I Interview Playwrights Part 375: Bess Wohl

Bess Wohl

Hometown:  Brooklyn, NY

Current town:  Right now I'm in Williamstown, MA, but I'm based in NYC, with frequent trips to LA.

Q:  What are you working on now? 

A:  In the past few weeks, I've been in rehearsals for my play, TOUCH(ED) at the Williamstown Theater Festival, rewriting and tweaking a lot.  I'm also currently writing the book for PRETTY FILTHY, a new musical, with the composer/lyricist Michael Friedman about the adult entertainment industry.  It's a commission from Center Theater Group and The Civilians.  Finally, because even playwrights need to make a living, I'm writing a feature for Paramount Pictures based on the bestselling book series, THE LUXE, and will be developing TV  for CBS this fall.

Q:  How does your acting inform your playwriting and vice versa?

A:  I actually first started playwriting while I was getting my MFA in acting.  There was a little student-run space called The Cabaret, and I began writing plays for my actor classmates and producing them in the theater there.  (The Cabaret also served booze, which probably helped those first plays go down easier...)  Wanting to create great parts for actors was the initial spark that made me start writing. Nothing pleases me more than seeing an actor find a way to be great, with the help of words I've written. 

On a deeper level, what draws me to writing is the same thing that drew me to acting-- it's all about character.  In both art forms, I hope to get inside characters and create living, breathing people.  I try to write parts that actors will want to play, and lines that I think would be fun to say.  What I've had to subsequently learn, as a writer, is how to be in charge, critical and decisive.  As an actor, you're trained to be continually open and pliable, to "always say yes."  As a playwright, you have to be able to articulate a clear vision and must stay in control of the story that is being told.  You have to be willing-- and able-- to say no. 

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

A:  This is really the defining story of my life, and it's a simple one:  When I was about four or five years old, I went to a summer camp with swimming classes.  There was an Olympic sized pool, with a very high diving board-- it seemed like it was ten miles up in the air.  The swimming teacher marched all the campers up the diving board ladder and stood us on the platform, asking who wanted to jump first.  Nobody ever had before.  It was absolutely terrifying.  We all stood there shivering in our swimsuits, as one boy after another walked to the edge, then balked and turned around.  Suddenly-- I still don't know exactly why-- I stepped forward.  This was completely out of character for me,  a shy, chubby, awkward bookworm, always picked last for every team.  But somehow, in that moment, I realized that all I needed to do was step off the edge, and gravity would do the rest.  I also knew I had to do it or I would regret it forever.  And so, I walked to the edge, and jumped.  It was probably the bravest moment of my life-- which I guess is a bit sad, really!--  but I still think about it every time I do a play.

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

A:  I wish it were less expensive, of course.  I also usually wish it were less stuffy.  I wish that it were more relevant to a wider array of people, which would probably come with it being less expensive and stuffy. 

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes: 

A:  Well, I have to go for the obvious-- Shakespeare.  I took a class Freshman year in college with the amazing Shakespeare scholar, Marjorie Garber.  We read all the plays and the experience pretty much changed my life in every way.  It was like a religious conversion-- I still look to Shakespeare for lessons in drama and in life.  The moment at the end of Twelfth Night when Viola, in the hope of finding her lost brother,  exclaims, "Prove true, imagination, O, prove true!" for me speaks to what we're always trying to accomplish in theater:  to take something imagined and make it feel true.  I think about that line all the time, as a silent prayer.  And his characters-- Lady M, Caliban, Brutus, Hermione, Mercutio, I could go on forever-- they are the bravest, most complicated and heartbreaking and sexy and fascinating group of people I could possibly imagine.

Of course, in terms of modern playwrights-- there are so many I adore.  Tony Kushner.  Stephen Adly Guirgis.  Paula Vogel.  And actors like Janet McTeer, whose Nora in A Doll's House is etched in my mind.  Simon Russel Beale whose Iago I'll never forget.  Mark Rylance who blows me to bits every time I see him on stage.  I'm also lucky enough to have some amazing writer, director and actor friends who have mentored me, reading drafts after draft of my work and giving advice:  Keith Bunin, Itamar Moses, Trip Cullman, Chuck Morey, Susan Pourfar.  I learned from them that writing doesn't have to be lonely and solitary-- it takes a lot of support.  I could never write without their help. 

Q:  What kind of theater excites you: 

A:  I'm attracted to theater that's language driven-- theater that feels excessive and messy and generous, where words flow freely.  I love the musicality of language, and I love people and characters who can't shut up. I get an almost physical thrill from hearing talking-- language that hits me hard, in the gut, and feels visceral and chewy and delicious.  I love sloppy words.  I myself can't shut up about them right now... But okay, okay, I will.  I'm done.  Really.  Okay.  Now.  Done.

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

A:  Find actors you love and bribe them with snacks or beer to read your work out loud.  There is no substitute for hearing your work, even if it's just in your own living room.  Chose subject matter that feels important to you, and stick with it even when it feels crappy.  I heard the amazing Ira Glass speak once about how there's this gap, when you're first starting out, between what you would LIKE to have made, and what you actually did make.  His advice?  To make a ton of work, and eventually your product will catch up with your taste, and the gap between what you are making and what you want to make will close.

Finally, I'd say you have to find a way to enjoy the process as much as the result, because you never know what the result will be.  A playwright friend once told me that you have to look at each step in the process-- from the first draft on-- as if it's the last one, and derive full satisfaction from it.    Because if you're waiting for some magical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow... Well, you miss the rainbow, which is the best part.

Q:  Plugs please: 

A:  TOUCH(ED) at Williamstown Theater Festival runs thru this weekend!  Come check it out!! 

I Interview Playwrights Part 374: Wendy MacLeod

Wendy MacLeod

Hometown: Arlington, Virginia

Current Town: South Conway, New Hampshire

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m working on a play that asks the question: What if the second coming of Christ happened in contemporary suburbia?

I’m also working on a screenplay for a thriller, and I have some ideas for future essays…I’ve started to write about books.

Q:  What could a student in your playwriting class expect?

A:  Students can expect to read great stuff. I don’t teach a play unless I love it, or feel very strongly that it has something to teach them. They can expect a heavy emphasis on solving the structure of a given play. They will be pushed to write something interesting in a voice that is distinctly their own. Comedy will never be dismissed as lacking in ambition because it’s a comedy.

They will receive an intelligent, thoughtful critique from their classmates. I think the tone of a writing workshop comes from the teacher so I don’t allow the students to merely like it or not like it—they must articulate what they’re responding to. And if they’re going to be allusive I insist on their using a theatrical frame of reference. How are they going to learn how to write plays if all they’re seeing and talking about is Will Ferrell movies?

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

A:  When I was in first grade, a classmate was cast as Wendy in Peter Pan. This struck me as a grave injustice given that Wendy was my name. So I offered her a ring in exchange for the role. I can still see it; it was a silver ring, from India, with little bells on it. She made the trade. I hope this speaks to my determination and not my lack of a moral center.

A few years earlier, I worked steadily on a flattened refrigerator box in the garage, drawing on the steering controls for what, in my head, was going to serve as a magic carpet. That combination of the imaginative and the practical was good preparation for being a playwright.

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

A:  I wish that people could afford to take their families so that children could discover the theater, real theater. My sons saw the entire Shakespeare history cycle, all eight plays, at the RSC, complete with bloody decapitated heads and battles with bows and arrows and Frenchmen descending to the stage on trapeze horses. They know that Shakespeare isn’t boring.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I can tell you which canonical writers I admire—Chekhov, Pinter, and Caryl Churchill.

But the heroes these days are the writers, directors and actors who continue to work in the theater when it sometimes seems irrelevant to the culture.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I often see things that feel made-up and I leave the theater feeling unmoved because I didn’t believe a word of it. If I believe the play has articulated some truth about the human condition, however big or small, that excites me, whether the vehicle is straight-up realism or a more formally inventive play. I want to hear an original voice and enter a world that I might not otherwise have access to.

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

A:  If they’re just learning to write plays, I would have them eschew most how-to playwriting books and go straight to Aristotle’s POETICS. (although Julie Jensen, Jeffrey Sweet, and Jeffrey Hatcher do have helpful guides). I would tell them that acting is great training for playwriting. I would tell them that plays are not just a series of conversations. Something has to happen.

I would tell them to read plays and go see plays, even the plays they think they know. I remember rolling my eyes at the thought of going to see that old chestnut OUR TOWN, and then spending the entire third act in a puddle of tears. I dismissed Alan Aykbourn until I went to see THE NORMAN CONQUESTS at Manhattan Theater Club and then I wanted to watch the plays again and again. I always tell my students not to say they don’t like a play until they’ve seen at least two productions of it.

Young playwrights should also know that they are not just playwrights, they are writers, and should be reading all kinds of great literature.

As for career tips, I would tell young playwrights not to send their plays out too soon, because most theaters will only consider a play once, even if you go on to write a brilliant new draft. I would tell them to proofread their work. And I would have to tell them that they will be taken more seriously as a playwright if they have film and television credits too. People always want to hop on the train.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My new play FIND AND SIGN opens January 13 at the Pioneer Theater in Salt Lake City.

I Interview Playwrights Part 373: Kate Mulley

Kate Mulley

Hometown: Newton, MA. When I was a kid I heard somewhere that Newton was home to 5% of the nation's psychiatrists, I don't know if that was true, but it was a fun fact at the time.

Current Town: New York, NY. New York is probably home to more than 5% of the nation's psychiatrists.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  A few things. I'm in the last week of preparing for my play The Tutor, which is about an SAT tutor who sells her used underwear online. It'll be performed in the New York Fringe Festival between August 12th and 20th. The NyLon Fusion Writers Collective, my writers group, is collaborating with a group of actors on a piece that has taken many forms. At one point it was about American expats living in London, now we're taking a more abstract approach and working on the idea of "home." That will be performed in November at the Gene Frankel. And I'm working on a play about a British doctor named J Alison Glover, who was an unsung public health hero in the early 20th century. It's about his work, how it relates to us today, the role of doctors and patients in medical decision making. But it's also a bit of a war epic. Like War Horse meets Wit.

Q:  How does English theater compare to American theater?

A:  Oh, this is a tricky one. Theatre is part of the general culture of England in a way that it isn't really in America (I think Jez Butterworth's play Jerusalem captures that very well). It's also part of their tourism in a way that it isn't here. People go to London to see plays, they don't do that in New York quite the same way. English theatre is also heavily subsidized (though some of that is changing), so there are more opportunities to take risks. Even commercial theater over there tends to be riskier, less family friendly. They had to change the whole arc of Priscilla Queen of the Desert to make it more "family friendly" on Broadway. Plays also don't get as bogged down in development hell the way they do here. If you have a show at an Off-West End or fringe theatre in London you can get 4 or 5 different reviews of it in national newspapers, that doesn't happen anywhere in America. I think institutions like the National Theatre and the Royal Court are absolutely integral to the success of English theatre (and American theatre if you look at how many of their shows eventually transfer) and those theaters have more than one show going on all year round. Rocco Landesman said recently that there was more supply than demand in American theater and a lot of us took offense to that. They don't seem to care about that in London. When I started my MA at Goldsmiths College, we read an article by Mark Ravenhill that said that American playwrights know that no one cares about them, but that English playwrights are deluded to think that people still do. I think embracing that delusion is key for survival. And somehow demanding to be relevant.

Q:  How does your dramaturgy affect your playwriting and vice-versa.

A:  I think I see dramaturgy and playwriting as one and the same. I love the research element of writing plays, it's how I satisfy my latent history nerd. I also love really taking apart plays and thinking about how they work structurally. My Goldsmiths classmates and I would sit around in the pub after class talking about how to fix our plays. Even three pints in sometimes, we would still be dramaturging one another's plays. I think it's a really important skill for playwrights to have. I also think that the definition of dramaturg can be be as narrow or as broad as you want it to be.

Q:  How did you end up writing headlines for the Onion?

A:  I was an Editorial and Sports Intern there my first year out of college. I got the job because I knew a lot about the Dartmouth hockey team and the guy interviewing me had grown up in Hanover (where Dartmouth is). We agreed that one player was totally overrated and a guy I was friends with was underrated (for the record, we were right, my friend's still playing in the NHL and the other guy ended up being a bit of a bust). After a month or so of sitting in on writers meetings I was allowed to pitch some sports headlines. One of them, about the Duke lacrosse team scandal, was totally unintentionally disgusting. And they just ran with it. I was also featured in a photograph as a girl who ate too much Valentine's day candy and was dumped by her boyfriend as a result.

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

A:  Music was really important in the Newton Public School system. In 3rd grade, we played the recorder, in 4th grade we got to pick our own instrument to play. I had already been playing the piano, but decided for my "4th grade instrument" I wanted to play either the oboe or the French horn, knowing that these were historically the hardest instruments to learn how to play. I ended up playing the oboe for about 4 years before giving it up to spend more time doing theater and playing sports. Now I look back at that and laugh at this innate desire to challenge myself. It's why I stuck it out on the crew team for four years in college and it's why I'm a playwright. And it certainly informs the type of work that I aim to create.

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

A:  I would love it if there were a way for ticket prices to be lower so that more theatre could be accessible to a wider range of people. Anything to get people off of their laptops and into a space with living breathing people!

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I feel incredibly indebted to Caryl Churchill. I find her work incredibly inspiring and beautiful. Tom Stoppard is another, so much so that when I met him in an airport in Spain I sent him a thank you note for being nice to me. I'm in awe of Sarah Ruhl's industriousness and brilliance. I like JT Rogers' dedication to epic theatre about ideas that are as gripping as Bond movies. I love Tarell Alvin McCraney use of language, there's a moment in The Brothers Size that gives me chills just thinking about it. I'm so glad Taylor Mac's work is getting a larger audience, he breaks my heart and entertains me at the same time. Nick Hern is a theatrical hero for publishing some amazing plays that would otherwise never be in print and for giving me the opportunity to stay in London for an extra 2 years when I otherwise would have been lost. The people at the New York Theatre Workshop for their dedication to taking theatrical risks. Oh and Mark Rylance, except I wish he weren't an anti-Stratfordian, that bothers me.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theatre that consciously breaks rules and entertains me at the same time. A great production of a play I've read but never seen. I love any play with drag queens (and have a kernel of an idea for a drag musical of my own, stay tuned). And most importantly, theatre that surprises me. One of the burdens of being a playwright/dramaturg is being able to predict the ending of a play. I love being pleasantly surprised at the end of a play.

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

A:  See everything you can. Read everything you can. Write as often as you can, but don't beat yourself up about it. Intern with companies you respect, usher at theatres, Make friends with people who share your aesthetic and create plays with them. Maintain friends who don't do theatre. Join a writers group. Don't worry about readjusting your definition of success as time goes on. Learn how to badger and hustle. Bask in the wonderful absurdity of your decision to be a playwright.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  The Tutor is at the Living Theater in the New York Fringe, August 12-20th (http://www.fringenyc.org/basic_page.php?ltr=T#TheTut) The NyLon piece in November at the Gene Frankel is tentatively titled Spoken For, but may change, keep a look out for that. Come say hi at the Drama Book Shop but if you would prefer to follow my occasional musings online, you can check out my website katemulley.com.

I Interview Playwrights Part 372: Octavio Solis

Octavio Solis

Hometown: El Paso.

Current Town: San Francisco.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Several commissions. One for the Denver Center, one for South Coast Rep, two for Yale Rep, and one brand new one for the Magic Theatre in San Francisco.

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

A:  When I was about 12, I was bicycling with my friend along the levee of the Rio Grande right by my house. We were performing stunts on the gradient of the ditch and drinking cokes and throwing stones into the sludgy brown water of the river. A US Border Patrol cruiser drove up and the officer asked us what we were doing. We told him we were just hanging around. Then he gave us a hard steely look and asked us for our identification. I told him I was an American citizen and a kid besides, and that I didn't need identification. He leaned down to me and took off his sunglasses and told me I would never be an American, no matter how hard I tried. In his eyes, and in the eyes of the world, I was and would forever be a Mexican. He almost cuffed me and took me in, but he laughed and drove off.

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

A:  America's infatuation with British drama. Having once been an Anglophile, I can understand the preoccupation with English plays, but as the American theatre movement persists in ignoring the diverse voices on its own shores, it's starting to feel a little classist.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Maria Irene Fornes and Shakespeare are my foremost influences. They changed the way I wrote. Sam Shepard also. But I think it is literature which has influenced me the most. I read a lot. Poetry, fiction, etc.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The kind that rattles me to the core. That scares the fuck out of me. The kind of theatre that keeps me up at night and possesses me during the day.

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

A:  Don't wait for to be discovered. Don't wait for some champion to come along and produce your work. Do it yourself. Make it happen. Define your terms and go. That way, you own your art and make your own mistakes and learn all the facets of theatre-making. From the ticket booth to cleaning the toilets to working with the actors: apply yourself to it. You'll either trust yourself in this or you won't.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I have a new musical, Cloudlands with music by Adam Gwon (Lyrics by both of us) opening at South Coast Repertory Theatre in April, 2012.

I Interview Playwrights Part 371: Ian W. Hill

Ian W. Hill

Hometown:  Cos Cob, CT

Current Town:  Gravesend, Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about Gone.

A:  Gone is really the first serious play I ever started writing, post school-juvenilia level. I began it in 1990, so it’s had a long, long road to the stage from when I first imagined it – of course I finished it in 2005, so it hasn’t been all that long since then . . .

Gone came about when I was acting in a play by Thalia Field, The Celibate, and I was taken with her use of . . . what shall I call it? “Non-standard English” in a dramatic context. The most frequent adjective that is used is “Joycean” which, I suppose, is fine as an easy descriptor, but is also teeth grindingly inaccurate. I had been writing prose in a bizarre, portmantoid style for years, but it wasn’t until I acted in Thalia’s play that I saw the possibilities of using this style in a theatrical context. I had this image of two old women sitting at a café table and discussing their lives (one of my two beloved great-grandmothers had recently died, and I was thinking of her and the other one) and what came out was this torrent of abstracted memories.

I wrote the first 5 pages of the play – it’s 11 pages long and runs 42 minutes – in a massive creative burst that first year, then couldn’t find it again except it bits and pieces for the next 13 years, over which I only wrote another 2 or so pages, line by sluggish line. Eventually, while I was a bored extra sitting around on the set of the horrible remake of The Stepford Wives for 4 months, I got the groove back and plowed through nearly to the end before getting stuck again. Then, finally, in 2005, I looked at it, saw how little there was left to do to finish it, buckled down and did it. In the meantime, of course, I’ve written a number of plays – wholly original and more often collage works – that have been produced, so it’s a strange feeling to suddenly see this play, which feels both like an “early work” and a brand-new one, coming to life in rehearsal, especially since I’ve always wondered if it could actually be performed by human beings! Realizing that something you’ve written requires tour de force performances by your cast to merely work at all is a bit daunting, but luckily I have been blessed with Alyssa Simon and Ivanna Cullinan, who have gone above and beyond in pulling it off.

It’s exactly the play I intended it to be 21 years ago when it came into my head, but it only just occurred to me in rehearsal recently that while the structure and feeling of the discussion and argument between these two women has been the same in all the time I’ve been writing it, I’ve changed so much in my life that I’ve gone from agreeing with the point of view of one of them to the other – which is probably good, as I always planned to give that one the final, convincing argument of the play, and it was easier to write when I agreed with her.

Gone is running on a double bill with another one-act play of mine, Antrobus, and that bill runs in rep with a new two-act play I’m writing, ObJects. Antrobus took a little less time to write than Gone – I conceived and started it in 1999, and am just finishing it now as we rehearse it – all my old computer files of previous versions vanished in a hard drive crash, so I’ve had to rewrite it from scratch. This has turned out to be a very good thing – it was originally written to replace a production of Sam Shepard’s Action when I couldn’t afford the rights to that, so it was a little too indebted to the set, props, and character breakdown of that play at first. It’s a little piece about a “family” attempting to survive in a future Ice Age, with cabin fever becoming the biggest problem they have to face.

ObJects is still being written around the actors as we rehearse (in fact, I’m avoiding some difficult writing right now in responding to this question), and is a science-fiction satire about class and ethics in the USA about 50 years from now. Dense and hard-to-describe, though I hope it’s fleet-of-foot and funny for the audiences. Somewhere between Shaw and Henry Adams and Network and Brazil, I hope.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  Besides the three original plays opening in August, my longer-term plans for next August are for the third installment in my dance-theatre series Invisible Republic. The previous parts were That’s What We’re Here For in 2006 (mostly theatre, some dance), Everything Must Go in 2008 (about even dance/theatre) and this new untitled one for next year (more dance, less theatre). This is a series about how certain behind-the-scenes forces work in the USA (thus far, Propaganda, Advertising, and next, Branding) told through vigorous physicality and stream-of-consciousness monologues. I will also probably write another original play to accompany this, but I won’t know until early next year what that will be. I usually go away to visit family at the start of each year and decompress, and look at the world and think about, “What shows does THIS year seem to require?” until it comes to me, so I have no idea what 2012 will bring until I get there.

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 actually remember coming in to Kindergarten the day after seeing Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and forcing all the other kids, whether they had seen in or not, to reenact the film with me – with me in the role of Willy Wonka, of course (as well as “directing”). It was only last year, as I was creating my wedding as a piece of theatre at The Brick, that it struck me that I’ve been trying to become Willy Wonka ever since, but with my plays as my treats instead of chocolate.

Of course, after I mentioned this in the wedding-play, my friend Tim Cusack – a great actor/director – corrected me, saying I wasn’t trying to give everyone delicious new chocolates with my work, but odd new combinations of strange extant flavors that make people go “Ewww” when they see them, but then they try them, and they love them. Yeah, that sounds more accurate.

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

A:  Less fear. The atmosphere of terror sometimes amazes me. On a grand scale, the constant debate and concern over Theatre’s “place” in the country, or world, or in the Arts, or in Society, or what have you, is tiresome, pointless, self-indulgent, and makes us all look like scared rabbits. But in general, every action by so many people in the Theatre seems to be dictated by fear – fear of “failure” (whatever that is; your definition may vary) paralyzes so many people in our community from taking true steps forward and big risks all the damned time, that what the Work needs – the most important thing – seems to get lost in the shuffle of what everyone else is thinking that everything else “needs.”

Of course, I’m rather a lucky person in a kind of ivory tower situation, so it’s very very easy for me to talk about not having fear – failure in my work will not remove a roof from my head nor food from my table. Still, I feel so much of the community constantly looking at everything around the Work we should be doing more than the actual Work, as if it were merely an adjunct to a life-supporting system we all need rather than the cause for that system to exist in the first place.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Richard Foreman and Robert Wilson are at the top, no doubt, in terms of artists whose work I’ve been able to see and enjoy for years as it happens. From the past, Shakespeare and Beckett are my favorites and no one else comes near. At one time, now that I think of it, Peter Barnes was very important to me, and while his work doesn’t touch me the way it once did, I can still access those feelings easily with great pleasure (and I feel like I see his influence showing up more and more). At one time, when I despaired of finding any new playwriting interesting, finding Mac Wellman and Len Jenkin and Jeffrey M. Jones did a lot to excite me again. And Sarah Kane, though not as strong on many re-readings, gave me a serious kick in the pants when I finally read her collected work.

Spending most of my life wanting to make movies means that most of my creative heroes have been filmmakers, so I should mention Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick, Jean-Luc Godard, David Lynch, Nicolas Roeg, Peter Greenaway, Ken Russell, and Powell & Pressburger, whose filmic styles have made me search for theatrical equivalents. And from literature, yes, Joyce, Nabokov, Hammett, Sontag, John Berger, William S. Burroughs, and a slew of others (currently, the spirit of the very-much-alive Samuel R. Delany is hanging around over my shoulder as I write the new plays . . .).

My real theatrical heroes, however, are the people who have been working in the Indie Theatre community of NYC with great devotion for years and years. We all know where the real work is happening.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Something I haven’t seen before that could only possibly work as a piece of theatre – moving it into any other art form, or even just trying to describe it, would be so reductive of the work as to be completely ridiculous. And seeing someone pull off the seemingly impossible in casually miraculous manner is an especial joy when it happens

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

A:  Learn everything you can about all aspects of the form – but this is what I say to anyone interested in anything to do with Theatre. Learn all you can about acting, directing, all forms of design – all of it will make you a better writer within the form. And learn all the supposed rules but don’t allow yourself to be hampered by them, especially if it means losing any part of your own distinctive voice. And see lots and lots of theatre, with kindly eyes. Even in the horrifying, look for what works. You’ll have a use for it.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  THE COLLISIONWORKS 2011: At The Ends (3 Terminal Plays/3 Ultimate Plays), which consists of the two-act play ObJects running in rep with the double-bill of one-acts Antrobus & Gone, will be opening on August 11 at The Brick and running through August 28. Information on the shows and tickets is available at The Brick’s website, www.bricktheater.com, and also on the Facebook pages for each show:

ObJects: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=230287530325852
Antrobus: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=247747448569676
Gone: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=203131493070208

Places I have visited or lived since leaving NYC in '08

Minneapolis, MN
Independence, KS
Tulsa, OK
New York, NY
Atlanta, GA
Outer Banks, NC
Charleston, SC
Asheville, NC
Savannah, GA
Las Vegas, NV
East Haddam, CT
Little Pond, PA
Anaheim/Yorba Linda, CA
London, England
Philadelphia, PA
North Dartmouth, MA
San Francisco, CA
Chicago, IL
New Orleans, LA
Bloomington, IN
Lewisburg, WV
Croton On Hudson, NY
Boston, MA
Los Angeles, CA
Charlottesville, VA
Cape Girardeau, MO
Maynardville, TN
St. Louis, MO
Montreal, Quebec
Seattle, WA

Next: Ft. Myers, FL
Los Angeles/Big Bear, CA
Philadelphia again
and we are moving back to Brooklyn in Aug

I Interview Playwrights Part 370: Monica Byrne

Monica Byrne

Hometown:  Annville, Pennsylvania. A sweet little college town.

Current Town:  Durham, North Carolina. A young artist’s paradise.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I'm working on What Every Girl Should Know, a commission for Little Green Pig. I'm taking an oblique approach to Margaret Sanger, the birth control pioneer--telling how her (badass) exploits inspire five young women imprisoned in a reformatory. They start making up an elaborate fantasy life where they travel the world, take lovers at will, and assassinate their enemies; all of which is a defense against their feelings of bleakness and helplessness. I keep trying to wrap my head around what life was like for women before birth control. They just didn't have any control over their bodies, short of total abstinence, which itself was not completely under their control. Who could blame them for wanting to escape? Or even die?

Recently, I was so inspired by the touring production of Black Watch, because it used so many media: gesture, song, music, dance, image, text. So What Every Girl Should Know will be very multi-channel in that way. We're going to shoot silent movies, hire a modern dance choreographer, and use music from the Los Angeles rock scene, circa 1989. I chose that genre because I started listening to Jane's Addiction right around age 13--the age of my characters--and their music conveys that adolescent feeling of urgency.

After that, I have collaborations with Jeff McIntyre and Lori Mannette, a screenplay about the first human mission to Mars, and whatever else I dream up in the meantime. I’m thrilled!

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

A:  When I was fourteen, I was cast in my high school’s production of Godspell. There was one moment during the production--lying flat on my back, staring up into a red light--when I would “check in” with myself every night: “How am I?” And every night the answer was, “I am so happy!” It was this conviction that steered me back to art after a decade-long detour into science. Research didn’t make me happy. Art did. To this day, there’s nothing else I’d rather do.

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

A:  I wish the American theater community had a more international orientation. There is so much to learn from other cultures’ conceptions of performance. But, like with literature, it seems like we’re only in conversation with ourselves, and the signs of inbreeding are showing.

Q:  
Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  First, one you all know: Martin McDonagh. When I read a play of his, I can tell he had a blast writing it. That's a quality I always look for. Is the author enjoying herself? I think it's a hugely underrated quality. And that doesn't mean the work is shallow; The Pillowman is very dark and profound. But yet, it's an absolute joy to watch. I love that paradox.

Second, two you probably don't know, but should: Jay O'Berski and Dana Marks. They're the Co-Directors of  Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern, a small company in Durham that’s been doing white-hot theater for years. LGP brings in artists from every field--productions regularly feature singers, painters, dancers and filmmakers. They always take big, interesting risks--nontraditional spaces, new play commissions, sharp experimental scripts. Looking over their season is like being seated at an exotic buffet. Even if you don’t enjoy every dish, you will most assuredly enjoy trying every dish. And that’s the kind of theater that excites me: the kind that makes me scream and laugh and screw up my face in total bafflement. LGP does that to me every time.

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

A:  It’s really simple, which means it’s the hardest advice of all: write every day and read every day. I find so many playwrights are looking for silver bullets. But it really just comes down to practice--Art Tatum’s 30,000 hours, John and Paul in Hamburg, and all that.

Also, consume everything. Not just theater. I recently made a list of my top hundred artistic influences, and only four-and-a-half of them were playwrights. (The half, Aaron Sorkin, only sort of counts as a playwright.) Inspiration comes from everywhere, and it will only make your work richer.

Q:  Plugs:

A:  My site is here, which also links to my blog. Come say hello!

I Interview Playwrights Part 369: Don Nguyen

Don Nguyen

Hometown: Lincoln, Nebraska

Current Town: Astoria, Queens Baby!

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  What am I working on now?

I just finished a first draft of my sign language play called SOUND for the Civilian's R&D group. It's about a deaf couple dealing with the difficult decision of getting a cochlear implant and Alexander Graham Bell's struggle to find a cure for deafness.

This summer I've got three projects I'm working on. I'm one of the writers (along with Josh Koenisberg and Sarah Burgess) for The Living Newspaper, and we'll be up at the Tofte Lake retreat in July working on a new show. I'm also working on rewrites for RED FLAMBOYANT, a play about Vietnamese women living with AIDS, who summon ancient female warriors from the past. I'll be developing that play at the Ojai Playwrights Conference in August. I'm also working on a play about my father's life in Vietnam. It's called THE MAN FROM SAIGON, and I'll have a reading of that sometime in the fall hopefully for Naked Angels. I say hopefully because I've had to postpone the reading several times already. It's my one play that I just can't seem to ever finish. No one else has that problem, right?

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

A:  The summer after my freshman year in college, I took a poetry class for easy credits. I wrote about my friends farting in my car. It was titled "The Shitless Echo." When I shared it in class, my professor, after a very long pause, said "If I were a foreigner and I came to this country and I had never read any poetry before in my life, and I read this piece, I would in fact...consider this poetry." It was a strange compliment and it made me want to write even more because I can accept strange compliments so much easier than I can regular compliments.

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

A:  We need to find a way to make theater a basic human need. Like if you don't go see at least three plays a month, you die.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Tony Kushner for his audacious writing, Martin McDonagh for his cutting humor, dialogue and good ol' yarn spinning (Pillowman, Lt. of Inishmore), Christopher Durang for writing The Marriage of Bette and Boo, the funniest saddest play ever. Robert Schenkkan for writing The Kentucky Cycle, epic yet intimate. David Henry Hwang for writing M. Butterfly, Yellowface and the upcoming Chinglish. Elevator Repair Service for doing Gatz. It was the longest and one of the most rewarding times I've spent in a theatre. Annie Baker for writing Circle Mirror Transformation and The Aliens. She says so much with the minimum amount of text. Sarah Ruhl for writing Eurydice. I saw that show twice. Kristoffer Diaz for writing The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Diety. I saw that show three times! Rajiv Joseph for writing Huck and Holden and Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo. Arthur Miller for writing After the Fall. Bertie Brecht for Caucasian Chalk Circle and Good Woman of Szechaun. Horton Foote for his deceptively simple yet elegant plays. The Orphans' Home Cycle at the Signature was a theatrical masterpiece. David Mamet for writing Glengarry Glen Ross. Richard Nash for writing The Rainmaker. Also anyone who works in Literary departments of theaters, because of the way they champion playwrights. Liz Frankel from The Public and Annah Feinberg from LCT3 and The Civilians, just to name a few. Sadly I'm leaving out a lot of other heroes.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The kind that tries new things and isn't afraid of falling on it's face. I'm talking about Spider-Man the Musical of course. Seriously though, I admire anyone who has the audacity to do something that's never been done before, and you cannot deny the fact that the creators of Spider-Man did just that on many different levels. Or maybe I just like things that fly on stage? Like Angels in America and Peter Pan. Come to think of it, even my own play Red Flamboyant has flying in it. Yeah, I like flying.

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

A:  I love this question because I'm just starting out myself, so fair warning, whatever advice I give could be deemed haphazard by anyone who takes it. That being said, wiser men and women on this blog have spoken about the importance of relationships. My agent uses the term "Grow your garden." I absolutely agree with them. These relationships that you will build throughout your career just might be the most important thing you do. It may even save your life one day. I give you exhibit A:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A042J0IDQK4

Read this if you were too lazy to click on the link:
It was an amazing video of a colony of fire ants in a flood, who learned to lock their legs together to form a makeshift life raft in order to survive. It was amazing...and you missed it.

Read this if you watched the video:

Wasn't that an amazing video? I know, I'm glad I didn't skip over the video too! Wow, my life is so full right now.

This video proves my point that you need a team/tribe/circle of champions that believe in each other and are willing to lock legs and help each other get to the next moment in what will hopefully be a long and fruitful journey.

Also, go see shows. If not to support other artists, then for entirely selfish reasons. I can't tell you how many times I've sat in a theater and worked out my own story problems while watching a show. Something about sitting in a theater and having a visceral reaction to what's going on, it really does jolt all the hundred monkeys and typewriters sitting in your frontal lobe.

Also, don't be afraid to use...the ellipses. It is awesome and will make your actors super happy because they'll take it as a sign to really emote or think...longer...before speaking. Also, literary managers love this and will consider you a true pro for using it in your scripts.

My last piece of advice is probably the most important. Be genuinely happy for your fellow artists. It is not a competition. It's a journey for all of us. Champion each other. Advocate for each other. And for God's sake man...clap for each other!

Q:  Plugs

A:  If there's anyone in the LA area, my play RED FLAMBOYANT will have a reading up at Ojai on August 12th. You can find all pertinent info here: http://ojaiplays.com.

Also, friend and fellow playwright Josh Koenigsberg's play Herman Kline's Midlife Crisis will go into production August 14.

Also check out The Public Theater Emerging Writers Group, The Civilians, The Ma-Yi Writers Lab, The Pack, the 52nd Street Project, and PigPen Theatre Co.

I Interview Playwrights Part 368: Dana Lynn Formby

Dana Lynn Formby

Hometown: Cheyenne Wyoming

Current Town: Chicago Illinois



Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I am currently working on rewrites for Corazón de Manzana that will be starting previews August 20th of this year. I am also working on a rewrite of my play American Beauty Shop. 


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 brother and I pulled our bow and arrows on each other in our shooting range in the back yard. We were about four feet from each other. Dad had to talk us down. I guess this memory explains a lot about my writing because we were laughing together a few seconds before and ready to kill each other in that next moment. Dad took the shooting range down that afternoon.


Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Charles Smith for being my mentor, and for writing such palpable disturbing images in his plays. Lynn Nottage for her ability to find beauty in dark places.



Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A;  Inexpensive and down to earth. I come from a Blue Collar Background and was not raised to go to the theatre. When I see a show my folks would love, that makes me happy.



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


A:  You have to tell the critic in your brain to go get a bag of chips while you write. He can come back later and tell you stuff, but he shouldn’t be there while you are creating. 


Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My play Corazón de Manzana opens at the DCA Store Front theatre on August 26th and runs through September 26th. Here is a link
http://www.dcatheater.org/shows/show/corazon_de_manzana/


I Interview Playwrights Part 367: Dennis Miles

Dennis Miles

Hometown: Santiago, Cuba

Current Town: Silverlake (a neighborhood west of Downtown Los Angeles)

Q:  What are you working on now? 

A:  I have a play idea about a woman whose lover will not marry her and she plots an elaborate revenge.

Q:  How would you characterize the LA theater scene? 

A:  Hit and Miss, mostly miss.  The acting, I find, is almost always good because LA attracts the best theater actors from throughout the country. They come here hoping to act commercially. While they wait, they theater act and that's just great for LA audiences.  The writing is very poor, although  I love Justin Tanner.  Better to see some dusty jewel from Europe or something revived that has survived the test of time, than risk our homegrown crop of scribes.  I often think that exceptional playwrighting is a rare gift indeed.  I love our storefront theaters, and that's what I support.  I stay away from "professional" theater. Leaves me cold. I don't want my art to be ironed out and polished and small theater in LA certainly gives me that a lot.   We have some really great companies, among them:  Anteus, Noise Within, Theater of Note (though not currently), Rude Gorilla Theater, though I haven't seen anything of theirs for a while.  A lot of the time, because of lack of money, I would guess, the set designs and custumes are rudimentary, and attention to the detail is rare.  Still and all, small theater is my art form and, as long as it's not a one person show, I'll go see almost anything that catches my interest and often, theater in LA rewards me handsomely. 

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

A:  When I was 11 or so a boy born in Panama moved into my neighborhood.  He was the most aware person I've ever met and he woke me up.  He had enormous curiosity and would see EVERYTHING in town and he'd drag me along.  I learn about theater, movies, music, poetry and literature from him.  His name is Joaquin Baquero. He started a literary club that he called Club Minerva and gave us all, there were 3 of us besides him originally, the names of Greek gods!  I was Mercury.  We would give one another assignments for writing and at the next Saturday meeting we would read what we had come up with.  I started writing then and haven't stopped, pretty much, until now.

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

A:  Those awful announcements at the beginning of the performance.  No, seriously, I'd forbid friends from laughing too loudly, and inapropriately,  when they come see their friends. Ah, I don't know.  I'd encourage writers not to come up with stuff that's obtuse for obtuseness sake.  (You can't do Godot again, no matter how well you try to disguise it)  I'd also insist that time not be broken up unless it makes the story more interesting, which usually, always, is not the case.  Well, that's several things.  But I don't have one huge complaint about theater.  One thing I would like to change about LA theater is to make more of us attend our theaters. I always thought that if small theaters advertised at all our community colleges and high schools, let's say, we could get more people to come see our work.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes? 

A:  Shakespeare, Chekov, Ionesco, Albee, (Virginia Wolf only), Whoever wrote The Apollo of Bellac, Brecht (Mother Courage and Galileo), Lorca (The House of Bernarda Alba).  Beckett. 

Q:  What kind of theater excites you? 

A:  Simple, clear, focus on the emotional human, great language, great images, subtle acting (no screaming).

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

A:  I don't have any.  I don't listen to advice myself, so I do my best not to tell people what might work for them.  Artistic writing is an organic endeavor, it is one's life, there's no advice for living out your life, artistic writing is a natural emanation of one's experiences and one's singular mind.