.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  If I laugh, cry, re-think my morals or want to dance, I’m over the moon. The audience should be involved with the process. If the audience is on stage with the performers, awesome. If the audience can interact with characters before and after the theatrical experience, stellar. Theatre has roots in religious rites, yet now it is spectacle for tourists and star-gazers. Theatre should be communal. The cult of personality dominates theatre, and we need to return to an experiential congregation where theatre makers move, challenge and delight the audience.

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

A:  It’s a fickle business, and you’ll rarely make a living as a playwright. Think seriously about this. If you want to make money, don’t write plays. My parents told me this when I was young. I didn’t believe them. They were right. Write plays because you love it.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  “Feeder: A Love Story” runs 3/7-3/26/11 at HERE
Begin the story: http://jessennoel.blogspot.com
Tickets: http://here.org/shows/detail/453/

terraNOVA Collective: http://www.terranovacollective.org

Website: http://www.onemuse.com

Blog: http://one-muse.blogspot.com/

I Interview Playwrights Part 323: Josh Tobiessen

Josh Tobiessen

Hometown:  Schenectady, NY

Current Town:  Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about your show at Alliance.

A:  ‘Spoon Lake Blues’ is a comedy about two brothers living in a small lake town in the mountains, two white guys, who start robbing their wealthy summer neighbors to try to save the house that they grew up in. One of the brothers falls in love with the daughter of an African American family that they’ve robbed and tries to start up a relationship with her and things get a little wacky from there.

I started writing this play a few years ago when I was living alone in a cabin in the woods for a few months. The town that I was living in had a mix of locals and summer residents and I found the differences between these two groups really interesting. This was also the summer of Obama’s presidential run and the collapse of the economy so all these things affected what I was writing. Including the fact that the plumbing in the cabin started backing up.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I’m working on a large cast comedy called ‘Crashing the Party’, which is about a family business that’s going belly up. As the family tries to throw a birthday party for the father, he’s trying to escape the country before the cops show up. I was really interested in exploring our country’s financial collapse in a way that didn’t let anyone off the hook. All kinds of chaos ensues but I think it has a lot of heart too. I’m doing my best to channel the zany vibe of the Kaufman and Hart comedies while keeping the subject matter current.

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 when I was kid my family and a friend’s family went on a camping trip together somewhere in the Adirondacks. Near our campsite my friend and I found an entrance to a Gnome house. We were smart enough to know that this hole in the ground was a Gnome residence because I had recently read the book “Gnomes” by Wil Nuygen, which had pages of helpful illustrations about how Gnomes lived. So my friend and I spent the day making a crude barn for the Gnomes out of sticks from the forest and covered the roof with fern leaves. Then, to secure our position as leading Gnome benefactors we collected a small pile of acorns and left them as a gift outside the entrance to their humble residence. The next morning the pile of acorns had disappeared (obviously removed to their underground food pantry) and the Gnomes had left for us two tiny wooden swords to show their appreciation for out generosity. We were absolutely thrilled. We played with those swords all morning until my friend got a little over zealous and tried to cut through one of the ropes holding up the rain tarp. The sword broke. He was crushed. Fortunately (and this was how cool my dad was) my dad was able to quickly whittle a pretty good approximation of a Gnome sword to replace the real one that my friend had broke. It was actually amazing how closely it resembled an actual Gnome sword. But still, it was just a replica, and I had the real thing.

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

A:  All playwrights would get a six-figure salary and a unicorn.

There are a ton of things that people talk about changing in theater but I don’t know how many of them are realistic. Playwrights don’t get enough money because there are so many playwrights out there dying for a production (in a neighborhood full of middle school kids you can’t make much money mowing lawns). The normal rules of capitalism don’t apply because we do something that not enough people care about. Most professional theater in this country happens thanks to a small number of generous individuals who pay a lot of their own money to make it happen. I guess if I were going to change one thing about theater it would be that I would convince our benefactors to focus more on supporting the art rather than the architecture of theater. We get these massive architectural spaces with people’s names on them, but if they are just filled with dusty old plays then what are we really contributing to our nation’s theatrical future? Maybe we keep the old theater space but you get to put your name on a decent size play commission? Or a new play festival. Or a residency. This is happening in a few places, but I think that theater companies need to continue getting creative when someone comes to them with a big check.

That felt more like half of a thing I would change so here’s something else. I think we need figure out how to make theater cool for more people. This is hard because theatre people aren’t used to being cool except around other theatre people. You hear complaints (maybe once or twice from me) that no one wants to leave their homes anymore what with computers and televisions, but they leave their homes for music concerts and sporting events. Why? Because they like being in a crowd but also they have a pretty good idea that they’re going to like what they see. I think that theatres need to do a better job of branding themselves and creating a distinct aesthetic vision rather then trying to keep everyone happy. You go and buy the new Radiohead album (imagine for a second that you’re a Radiohead fan) if you liked what they’ve done before and you trust that their next album is also going run in a similar aesthetic vein. This isn’t saying that theatres need to do the same thing over and over again, and it isn’t saying that audiences need to go to the same theatre all the time. But audiences need a theatre that they can trust, that they can become fans of, that they can confidently tell their friends about, and that produces plays that they can’t wait to see. Theaters need to generate that kind of deserved loyalty from a core group of passionate audience members and stop worrying about making everyone sort of happy some of the time. Passionate audience members will attract new audience members with their passion, which is what we all want. Some places are already good at doing this and they’re usually the theatres that people get really excited about.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Stage managers.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I need to be surprised somehow, which sometimes means swinging on cables over an audience (I’m sorry haters, but there were some very exciting moments in Spider-man) and sometimes means making me laugh out loud. But it’s not all death defiance and punch lines, plays can also be intellectually or philosophically surprising (as long as they don’t beat me over the head with their superior world view). If I’m watching a play and I know where it’s going, or if I don’t care where it’s going, then I just feel bad for all those people in the audience who paid full price for tickets. An exciting play keeps me on my toes and activates me as an audience member.

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

A:  Every playwright has taken a completely different route to get where they are today so stop comparing yourself to other writers. Just keep writing, keep making meaningful connections with directors and people who produce plays, and try to write plays that aren’t boring.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A: 
Spoon Lake Blues at the Alliance Theatre, Atlanta. Previews start April 1st. Davis McCallum is directing, we have a great cast and it’s going to be a fun show.

I Interview Playwrights Part 322: Victor Lesniewski

 
Photo credit: Joshua Bright for The New York Times

Victor Lesniewski

Hometown: Torrington, CT

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about Where Bison Run.

A:  I wanted to write a play exploring the political situation in Belarus. We really only hear about it in our media when there's an election (like in December of 2010) and then it's only in the news cycle a couple of days and everyone here forgets all about it again, for years until the next election. Plus all we get is coverage skewed toward those protesting the restrictions on their civil liberties. Not that this is all bad. The more coverage on a global scale for them the better. But these protestors are a small part of the country's population and this kind of coverage does seem to be lacking in a deeper analysis of what the population as a whole is experiencing in that country. Calling a thinly veiled dictatorship out for what it is is fine, but we must also accept that those people in power are very good at what they do and that the average Belarusian is not veiwing his/her life through the same lense we are. The majority of Belarusians support their government because they've seen improvements in their standard of living compared to what came before. Not even assuming that we have any right to do so, but asking the question anyway, how do we approach a whole country of people who see their lives as improving over time and attempt to convince them that they are actually lacking in certain key civil liberties that may lead to an even better livelihood? Not only this, but when taking into consideration an area of the world where the land itself has been trampled upon by such a variety of people and nations over various extended periods of time, how do we expect one nation to unify itself and prosper? And how could this happen without an extremely strong organized government force? I am in no way defending the crimes committed against the civil liberties of the citizens of Belarus, but simply asking, if we are going to look on with what we feel is justified horror for a couple of days every few years, don't we owe it to ourselves to investigate the real issues at hand in the country everday on a more social, economic, and cultural level? Isn't their more to be gained by trying to understand the country's people than by simply disavowing the country as a whole due to its government?

And if all that sounds really boring, well, the play is also about hockey. I'm a big hockey fan and the sport is huge in Belarus, so it seemed like a natural way in to exploring the politics from a more personal level.

The play just had a reading at Ars Nova which was really tremendous. The cast's wealth of talent was completely unreal. I know Adam and many others out there know this already, but Ars Nova is such a great place to work. In addition to featuring powers that be who are really intelligent and great with new work, the community overall is fantastic. The shows that go up there are in such a wide range of styles. They embrace new and exciting work no matter what it looks like and that really helps build relationships among artists/musicians/performers from all walks of life.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I have another play that had a public reading a few months ago. It's called Cloven Tongues. It's set in a small town in upstate New York and deals with an immigrant woman with an unknown past who gets picked up at the Canadian border for running drugs. A priest and a social worker take her in and try to figure out how best to help her. Like Bison it has a certain global element to it where American characters come into contact with someone from a culture they may not completely understand. In the end though, this play is also about those American characters and for what reasons we in this country sometimes go about trying to help others.

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 not sure if high school can be considered childhood. I know when I was in high school, I certainly didn't consider it so, but... In high school I was lucky enough to go on a class theatrical outing and see Long Wharf's production of David Rabe's A Question of Mercy. This was when Doug Hughes was there. The production was brilliant and the play really struck a chord with me. It was such a political play yet it was completely personal and heart wrenching. It examined and considered very big questions without lecturing. It was truly powerful and inspiring. At that point I thought, if theatre can do that, that's what I want to do.

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

A:  Creating more opportunities for playwrights to have their work produced on a professional (not just do-it-yourself) level. There is so much creative talent in NYC when you look at all of the directors and actors both working and not working. I think the city could support even more theatres, productions, etc on a very high level. Of course all this comes back around to the ability to actually produce at that level. So I suppose a variety of things would have to change, we'd be talking about growing younger audiences, finding production dollars, etc. I have an infinite amount of respect for those people who are already taking up these tasks on a day to day basis. Theatre administrators and staffs (not just in NYC, but across the country) have dedicated their lives and livelihoods to fighting a very difficult war and they are truly heroic.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Gorky, Chekhov, Havel, Pirandello.
Rabe, Shinn, Baitz, Sorkin.
Beckett, Artaud, the Italian Futurists.
Dostoevsky, Calvino, Faulkner.
Etc.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  New plays. Plays that deal directly with where we are right now as people, or as a culture, or as a world. Plays that deal with our humanity on a global scale.

And given the subject matter of Bison I'd be remiss not to add my admiration for the Belarus Free Theater. They make a kind of political theatre that I don't know I would approach myself, but that is very powerful, poignant, and very necessary given the current circumstances under which they operate. With members who have been arrested, beaten, and chased underground (and I'm sure that's only part of the story), it is simply amazing what these people have sacrificed in the name of art and freedom.

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

A:  Go see new plays. Successful artistic communities have always thrived when contemporary artists are in conversation with one another through their work.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My girlfriend just happens to be the incredibly gifted playwright Janine Nabers. Her play Annie Bosh Is Missing is going to Sundance this spring. So keep an eye out for that one when it gets back to NYC and anything else with her name on it. For more info on Janine, check out Part 180 of this blog. Yes, that's right, I just plugged the blog from inside the blog...

I Interview Playwrights Part 321: Abi Basch

Abi Basch

Hometown: New York City

Current Town: San Francisco (by way of Austin, Minneapolis and Berlin)

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Arctic Circles, a new play I am developing with my company (Kinderdeutsch Projekts). We recently got a grant from the Creative Work Fund for its 2012 premiere with Climate Theater, so now everything is about the geographic challenges of gathering the international lot of us for rehearsals, planning and production. This summer we will meet at Odin Theater in Holstebro, Denmark to do a development workshop with the magical Else Marie Laukvik. The first draft is done and I am hammering away at draft two with my dramaturg/genius Duca Knezevic. Then the very brilliant Paula Matthusen, electroacoustic composer/installation artist, will take over and transform the piece into some uncanny, frosty landscape in time for the summer workshop. I am hugely excited to start working with the group of collaborating artists, which includes German scholar extraordinaire Caroline Weist and my very bizarre and beloved actors from Kinderdeutsch Projekts Molly Shaiken, Thorsten Bihegue and Stefanie Fiedler. Did I butter my collaborators with enough compliments? I don't think so. They really are incredible.

I've also been doing dance dramaturgy, most recently for a piece by Tiit Helimets for the Estonian Ballet premiering this October. And I'm starting to write screenplays -- short form to warm up, now heading into a feature length. I sucked it up and bought Final Draft and let me tell you the part of the program that makes your computer read your plays back in crazy robot voices is well worth the investment.

Q:  Tell me about kInDeRdEuTsCh pRoJeKtS. How do you create work together?

A:  I write the scripts (either from scratch or in response to actor explorations) then cut the hell out of them to make room for movement. Then we all get together for lengthy processes to uncover the unique (dark, deranged, comical) movement, visual and sound worlds of the play. I rewrite the scripts in response, we carve out the worlds' specifics in response, and then we premiere. Then we tour.

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 father used to blast 8-tracks of South Pacific on family roadtrips and sing along at full volume. This is probably the origin of my love for theater. How this became experimental physical theater is a mystery of my brain and its dark sense of humor. It could have to do with my profound wish to dance and sing in the face of atrocity - actually that sums up my aesthetic pretty well.

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

A:  I wouldn't. It is the perfect experience of being most alive in a room of strangers, especially in the 21st c. However, if I could change one thing about theater in the US, I would make tickets affordable and find a way to get younger, more diverse spectators in the seats. Oh and I would bring back the Federal Theatre Project. And while I'm at it, let's revivify Ethel Merman.

Q: Who are your theatrical heroes?

A:  Russian revolutionaries (Meyerhold, Mayakovsky, Bulgakov), German contemporaries (Jelinek, Pollesch, Stemann, Schlingensief), Theater Laboratory visionaries (Grotowski, Barba, their child companies Dah and ZID), hoofers and female impersonators of the vaudeville circuit, Mae West, Charles Ludlam, Eva Le Gallienne, Mary Martin as Peter Pan, Mei Lanfang and Chinese Opera performers in general, Inuit derision song poets, San Francisco Ballet dancers, new play development organizations that spoiled me (Young Playwrights Inc, The Playwrights' Center, Playwrights Foundation), my teachers and mentors (Sherry Kramer, Alice Tuan, Jill Dolan, Daniel Alexander Jones, Honor Molloy, Suzan Zeder, Paula Vogel, Chuck Mee), my colleagues (too many to mention, but to start Trista Baldwin, Jordan Harrison, Kirk Lynn, Steve Moore, Dan Basila, Carlos Trevino, Peter Nachtrieb) and my collaborators (see question one).

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Anything with a clear aesthetic and bodies moving through space. Most of the work being made right now in Berlin.

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

A:  Travel. See as much work as you can internationally to experience what is possible. And find your people, work with them as much as you are physically able, make each other better artists.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  

My website: www.abibasch.com
Kinderdeutsch Projekts: www.kinderdeutsch.org
Our collaborators, colleagues, mentors: http://www.kinderdeutsch.org/links.htm
Voices Underwater plays in D.C. through April: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/02/AR2011030207490.html

Interview and play of mine

Here:

http://www.connotationpress.com/drama/781-adam-szymkowicz-drama

I Interview Playwrights Part 320: Matthew Paul Olmos

Matthew Paul Olmos

Hometown: Los Angeles

Current Town: Brooklyn

Q:  Tell me about your upcoming show at Mabou Mines.

A:  This is my 2nd year in the Mabou Mines/Suite Resident Artist Program, in which the first year focuses on exploration and in the second focuses on bringing a piece to production level.

It is a piece entitled The Nature of Captivity, based on The Dog Catcher Riots, about a family that gets run off from their home, and then the play turns itself around and we look at the people who ran the family off. It’s a little socialist and a little animal rights, but it’s pretty fucked up and funny too. I dunno how to describe it. But I’m ridiculously indebted to the team in the room, and who have worked with me in the past, it’s such a great example of the many together elevating a piece to place it could never have gotten to on its own.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  For the first time, I’m returning to the world of an older piece. Not a sequel, but almost a companion piece to i put the fear of méxico in’em; it takes place some years after the current drug wars in México. The play originated after I read a letter printed in the Los Angeles Times from a Tijuana resident addressed to her government. In the letter she painted the picture of what life had become since these wars had grown wild, and at the end of the letter, she asked the very simple question, “How do you expect us to stay here?”

And I began to wonder what if the cities and towns in México gave way to ghost’towns. What if dust settled the country over? What if the entire of México became nothing more than a fossil of the people who used to live there? What happens when a government can no longer protect its citizens? And what’s sorta ironic, is that after I began the mental notes for this one, it actually began to happen sorta in some places in México, so it’ll be interesting to see how the situation and the play turn out.

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

A:  In 2nd grade, at Arroyo Vista Elementary, a new student named Roland started mid’year. And I remember very distinctly his first day at recess; he stepped out into the yard and tried to join a group of us in the playground area. He was accompanied by another boy, Brian, who I think sat next to him in class and thus they’d already started a friendship. In any case, this group I was with included the cool kids of the school. And on this particular day, one of the cooler boys stopped short, turned to Roland and said, “What do you think you’re doing?” To which Roland and Brian just stood; froze. The cool boy went further, “You can’t come with us.” And very quickly Brian led Roland away from us, retreating to the opposite side of the playground. There was laughter, heckles. And as my group ran off into the imagination of the playground, I remember standing back. My friend asked what I was doing, I gave some excuse, like I had to do something or had other plans. Really, a 2nd grader with other plans.

So instead, I walked over to where Roland and Brian were sitting on the bottom part of a slide. Brian looked up, “Did they kick you out too?” I lied and told them that they had. I didn’t want them to feel bad.

I don’t remember what happened the next day, but I remember I spent at least that one recess with Roland and Brian, pretending to be an outcast like they had. It is my earliest memory of feeling something was not right. That certain people were treating others unfairly. And that I never wanted to be on the wrong side of that. (Believe me, I’ve been on the wrong side of that many, many times since then, but like to think I learned it was wrong, in that 2nd grade recess, even if I’ve failed to be as smart in life as I was that day over twenty-five years ago).

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

A:  I have this daydream that theatre allows itself to be more fucked up. For all the invigorating pieces I see, it is still a very safe art’form, at least in this country. While I wish it that we could take politics and social issues to the streets and make people pay attention. I don’t think it’s possible. People who are not into theatre have their view of it and that will never change. No matter what we put onstage. Even with certain artists trying to change that, I daydream it that we could just…be drastic.

I’m talkin’ rival’fuckin theatre companies, like Partial Comfort kicking the shit out of Soho Rep, not like artistically, but like in the streets. I wanna see HERE Arts throw a burning brick into a press performance by The Civilians, and then see, from out of nowhere, The Public Theater seek retaliation. I want the general public to read about playwrights Sam Hunter and Carla Ching getting into a fistfight in the Crime Section of the Post. I want them to know that there is blood and guts going on in what we do. We want theatre to be dangerous again? We might haffta start from the outside in on that one. (disclaimer: Matthew is a fan of all those mentioned)

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  What inspires me daily is everyone who just does the work. An actor or actress who shows up at first read through and have clearly already gone over the script multiple times and have educated questions about the piece. A director who doesn’t dance around or on top of what is or isn’t working, but rather challenges and isn’t afraid of being challenged. Producers who nevermind what they’ve been told to mind and follow their hearts. Writers who don’t just put their own neuroses or personal ticks onstage because it is enjoyable for them, and nevermind the rest of us who have to sit through something neither relevant, nor even very interesting.

There are so many beautiful talents out there doing everything their gifts allow to create great theatre. Even if it is an individual performance in a shit play; or a silent and confident direction on an over’produced classic. Even if that relevant play doesn’t work at all. People who give a shit about this what they do; both in their work and their choices. These are the people who inspire me to get off my ass and try harder every day. Who make me want to try past my serious self-doubt and harshly critical side. I am inspired by artists and theatre folk out bring it, in every sense of the catch phrase.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  What I find myself floundering in aspiration to is theatre that asks something both of its participants and audiences. While I too am irritated at theatre that doesn’t “let me in,” I am perhaps more offended by theatre that has very little to even let me in to. Alright, so yes, in the moment, perhaps I am screaming inside my head “Please End!” to some experimental or pretentious piece that hasn’t bothered clueing me in on whatever it is its doing. I am guilty of being on both sides of this scenario.

However, I just cannot muster the respect for a piece that asks nothing of me, that is content for me to just sit there and suck air.

Writers like Thomas Bradshaw, Young Jean Lee, Tommy Smith, they are not (or don’t seem to me) to be after audiences that wish to just sit back and enjoy the evening’s entertainment, they seem to be asking something more of their audiences. To think and question what is in front of them. To discuss after the lights have come up. To dismiss their work even. But under no circumstances are you to sit back for ninety minutes, then leave the theatre and shrug your shoulders. There are certain theatre companies, large and small, who seem happy enough putting up what-they-call-theatre which poses nothing to the audience other than they pay for a ticket, sit and be amused, before exiting as quietly as they first came in. With no change in them, nor the performers. In fact, the entire evening has been closer to pressing pause than anything else.

And thus theatre becomes irrelevant.

So for me, what theatre excites me and I wish I could accomplish is that what wishes to hold a dialogue with their audience, one that is equally participatory. Whether artists who can accomplish this succeed or fail, I don’t give a shit; I will continue to show up, to buy my ticket as soon as they go on’sale because I am eager to be in their audience, to be challenged.

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

A:  Something I’m beginning to learn the long way is to not only embrace questioning, but be willing to make changes afterwards.

It is very easy, sometimes, to come up with a pretty good first or second draft of a play; you have many moments that work, there is an overall arc to the piece. All in all you think to yourself, “this is decent.” And in many ways you are happy with it. And in your own arrogant way, you think to yourself, “It’s already better than half the shit out there.”

And hopefully, if you are doing your job, you’ll work through the script with a director, actors, etc., and listen to them when they ask you questions, challenge what you’ve written, and communicate to you what they are getting from the piece. You’ll create an environment that aims not only to give you feedback, but asks every person in the room to ask really deep questions about what it is you’re doing with this play and what it means in the world around us.

And then there’s the playwright back in their bedroom, or barstool, with all these notes. And you begin to read over your script again, and some of the changes you have been thinking over…they just seem so big. And you become afraid to mess with the parts of the script that already work. So you begin to just only tinker. Or clean up certain scenes. You begin to question how well a reading went, and theorize that is why certain parts didn’t work. Perhaps you’ve already rented a space, or scheduled a public reading, and you think to yourself that with this one talented actress or this one skilled actor, the script will fly regardless.

I find that, often, writers are too afraid to turn everything they’ve written onto its head and address the true problems inside it. We don’t want to damage the sections of the piece that already work. So we try this patch’job, or pretend the missing pieces will not be missed. Or we think that the story we are telling doesn’t need to go any further. That this one aspect of whatever topic we’re writing about is enough. We let certain blames fall onto the characters onstage, as opposed to digging deeper and presenting a play that discusses why those characters are flawed to begin with. We let our script run along the surface because we are too scared and too lazy to try to write something much more complex and difficult.

It is our job both as writers and as people to always question, but not to stop there. Rather to dig into ourselves for answers, and when we find them, to have the courage to completely disassemble something we’ve worked so hard on. To not settle for something good, but try for something that scares the shit out of you instead.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  The Nature of Captivity runs March 3rd through 7th at the ToRoNaDa space in Performance Space 122 at 7:30pm. It is directed by Victor Maog and features Keith Eric Chappelle, Sarah Nina Hayon, Chantel Cherisse Lucier, and Juan Francisco Villa; plus set design/costumes by Deb O.; sound design by Daniel Kluger; lighting design by James Clotfelter; movement/choreography by Jenny Golonka; stage managed by Neal Kowalsky; and produced by Brandi Bravo. To RSVP: rap@maboumines.org
For more information: www.maboumines.org or www.matthewpaulolmos.com.

Keep an eye out for a world-premiere of i put the fear of méxico in’em in the spring of 2012, though I can’t officially announce yet.

I Interview Playwrights Part 319: Stephanie Fleischmann

Stephanie Fleischmann

Hometown: London, England (til I was 7….)

Current Town: Columbiaville, NY, a tiny spot on the map, north of Hudson, NY, in the Hudson River Valley; & NYC.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m putting the finishing touches on The Secret Lives of Coats, a coatcheck musical with music by my Red Fly/Blue Bottle collaborator Christina Campanella—we’ve been developing it with director Hayley Finn, with much good support from The Playwrights Center, Whitman College, and more recently, New Georges, and the Anna Sosenko Assist Trust and a faculty development grant from Skidmore, where I teach. It’s about three coatcheck girls, their longing to escape the box beyond their coatcheck booths; it’s about the things we lose in the holes in the pockets of our coats. It’s funny and fun, whimsical, charming, surprising, mysterious, even. We’re doing a second NYC reading on Monday, February 28th at Chelsea Studios.

I’m just about to start a new short play, which I will interpolate into my larger piece, WHAT THE MOON SAW, a compendium of plays inspired by Hans Christian Andersen and set in post 9/11 NYC. Son of Semele Ensemble will premiere it in LA in September, in commemoration of the 10-year anniversary of 9-11. Matt McCray, the director, has asked me to set the new play in LA, and so I am collecting experiences re what it felt like to be in LA that day.

I’m beginning to push around pieces of the next longer work, tentatively entitled The Adventures of the Mousey Woman. It’s about invisibility and overcoming our deepest fears: of taking action, of being seen and not seen. And, in the same vein as Secret Lives, it’s also a whole lot playful and plenty silly, which is what I seem to be needing right now, lyrical and over-the-top, and, unlike much of what I write, eminently produce-able—all that’s needed is an empty space, 4 performers and one musician!

I am deep into a novel entitled The Trash Picker. I have always written fiction as well as plays, a habit that informs my playwriting, which is layered, and can be epic, kaleidoscopic, microscopic, and at times has been labeled, well, novelistic.

With director/collaborator Mallory Catlett, I’m in the very beginning phases of development for our next Latitude 14 project (a company I co-founded with Mallory, Christina Campanella, and Peter Norrman, when RED FLY got its legs, or I should say wings), which is an architectural intervention/historical/multimedia exploration of the Hudson Opera House, New York state’s oldest surviving theater.

And I am mulling over how to write about my father, who passed away last June, and lived a jam-packed and visionary life that may well have changed the course of classical music in the 20th century.

If this all sounds like a lot, it’s not. The writing comes in fits and starts, in jagged bursts, interspersed with the business (read: busy-ness) of living and being a writer in the world.

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

A:  First, there is the music. I grew up with music. My Dad ran the LA Philharmonic, and there was always music. That sort of says it all. But here are a few other childhood tales.

I was four. I have this dim but deeply etched memory of a party at my preschool in London, where we lived until I was seven. The performance: The shadow of a newspaper folded up and snipped at with a scissors, and then pulled on and pulled as before my eyes behind its screen it grew into a tree. Magic.

I was still four. I was taken to see Peter Pan. Neverland and flying children. We lived in Bayswater. Kensington Gardens was around the corner. I would go to the park and trace the footsteps of Peter Pan and Wendy and the boys. Literally. The imaginary world and the real world overlaying each other, dovetailing, careening together.

At seven, I visited my grandparents, who lived on the other side of the world in South Africa, where I watched a chameleon shift its colors. From green to brown and back again. This was the magic of the natural world.

I was 12. We were living in L.A., an edge-of-the-world land of sunsets and surfers and smoke and mirrors. I was a fish out of water and often felt an intense need to disappear. I found my escape hatch in books and in the enveloping dark of the theater. I grew up going to plays at the Mark Taper: Luis Valdez’s Zoot Suit and the touring version of the original production of For Colored Girls are plays that planted seeds. From them I understood the power and the lyricism of what a writer could conjure. And then. I was lucky enough to witness a rehearsal of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale, I believe it was directed by Peter Sellars. I was so mesmerized I forgot to eat lunch (a first for me!). Music and narrative and strangeness and heart and angularity. And rehearsal…. I was hooked.

All this is to say that in part because we moved from London to LA, in part because my father moved from Germany to South Africa (where he met my mother) and then to London, I am from nowhere and everywhere; I hail from an intensely specific melting pot, and yet my family has nowhere it can well and truly call home. Hence much of my writing is about dislocation, prismatic notions of home. My earliest “magical” years in England and the clash that came about when we moved to L.A., a world that on many levels felt to me incredibly mundane. I am, to this day, obsessed with the magic in ordinary, everyday things, the stories these things have to tell.

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

A:  I would make it adventurous all the time and accessible to everybody. I would make touring work internationally a bigger (budgetary & administrative) priority in an attempt to erase boundaries, cultural, aesthetic, intellectual (this happens so much more in Europe, for instance). I would raise the bar. By this I mean theater needs to push its own envelope if it is to be capable of not just holding its own but engaging in a conversation with the other art forms. I would empower writers to head theaters and encourage them to become producers. Half of the year. But most of all, I would want to rejigger the system so that theatermakers who have committed their lives to the stage can earn a living wage.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Suzan-Lori Parks. August Wilson. Ruth Maleczech. Brian Mertes. Reg Rogers. Jesse J. Perez. Anton Chekhov. Olga Neuwirth. Osvaldo Goliajov. Mac Wellman. Black-Eyed Susan. Nilo Cruz. Sound designers everywhere. Jim Findlay. Olivera Gajic. Melissa Kievman & Brian Mertes. Pina Bausch (Many years ago I was in Venice and so were they. Staying in the same hotel, no less. I watched them drink coffee and smoke cigarettes and eat together as a company. I watched them perform at the Teatro Fenice. I fell in love with these beautiful, itinerant performers whose work was their life.) Buchner. Bill Irwin. Lynn Cohen. Needcompany’s Lear. Enda Walsh. Sibyl Kempson. William Shakespeare. Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska. Arto Lindsay. Mark Ribot. Erik Ehn. Jane Houdyshell. Just about every actor I’ve ever worked with. Todd London & Emily Morse, of New Dramatists. Okay, you get the picture… I’m leaving out many, not intentionally, but because there are so many.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that makes me see and feel the world in a new way. Theater that is sensory and visual and lyrical and raw and subtle and in-your-face and compositionally rigorous and surprising and revelatory.

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

A:  Carve out time to write. 5 days a week. Even if it’s just half an hour a day. It’s the rhythm of writing that helps you get over the hump. First day back’s always the hardest. Read everything. See everything. Know who’s out there—actors, directors, designers, stage managers, producers. Live fully. Be in the world. Then sequester yourself. Look inside. Ask questions of yourself and your world. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Have faith in yourself, your voice. Don’t be afraid to speak up in rehearsal. Show gratitude to all those who make your vision a reality. Make rehearsal happen by mounting your own work. Know what it is to make theater on every level. Dream.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A: 
www.latitude14.org

The Secret Lives of Coats, Feb 28, 2011, http://www.thesecretlivesofcoats.wordpress.com

What the Moon Saw. Son of Semele, LA, Sept 2011

I Interview Playwrights Part 318: Chana Porter

Photo courtesy of David Gibbs/DARR Publicity

Chana Porter

Hometown: Columbia, Maryland

Current Town: Woodhaven, Queens, New York

Q:  Tell me about AliveWire and your upcoming show.

A:  Scott Rodrigue (my director and cofounder of AliveWire) and I met a couple of years ago at a Pataphysics benefit at The Flea. It became clear pretty fast that we were going to make beautiful work together, which is a specific kind of love and marriage. Our respective partners get it.

We’re dedicated to creating new work that’s connective, charged, and current.

Scott been a huge part of Besharet’s development. He’s the first director to understand that my writing is wholly an intuitive process-- our act of discovery is ongoing. So you have to be brave and generous and willing to change.

Besharet is an ambitious play, wrestling huge issues (love, faith, gender, sexuality, atrocity) in a intimate way. I’m interested in where the private meets the public, those intersections on shifting grounds. I started it 4 years ago, I feel like I’ve come of age writing it. At times the play has surprised me so much I’ve been truly creeped out, as in “that came out of me?”

Our cast is so powerful, our crew are such inspired artists-- I can’t believe I get to work with these people.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  Two really exciting projects that aren’t plays:

I’m collaborating with wonderful artist Delia Gable on The Ruthie Chronicles, a graphic novel in two parts. Part one will be out this summer. I’m a huge comic book fan from way back, but never realized the extant of storytelling potential. The access of comics to inner life, dreams, fantasy-- it’s intoxicating and liberating. (You don’t need more money! You can do ANYTHING.)

I’m currently in development with film director Kevan Tucker (The Unidentified), who is big-hearted and rad, for a feature length love-song to the city of Worcester, MA. We’re shooting on location this summer. I’ll be acting as well as writing, which is scary. I’m so excited to learn how to make a movie.

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 a stutterer and have been my whole life. My communication has always been fraught. I started writing poems and songs as a very young child, dance and puppetry as I grew older-- sometimes as a way to survive presentations throughout school. If I could make a really creative, funny puppet show about the U.S. constitution, my classmates would forgive that I couldn’t speak under pressure. (Thus the monocled sock puppet “Mr. History” was born.) So I guess I began as a writer out of necessity. The funny thing-- it’s such an asset to me as a grown-up. EVERYONE has trouble communicating. My physicalized struggle made me curious about what’s hidden, unexamined. And curiosity paired with empathy is a great start to being a writer.

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

A:  Money and the ways we use it. We need new modes of creation-- so many new plays are getting developed endlessly without ever seeing production. You cannot realize your play without having it embodied. I know our biggest challenge for AliveWire is space--both performance and rehearsal. I spent about a month rehearsing a performance piece in textile warehouse in midtown, at night after the staff went home. The city is bursting with these underused spaces. So I would change our mindsets: the way we think about theatre, money and the normal channels of production.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Three very shaping experiences: My parents took me to a dinner theater production of Brigadoon in a Maryland suburb when I was around 7-- I think I had my mouth open for the entire show. At 14 I was in Our Town and I remember listening to Act III night after night, peeking into something beautiful and devastating. At Hampshire College I was in a production of Suzan-Lori Parks’ Venus. Her work is very powerful in repetition, a blossoming, an unfurling occurs. (Suzan hugged me years later when I told her I was a fan-- established artists who are warm and generous to strangers are always heroes of mine.)

Craig Lucas is a hero of mine, big time.

Yoko Ono. Erik Ehn. All of 13P. Annie Baker. Maria Irene Fornes. The movies of Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Everything by Marguerite Duras. Omigod Chekhov.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Messy compassionate curious theatre. Theatre that does many things at once, like looking at the whole world-- beauty and horror existing together, rather than undercutting each other. I dig sincerity. It’s more funny/fulfilling than detachment and irony. I dig ambition and simplicity. Honest looking. Work that expands.

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

A:  Follow joy. Meet lots of people. Make friends with the ones who delight and inspire you. Inside a great friendship, opportunities to work together present themselves organically- you can’t enforce a timeline. It’s important to work on your health and happiness as well as your craft. Eat well, exercise, be silent, listen, go dancing.

Q:  Tell me about when I saved your life.

A:  This summer I went on a silent retreat in the Catskills led by the singular Erik Ehn. On the last night, three playwrights closed their laptops on the porch in unison. Scotch appeared, silent toasts all around. Had we finished our plays at the same moment? We couldn’t ask, because we couldn’t talk. Casey ran away with her glass, returning with oars and a gleam in her eyes. An understanding emerged. Casey, the rogue Eric, his cigarettes in a plastic bag for waterproofing, you and I made our silent way to the dock in the deep dark. It was a starless night, I recall, with a true breeze coming down off the mountains. You stood chivalrous beneath the dark forest canopy, assisting Eric, Casey and I into a canoe and pushing us off into the black water. We paddled with vigor briefly, then thought in unison-- it is very dark out. How will we find out way back to our unlit dock on this starless eve? We sat silently in our still vessel. Eric smoked his waterproofed tobacco. It had been a beautiful six days. About a half an hour later we began paddling, at first in a circle. The wind had pushed us back, but how far? We argued silently, gesticulating with our paddles. We paddled on and laughed to the great Poseidon at our present calamity. I briefly considered leaping into the water and pulling our wayward vessel to the nearest patch of shoreline. We would not speak! The trip was too profound to break our reprieve from socialization prematurely. Suddenly, I opened my mouth. “Ka-kaw!” I cried, a primitive bird call meaning “Where is the dock? We’re lost!” “Ka-kaw! Ka-kaw!” you answered, meaning “It’s right here and it’s time for tea!” We paddled toward the sound of your cries, and you helped us weary seafarers on to dry land.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  AliveWire Theatrics presents Chana Porter’s Besharet March 5th-27th in Space 9 at PS122, $18 general, $15 students/seniors. Saturday March 12th is our donor night, $50 for the show and a post show soiree with open bar, delicious eats, music and revelry with cast and crew.

A reading of my new play, Leap and the Net Will Appear will be directed by Craig Lucas on March 14th, in Space 9 at PS122 at 7 p.m.