tomorrow

CLOWN BAR
by Adam Szymkowicz
directed by Kip Fagan

Lyrics by Adam Szymkowicz and Adam Overett
Music by Adam Overett

with Alex Anfanger, Brett Aresco, Stephen Bel Davies, Sam Breslin Wright, Jamie Effros, Jessy Hodges, Beth Hoyt, Jessica Pohly, Dominic Spillane, and Steve Stout

Long ago Happy left the Clown Bar and the organized clown crime world to work for the good guys.  Now his junkie brother Timmy has been murdered, and Happy returns to his old life to ask a few questions.  Can he go home again without getting sucked into the seedy clown underbelly of vice and violence?  And will he survive the gun toting clowns who used to be his friends? Or Blinky, the lady clown he left behind?

ONE NIGHT ONLY: Sunday, June 19 at 7 p.m.
Seventh Street Small Stage
at Jimmy’s No. 43
43 East 7th Street (between 2nd/3rd Aves)
6 to Astor Place, R/W to 8th Street, F to 2nd Avenue
Seating extremely limited – for reservations and information please call 212.946.5198

I Interview Playwrights Part 361: Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro

Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro

Hometown: Ann Arbor, Michigan

Current Town: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Q: Tell me about your play next season with the Huntington Theatre.

A: I have lived in Harvard Square for 46 years and been a playwright for 30 years so it was time to write a Cambridge comedy about friends on the cusp of old age. In Before I Leave You, Emily’s cozy world threatens to fall apart: her husband Koji suddenly embraces his Asian roots as his theater career takes off; her best friend Jeremy has a mysterious illness and stops work on his novel; her son leaves home to live with a grocery checkout girl; and her girlfriend Trish has her eyes on Koji. Longtime friendships morph and crumble in the blink of an eye.

Q: What else are you working on?

A: For the last year I have been researching and writing the first draft of Mammal Heat, my golem/robot play. The four characters are Golp, a humanoid with feelings (and with all of Google poured into his head); Maggie, the scientist who created him; Maggie’s 8-year-old daughter, Abigail, who plays with him; and Maggie’s embittered 59-year-old mother, who teaches him about the facts of life. Mammal Heat is a domestic robot play with a window, via TV, to the war raging on the other side of the world.

Q: Tell me about the Huntington Playwright Fellows Program.

A: I am very happy being a Huntington Fellow. Playwrights often feel like itinerant peddlers as they wander from theater to theater, displaying their wares. It’s extremely nice to have a professional roof over your head, especially one that invites its HPFs to all its performances (as well as opening night parties), and makes you eligible for a reading at the end of your tenure. There’s a forty-year age span in our small group and an exciting range of styles and subject matter. Our bi-weekly discussions, under the sharp and genial direction of Lisa Timmel and Charles Haugland, are lively, helpful, and fun. It’s surprising that I enjoy the TPFs so much, being the sort that usually works slowly over time (and also the sort that tends to overanalyze my critics), but I find “the rose, the thorn, the bud” approach to the TPF discussions very nurturing. Most of my writing life I’ve felt like a part-timer; now at 72 I’m finally working full-time.

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

A: As an Asian American woman playwright, I would like the audience to park its assumptions at the theater door. I realize that’s impossible - I admit I tend to be excited by and supersensitive to Asian American plays because it’s like seeing something done by my family. But as a playwright I tend to write what I feel like writing; I don’t let someone else dictate the terms. I believe if you write on what moves you, everything you are will go into your play. One more thing - I think my Asian American characters should be judged like any of my other characters, not just as representatives of a group, but on their own terms.

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

A: Keep a journal, write two hours a day, read hundreds of plays, go to a play a week, get to know your local playwrights and rush to see their plays, when you have writer’s block distract yourself with a 10-minute play and submit it to the innumerable festivals in your favorite cities all over the country, have close friends (other than yourself) that you study and know inside out. Never give up, never despair – after three decades of doing what you love most, the Huntington might give you a call.

I Interview Playwrights Part 360: Hannah Moscovitch

Hannah Moscovitch

Hometown:
Ottawa, Canada

Current Town:
Toronto, Canada

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m in Banff, working on a play commissioned by the Banff Centre called We are at War about the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan. It’s based on interviews with three veterans who did tours in Panjwaii, one military psychiatrist who runs a PTSD clinic in Ottawa, and two journalists who were embedded with our troops.

Q:  How would you characterize Canadian theater?

A:  I spend most of my time in Toronto and theatre culture varies a lot across the country (we only have one tenth the population of the States but we’re so spread out that different aesthetics develop regionally). Okay but I’d say Canadian plays tend to explore ambiguity, complexity of human experience, and subtle shades of meaning. And our sense of humor is relatively self-deprecating and ironic. It comes from knowing we’re an icy outpost and not at the centre of things. And to be honest a lot of the plays that get done in Canada are made in England or the States. Canadian theatre culture is young. Almost all of the great Canadian playwrights are alive.

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 common knowledge in my family that I’m terrified of spiders. It’s true that when I was a little girl I was terrified of spiders. Now I’m not scared of them but somehow it’s become so much a part of my identity within my family and it’s so expected of me that I’ll lose my shit when I see a spider that I pretend to be frightened of spiders. I scream and run out of the room over spiders even though I’m not at all afraid.

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

A:  The ticket prices.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  My first heroes were the Canadians playwrights: Judith Thompson, John Mighton, Daniel MacIvor, George F. Walker, David French, Claudia Dey, Morwyn Brebner, Michael Healey, Adam Pettle, Wajdi Mouawad, Michel Tremblay, Michel Marc Bouchard, Robert LePage...

At the moment I’m reading a lot of Edward Bond. It’s blowing my mind.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I don’t have a kind, I don’t think. I’m pretty fervent about believing that you don’t have to suppress one theatrical style to promote another. I get excited about verbatim, experimental performance, language-based plays, story-based plays, image and spectacle based plays, musicals. I like whatever’s beautiful and intelligent. I like what’s good.

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

A:  Produce your own work, find colleagues you want to collaborate with over and over again, and develop relationships with theatre companies who will produce your plays. The best case scenario is to develop a primary relationship with one artistic director who will produce all your plays (and take risks with you). Either that or built your own theatre company and tour your own work.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  East of Berlin and The Russian Play are being produced by Signal Ensemble in Chicago in October.

Little One is being premiered by Theatre Crisis at Summerworks Theatre Festival in Toronto in August.

The Children’s Republic is being premiered by Tarragon Theatre (where I’m in residence) in Toronto in November.

upcoming and right now

1.  I have a play in 300 Vaginas at Blue Coyote.  It's a really good night.  Go if you can.  now playing.

2.  Then, after that, a Production of Clown Bar with Rising Phoenix Rep
Directed by Kip Fagan
Seventh Street Small Stage at Jimmy’s No. 43  NYC
June 19.  7pm  (Free performance, one night only see website for details)

3.  Then a reading of my really new play The Artist at the Chance in CA in the OC July 20.  (I'm the resident playwright at the Chance Theater this year.  Did I tell you that?)

4.  A production of Nerve in LA in July.  (production # 11 of that play) Everything I've heard so far about the planned production sounds exciting.  I'll let you know details when they can be revealed.

5.  In August, Elsewhere will be done at Theatre Conspiracy in Fort Meyers, FL.

6.  In October, I will have 3 productions of three different plays in two different cities.  Rehearsing those will be tricky.  I'll let you know more soon.

7.  And there are at least 7 other planned productions I know of in '11 and '12 so far.

I Interview Playwrights Part 359: Alessandro King

Alessandro King

Hometown: New York City

Current Town: New York City

Q:  Tell me about the play you have coming up with Trustus.

A:  Swing ’39 is an imagined story about a group of girls from 1939 Harlem who win a competition to meet the King of Swing, Benny Goodman. The play is about the relationships that spring up between the Italian Harlem residents and the members of the Goodman organization, including one girl who becomes romantically involved with Benny himself.

I’d characterize the play as a character-driven ensemble piece, initially inspired by the works of Chekhov and Terence Rattigan, two greats I was reading a lot of when I wrote the first draft three years ago.

Swing ‘39 was originally done at Sarah Lawrence College, a production in which I actually played Benny. This August you can catch it at the Trustus Theatre in Columbia, South Carolina. It’s part of the Trustus Playwrights Festival, one of the oldest play festivals in the country. I am extremely honored and excited about this wonderful opportunity.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I’ve been developing my new play, Tabor, at INTAR, where I’m a member of The Pound, the new emerging artists lab there. I will most likely have a reading up some time this summer.

I’m rewriting a one-act of mine, North Island, that I hope to pair with another short piece with similar themes. And I am in the middle of research for my long-term major project, a play about Al Smith, my favorite New York figure.

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 used to collect Carl Barks comic books, and I started before I could even read. I used to cut them up and make collages out of them. I still have my big journal with each page devoted to a different character – Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, Gladstone Gander. Each page is filled not just with pictures of the featured character, but images that represent what the character is “about.” So the Donald page, for example, also has pictures of bad stuff happening to Gladstone, his arch-nemesis.

I think this shows that even before I could comprehend narrative and plot, I had a very strong interest in character. I understood that personalities were being expressed and contrasted, and that each character had an ineffable yet specific essence.

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

A:  I think there are playwrights on this blog who are more eloquent when it comes to this question. But I will say that the affordability of ticket prices gets my vote for the top dilemma. If we could magically remedy that, I think many of the other problems would be helped.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I am who I am thanks to a crack team of teachers and professors: Bill Williams and Michael Gilbert of Trinity School, and Stuart Spencer, Amlin Gray and Christine Farrell of Sarah Lawrence College.

My favorite playwrights are Shakespeare, Chekhov, Terence Rattigan, Lanford Wilson and Kenneth Lonergan. They love their characters. Lonergan and Annie Baker are the two contemporary writers on my must-see list.

I read Simon Gray’s Quartermaine’s Terms a year ago and it is my new favorite play. It makes me smile just to think of it.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like to leave the theater thinking about the characters. If I leave thinking about the writer or the director – how capable they are, how smart they are – that’s good, but it’s better if I don’t realize they’re there at all. As a writer I try to be invisible.

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

A:  Well I am definitely just starting out myself, so I feel a little bashful about this one. But I will say this: I got the Trustus production by submitting to everything I was eligible for in the Dramatists Sourcebook. And I have a file cabinet with dozens of rejection letters. So, if at first…

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Swing ’39 goes into previews at Trustus on August 10th, with an opening night of August 12th:

http://www.trustus.org/show.php?show_id=6

Come down before the fifteenth and we’ll grab a drink!

My zany improv show, Listen, Kid!, currently plays at the Magnet Theater in New York:

http://magnettheater.com/viewshow.php?showid=36829

If you have children, you simply must take them to a Monster Literature show:

http://www.monsterliterature.com/

And if you’re planning on visiting the Williamstown Theatre Festival this summer, you’d be crazy to miss the reading of Sarah Hammond’s beautiful House on Stilts on July 8th.

Thanks for checking out my interview! If you’d like to read one of my plays, shoot me an e-mail at AlessandroMKing at gmail dot com.

Summer classes at ESPA

studying with great people like Tanya Barfield, Sheri Wilner, Bekah Brunstetter, and Daniel Talbott.

Check it out!  www.primarystages.org/espa

I Interview Playwrights Part 358: Alex Lewin

Alex Lewin

Hometown: A couple of suburbs in Bergen County, NJ (my dad commuted across the George Washington Bridge), and then, after the age of 13, various locales in the 310 area code of Los Angeles. I was born in Suffern, NY. All of which means I don’t really think of myself as having a hometown.

Current Town: New York City.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  A two-character, one-scene play called The Interview, about a 30-something, gay, aspiring filmmaker — sort of a member of today’s creative class — who is volunteering to be a “big brother” and is going through the screening process. As you might guess, I’ve been through this, and the extensive interview, which I knew was going to be personal and probing, surprised even me. They want to make sure any volunteer is a) psychologically stable, and b) not a child molester, and I was fascinated by the strategies they employ to gauge those things, and also by the interviewer’s agility in departing from the questionnaire when necessary. The play imagines an interview like the one I went through, but with an interviewer who happens to be having the worst day of her life, and an interviewee who happens to have some sexual proclivities that he can’t really hide (and doesn’t feel he should have to hide) from his interlocutor.

I’m also writing a screenplay called The Impostor, which is inspired by the Ghanian journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas, who is something of a chameleon/master of disguise. He goes “undercover” inside weapons smuggling rackets, or corrupt government agencies, and then exposes them in his newspaper — and nobody knows what he really looks like. In my story a journalist like Anas goes inside a high-class Washington, D.C., brothel, masquerading as a (female) prostitute. I jokingly pitch it as All the President’s Men meets Tootsie.

And I’m working with New York Theatre Workshop and Laura Flanders of GRITtv on a piece that will use the language of primary documents of the American Revolutionary period — writings of Madison and Jefferson, the Constitution and formal objections to it, populist agrarian pamphlets — and somehow (we’re in the very early stages) depict a debate or a rally or a polemic that is meant to take back a lot of this language from the lunatic right. (A phrase, by the way, that is becoming more and more a redundancy.) When they reference Jefferson and Republicanism, and when they purport to be “preserving” the Constitution, they’re almost always willfully misinterpreting American history and the thinking of the (so-called) founding fathers. Ask me in a month or two and I’ll be able to tell you more specifically what this piece is going to look like.

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

A:  This is your hardest question, Adam. The difficulty for me is that I was generally a cranky, frustrated child. I was an unhappy child who had a happy childhood. And I think that’s probably the answer to this question: I hated being treated like a child, I hated being a child, I couldn’t wait to grow up. (It’s why the Peter Pan mythology has always bored me to tears. Why would anyone want to be a child forever?) I never read children’s books, I read mysteries and spy novels, even though I didn’t always understand what I was reading. I hated the Narnia stuff. When the Nursery Rhymes category comes up on “Jeopardy!” I just throw my hands up in surrender.

I’ll tell you a story the significance of which I can’t possibly name, but for some reason it feels like a right answer to your question. When I was eight years old I went to a sleepaway camp, Camp Watonka, and I remember walking across a big lawn at twilight and stopping to stare at a boy, a year or two older than me, who was wearing a teal t-shirt and blue jeans. The sleeve of his shirt stopped just above his elbow, revealing a hint of upper arm, and the hem of the shirt stopped just barely below his crotch. All I knew was that something I really wanted was being simultaneously called attention to and withheld from me. He snapped me out of my reverie by demanding, “Got a prob?” I hurried on to wherever I was going. To this day a t-shirt and jeans is, to me, the sexiest outfit a man can wear.

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

A:  I would love to see theatres guarantee production to their commissionees. I would love it if theatres said, “Here’s a commission. Whatever you write, we’re gonna do it.” With certain understandings and qualifications of course: if, for instance, the playwright writes a 17-character play, s/he’s got to understand that the theatre won’t be splurging, then, for some elaborate set. Or the converse: If the playwright needs to have a functioning volcano and a waterfall, they’ve got to keep the cast small. Et cetera.

If plays were generated in such a fashion — as Angels in America was — I believe they would be more audacious. Bigger in every sense. One of the great qualities about the graduate theatre program at UC San Diego, where I got my MFA, is that each writer basically has an open-ended commission. For three seasons. You write a play (a one-act in your first year, full-lengths in years two and three) and somehow, some way, the department finds a way to produce what you write, even on shoestring budgets, during the Baldwin New Play Festival every April. They make it happen. Everyone gets together and finds a way. It’s what gave me the courage to write a three-act, ten-actor play about God and geopolitics and archaeology and the Koran and sex and ghosts, a play unlike anything I’d built before. And then that was the play, The Near East, that got me a lot of attention when I came out of grad school.

If theatres worked that way, how might American playwriting be different? I believe we’d see more political plays, more boundary-busting plays. And, yes, of course, a lot of them would be bad, but they’d be audaciously bad. I think we’d see American plays move away from modest, intermission-less, four-character dramadies with literate, minimalist dialogue. I’d rather see an ambitious travesty than a timid mediocrity. I’m not kidding when I ask: When’s the last time you saw a play with a volcano or a waterfall?

The obvious objection is, “Whoa, wait a second, how could a theatre possibly commit to producing a play that doesn’t even exist? Isn’t that taking too big a chance?” To which I respond: Theatres that do new work, I expect, would like this idea because most of them don’t really program plays, anyway — they program writers. (Which may actually be the real problem.)

Also, I wish the New York Times would publish more than one critic’s review of a given play, as the British papers do, and as the Times sometimes does with books.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Eugene O’Neill, the greatest of American playwrights. Caryl Churchill, the greatest playwright alive. Amy Freed. Larry Kramer. Jon Robin Baitz for writing The Paris Letter. My first theatre teacher, Ted Walch, who, when I was fifteen, put a copy of Glengarry Glen Ross in my hands and changed my life. Suzan-Lori Parks, all of whose plays, good or bad, are audacious. And he may be an unusual suspect, but the late, great film critic Robin Wood wrote about art as a form of protest — an antidote to all the bullshit — in a way that makes me proud to be an artist.

Q:  What kind of theatre excites you?

A:  Theatre that responds to film. (Consciously, I mean.)

It seems obvious to say I’m excited by theatre that provokes debate, but I also love theatre that depicts debate, and I feel like I don’t see that very often. (David Hare’s A Map of the World is one of my favorite plays.)

I’m excited by “well made,” three-act, naturalistic drama. Very old-fashioned of me, I know, but I believe most theatre audiences and producers are secretly excited by that type of theatre, too. (And not because such plays are safe or conservative or non-threatening. Just the opposite. In our era of theatre, such plays are audacious.)

Also, I love a good dick joke. Not kidding. Theatre should aspire to be lowbrow and highbrow all at the same time. Shakespeare wasn’t above a fart reference or a pussy pun. A lot of plays I see strike me as really, really polite. I can’t resist quoting Anthony Lane’s review of The Bridges of Madison County: “If you added the word ‘Cheerios’ or ‘horny,’ for instance, the whole thing would faint with shock.”

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

A:  Don’t mistake intellectualism for intelligence. (Your own and others’.) Don’t worry about being smart, don’t try to be Tony Kushner. Keep figuring out who you are and keep expressing it as best you can. Talent is directly proportional to self-awareness. Also: the people you know to be phony will ultimately end up unhappy, so try not to obsess on them.

I’ll also pass along one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received: “Don’t do business with anybody you would not invite into your home.”

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  If you find yourself in the Evansville, Indiana, area on June 4, come see a reading of my play Alexandria at the New Harmony Project, where I’ll be workshopping the play for two weeks.

Also, I co-author, with Aaron Rich, the blog They’ll Love It In Pomona, where Aaron and I review movies and make fun of one another along the way.

I Interview Playwrights Part 357: Laurel Haines

Laurel Haines

Hometown: White Plains, NY

Current Town: Astoria, NY

Q:  Tell me about your play currently at the Flea.

A:  Future Anxiety takes place in the not-too-distant future, when all of our current problems have expanded into utter nightmares (though if the tsunami/earthquake/nuclear meltdown in Japan isn’t an utter nightmare, I don’t know what is). In Future Anxiety, Americans are sent to China to work off the national debt, strawberries are extinct, and toilet paper is rationed to one square a day. The situations are ludicrous, horrific, and yet strangely plausible.

And it’s a comedy, actually. Karl is building a homemade spaceship, and everyone wants to get on board. They think they’re going to escape to another planet, which might be real, or it might be one of Karl’s acid flashbacks. He’s desperately trying to convince his ex-girlfriend Christine, who works as a re-entry therapist for cryonics patients, to come with him.

The play has a long list of characters and Jim Simpson, the director, has cast 23 of the Bats, the Flea’s resident acting company. It’s really a dream come true for me, because I never thought any theater would do this show without doubling and tripling the parts. Actually, recently I began to think that no one would do this show, period, and I would have to produce it myself. So it’s wonderful to see the play realized so completely.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I’m writing a musical with Nan Hoffman about a detective who’s searching for the money lost in a ponzi scheme. It’s a 40s noir spoof with echoes of Madoff. I’m also working on a new play that I started in the Play Development Collective’s Winter Intensive.

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 awkward adolescence probably explains everything.

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

A:  I would create an eccentric billionaire who would give grants for productions of new plays by unknown and emerging playwrights. Kind of like that amazing lady who gave $100 million to Poetry Magazine - Ruth Lilly. There’s got to be a billionaire out there who thinks new plays are cool. S/he would be a hero – bringing new voices to the American theater and saving their plays from obscurity.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  That imaginary billionaire. And any group that’s producing new plays or bringing theater into the schools.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Everything except the boring kind.

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

A:  Take risks and go crazy. Write things that don’t make sense but might be brilliant. Or bad. Stop caring if it’s bad. If you’re passionate, you’ll eventually write something great.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Future Anxiety is running at the Flea Theater in Tribeca through May 26. Shows are Tues-Sat @ 7pm; Sat Mat. @ 3pm
$25 General
Pay-What-You-Can on TUESDAYS**
Go to http://www.theflea.org/ or call 212.352.3101

**Pay-What-You-Can tickets available at the door only, starting @ 6pm each Tuesday & are valid only for that performance.

I Interview Playwrights Part 356: Renee Calarco

Renee Calarco

Hometown: Rochester, NY

Current Town: Washington, DC

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I’m revising THE RELIGION THING, which is an uncomfortable comedy that’s scheduled for production at Theater J in January 2012. It’s a play I’ve been working on in fits and starts for about six years; there were some terrific development readings at Charter Theater/First Draft Geva Theatre, and Theater J.

Also, I just finished a revision of KEEPERS OF THE WESTERN DOOR , which is another uncomfortable comedy… about Alzheimer’s. (Because nothing says “comedy” like degenerative brain disease, right?)

Q: How would you characterize the DC theater scene?

A: Vibrant, very collegial, and more experimental that people give it credit for being. Also, audiences here are insanely smart and willing to invest their time in seeing new work. I’m an associate artist with Charter Theater/First Draft, and our mission is to develop new plays and the audiences who love them. We hold monthly free staged readings of new plays, and it’s just crazy how many people turn out for them—anywhere from 25 – 50 people on a Tuesday night. Nearly everyone stays for the post-reading discussions. Audiences just want to be heard. They want to connect, they want to engage with artists, they want to watch theater being made. And they will follow artists anywhere if we’re willing to pay attention to them.

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 come from a family that absolutely worships the performing arts; growing up, I had all these relatives who were really talented amateur artists. My maternal grandmother was an actor and singer in local Yiddish theater; my maternal grandfather was a playwright, songwriter, and director; my mom was a jazz singer; my uncle was a director and opera singer. My great-uncle was a vaudeville-style comedian. Everyone worked for a living first, and did their art on the side. It was heartbreaking because we all knew that everyone was kind of dying a little inside---desperately wanting to spend all their time performing and writing—and knowing that economically, it was impossible. My brother Joe was the first person in our family who really made the commitment to make a living doing theater. My cousin Gina is just starting her professional acting career. And I’m still a bit in both worlds: I’m a playwright who has a day job (that’s theater-related).

Anyway, here’s my story. When I was in high school, I was hanging out with my friends in the auditorium; I think we were getting ready for play rehearsal or drama class. As we sat there on the stage, I thought, “This stage is absolutely bare…and anything can happen right now. We can just make something up right now and it would still be like a performance.” It’s kind of a cheesy story, but that feeling eventually led me to doing improv, which then led me to playwriting. And now you know why improv is the gateway drug to playwriting.

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

A: The notion that theaters have to somehow educate audiences about how important theater is. Audiences aren’t dumb. If we don’t want to entertain audiences first, I think that’s a problem. As a playwright friend of mine once said, “Nobody was ever forced to take hockey appreciation class in school.”

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Anything that’s surprising and that tells a great story. Anything that could only happen on stage, rather than on TV or in the movies. I love bare-bones productions and I love over-the-top spectacle. Really, I just like to be surprised.

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

A: Take an acting class. Take an improv class. Learn about design and stage management. And spend time with people who aren’t in the theater. This is advice I’m constantly giving to myself, as well. See plays, but also see other forms of art. The best thing about living in DC is all of the free museums!

Q: Plugs, please:

A: THE RELIGION THING opens at Theater J on January 4, 2012:

http://washingtondcjcc.org/center-for-arts/theater-j/

I Interview Playwrights Part 355: E. Hunter Spreen

E. Hunter Spreen

Hometown: I was born in Hartford City, IN. My family moved around a lot, so I lived in Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky.

Current Town: Los Altos Hills, CA

Q: Tell me about your play with Shotgun.

A: Care of Trees is about love and belief and what happens to your relationship when your partner goes somewhere that you can't follow or that you don't understand. The play also tackles some big questions w/r/t our relationship with the planet, but in a deeply personal way - through the vehicle of a love story. When I first started the play, I had this idea that I'd write a stripped down play with two actors and not much else. But I had trouble getting it started and keeping it going, so I brought in this idea that Travis would film his wife, he'd be obsessed with trying to document what he considered symptoms of Georgia's illness and she would resist because she sees her situation in a completely different way. Eventually, that idea evolved into a writing screenplays that would be filmed and which would run within the play. The idea was that these films would be like the spontaneous films we shoot of our lives with our digital cameras and cellphones. They're not made for an audience, they're just ways of capturing moments. It's been amazing watching how the story emerges through the interplay of actors and those films.

The play was commissioned for Shotgun's 20th Anniversary season. Patrick Dooley, the AD, commissioned five new plays to mark the occasion, so a whole season of new work, and I'm honored to have gotten to write this for them.

Q: What else are you working on?

A: I'm thinking about my next four plays - Dumb Puppy, The Archive and a couple of others. How that work's going to proceed. The Archive is a devised work that will rely on community involvement to generate the material. It's a large scale project and I need to spend some time figuring out how to structure the generation process logistically and how to do the outreach on the scale that I want to do it. So mostly it's planning and writing out all the steps - from generation to devising to performance. Dumb Puppy is more manageable. I sit down and write it (at least that's what we hope for). I've tried to write it twice before, each time getting a few more pages. The time feels right to take it on again. As for the other two plays, I need to spend time in the Ransom Library in Austin doing research and so those plays require a bit more in terms of resources - ie. money, but also time and research assistance so that I could get through the material more efficiently. Plus having a partner or team would effect the material and take some of the decisions about it out of my hands which I always like.

I'm also working on a community art project that's being devised by Moïse Touré and Frances Viet over the next year. We did the first phase a couple of weeks ago. I went into the studio for a film interview and then Frances created choreography based on my answers. They'll come back to San Francisco a couple more times and then the community they've assembled will perform the piece. So it's still being shaped and discovered. I have no idea at this point what it's going to look like, but the time in the studio was incredibly powerful and moving. I was paired with a film-maker and we were interviewed together. The exciting thing for me is that the project brings together people from all walks of life and presents their perspective both on film and on stage.

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

A: Here's a list. Make of it what you will.

1. As a kid, I liked to watch Batman. I would press my face against the TV screen and look at all the dots in the image and listen to the sound.
2. I loved to read. I would read the covers off of books. I can remember the first book I could read all by myself. When I was in high school, I would bring stacks of books home and read them all over the weekend.
3. I was an obsessive spinner. I would stand in the middle of a room and spin spin spin until I annoyed my grandmother and she would make me stop.
4. When I was a kid, I believed that baptism was real - like when you were immersed you really did die and when you were lifted out of the water you came back to life. So going to church was very disturbing to me. This whole elective drowning thing freaked me out. Equally disturbing - no one else seemed to be as horrified by it as I was. This is an example of why you shouldn't believe everything you think.
5. When I was six I remember I couldn't sleep one night. I was terrified for some reason and so I couldn't get to sleep. I kept going downstairs and trying to get in bed with my mom and dad. I claimed that I smelled smoke. I was lying and my dad knew it. He kept taking me back upstairs and putting me in bed. I got up three or four times. And my dad took me right back upstairs. But the last time he took me up, my bed was on fire. We got out of the house before the whole place burst into flames. Sometimes I feel like that when I write. I think something and then it happens. You know, kind of like Drew Barrymore in Fire Starter.
6. I'm not convinced any of these items explain who I am as a writer.

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

A:  We'd get as excited about failure as we do about success. I wish there were places where I could just experiment - you know, hey people, this might not work but I'm going for it. Come watch it and tell me what you think. Sam Shepard had that freedom and there's so much imagination and playfulness in his early plays. They don't all work, but he was just writing and making and figuring it out by having productions go up. It's hard to support that kind of work now. I dream about buying a farm and converting a barn - like how cliché is that? But really, I'd like to create this place where experimentation could take place with the support of the community that surrounds it. I think there are companies doing that already - Double Edge is the first that comes to mind. Alongside the idea of fostering experimentation, I'd like to challenge the idea that an artist's scope and practice has to be limited.

What do I mean by that?

I often feel like there's a perception in the theater community that if I focus on the formal concerns of playwrighting or theater, then I can't be politically engaged or dealing with the big "issues" we face globally or locally. Or if I'm interested in generating community-based work, then I can't or shouldn't be interested in the formal aspects of theater as an art form. Somehow these things are mutually exclusive and that the audience who might be interested in one wouldn't or couldn't or shouldn't be interested the the other. There's a pigeon-holing that takes place and I'm not sure why that happens. Sure, there's the art as commerce trope, but I'm not convinced that marketing is the only reason for this situation.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  My kids. They're just endless fountains of creativity and inspiration.

These people are influences and sources of inspiration:

Pina Bausch, Tim Etchells, Andy Kaufman, Bill Hicks, Gertrude Stein, Glenn Gould, Jacques LeCoq, Anne Bogart & Siti Company, Mary Overlie, Robert Wilson, Hunter S. Thompson, Zeami, Arianne Mnouchkine, David Foster Wallace, William S. Burroughs, Elevator Repair Service, Superamas, Mike Daisey, Forced Entertainment, William Gibson, Jaques Derrida, Derrick Jensen, Eve Sussman and Rufus Corporation, Dorothy Lemoult, Ming Zhu-Hii, Jeff Wood, Susannah Martin, Brian Eno, Lester Bangs, Tarkovsky, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Ida Rolf.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like theater that is present and that can mean many things -
it can be about the performers or it can be about the play itself or even better - both at the same time. It starts with an acknowledgement that we're all in the room together or the alley or bathroom or wherever it's happening. That's what's so great about flash mobs or pop-up theater - there's no getting around the fact that this thing is happening right now. Part of that is novelty, but part of that is this great sense of play and willingness to participate fully in life and that theater can be part of that, celebrate that, and not be this thing that happens in a dark room and you have to sit still for. Which kind of contradicts what I said in my what would you change about theater question - maybe.
But it can also happen in the room too. And when it does, it leaves an impression, it's like it rearranges all the cells in my body.

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

A:  Write. Really. Don't worry about success or failure or outcome. Just write. You don't need permission to do this. Try to write everyday. Read plays. When I first started writing plays I would pick a playwright and read everything they'd ever written and in some cases, everything that had been written about them. I also read every book or play or see any film they might mention (if I haven't already) as being an influence to them. I kind of obsessive like that. Some call it "google stalking," I call it inspiration. See plays and readings. Don't forget to bring a notebook and a pen with you wherever you go.

Allow yourself to make "mistakes" and right terrible first drafts. When I started writing I was horrible and I'm not being modest. I was terrible. If I'd been in grad school, they would have taken me aside and told me to consider another career. School would not have made me better and it would have been embarrassing and frustrating for everyone. I kept at it because occasionally I would get something on the page that was exciting and alive. It took me many years to be able to sustain my voice as a writer, technically, but also physically and emotionally. It took time to build up the stamina to deal with the toll writing takes on me.

Stick it out and keep writing. If you're a writer, you won't have any other choice.

I say this because this is also part of that pigeon-holing thing that happens. There's this idea that if your talent or ability doesn't express itself when you're young - like in your twenties, then you are hosed. When I was in my twenties I could barely feed myself and make it through the day. I was a mess. But there's this idea about success and what that means and what it looks like and how it happens or doesn't and what that means for you and your artistic life if you're going to have one. And even though we don't see or hear as much about the exceptions, they are out there and they are making work. Have you heard about Marta Beckett? She's an actress/ballerina who runs the Amargosa Opera House in Death Valley Junction. She's out there in the middle of the desert making theater on her own terms. What she offers may not be your taste, but she has been performing and running that space since 1967. She's in her eighties now and still performing. She is such an inspiration.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Care of Trees opens May 21 and runs through June 19 at the Ashby Stage in Berkeley. http://www.shotgunplayers.org/2011_careoftrees.htm

National Playwrighting Month (NAPLWRIMO) is in November. http://www.naplwrimo.org/ Last year I had my first go at taking the reins for the event and it was tough because I was in the midst of writing my MA thesis and writing Care of Trees, so it was tough trying to juggle everything and keep up with the daily maintenance and support that goes into the event. This year, I can do more planning and can be more involved in directly contributing to the community that emerges during the event. I'd like to expand what we do on the site, to make it an active year round community and then we'd have that marathon month of writing in November.

I Interview Playwrights Part 354: Michael Lluberes

Michael Lluberes

Hometown: Okemos, Michigan.

Current Town: New York, NY

Q: Tell me about The Boy in the Bathroom.

“The Boy in the Bathroom” is a three person musical I wrote with composer Joe Maloney. Here’s the blurb about it: “David lives in his bathroom. He never comes out. His mother feeds him thin, flat food she can slide under the door. He has everything he needs. David has obsessive-compulsive disorder and he's not going anywhere... until he meets Julie... and discovers that there might be something - or someone – on the other side of the door that will make it worth opening...”

I’m very proud of the work Joe and I have done on it. Hopefully it’s funny and sad and weird. It’s a very different kind of musical – the subject matter – the size – it’s intimate and personal. We wanted to create a really tiny world that would hopefully have a larger resonance. I think the piece surprises people. It feels much more like a play than a musical.

We originally did it at The New York Musical Theatre Festival and since then the show has received a lot of wonderful development opportunities. It’s now in a production at The Chance Theater in Orange County, CA through May 22nd.

Q: What else are you working on?

A:  I’ve been commissioned by No Rules Theatre Company in D.C. to adapt and direct a new version of Peter Pan. This is going to be a very dark and dangerous new take. I think J.M. Barrie wrote such a beautiful story about the pain of growing up. I’m reading a lot right now about his life and it’s opening a lot of windows. A wonderful imagination often emerges from dark places in childhood. I want the play to be both a child’s dream and nightmare. I want to create a fun and scary theatrical playground. I want the play to be thrilling battle between childhood and adulthood. It’s going to be all about imagination. I’m very excited about it.

I just received a New Artist Initiative grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for a residency this summer at The Hambidge Center. Hambidge is a beautiful artist’s retreat in the mountains of North Georgia. I plan on using the time there to work on Peter Pan.

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

A:  You’ll have to buy me a drink first.

I don’t know about a specific story, but for as far back as I can remember I was always making theatre. When I was little, I would put on plays with my toys in the bathtub. I used to force my sister and the neighbor kids to put on shows in the backyard with me. My mother sewed red curtains and we put up a little make shift stage in a corner of my basement. I used to do plays on a trampoline in the round. I wore a red cape for a year when I was seven.

Later in high school I would put on rebel productions with a group of my friends. We would steal huge boulders from the City Park and orange fencing from construction sites for our sets. In one play I made a boy dress up in a Dorothy dress and a girl actually throw up in a bucket. I directed plays by Brecht and Ionesco while the other kids were doing “Damn Yankees”. I wore a beret. I was that kid. Today I still feel like I’m just a little kid making plays.

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

A:  One thing: I want theatres and producers to take more chances on new untested plays and artists.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

Shakespeare, Stephen Sondheim, Orson Welles, Charles Laughton, Peter Brook, Zero Mostel, Tennessee Williams, Simon Callow, Bill Finn, Edward Albee, Albert Cullum, Tony Kushner, Kaufman and Hart, Marian Seldes, The Muppets, The Group Theatre. My teachers: Gerald Freedman, Lewis J. Stadlen, Marty Rader. I devour biographies of theatrical giants of the past, the greats who broke through something and created a huge change – a new way of thinking or feeling about theatre.

Also, my friends are my theatrical heroes. Some of them are working for pennies and cheeseburgers and are creating really amazing work all over the country.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I’m excited by anything that I haven’t seen before. I’m excited by plays and musicals that change the form, that do something different and new. I want theatre to surprise me. Most of the time I sit in the theatre and I feel like I know what the person on stage is going to say or sing next or where they’re going to move. I love being surprised. I like crazy theatrical plays that are also deeply personal and heartfelt. I’m excited when I see a story about people who don’t normally get plays written about them. I love things that make you laugh and cry at the same time. I’m excited by the combination of contradictory things, the juxtaposition of things in theatre. The big and the small, the highbrow and the lowbrow, the pretty and the ugly, the extraordinary and the mundane, the dirty and the sparkly, the hilarious and the heartbreaking, the old and the new smashed together in one play.

I actually think we’re living in a really exciting time for new musical theatre right now – there’s a whole crop of original small musicals out there. I’m truly inspired by the writers and composers in our generation who are trying to do something new and exciting with the form. You’re not necessarily going to see them on Broadway - the “American Musical” is still a fairly conservative art form – but it’s also a comparatively young art form and my hope is that it turns into something as diverse and exciting as independent film is. There’s room in musical theatre for all kinds of different subject matter, characters, music and storytelling. I’m really excited to see what happens next.

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

A:  Be yourself. Write the play or musical that you want to see.

Be theatrical. Don’t put something on stage that you could see on TV.

There’s a lot of rejection. People will either get your play or they won’t – but you only need one person to get it.

Be personal. When you’re young and just starting out there’s no reason to not wear your heart on your sleeve. Make your plays personal.

Put your play up yourself. Just do it. Plays are meant to be seen and performed - not read.

Also, and I have to remind myself of this all the time: We are writing plays for people to see. We are telling stories. We are trying to make people less afraid, or more hopeful, or challenge them, or make them think, or entertain them. We’re not creating theatre for ourselves in a box, we are communicating with people.

Q: Plugs, please:

A:  My website:
www.MichaelLluberes.com

The Boy in the Bathroom at The Chance Theater in Orange County, CA
through May 22nd.
www.chancetheater.com

Reading at Primary Stages May 23 at 3pm

Where You Can't Follow
by Adam Szymkowicz
Directed by Lucie Tiberghien
Starring Michael Cerveris, Heidi Schreck, Bahvesh Patel, Jessica Love

Matt's doctor tells him he doesn't have long to live. He realizes he's
never been in love before, so he leaves home, flies to Paris and tries
to find love before it's too late.

All Readings will be held at Primary Stages, Studio A

307 West 38th Street, Suite 1510

New York, NY 10018

All readings are free and open to the public. Reservations are
requested and can be made by emailing readings@primarystages.org or by
calling 212-840-9705.

http://www.theatermania.com/new-york/news/05-2011/works-by-bekah-brunstetter-janine-nabers-adam-szym_36906.html

I Interview Playwrights Part 353: Kathleen Akerley

Kathleen Akerley 

Hometown:  I was born in Swindon, England but did the bulk of my growing up in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Current Town:  Cheverly, Maryland

Q:  What are you working on now? 

A:  Two weeks ago I finished the draft of a full length play called Something Past In Front of the Light for production in August.  We're going to get together to read it later this month so I can have some edits ready for first rehearsal:  so despite the fact that I have a short play (Law & Ordure) due days ago and despite the fact that there is nothing more to be done with the first one until I hear the read, I keep using my writing time to go into the draft of the first one and just look at it when I really need to be getting more of the second one out of my head and onto the paper.  And I have something due in about 60 hours for the playwriting collective I'm in, unless I want to skip the challenge which I don't, and all of that's in my head too.  So I'm not working on anything right now while working on three things, which tends to encourage a lot of staring out the window.

Q:  How would you characterize DC theater? 

A:  Overcrowded.  Filled with many very driven, artistic and lovely people who must be counting on Adam Smith, or possibly even Darwin, to sort it all out, and who randomly sample from capitalist or socialist philosophies as suits them in any given moment to avoid being naturally de-selected (economically, of course:  it is a lion-free environment).  Generally, though, they're also folks who can be counted on to have interesting and open-minded conversations and to support each other's work.

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 checked in with my family on this one because that's often both illuminating and objective:  my brother sent back a huge tally of stories about me being confrontational with cops (I had never added them up!) as well as other authority figures, my father sent back one choice from the same list.  Perhaps the connection is tenuous, but:  I am impatient with unexamined assertions, bland generalizations, resting on simplified views, both in human interactions and in plays, and I get hornet-mad at people who abuse their authority, whether it's legal authority or the authority you have over someone's time and experience when you get them into your theater.

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

A:  I would get people to stop using the little money we have on encouraging the audience perception that theater is only valid when it's recently upgraded and shiny.  Since I will certainly fail in that initiative, I will then try to get people to stop writing monologue plays with wholly self-aware protagonists.  This second failure will drive me out of theater and I will have to live out my days giving massages in Thailand.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Harold Pinter for so many reasons, but mostly for writing and living the line 'Don't let them tell you what to do.'

Q:  What kind of theater excites you? 

A:  I saw a production of Trojan Women at La Ma Ma about six years ago in which an actor slid on her back, head first, down a sharply raked wall from about twenty feet up.  She controlled the descent with a kind of alternating-shoulder oscillation, her hair was long and flowed out below her, her dress was blue and the fabric light -- the total effect of seeing someone who'd just been thrown into the sea was stunning.  Every time I direct a play now I tell the actors that every scene has to have its blue dress moment or else we didn't find the point of the scene.  I'm excited by theater that doesn't explain itself, does use a lot of muscle, doesn't rest on its points or over-simplify, and knows that absurdism/magical realism (my favorites) doesn't mean conceptually self-indulgent or undisciplined.

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

A:  1.  No one reminds anyone of a shared past in full sentences, no one states the theme of the play.  Let the audience meet you with their thinking, let them leave with questions.  2.  The longer a monologue, the more it should reveal something about the speaker that s/he doesn't know s/he's saying.  3.  Everything you think is interesting:  you can figure out later, in the editing stage, if it's relevant.  Is my view!

Q:  Plugs, please: 

A:  If you're in DC in August or early September, come on by the Callan Theatre and see my play about the Devil collaborating on his biopic with a documentary filmmaker (www.longacrelea.org).  If you're in DC later in September or October, come see Law & Ordure, which is one of five plays in the Hope Operas, a new-works project established two years ago to support local charities.

I Interview Playwrights Part 352: Sonya Sobieski

Sonya Sobieski

Hometown: Maplewood, New Jersey (by way of Cincinnati , Ohio )

Current Town : New York Fucking City

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I just finished a new full-length play, the first since Commedia dell Smartass, which was produced by New Georges in 2005, just before my daughter was born. The daughter part kind of explains the hiatus. I’ve been writing a lot of one-act musicals in the last five years, as the form seems well-served by short spurts of energy. Some of those have coalesced and expanded into The Unfortunate Squirrel, a feel-good musical about the emptiness of modern life, which will have two public readings this month!

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 think it was around seventh grade, and a classmate I didn’t know very well asked, “Hey, are you the girl who makes the funny faces?” And my response was to give her a look, like, “Who, me?” I didn’t even realize that I was making a face—and essentially answering her question—until I’d done it. Recently I find myself writing characters who don’t speak, yet they’re always incredibly emotive and interesting. I spent many many years in childhood and young adulthood not knowing the right thing to say, and yet I was desperate to connect with others. It was a constant struggle. Playwriting is probably a way to resolve that—to use all those years of listening in order to create something that cannot be completed without other people.

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

A:  People would care. And I don’t mean non-theatre people. I mean theatre people. I wish we’d care more about what our peers and our potential peers were doing. I wish we weren’t slaves to The New York Times.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Mac Wellman, even though he’d be surprised to hear it. Artaud, because he advocated that theatre be big, emotional, and messy. Dan Rothenberg of Pig Iron is a current favorite. Lynn Nottage, because she has the seemingly miraculous ability to write plays that are both hard-hitting and uplifting, and she has a kickass sense of humor.

Q:  Any other influences?

A:  Woody Allen, romantic comedies, desire for the supernatural to be true.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Sleep No More, My Last Play, Confidence Man, Hell House. Ambitious, unusual, site-specific pieces that are experiences, not just literature. The po-mo comic-book/sci-fi/martial-arts mashups of Vampire Cowboys. I mean, I also like a good “play play” like Good People or Kin. Kin felt like a comforting, warm bath. Perfect. But not exciting. Well, the bear scene was exciting. The rest was lovely.

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

A:  Don’t spend more than two years working in a literary department. If you have profitable skills, consider taking a money job right out of college, make a bundle, and then you can do whatever you want starting in your late twenties, which is plenty young enough. But if you choose to go the internship/day-job route, that’s fine, too. Just write A LOT and don’t listen to critics, external or internal. Have fun and meet people. Be nice to everyone.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Readings of The Unfortunate Squirrel on Friday May 20 @ 9PM (Tada!, 15 W. 28th St. ) and Wednesday May 25 @ 4PM (Ripley-Grier Studios, 520 Eighth Ave. ) Lots of fun and singing. For info and reservations, http://flyingcarpettheatre.com/current-productions/the-unfortunate-squirrel/ I work free-lance as a playwriting mentor, helping individuals develop their scripts and ideas and write at their full potential. Says one of my clients/students: “You get the eye of a literary manager, with the heart of a fellow writer.” Register through NYU http://www.scps.nyu.edu/course-detail/X32.9608/20111/playwriting-tutorial-working-with-a-dramaturg or contact me directly at sonyasobieski at yahoo.

I Interview Playwrights Part 351: Gwydion Suilebhan

Gwydion Suilebhan

Hometown:   Baltimore, MD. When I was born, it was the seventh-largest city in the country. Throughout most of my childhood, it never fell below about more than a couple of slots. It’s 21st now, which is a whole different ball game, but it’s still just a tiny bit ahead of my current home town: Washington, DC. What’s my point? My point is that just saying “Baltimore was my hometown” might not convey what it meant to have lived there when I lived there. My family lived in the suburbs, mostly, but it felt like we were hovering on the edge of something Huge and Historic and Important all the time… and I doubt those are words that many people associate with Charm City any more (to my great sadness).

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m working on a commission for Theater J—a new play that I’d rather not discuss in specifics lest I ruin the mojo. (They’re doing a reading in February 2012.) I will say this: it feels like the most important story I’ve worked on for quite some time. It feels like the stakes are high. I love the feeling.

Q:  So how many playwrights are there in DC?

A:  Well, it just so happens I know the answer to that. At last count, there are about 180 playwrights living and writing in the DC metropolitan area. When all is said and done, I believe we’ll get to 200. If you accept the commonly-cited figure that there are 10,000 playwrights in the United States, that gives us 2% of the total right here. Given that “right here” includes only .4% or .5% or so of the country’s population (I’ve included playwrights living in the suburbs in my count), I’d say we’re doing pretty darn well.

How do I know all this? Because not long ago, I posted a list of the playwrights I knew on my blog, then asked others to circulate the list and send me names. In two days the list had grown by more than 100 names. It still keeps growing, in fact. I get another name or two every day.

My original goals were to change the perception that DC isn’t a playwright-friendly town and to re-orient a few local artistic directors to the notion that we have an immense diversity of stories being told in our own city, which means there’s no need to continually import them all from New York and points west. Now I’m starting to think that there are other possibilities worth exploring, from making an email list to getting everybody together to figure out what our shared pain points and opportunities are to just plain hanging out and getting to know each other. Being a playwright can be lonely, after all, and it’s only a rather annoying and false sense of competition that keeps us from learning from and supporting one another. I’d like to be able to do whatever I can to help build community.

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

A:  I’ve known I was going to be a writer, in one genre or another, since I was about 14 years old… so I need to look even earlier in my life for a story. The first thing that occurs to me isn’t a specific story but the many hours I spent playing with Lego blocks with my best friend David. We would build enormous castles and outrageous vehicles of one sort or another, create characters—idealized adult versions of ourselves, essentially, with different names—and improvise hours-long adventures. At some level, that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.

But the story that I think explains who I am as a writer happened in Hebrew School. Although I wouldn’t have said it this way at the time, I was struggling with the fact that I just didn’t believe in God, even at 11 years old. Everyone around me was acting as if they just accepted the fact of God’s existence, and I felt like a sham because I couldn’t. I was worried that everyone would figure out I was only pretending.

And then one day my teacher was telling class about the Jewish holiday of Purim, and all of a sudden I realized: this is a story she’s telling! It’s really just a story, like every other story I’d ever read. The Hardy Boys, A Wrinkle in Time, The Phantom Tollbooth… and the Old Testament. I could think of them all the same way. I could believe in them in the same way, which is to say that I could suspend my disbelief while the story was being told, then happily re-establish it as soon as the last word was spoken. I didn’t have to be credulous to play along.

At the same time, I also began to realize that some stories were more powerful than others. Some could clearly inspire people to do both tremendous and wretched things, and some could give voice to both beautiful and terrible ideas. I wanted to fight on the side of the good guys, which to my mind were (and still are) those who don’t deify stories, who reinvigorate the world’s mind with new narratives, who keep us fresh and alive and connected both reality AND possibility, who keep us moving forward.

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

A:  That I only get to change one thing.

But if I couldn’t change THAT, the first thing I’d do is provide clearer means by which playwrights can connect with, listen to, and learn from audiences. I believe we’re woefully estranged from the people for whom we ostensibly make stories. We’re taught not to listen to them, and we only want to talk to them through our work. We alienate ourselves; we write the stories that make us happy, rather than the stories that the members of our communities (however we define them) need and want. We don’t think about theater as service. We’re self-centered. And naturally, as a result, people tend to think of us as withdrawn and superior and elitist, which is a real shame. We’re really not so bad.

Once we crack that nut, the rest of the revolution will, I hope, proceed accordingly.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like my theater raw, which is to say that I want it to be as different as possible from television and film. Less emphasis on effects and spectacle and more emphasis on honest storytelling. I like my sets and costumes minimal; I’d rather invite audiences to participate in the creation of the work through the imaginative process of filling in the details. I’m also interested in plays that engage science in meaningful and creative ways; not science fiction, mind you—or not only science fiction—but real science, which is strange and wonderful and exciting all on its own.

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

A:  Become an auto-didact. No one is ever going to teach you the way you need to be taught. Read widely, be curious, don’t be so quick to learn (or follow) the rules, and question very deeply whether tens of thousands of dollars for a graduate degree is a fair deal.

Beyond that: develop a second career you can rely on for economic stability and health insurance. Get really good at something: so good you can earn enough money to live on by doing it about 20-30 hours a week. Love whatever it is, too; don’t resent it for what it isn’t. And let it inspire you. Let it keep you part of the general population of the world. Because you are, whether you like it or not.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My play LET X is opening for a short run in Chicago this July. I have a reading of BUGGY & TYLER (a new full-length version of a one-act that ran earlier this year) here in DC in September. Beyond that, REALS will also be returning to DC in early 2012.