I Interview Playwrights Part 384: Jeff Talbott

Jeff Talbott

Hometown: Kimball, Nebraska

Current Town: Sunnyside, Queens, NYC

Q:  Tell me about The Submission.

A:  Hm. The Submission is a play about a guy who has a lot to learn. Hopefully. It's a play about where we are right now and conversations we should be having about how we can maybe be in a better place. Hopefully. It's a comedy for awhile, and then not a comedy at all. It's a play about a friendship and a play about being young and sure that you're right, sure that you're a good person and sure that the world is going to get all of that. And learning that none of that is 100% true. Or true at all. Hopefully.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I just finished drafts of two new plays, one is a workplace comedy (comedy? hm. well...) about how little we know each other, and the other is a comedy about Alzheimer's and how we build a family. I am taking notes on something new that I think is about high school teachers. And something that I think will be about adoption. At least right now I think that's what they will be about.

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

A:  I think acting informs my writing in a lot of ways, but probably the purest way is I write fairly blankly about what I think an actor is doing. I only write what they say (for the most part - obviously I have opinions about how it gets played out, and I use stage directions when I need to, but sparingly). Because my favorite part of being an actor is making up the story in my head, privately - so as a writer I want to make sure there's a strong template so an actor can do that - can interpret - without a heavy hand from me. Same for the director. It's fun to watch people figure out their own way in, and then to get to respond only if it seems to not be helping the story. And writing influencing my acting? Hm. I think it has made me much more aware of how hard every single syallable is to get right, so I try to honor that as an actor. I was always a big verbatim guy, but writing has only strengthened that.

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

A:  Wow. I dunno. I guess I'll tell this one. When I was in high school, we did The Odd Couple. I played Felix. I come from a very small town, and we had limited resources with which to produce plays. So the entire set was made up of furniture from the drama club coach's house (it's important to note we had a different drama coach each year I was in high school - it was a job nobody wanted). We did two performances and at the end of the first one we were all in the cafeteria and I realized the coach/director wasn't there, so I went back to the auditorium to get her and found her sitting on the set, in the middle of her furniture, quietly weeping. And she said to go back the party, she'd be there later. I think what that taught me is that there's a cost to what we do, and I try to honor that, or remember it, when I do it. Or it could've just been that she (a) missed her funiture, (b) hated us, (c) hated her life, (d) hated the play or some combo platter of the above. But in retrospect for me, I made it a life lesson about what we do. Not because I'm deep, just because I never forgot it.

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

A:  It would cost less to see (and pay more to do).

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Gee. I have so many. Ibsen was great. It's easy to love Chekhov, but I love Ibsen as much. Less subtle but a lot of punch. If you don't know Little Eyeolf (nobody does), you should. Wow, that guy was great at what he did. I dunno. There are so many great people doing this, and some of them are my friends, so I hate to name names right now - because I'd leave somebody out and I'd feel bad. So I'm sticking with Ibsen for today.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The kind that doesn't bore me. I see a lot, and there's nothing I hate more than middle-of-the-house theatre. You know the kind. The kind that doesn't swing for the fences, just swings to get on base. I'd much rather see a terrible, awful, unendurable failure that is trying to do something than a safe, boring nothing that only wants to please.

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

A:  Write. It's the most uninspired advice in the world, only because it's good advice. Write. And get friends together to hear what you wrote. And then go home and write some more. It's hard, and lonely, and you should try to make it communal when you can. Listen to people, decide who's smart in your life and listen to them. And then go home and write some more. See plays. See as many as you can. And then go home and write some more. And drink a lot of water, because it's good for you.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  The Submission, now through Oct 22 at MCC Theater performing at the Lucille Lortel Theatre on Christopher Street.

I Interview Playwrights Part 383: Deborah Brevoort

Deborah Brevoort

Hometown:  Juneau, Alaska

Current Town:  North Bergen, NJ (New York City, really…)

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Crossing Over, a hip-hop musical set in Amish Country, with composer Stephanie Salzman. The Comfort Team, a new play about military spouses, commissioned by Virginia Stage Company; Steal a Pencil for Me, a holocaust opera based on the book of the same title, with composer Gerald Cohen; and Embedded, a one act opera inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, with composer Patrick Soluri.

I’m finishing up the above four projects and am starting to do research on two new plays that will be set during the Revolutionary War period: Campfollowers, about the battle of the sexes between George Washington and the wives of his troops at Valley Forge, and another play about Martha Washington, for Virginia 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:  I was born into a family of singers. My parents performed in a Gilbert and Sullivan opera company; my brothers were musically talented. I was tone deaf. I write, because I cannot sing.

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

A:  I would make it illegal for any non-profit theatre company to extract future percentages, (i.e., participate in the future earnings) from the new works they produce. They get tax exempt status to do this and it hurts playwrights. Plus, the practice is just plain wrong.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Tennessee Williams; Lorraine Hansberry; Paula Vogel; David Greenspan; Charles Ludlum, Stephen Sondheim.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Virtuosic theatre. Theatre that is bold, theatrical, daring, moving, ruthless and inventive. I love theatre that makes use of style and form. I’m not a huge fan of naturalism or realism, but then again, Lorraine Hansberry is on my list of heroes. But she was ruthless (You know what? I just love theatre—in any style--if it’s done really well!)

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

A:  Don’t give up. It’s the most discouraging thing you could ever choose to do, but it’s possible to make a way in the world for yourself and to cobble together a living. We have enough businessmen and bankers in this country. We need artists. We need you. So write. And don’t stop. Ever.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  If you’re an opera buff, come see Embedded, my Poe opera on Nov. 10 at the De Menna Center for Classical Music.

If you’re in Spain, go see my play The Women of Lockerbie in the Catalan language (Les Dones de Lockerbie) in a wonderful production by Teatre la Dependent in Carcaixent at the Teatre Don Enrique.

And if you’re in Denmark, go see The Poetry of Pizza at the Kalundborg Theatre Society in Kalundborg

Final plug: The Comfort Team will open the Virginia Stage season in Sept 2012, so if you’re in Norfolk, don’t miss it!

 

I Interview Playwrights Part 382: Robert Askins

Rob Askins

Hometown: Cypress, Texas

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about your show coming up at EST.

A:  I wrote this play called Hand to God. It’s about a Christian Puppet Ministry. It’s kind of a horror/sex/religious/comedy/grief play. Margery, played by Geneva Carr, runs the puppet club and her son, played by Steve Boyer, is the star. A while back her husband and his father died. They ain’t doing to well with it. The boy Jason is trying to be good but starts acting out with the puppet. Margey is trying to keep it together too but then bad boy in the club starts making passes at her and… well the puppet gets possessed and… I ain’t gonna spoil it but there’s blood and sex and a burning church.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I wrote a post-apocalyptic kind of Lord of the Rings, kind of Wizard of Oz thing. It’s called Pig Shit and the Frozen City. I’m doing a reading of it this Sunday with Jose Zayas at E.S.T. I’m working on a musical called Dave Koresh Super-Star. I also am putting together a psychopharm coming of age story called Adderal tm.

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

A:  Rent. Real Estate is expensive. Manhattan is stupid. If we was somewhere else where the theatres didn’t cost so much to build run or rent we could do more shows and try more things and make more shit we didn’t know would be good and then the surprise hits would feed an energy and maybe theatre would be on fire again.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I love Sarah Kane. Edward Albee made me want to do this. My Aunt Sally is amazing she builds puppets in Waco, Texas and keeps going it in spite of it all.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Genre mixing high wire acts. Sexy violent dangerous work. Stuff that ain’t been work shopped to death. Plays with a pulse. I want to be there where the feeling is. The feeling that made me want to get into this. That feeling like you don’t know what’s gonna happen and everything is up in the air and if we can just get to the next scene everything is gonna explode, fly apart in the best possible way.

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

A:  Write. Write. Write. Don’t think too much. Don’t plan too much. Take classes from playwrights. Take what you can and then write. You gotta write through your shit. Write through your influences. Write through what you know is hot and keep on writing. Don’t look at the success around you. Don’t look at who is getting the money or praise. When you sit down try and empty the barrel. It is you and the page my friend. You and the page. If you make it great. If they like it great. But in the end you’re writing for you kid and you better be loving what you do.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Come see Hand To God. Opening October 24th Closing November 19st at the Ensemble Studio Theatre.

We’re reading Pig Shit and the Frozen City at EST tomorrow Sunday September 18 @ 6 o’clock with my group Write Club.

On the October 8 I will be doing the first episode of my site-specific brunch serial called All the Little Fishes about working at a Greek restaurant at the Greek restaurant I work at. There will be food and unlimited champagne. The restaurant is Kellari Taverna 44 between 5 & 6 avenues.

Also right now I’m acting in The Tenant with The Woodshed Collective. It is great site-specific fun.

And I have a part in a webseries called The Share written by Emily Chaddick Wiess. Look for that soon.

I Interview Playwrights Part 381: Paul Cohen

Paul Cohen

Hometown: New York City

Current Town: New York City

Q:  Tell me about the Tenant.   How did you all collaborate on this project?

A:  There wasn't a ton of collaboration that I know of between playwrights. There was one very general meeting early on with all of us, but after that we just took our assigned tracks and wrote them, and then the Woodshed Collective took these tracks and formed them into a cohesive whole. This actually made it a lot more fun to watch, because most of the play was completely new to me both times I went to see it.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I've got a play that's been called Untitled Genocide Comedy (that won't be the actual name) that has been bouncing around for a while, and almost got done a few times. There's one based on a Henry James short story. There are various others at various stages of development.

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

A:  In second grade a friend of mine yelled "Vaginas" in the middle of class. Out of nowhere. It actually didn't get a huge laugh, and I didn't think it was funny, but I did think it was a good thing to say. I still like that he went plural rather than singular with it. I guess I learned a lot about the power of words (he wouldn't have gotten in as much trouble if he'd used a different word) and about the power of performance (he wouldn't have gotten in trouble at all if he'd whispered "vaginas" quietly to himself.) Years later (maybe fifth grade) I asked him why he'd done it. He said, "Man, times were different."

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

A:  It would be good if people wanted to watch plays, especially new plays. Let's say 160 million people watch television in the United States on an average night. I would make it so that a quarter of them would want to watch a play (the other 120 million would still watch TV.) This brings up some serious logistical problems, but we'd deal with them.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like good writing and good acting.

Q:  If you had to compare Adam Szymkowicz to a bird which bird would it be?

A:  The Golden Eagle: majestic and cunning.

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

A:  For at least a year work a job that is illegal (doesn't have to be drug-dealing, but something like that.) The situations are inherently dramatic, with lots of vivid characters, plus all the regular officeplace politics. Also there are many excellent writing/theater programs in prison, especially in New York and Massachusetts. I'm pretty sure Tony Kushner killed a guy--but that's taking things too far.

I Interview Playwrights Part 380: Stephen Karam

Stephen Karam 

Hometown: Scranton, PA

Current Town: New York, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m finishing rewrites on Sons of the Prophet, a play that will have its New York premiere in October at Roundabout Theater Company. It’s a dark comedy about a guy coping with chronic pain. More generally, you could call it a comedy about human suffering. It explores the particularly messy portions of our lives – the times in which you find yourself coping with multiple life issues, and before any of them can be resolved – two more show up on your plate.

I’m also working on the libretto to a chamber opera with music by Nico Muhly called Dark Sisters, which runs Nov. 9th – 19th in NYC before moving to Philadelphia in June 2012. I’m also starting to re-write an absurdist farce that takes place in an abandoned hospital called Girl on Girl. The play scares away most people but I’m hoping mount a small production downtown, maybe self-produce with wildly talented friends.

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, and completely closeted, I entered my public high school’s talent show and sang “Last Night of the World” from Miss Saigon in front of the entire student body. Earnestly. With a karaoke tape I purchased with my birthday money. I had thick plastic glasses, mild acne and baggy dress pants. So. That happened. In a more metropolitan city/town it would have been a coming out party. But this was Scranton High School, where I was merely identified as being a tremendous dork. Before I went on stage, I was somehow not burdened by the reality of how I appeared to everyone else. Afterwards I was. I began to take life - and myself - way too seriously. Now I’m trying to get that bravery back – not the courage to belt Bui Doi – but generally speaking, to take more risks as an artist. I mean, it’s only a play.

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

A:  The major non-profits would offer health insurance to writers they produce on their mainstage. The receptionist at a non-profit gets access to insurance, but playwrights aren’t afforded the option of coverage even for the year their play is running. Everyone shies away from this question because it’s tricky - playwrights aren’t staff members, nor do we work a set number of hours a week – so there isn’t an easy solution. But if the non-profits don’t step up to the plate and care enough to make this a priority, I think they’ll receive less and less high-quality plays since many of the best writers are spending 9 months a year writing for television so that they can meet basic financial needs and be able to see doctors.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Williams, Chekhov, Wilder, Shakespeare, Churchill, Orton, Craig Lucas, Paula Vogel, Tony Kushner, Robert Wilson; a handful of newer voices whose work has excited me recently: Melissa James Gibson, Young Jean Lee, Dan LeFranc, Keith Bunin, Annie Baker.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Any kind that moves me. I like being moved. Laughing out loud. I like being scared. I like dance/movement driven work. I like not knowing what’s going to happen next. Feeling like I’ve been gut-punched, it’s all good.

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

A:  Do whatever works for you.

My path in NYC was anchored around a day job that had nothing to do with writing or the arts. For around 7 years I had a permanent 30-hr/week job at a Canadian Law Firm working as a legal assistant. It was a good fit and gave me health insurance. I could leave the job behind when I left the office. It left me the headspace and the energy to create. I opened four plays in seven years in three different cities during that time. Using vacation days!

That being said, most of my colleagues have gone the MFA route. I’m sure I would have loved that experience; I still think about going someday – I love the notion of having the space and time to dream big while also having some sort of solid mentorship. I missed out on all that.

Read as many plays as you can get your hands on. Experience as many other art forms as you can, don’t just read/see plays. I’d also remind writers starting out that many exciting new plays get rejected by subscriber-based theaters. A rejection is not always a reflection of the quality of the work, but sometimes a reflection of the kind of play the subscription-based theater favors.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:

--Sons of the Prophet http://www.roundabouttheatre.org/offbroadway/sonsoftheprophet/

--Dark Sisters http://www.darksistersopera.org/

I Interview Playwrights Part 379: Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig

Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig

Hometown:
I'm not really of a place. But I hope to be someday.

Current Town:
Austin, Texas.

Q:  Tell me about Lidless.

A:  It's a work of speculative drama imagining the consequences of the United States government authorizing the use of the female body in the 'War on Terror,' and specifically, to make a Muslim man stop praying.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I spent the past ten years working on my 'artistic' muscles if you will, and focused too much on that at the expense of other components of what I consider to be a healthy, balanced, vibrant life. The 'writing' work will always be done - I know how to be alone in a room and spend thousands of hours growing an idea into a literary work. What I know less about and am working on is how to not become too cynical or despairing when the work I am doing has a lot of darkness, and how to grow in and maintain human relationships over time. A lot of the theatre-making process is similar to a nomadic childhood - a really intense finite period, and then dispersal. A wise man once told me that you can't make new old friends.

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

A:  I would bankrupt all the media conglomerates and support the emergence of a truly independent media. Then theatre producers wouldn't have to rely on a single reviewer to make or break their shows and could be much braver and bolder in their programming.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  He's not exactly a hero because he is also cynical asshole, but Edward Bernays was a pretty amazing manipulator of the masses and stager of street theatre. I love the way Ariane Mnouchkine works and wish there was a Cartoucherie in Austin.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The kind where systemically oppressed people realize they are performing their oppression in a ritualistic fashion, stop doing that, and build an alternative.

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

A:  Try thinking of yourself as an ecosystem that has it's unique needs and features. Understand what this ecosystem needs to grow and sustain itself over time - not weeks or months, but years and decades. You might have a daily writing practice and largely monastic life. You might travel and do other work for nine months of the year and then have a really focused and intense three months of writing. Try lots of different practices and ways of provoking yourself and expanding your frames, writing, and rewriting. Let go of what isn't working and hold on to what is. Don't think someone else's bizarre idiosyncratic writing ritual is going to work for you - but try it just the same. And stop doing what isn't helping you.

Read "The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property" by Lewis Hyde to get an idea of the range of economic relationships an artist can have to their work. Spend some years outside your culture of origin. Long enough for it to start to seem alien and for its rituals and identity-constructions to seem as constructed as anything you might make for a performance. Pursue a life of downward mobility. Try to be as little a wage-slave as possible so you can spend as much of your time thinking, reading, writing and interacting on your own terms for your own reasons. Don't be afraid to spend two or three years on a play before showing it to anyone. Don't try to be too much of a careerist about it - your work will suffer.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Lidless, the play I described above, is having its New York premiere at the Walkerspace September 20 - October15, produced by Page 73 [www.p73.org] and directed by Tea Alagic. I am honored to collaborate with such an amazing group of theatre artists, and can't wait to see what we collectively create.


www.francesyachucowhig.com

Compulsive Love

We're trying to raise money right now in order to film a web series I wrote.  If everyone who sees this gives three dollars, I'll be funded.  Do you have three dollars to spare?  For 50 cents more, Kevan Tucker the director will kiss you.

http://www.indiegogo.com/Compulsive-Love-1


Compulsive Love loves IndieGoGo from Tim O'Neill on Vimeo.

I Interview Playwrights Part 378: Karen Smith Vastola

Karen Smith Vastola

Hometown: A small town in upstate New York

Current Town: New York, NY

Q:  Tell me about Buried Words.

A:  I began work on the play while in Columbia MFA program. It had a reading at Rattlestick Playwright’s Theatre. More revisions. There was more developmental work done (revisions) at the terraNOVA Collective playwrights group. Accepted by 2011 Fringe Festival. Rehearsed for three weeks under the direction of Johanna Gruenhut. More revisions and new scenes added. It started as an imagined conversation between two grown women remembering childhood events with a mother who evoked a mixture of fascination, fear and anger. These three emotions fuel their imaginations. Ultimately it became about these same two women as children reconsidering the violence of both parents towards themselves and each other through the acting out of past events.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  Most recently, I began work on a play set in a long distance train ride across the US. Time, home, references...are suspended for its travelers. Within a small, crowded space travelers are forced to deal with issues of class, race, and each other’s very different needs. Conflicts, outright clashes, possibly understanding may develop. I am also revising two plays for younger actors. The first called Useless Inc. includes Coco Chanel, Ayn Rand and a time-traveling mannequin set in the old Hollywood and Paris in the early 1900’s. The second is a very loose adaptation of the Pinocchio story set in World War I.

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

A:  A hardscrabble life where one of the options was voluntarily asking for safe haven in an orphanage three blocks from my house. A strict Catholic education that put the both the fear of the retributions of sin and the belief in miracles which kept me on the straight and narrow until I could leave town. A sister who held an imagination and sense of adventure that symbiotically entered my being.

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

A:  A national theatre system that is subsidized by the government, similar to the one in Great Britain, so that all classes of people could afford to buy a ticket and artists who wanted to make theatre could have a place to practice, It happened once in this country as part of WPA in the 1930’s. It put a lot of people back to work, and more Americans across the country, in every region, saw more theatre, then they had ever seen before. Also, an end to all bias- gender, race, sexual orientation, religion and age. It‘s written into the laws for government funding, but a lot of folks ignore it and few challenge those who control the choices. Sorry that’s two things. Writers can’t count.

Q:  
Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Behn, Calderon, Everyman, Schiller, Durrenmatt, Beckett, Genet, Pirandello, Wilder, Williams, O’Neill, Wilson, Pinter, Kane, Bond. Still with us heroes: Albee, Churchill, Kennedy, Guare, Ruhl, Parks, Fornes, Kushner, Adams, Hare, Eno, Gibson, Moses, Machado, Stuart, Koteles, Szymkowicz, Walker, Walsh, Lawson, Cohen, Vourakis, Swedeen, Empfield, Wallace and Wertenbaker.

Q:  

What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Committed. Intense. Truthful. Highly theatrical. Highly Imaginative. Ideas that abound. Anything directed by the Peruvian director, Gisela Cardenas, the French director, Mnouchkine or the American director Johanna Gruenhut. Theatre Complicite, Elevator Repair Service. Abbey Theater, The Civilians, Performance Lab 115, Flux Theatre and watching plays written by all of the previously mentioned theatrical heroes.



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

A:  Write. Write alone and with a weekly group of writers whose opinions you value. Attend Grad school if you can afford it, become homeless, but gifted, and then apply to grad school for scholarships. Send your plays out. Befriend members of your own tribe- actors, directors, stage mangers, etc. If theatre companies don’t want to do your plays, produce them yourselves – on the street, in churches, your studio apartment. Never give up - life for most is long. Believe in your work and keep people close who love you and also believe in your work. Any art is a difficult choice. Persevere and Revise!



Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Go see my play Buried Words at the Kraine Theatre, 85 East 4th Street- August 15, 20, 24, 27 & 28. It’s part of the International New York Fringe Festival.

I Interview Playwrights Part 377: David Grimm

David Grimm

Hometown: Born in Oberlin, Ohio

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Trying to start a new play. Just got back in town from workshopping two new plays: one at Portland Center Stage’s JAW Festival, with director David Esbjornson. It’s called TALES FROM RED VIENNA. The other at the Huntington Theatre in Boston, with director Peter Dubois. That one is about the Hays Production Code in Hollywood in 1934 and its called THEY DON’T MAKE ‘EM LIKE THAT NO MORE. I’ve also been working on my first musical for the past two years with Harry Connick Jr writing the music and George C Wolfe attached to direct. Trying to develop a couple other musical projects. Oh and adapting an old pre-code movie for the stage for drag queen, Varla Jean Merman.

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

A:  For six formative years of my upbringing, I lived in Israel. When I was in the third grade, I developed a crush on Karen, one of the popular girls. I desperately wanted to be her friend. To be accepted. To be one of the cool kids. I was terrified of approaching her, for fear of being rejected.

Somehow, I got it into my head that the ideal way to share my feelings with Karen would be through writing her a note, rather than in person. I’m not sure why but I blame my education in classical literature.

Anyway -- I wrote the note and, during recess, slipped it onto her desk. Immediately I ran outside and did my best to act nonchalant and casual. However, I soon became aware that the popular girls had gathered like swarm of buzzing bees, whispering together heatedly and pointing in my direction. Had they all read my note? My face flushed with shame but I kept up the act.

Back in class, Karen had vanished and no one seemed to know where. When the teacher (a particularly sadistic young woman in a mini-skirt, platform shoes, and a beehive) inquired as to Karen’s whereabouts, one of the nastier girls chimed in with sing-song cruelty: “David left a note on her desk and she went home crying.”

Crying? How could that be? Had my words of affection and adulation been so traumatic to her as to bring her to tears? Was the prospect of my friendship so horrible to contemplate? What had I done?

Cruella (I don’t remember the teacher’s name) sent me out to find Karen and bring her back.

Standing at a dusty crossroads in the middle of nowhere (the town was still being built and carved out of the dry desert land), I had no idea in which direction Karen had gone. I returned to the classroom a failure. A shamed failure, at that. But Cruella wasn’t done with me. Having failed to bring Karen back, I was to stand before the whole class (40-45 students) and tell everyone what horrible thing I’d written to her to cause her such distress. I stood there, but wouldn’t speak.

That was the first time I realized the power of the written word. It was also the first time something I’d written got me in trouble. I’ve been doing some version of that ever since.

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

A:  Only ONE? Well then, I’d change the ticket prices to make it affordable. I hate that theatre in America is the privilege of the upper classes, as opposed to the art of the masses. I hate that it speaks to one socio-economic bracket and ends up saying the same thing over and over to them, preaching to the choir.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Marlowe for putting free verse on the stage; Shakespeare for eclipsing him; Moliere for poking at hypocrisy; Wycherley for doing it in English; Wilde for his wit; Orton for his naughtiness; John Guare for making it American.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theatre of language and ideas. Theatre of scope and ambition. The collective theatrical imagination gets smaller as the filmic imagination expands. Why is this? Of course, there’s the economic considerations, but is that the complete answer? Have we put a price tag on our imagination? What a shameful turn of events if that is so.

I love theatre that dares. I love theatre that has epic size and consequences and good stories. A feast for the ears as well as the minds and the eyes.

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

A:  Read plays.

For quite a few years now, I’ve been teaching playwriting. Yale School of Drama, Brown University, Columbia University, and now at the Dramatic Writing Program at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. It continues to amaze me how poorly read so many graduate playwriting students are. This past year, I had a student who had never read a play before being accepted into the program.

Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Writing a play is not only a communication between artist and audience, but between the writer and his/her fellow writers. It is a response to what has come before. The more you read, the more you understand what others have tried, and the more there is to respond to. Read plays, dammit.

I Interview Playwrights Part 376: Claire Moodey

Claire Moodey

Hometown: Erie, PA

Current Town: Brooklyn

Q: Tell me about < the invisible draft >

A: < the invisible draft > is a play I describe as a radio play silent movie. There are two characters: Our Man of the World, a silent movie, and the Girl with a Backpack, a radio play, who interact in a space between reality and its representation. Their scenes blossom into stop-motion animations inspired by Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. So what that boils down to is a non-narrative multi-media exploration of human experience, specifically the necessity of translating that experience in order to communicate. How's that for a mouthful?

I first started daydreaming about doing a project based on Calvino's book almost four years ago. When I first thought about the piece, I believed it was an art installation with some meandering actors or puppeteers of installation pieces not unlike Punchdrunk's Tunnel 228 which was in an old Tube station in London a couple years ago. About a year and half ago, I started writing and suddenly a lot of text started to congeal around the same set of ideas and then move further away from Calvino's book. Voice & Vision Theater, headed by Jean Wagner, has been incredibly supportive as I've developed this, my first play. Jean suggested I take a class with playwright Lisa d'Amour and then set me up with Saviana Stanescu through V&V's new mentorship program. These are both artists whom I admire and respect tremendously whose input on the show has been invaluable.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  This show has been pretty much consuming my time in the last couple weeks, but I have a some other ideas which are itching to get out. One of them has to do with color theory and Schubert, which is all I want to say about it just yet! I'll be headed up to Vermont for the last week of performance at Bread and Puppet Theater this summer after closes, which I am looking forward to, and I hope to do some more performing and lighting work this fall.

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 first got into theater when I was about nine and my brother Sam, who is now puppeteering in my show, was an Oompa Loompa in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" at the Erie Playhouse. I went to see the show and spent the time really jealous that I wasn't onstage and humming along with Willy Wonka's song "A Touch of Magic". I had a huge crush on Willy Wonka and then auditioned with my brother for "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" a couple months later and have been hooked ever since. I'm not sure what that story says about me, but I think it is funny!

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

A:  I would make it less expensive-I think as humans we need art, we need forms of expression and play which theater makes available in a unique way. When this medium is inaccessible due to cost, I think audiences disengage, the work suffers, and we all miss out on an opportunity to come together as a community and participate in a ritual of culture, which helps us to digest our world and lives on several levels.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Samuel Beckett, JoAnne Akalaitis, Mabou Mines, Dario Fo, Dimiter Gotscheff, Christoff Marthaler, the woman who played Emilia Galotti in Thalmeier's production, the list goes on...

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I am most excited by watching theater in languages I don't entirely understand. Or understand near fluently, but not quite. It opens you up to rhythms and the musicality of the stage, the imagery in a different way; I think differently when not using English and that has the possibility of making me more acutely aware of some visceral responses which sometimes I ignore. This is also part of my interest in highly physical clown and puppet theater. I like the experience to be immersive in some way, whether or not that means you walk around and interact with the players is irrelevant.

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

A:  Write a lot, dream a lot, and don't be afraid to ask questions of just about anyone. Both seek things out and let them come to you. That's what I tell myself anyway! Any advice for me?

Q:  Plugs, please:

A: < the invisible draft > opens tomorrow at Theater for the New City's Dream Up Festival and plays through next Saturday, the 20th! My stellar team of collaborators and the staff at TNC have been working tirelessly on what I believe is a beautiful production. Jonah Rosenberg has been working on the project with me for about nine months, brainstorming and engineering the sonic world of the Girl with a Backpack, played by Briana Pozner. Lotte Marie Allen, a print-maker and animator, joined the project this past spring before the workshop at Theater for the New City's Scratch Night and her vision has been invaluable to the development of the visual world of the play. Both of them are outstanding artists, as is Matteo Paoloni, the Roman actor playing Our Man of the World who has helped generate a lot of ideas in rehearsal. And this summer, Milo Cramer, Harriett Meyer, and my brother Samuel joined as puppeteers. They have been crucial as we've constructed and learned to operate the set, which is made of old moving maps.