I Interview Playwrights Part 389: Taylor Mac

Taylor Mac

Hometown: Stockton, California. Not the land of the sea but the land of tract housing and blending into nothing.

Current Town: New York City and Southfield, Ma

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  A few projects: the libretto for a composed-through musical about the ethics of small government, the philosopher Philippa Foot and her grandfather Grover Cleveland; an all ages play set in an actual mud pit that celebrates failure (and where the entire audience is dressed as frogs); a kitchen-sink drama about the end of men and the changing demographics of our country; and a twenty-four hour concert of the history of popular music.

Q:  How would you describe the process by which you create a new piece?

A:  It's always different but they tend to use pastiche, which can be confusing because pastiche is often associated with work that's hodgepodge or stolen from other sources. My work is about variance. I like to show the full range of who we are as people and the themes I'm discussing in the work. If we're honest great works of art are often in the genre of pastiche: "War and Peace" is a pastiche of romance novel, critical theory, and history. One could make the same argument (and I do) for any Shakespeare play. My plays often squish genre's, styles, and forms together with the hope that by doing so I'll create work that honors (by acknowledging) the past and present but whose goal is to help dream the culture forward.

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

A:  I was just reading Steve Jobs obituary in the Times this morning and when asked about market research he said, "It's not the consumers job to know what they want". I've been trying to get the theater community to recognize this for awhile now. We ask our audience to tell us what kind of theater we should be making way too much. Instead I'd like us to become experts on the needs and wants of humanity. That's our job. A true curiosity and a disciplined exploration of what's under the surface. If we ask the audience what they want, they'll tell us to give them what they know, which keeps the work stuck in tropes, nostalgia, and safety. If we do our job and figure out what our audience needs in the present moment, we dream the culture forward.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Plato, Molière, Shakespeare, Wilde and his sister Wilder (Thorton), Shaw, Rice, Williams, Kondoleon, Ludlum, Eichelberger, Papp, and Harry Hayes are the ones whose work has inspired me but who I never met. Elizabeth Swados, Morgan Jenness, Justin Bond, Michael Warren Powell, Lanford Wilson, Romulus Linney, Mercedes Ruehl, Bill Irwin, Karen Finley, Sam Shepard, Naomi Wallace, Penny Arcade, and David Greenspan are the ones who I've been taught by, encountered, and/or admired from a distance.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  When theater reveals something I didn't know about the world, my understanding of myself and the others around me; when it reminds me of something I'd forgotten about the world, myself and others around me; and when it creates a community out of the audience and players, allows them to be present in the moment and inspires them to further the conversation the work put forth.

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

A:  Write, write, write. Make, make, make. Share, share, share. And whatever you do, don't ask for permission to be creative.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Three upcoming concerts at Joe's Pub in NYC (Oct 16th, Oct 23rd, and Nov 6th) and two upcoming productions of "The Lily's Revenge" (one in New Orleans in the spring of 2012 and one in Edinburgh in August of 2012).

I Interview Playwrights Part 388: Sharyn Rothstein

Sharyn Rothstein

Hometown: Avon, CT

Current Town: NYC

Q:  Tell me about The Invested.

A:  As the economy started imploding (the first time), I noticed that the few women who were at the top of major Wall Street banks and firms seemed to be losing or walking away from their jobs. Whistleblowers tend to disproportionately be women, so I thought that was an interesting correlation – one that nobody seemed to be talking about.

I was also interested in generational differences when it comes to money and Wall Street – when I graduated college in 2003 it felt like anybody, even a playwright with a sociology degree, could go get a job at a hedge fund and make ridiculous amounts of money. Obviously, there was a reason it felt that way.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  My newest play is a three-person comedy about amateur actors putting on a historical melodrama about Alexander Hamilton in an Applebee’s. I’ve also been working on a musical comedy based on the biblical story of Esther for a couple of years now… we’ll be workshopping that again soon. My play March, about two teenagers who meet on an online fantasy game, will be produced in April.

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 other kid’s parents were telling them – or telling them without telling them – that they had to pursue something practical, my amazing mother (also a writer) told me, “Somebody has to be Steven Speilberg.”

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

A:  The virgin/whore problem with new plays. Every theater only wants to produce a world premiere, so once a play has been produced – unless it’s gotten tremendous press – it basically becomes the sad girl at the semi-formal who nobody will dance with anymore. It’s unfair to writers, who want to see their work produced as much as possible, and it’s unfair to theaters, who are missing out on wonderful plays that have had the benefit of going through a production.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I guess I’m old school: I love well-structured plays with complex characters and some funny to them, even if they’re not comedies. I love playwrights who have the guts to put whole, weird, complicated characters on the page and I love directors and actors who aren’t afraid to bring those characters alive.

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

A:  Finding directors you love and trust is just like dating. You’re going to kiss some frogs, but when you find your prince – or princess – hold them tight and never let them go. Find opportunities to work with them. The same goes for actors – your plays will always be better if you know and respect the other artists you’re working with.

And if you can, find a community. I’ve been very lucky to be a member of Youngblood and Ars Nova Play Group, but if you don’t have access to a group that already exists, start your own. Getting feedback from other writers you trust will make your work better – and hanging out with other playwrights will ensure that you’re never sober for long.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My BFF’s show is at LCT3 next month. All-American by Julia Brownell. It’s a wonderful – and wonderfully funny – play. Check it out.

I Interview Playwrights Part 387: Jon Kern

photo by RJ Tolan
Jon Kern

Hometown: New York (Manhattan)

Current Town: New York (Brooklyn)

Q:  Tell me about We in Silence Hear a Whisper.

A:  We in Silence Hear a Whisper tells the story of a young refugee girl trying to survive in Sudan as she’s pursued by the malevolent Man on a Horse. To do the Hollywood thing, the play is No Country for Old Men meets Alice in Wonderland meets a Nicholas Kristoff NYT column on the genocide in Sudan. My first ideas for the play came in 2004, when I was reading those Kristoff columns. I didn’t begin writing the play until 2008 when I had a deadline for an EST/Youngblood reading. I wanted to see if I could write about something as soul crushing as genocide while still having the elements of good entertainment: humor, action, and empathy. An older draft of the play is responsible for my being awarded a Van Lier Fellowship at New Dramatists, which basically stopped me from quitting play writing. It’s very gratifying to see the play finally get produced [thanks to Red Fern and Melanie Williams] after many, many, many rewrites.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I’m presently working on rewrites for my chopsocky multi-ethnic identity play Tapefaces: Legend of a Kung Fu Master – Season 1 DVD with the director Sherri Barber for Ars Nova’s ANT Fest. I’m waiting around as my agent shops my best full-length Modern Terrorism, or They Who Want to Kill Us and How We Learn to Love Them, which is its own kind of Beckettian work. Currently, I’m helping the playwright Carla Ching hone her play The Sugar House at the Edge of the Wilderness as dramaturg/drinking buddy. Soon, I’m to begin developing a new play with the Civilians R&D Group on internet addiction. I also have an outstanding [as in late] Sloan Commission, which makes it hard for me to look EST’s Graeme Gillis in the eye. And my agent wants me to work on this comedy about a college football so he doesn’t have to try to sell chopsocky multi-ethnic identity plays to a wary off-Broadway 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:  The hardest I ever worked in school – elementary or high school – was on crafting jokes. And I was a nerd. I used to have to double bag my textbooks in two brown Macy’s Cellar bags because my backpack was already packed to the ripping point. The first instance of hard work was in 5th grade, when for parents’ day, I wrote a commercial sketch for Billy Bob’s Bar-b-que Sauce, a parody of the Folger’s crystals commercials where they would surprise customers with the reveal that the coffee they ordered was in fact Folger’s! Replace “Folger’s” with “Billy Bob’s Bar-b-que Sauce,” add a bunch of kids doing over-the-top Southern accents, and you get the idea. It was this moment that I first knew I wanted to be a writer. The second instance of hard work was in senior year of high school when I stayed up all night crafting comedy bits from The New York Times articles for a presentation on The Daily Show. Many years later I found out a friend of mine didn’t believe I wrote the jokes. Accusations of plagiarism: the highest of compliments. From these two experiences I realized the only thing I can conceive worth spending hours and hours of energy and effort to do well is entertaining other people. Everything else, such as making money or being an adult human being, seems unimportant.

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

A:  “Theater” is not a monolith. There are many different kinds of and forms of theater going on, each with their own specific issues to address. I’m not sure there is a single panacea for the multi-faced commercial art known as “theater.” If I had to reach, the one thing I can think of that applies somewhat universally is the lack of well-executed sword fights. Sword fights have been exciting entertainment for millennia. Anything that wishes to label itself as “theater” could stand a few more sword fights. I too am guilty of this.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I could give a list of famous names [Chekhov, Pinter, Churchill] or slightly less famous names [Lloyd Suh, New Dramatists], or seem sentimental and say my parents, whose self-dramatizing nature and emotional neglect truly helped to create most of my characters’ voices. [I love you, Mom and Dad!] But instead I choose to interpret this question with the answer, “My favorite theatrical superhero is Nightcrawler: he could teleport, his appearance made him an outsider, and I believe he quoted from Shakespeare a couple of times in the Alan Davis run on Excalibur.”

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I fell out of my front row seat from laughing when I saw Quinn Bauriedel, Geoff Sobelle, and Trey Lyford’s Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines at Here Arts Center. I also loved, and still think upon, the Foundry Theater’s production of Ariana Reines’s Telephone. The connecting thread between these two shows is lost on me, and I’m inside my own head.

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

A:  Learn to cook. It saves you money, and makes for better parties. Also, don’t be afraid to ask people for assistance, even if you feel they are more successful than you, and don’t get discouraged if they say no. Even when they say no, they wish they could say yes.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  We in Silence Hear a Whisper runs from October 5 - 23 at The Theater at the 14th Street Y, 344 East 14th Street, produced by Red Fern Theater Company. For tickets and showtimes and other such details, go to here: http://redferntheatre.org/p_we_in_silence_hear_a_whisper.asp

Tapefaces: Legend of a Kung Fu Master – Season 1 DVD will be a part of Ars Nova’s ANT Fest on Nov. 15. You can get tickets, and see a disturbing photo, here: http://www.arsnovanyc.com/index.php/lineup/149-tapefaces-legend-of-a-kung-fu-master-season-1-dvd

Carla Ching’s The Sugar House at the Edge of the Wilderness runs from November 8 - December 4 at The Connelly Theater, 220 E 4th St., produced by the Ma-Yi Theater Company. To found out more about this play [which I am proud to be associated with], go here: http://www.ma-yitheatre.org

I Interview Playwrights Part 386: Sylvan Oswald

Photograph by Geoff Green -- geoffgreen.com

Sylvan Oswald

Hometown: Philadelphia

Current Town: Brooklyn

Q:  Tell me about Nightlands.

A:  NIGHTLANDS is the story of two women, a working-class Jewish housewife and an African-American astrologer, whose unlikely bond is tested on the eve of Philadelphia’s 1964 riots. It’s highly fictionalized and stylized but based on the story of how my grandmother learned astrology – she actually studied in the 1970s – but it was still somewhat scandalous. She went on to have her own radio show and teach a bunch of people who are still practicing writing horoscopes for newspapers and such. She made a set of teach-yourself-astrology instructional tapes (soundtrack: “Neptune, the mystic” from Gustav Holst’s The Planets) and sent all her grandchildren astrology tapes on our birthdays – telling us about the months ahead. She’d say amazing things like “make sure no one is trying to hoodwink you.” One or two of her lines made it into the play.

Her teacher was a brilliant woman with expertise in all manner of spiritual subjects including Kabbalah. As part of her apprenticeship, my grandmother would drive her teacher to these astrology conferences in Atlantic City. Can you imagine the sea air, the deep talk. That scene’s for the film adaptation if I could be so lucky.

In writing the play I wrestled a lot with how, as a white writer, to tell this story in its period, with all its taboos, racial strife, and repression, while creating nuanced and complex characters. I spent a lot of time thinking about framing and historical inaccuracy because I was less interested in portraying repressed states than in dramatizing their upheaval.

The production I’m building with Tamilla Woodard, our designers, and New Georges has a feeling of suspending the characters in space and time. It’s set in “a memory of North Philadelphia,” so there’s that sense of that one chair from your grandparents’ house, it’s nubby fabric, and not the whole house. That one radio. Her skirt. Sound and light refract as if reaching us across generations.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  A new play called PROFANITY. I put some of the process images up on my new site (sylvanoswald.com) even though the play is still in the works. It’s about some real estate agents in Philadelphia in the 1950s who are selling land that doesn’t exist. It’s based in part on my shyster great uncles and the neighborhood where my mom grew up, the Logan section of Philadelphia, where all the houses sank into the ground. It’s the last play in my mysteries trilogy with SUN RA and NIGHTLANDS. I’ve been doing all this thinking about self-fashioned spiritualities and how they can be alternately nationalistic, violent, or queer.

I’m also working on a music-theater piece called ZOETROPE with Alec Duffy and Mimi Lien. It’s a song cycle about the increasing boundarylessness of our lives as the realization continues to dawn on most of the country that being an imperial power may be a bad idea – and of course the searchability of all our selves online contributes to this feeling of privacy and sovreignty turned inside out. Living rooms appear in offices, kitchens appear outside, groups of people sleep in the same bed. It’s a cast of seven people, a range of ages, races and ethnicities, and genders. They sing tuneful songs that, if you listen closely, don’t quite make sense. Kind of Gertrude Stein meets musical theater. We’re inspired by Robert Ashley, Meredith Monk, and Einstein on the Beach.

Also, I wrote a very dark and strange play during a recent silent retreat led by Erik Ehn and the Pataphysics crew down in Texas. It was 107 degrees most days.

Q:  Tell me about Play A Journal of Plays.

A:  Jordan Harrison and I started PLAY A JOURNAL OF PLAYS in grad school at Brown in part to process all the incredible experimental writing we were encountering. The other part was suddenly realizing that as emerging artists we were in this awkward bottom-of-the-totem-pole position where we had to ask for things and send away by mail and wait to be anointed or something and that just wasn’t going to be very satisfying or pro-active. Completely out of our control. So we wanted to emerge with an offering of sorts. We wanted to emerge participating, contributing. Already giving.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  In no particular order: Gertrude Stein, Suzan-Lori Parks, Adrienne Kennedy, Paula Vogel, Erik Ehn, Mac Wellman, Jordan Harrison, Karinne Keithley, Anne Washburn, Big Dance Theater, Dan Hurlin.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Emotionally truthful, aesthetically rigorous, politically risky, underrepresented voices and viewpoints, ethically engaged in its choices, visually tuned, physically virtuosic.

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

A:  Don’t wait for something to happen to you. Reach out. Show up. Make friends and take care of them. Make mentors and take care of them. Turn off the internet. Don't rush to understand your writing.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Come see NIGHTLANDS directed by Tamilla Woodard produced by New Georges at HERE running Oct 5-29, opening night Oct 10!

I Interview Playwrights Part 385: Mickey Birnbaum

Mickey Birnbaum

Hometown:  Los Angeles.

Current Town:  Los Angeles.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  A play about backyard wrestling, and another one about the American Revolution that's kind of a cross between "The Romans in Britain" and "Our Town." I'm also starting up as an MFA student this month to earn a writing degree and hopefully embrace the life of an academic in my non-existent free time.

Q:  How does your film work inform your playwriting and vice versa?

A:  The world keeps getting more visual every day, so we better speak its language. When I started writing plays I purposely used movie rhythms -- short scenes, impossibly epic settings -- especially because I am usually trying to write for a relatively young audience that would just as soon be watching movies on their iPhones. Then for a while I got ornery and wrote things that looked marginally more like standard plays, with some unity of time and space. Now, I'm ready to go back to exploding time and space. As far as the film work goes, I'm trying to migrate into more of a TV sensibility, where story flows from character, and language trumps visual.

Q:  How would you describe the LA theater scene?

A:  The most talented people I've ever come across, and some of the most generous and supportive. This being such a big city, full of nooks and crannies, it's sometimes hard to find or just reach some of the best companies doing the most ground-breaking work. Like, it's weird to find a stellar production in a well-equipped waiver theater in a mini-mall on the eastern stretch of Anaheim, but so it goes. Sometimes I think if the community were more centralized, it would thrive more, but who really knows? In any case, theater artists who persevere in the face of a failing economy, public apathy, and lack of institutional support are heroes, as far as I'm concerned. Or maybe that's just the definition of an artist in America, unfortunately.

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

A:  One of my earliest memories is being four years old and standing outside the LA County Courthouse, and my mom telling me I had a new name. She had fled cross-country out of spite to prevent my dad from having visitation after their divorce. She wouldn't talk about him thereafter. It took me 35 years to find him. He was a great guy. A couple years after that name change, my mom and her date (who became my step-dad) took me to see Bob Barker's Marionette Theater. Those are kind of like the north & south poles of my life.

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

A:  Realistically, I'd like to see the larger, more successful institutions nurturing smaller companies and writers with promise. Unrealistically, I'd like to see new plays in every theater in the country, playing to packed houses.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  The usual thugs, Miller, Pinter, Beckett, Thornton Wilder above all. More recently, Franz Xaver Kroetz, Howard Brenton, Philip Ridley, Martin McDonagh, John Steppling, and about a million others. All my colleagues are better writers than I, and thank god I have the opportunity to learn from them. At the risk of playing favorites, Jacqueline Wright's the most fearless playwright I know, and an amazing actress as well. I've worked with her a lot, lucky me.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Where narrative & non-linear collide. Where there is deep, deep feeling. Where realism and surrealism mesh. Where I don't know where the stage ends and I begin.

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

A:  Read Shakespeare. Find a playwright/teacher to learn from, someone whose lineage you want to follow. Think of them as a Shaolin monk, and you the apprentice. Renounce the world, it will not reward you for wanting to be a playwright, and embrace the art. Raise a family, Dig in the ground. Recognize you are mortal. Do not try to write for film or television until you are in your forties and have a voice that is unassailable by the influence of idiots. Be original. If you want to be a genre writer, go immediately to film or television, do not pass go, do not collect the two hundred dollars you would get for your play. If you can't go on, go on. Kick against the pricks. Fail, as often as possible. Be vulnerable. Eat well and exercise. Learn to rest in contradictions. Negative capability is your friend.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Find me among more illustrious company at www.dogear.org.

upcoming for Adam

Hi all,

I have a web series being taped this fall called Compulsive Love that I'm really excited about.  If you can spare a few bucks, I'd really appreciate it.  Every cent helps.  http://www.indiegogo.com/Compulsive-Love-1#team

Next a reading of Elsewhere in Houston Oct 3: http://www.mildredsumbrella.com/mu/Mildreds_Umbrella.html  (this will be the 7th or so reading.  We did a production in Florida a couple months ago that went well and there will be a NYC production this winter.)

A production of Fat Cat Killers in Philly starting October 26.
http://www.flashpointtheatre.org/

More shows coming up I don't have dates for yet-- 2 in LA, 4 more in NYC, one in Las Vegas, one at a college in WI, and one probably in Istanbul.  I'll let you know more when I do.

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.