Here's What I Like

In preparation for my upcoming web series, Compulsive Love, I give you Helen Pellet by the amazing Amy Staats who you will soon see in some episodes of mine.

Genius!

I Interview Playwrights Part 419: Kristen Kosmas

photo by Chris Speed


Kristen Kosmas

Hometown: New Smyrna Beach, Florida

Current Town: Walla Walla, Washington

Q:  Tell me about You, My Mother.

A:  It's a collection of three chamber operas commissioned by The Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf. Brooke O'Harra invited Lisa D'Amour, Karinne Keithley and me each to write a thirty-minute libretto, and we were paired with composers Chaya Czernowin, Brendan Connelly, and Rick Burkhardt, respectively. We were given a set of, I thought, terrifying and perfectly weird restrictions to work with, including the title. We also had to include an animal suit (preferably a gorilla); slides and/or a slide projector; and we were supplied with some very generous and risky personal narratives from members of the company about their own mothers, which we were allowed to incorporate if we chose. It was a great experience. I'd never written an opera before, and it allowed me to work with a kind of restraint that was difficult and exciting. Also, I felt like the luckiest person in the world when I learned I'd be working with Rick Burkhardt. Three Pianos and Storm Still were two of my favorite things I saw last year, or possibly ever, so I can't wait to hear what he's done with and to the text. Brooke is one of my favorite directors, too— Actually, everybody working on the project is really incredible at what they do, so I'm honored to be a part of it.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm working on a play called There There, which will be directed by my long-time friend and collaborator Paul Willis. It was commissioned by PS 122 and will go up at The Chocolate Factory in December. It's a monologue for two actors, a bilingual performance duet that happens simultaneously in English and Russian. It's inspired by the completely unsympathetic character Vassily Vasilyevich Solyony from Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters. He's the one who says he'd fry Natasha's baby up in a frying pan and eat him if it were his child.

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

A:  Hm. Well, I'm thinking right now about how I never liked to play with dolls when I was little. I could never think of anything for them to say to each other. Maybe because I wasn't so interested in the narratives suggested by Ken and Barbie et al. I did, however, very much enjoy setting up dollhouses. I loved making miniature spaces out of shoe boxes and milk crates and that kind of thing, with water beds made out of ziplock bags and stuff like that. The dolls would just lie off to the side on the carpet without any clothes on, but I could spend hours constructing these houses for them. I think this is related somehow to the kind of theater I make, which is as much concerned with space and architecture, construction and arrangement, as it is with any kind of story. Of course, I don't have actors lying around naked on rugs in my plays. And now I'm extremely interested in language, and what it does and what it sounds like. But that came later. Probably when I was about 15 and started listening to Laurie Anderson.

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

A:  I'd like to take away all the props and furniture for a couple of years and see what that would do.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Oh gosh. I have so many. A partial list: Maria Irene Fornes, Anton Chekhov, Mac Wellman, Anne Bogart, Richard Foreman, David Greenspan, Len Jenkin, Elizabeth LeCompte, Karen Finley, Ruth Maleczech, Kate Valk, Spalding Gray, Sam Shepard, Scott Shepherd, Samuel Beckett, Wallace Shawn, Joseph Chaikin, Laurie Anderson, Anne Magnusson, Paul Lazar, Radiohole, Sibyl Kempson, John Kazanjian, Yelena Gluzman, Steve Moore, Rich Maxwell, Will Eno, ERS, Erik Ehn, Daniel Alexander Jones, and weirdly, right now, I'm kind of obsessed with David Mamet. Also all the producers who put the work of those people in front of an audience. The producers are superheroes.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I really like not knowing what's going on. I feel the most excited when I have no idea what's happening or what's being done to me. Playwrights who excite me like that the most lately are Kristina Satter, Julia Jarcho, Greg Moss, and Kate Ryan.

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

A;  Just keep doing it. It's very rewarding if you stick with it. Don't listen to what anyone tells you about what a play should be. Say hello to people. Ask for help.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  If you want to come to Walla Walla, you can see a production of my play Hello Failure, which I'm directing with students at Whitman College in March.

Otherwise, of course, You, My Mother.

I Interview Artistic Directors Part 6: Jim Simpson

Jim Simpson

Hometown: Honolulu, Hawaii

Current Town: New York City

Q:  Tell me about The Flea.

A:  I started the Flea with my wife and friends. Acknowledging that most Off Off Broadway performing artists and their colleagues in design fields receive inadequate pay (a result of the small venue) for their efforts, at least the conditions in which they are essentially volunteering their time and artistry should be excellent. For audiences, a comfortable enough venue so that the adventure occurs in the work- not in the conditions you encounter it in. We’ve run a 2 theater venue for 15 years on White Street in Tribeca.

Q:  How do you create your season?

A:  I deliberately don’t plan too far in advance. I place a big value on “being of our time”- and reflecting what’s going on in the real world. So I like to find a relationship between our immediate lives and the work we do. What we do might not be strictly topical- but it should feel right- for right now. Or at least that’s the challenge that I’ve set for us. In our large theatrical community I also look for what is not going on- if there is a different game to play. To plan a year or two in advance guarantees irrelevancy. Typical institutional theater finds many values in advance planning- but I think that favors the institutional experience, not necessarily what happens between performer and spectator, which is what we’re focused on. As I write this it is early January- and I’m looking for something for the end of this month. (And yes, I am very, very picky.) We have a large young company of resident actors, The Bats, they change throughout a season, and our work often reflects what’s possible (and what’s going on) with them. Some of our best work has resulted from their insights, inspirations and proposals. I believe in young people and place a high value on them. We don’t “develop” work other than actually doing it- so when I read a piece or get interested in something we often chase it down on the spot. Why wait? Although Playwriting is a challenging form, we concentrate on realizing the work, rather than the development of the writing of it. That’s the Playwrights job after all, not ours. In the theater, we learn more by doing, in meeting our audiences than in a closed system. Nuts and bolts wise- I do a lot of reading, a lot of thinking and I hope a fair amount of listening in arriving at what we do. I realize that as an Artistic Director, I’m in a very privileged position with a working venue- so at the Flea, we feel that a dark theater is a shameful one. We do a lot. As a younger man, I spent a lot of time outside looking in at the stalwarts of New York Theater and wondered why they didn’t do more, or offer more opportunity- why so many performing spaces were deliberately kept dark. It bugged me.

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

A:  I was 4 or 5 and coming home from my first Choir Rehearsal at Church, proudly proclaimed to my mother, “I’m a monotone!” Although I developed my musical abilities beyond that early assessment, I realize that many of my values of theatrical performance come from my missionary Church upbringing in Honolulu as much as working with John Raitt, Grotowski or the Yale School of Drama. Although I’m a spiritual atheist New Yorker, I’m also very much a Keiki o ka Aina Congregationalist who favors Spartan settings and the congregation more than the minister’s sermon. This Haole grew up immersed in a Nisei neighborhood with Run Run Shaw movies and Samurai Flicks, surfing and eating Saimin. He's a strange duck who could only come out of that miracle chain of islands in the Pacific.

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

A:  I’d get Equity to value and even more- support what we do Off Off Broadway and to realize their adversarial stance is mystifying and counterproductive. Without our community developing the theater artist of tomorrow, we’ll all be left with just tourist trade work.

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

A:  I’d like to take all money out of the equation. Well, with a 72 and 40 seat venue there’s not much here anyway- so we’re close to that goal.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Good smoking acting- physicality, strength, terrific voices able to ring out and vibrate your soul, smart text, people onstage who look like our New York community- plays which offer me a chance to think about how I’m living my life, the world I’m living in and the possibilities of other worlds.

Q:  What plays or playwrights are you excited about right now?

A:  Right now? Plays written by actors: Greg Keller, Hamish Linklater, Donaldo Preston, Seth Moore. They really, really cook.

Q:  What do you aspire to in your work?

A:  My aspiration/inspiration is to be a theater artist as per Yevgeny Vakhtangov’s example and instructions. I’d like the Flea to be a tiny reflection of Minton’s Playhouse, when Teddy Hill ran it.

Q:  Has your practice changed in the last ten years? Do you see changes in technology and culture changing how you work in the next ten years?

A:  Lately my practice has veered into more literary realistic work- I hope to break back out into more physically exuberant theatrical work in the future. Kabuki is my porn. I’m predisposed against high tech. Usually it means they are hiding something- or not really able to get the human thing going on. I’m also a stone cold Grotowski acolyte- via negativa- Theater is what happens between spectator and actor- sets, lights, projections, video, whatever are extra- rich theater- and often get in the way. It’s not “Green” either. (what a geezer!)

Q:  What advice do you have for theater artists wishing to work at your theater?

A:  If you are an young actor- audition for the Bats- usually in Summer and Fall. If you are a young director- apply for our residency- it’s awesome. If you are a young playwright- come to the serials and insinuate yourself into our community- If you are a young designer apply for a residency. If you have a group- I want at least to meet/correspond with you- I have theaters to fill. If you are a established artist- and have something no one wants to do because it is too “out there” e-mail me.

I Interview Playwrights Part 418: Jennifer Lane

Jennifer Lane

Hometown: Troy, Michigan

Current Town: Astoria, New York

Q:  Tell me about Fizz.

A:  The Fizz Plays are a collection of 10-minute pieces written by the 2012 terraNOVA Groundbreakers Playwriting Group: Krista Knight, Crystal Skillman, Andrea Lepcio, Ken Urban, Matt Olmos and me. We were given the word "fizz" to inspire our plays, and mine is called Tummy Bubbles. It's about a gamer girl who has planned what she thinks is just the perfect night for her and her roommate, but her roommate has other things in mind... It's on Monday, January 16th at the 14th Street Y. More details can be found here. You should come! It's going to be a lot of fun!

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A;  For Groundbreakers, I'm reworking a play I wrote early in Grad school that used to be called Asylum, but is not called that any more. In fact, it is currently for want of a title. It's about women in mental institutions in the past and present and deals with gender stereotyping within the mental health system, as well as the rather tumultuous history of the system itself.

I'm also working on a solo piece called Convergence with actor Avery Pearson and director Calla Videt. I'm really excited about it because it uses video projection and I've never done that before. In fact, I've never written a solo piece before either, so there are a number of firsts for me in this project.

And I'm also working on a play called The Burning Brand, which is inspired by a town (Centralia, PA) that has been on fire since 1962. Like actually on fire. A coal mine has been smoldering steadily under the town for decades now, and yet as of 2010 there were still about a dozen or so people who live there. Fascinating stuff.

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

A:  So, in the 5th grade at the school I went to, they had this thing called the Young Authors Tea. Every year the 5th grade class would write a story and then bind it into a book using cardboard and fabric and staples and tape, and the books would be displayed in the library right alongside the real books. And the students could read them and write comments on them and everything. As a third- and fourth-grader, I read all of the 5th grade books, so I was pretty stoked when it was my turn to write. My story was based on something I read in the newspaper -- because I read the newspaper in the 5th grade -- about a woman who got drunk and took her baby for a walk in the middle of a highway. People tell me my writing is dark. Well, I started young. The kids who read it and left comments said things like, "This is good, but it should have a happy ending." or "I don't understand why a mother would do something like that." Well, kid. Me either. I wrote to figure it out.

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

A:  I would magically make it so that not only was it inexpensive and accessible to all, but all of the artists that worked in it would be able to make a comfortable living. And then I would magically make it so that there was gender parity. Boom. Just like that.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Chuck Mee, Lucy Thurber, Kelly Stuart, Sheila Callaghan, Sarah Ruhl, Stuart Spencer and Robert Murphy -- all such brilliant artists and teachers and people who have touched my life in innumerable ways. But I think the work I come back to the most frequently is that of Sarah Kane and Bertolt Brecht. When I'm stuck, that's who I read. Also, my dear friend Trystan Trazon, whose gift with music and language is what inspired me to write plays in the first place.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Things that use what one of my favorite collaborators (director Jess Smith) calls "Phenomenologically hot" -- running water on stage, for example. I'm also really into interdisciplinary performance right now, and to see authentic and human stories told through various mediums is really exciting to me.

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

A;  I myself am a playwright just starting out, but here's what I can offer from my limited experience: 1) Just ask. People are pretty nice, generally, and if you ask for help you will probably get it. 2) You don't know what you can do until you try it. So apply to that Thing You Think You Probably Won't Get, and write that Play You Think Will Probably Be Too Difficult To Produce. You may surprise yourself. And 3) Don't wait. If no one wants to do your play, do it yourself. Raise money, rent space, and do it. Or do it for free in a park, or read scenes of it form a coffee shop. But do it. And ask someone to help you.

And also? This might sound weird, but get on Twitter and follow the amazing conversations that are happening about theater and new play development. Start with @HowlRound and go from there.

Oh, and have a website. As a lit manager, I love looking at playwright websites -- it's a way that you can assert some control over your professional web presence. Take advantage of that.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: terraNOVA Collective - Fizz Plays, January 16th. And look out for our Groundbreakers Reading Series coming in April, 2012!

Also: The Washington Rogues are doing a reading of my play The Would-Be Room on February 17.

And finally: The Astoria Performing Arts Center has some great programming coming up (I am the literary manager there).

http://jennifer-lane.net

I Interview Playwrights Part 417: Tasha Gordon-Solmon

Tasha Gordon-Solmon

Hometown: Toronto

Current Town: New York

Q:  Tell me about the play you're having read at Dixon Place.

A:  The play is called Golden Water and it’s my biggest, weirdest, most theatrical, most ambitious play. It’s a collage, it has a cast of 10, and it takes place in heightened, magical world. It’s about story telling and identity and Jewish history –in a really twisted way.

I’m really thankful Dixon place is giving it a home. This will be the first reading of it.

It’s big and messy and I honestly have no idea what it’s going to look like, but I’m excited to find out. It’s being directed by the super cool Shira Milikowsky.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I’m writing a new play for the Dramatist Guild Fellows, which is still very fetal. It’s about a wedding. I’m kind of obsessed with weddings right now. They are pure theater. I wrote a short piece for the New Georges Perform-a-Thon this weekend and it also ended up being about a wedding – or someone who faked wedding--or rather, faked a groom for a wedding. I’m really interested in ritual and taboos and characters who are a little delusional - and weddings have all of that.

I just finished a play I’ve been working for a while called You, Me, Su-Yi and the Kitchen Sink. It’s about a 16 year old who returns home from a semester abroad to a very different family than the one she’d left, including a newly adopted 6 year old from China who doesn’t speak English. It’s a dark comedy.

And, I’m collaborating with the brilliant designer Lara de Bruijn on something so new we don’t know quite what it is yet, but I’m excited. And you should be too.

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

A:  Every weekend morning when I was around 5, I would get into my mom’s bed and pretend to give birth. It would involve my putting a doll under my shirt, and then dramatically wailing and screaming as I delivered it. I’d repeat this with about 20 dolls. 30 on a good day. I had no interest in doing anything with the babies once they were born, they were really just accessories to my performance. So I guess from an early age I had flare for drama.

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

A:  I think we get too caught up in definitions and roles. If you’re a writer, it’s crazy to think you could also be a director. Or we’ll decide you’re a certain kind of writer or actor and if you try to do something different, people get all confused. I often see friends trying to create the same thing over and over, because they feel this pressure to fit into a type. I think it’s funny that we’re supposed to be the progressive creative ones, but we can still be kind of rigid with our expectations. The best theater artists I know are the one who are constantly defying definition and crossing boundaries.

Otherwise the regular complaints: health insurance, money and free smoothies.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I was originally a dancer, so I love experimental companies who do really physical and theatrical – The Wooster Group, SITI Company. I adore Bill T. Jones – he’s created the some of the moving and powerful performances I’ve seen. There are probably 50 contemporary playwrights I could list, but for lack of space I’ll say Charles Mee, Sheila Callaghan, Sarah Ruhl and Kris Diaz. And pretty much everyone I was in the Ars Nova Playgroup with. Oh, and Shakespeare.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that crosses stylistic boundaries. Seemingly un-producible theater that gets produced. Theater makes me laugh. Theater that surprises me. Theater that tells new stories that haven’t been told. Theater that asks questions and doesn’t give answers. Theater that uses space in new or unexpected ways. I love ensemble work and collaboration. Good collaboration is the best.

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

A:  A friend once told me to have a glass of wine. I think that’s pretty good advice. Unless you’re an alcoholic.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My reading of Golden Water at Dixon Place on January 23rd at 7:30.

dixonplace.org

https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/171

I have a blog on the Huffington Post, where I discuss serious subjects like my cat and The Bachelor. You should read it because every time you don’t, a fairy dies a slow painful death.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tasha-gordonsolmon

My 2011 in review

I had 8 productions of full length plays in 2011 with 12 more planned for 2012, in theory. (although this time last year I thought there would be 12 productions this year). To make a living solely from playwriting I would have to have something like 5 times as many productions as I had this year. It’s true I doubled the amount of productions from last year, but still…I’m not sure how to make that happen.

This year I spent time in Anaheim, CA (2 readings, production), Los Angeles (2 readings, some meetings, wedding), West Virginia (reading), Westchester, NY (reading), Boston (reading), Bloomington, IN (reading), Montreal (just for fun), Seattle (for a wedding), Ft Myers, FL (production), Nazareth, PA (wedding), Philadelphia, PA (production). And was in and out of NYC frequently (2 productions, 1 public reading, 1 web series, 1 wedding, lots of private readings and other things.)

What else? The first season of my web series, Compulsive Love, was filmed and it should come out early in the new year.

I wrote a pilot, 3 full length plays, 1 half hour long play, started work on another pilot with two other writers, and am in the process of turning My Base and Scurvy Heart into a musical with the same composer and lyricist I was working with this time last year.

I was the resident playwright at the Chance Theater in Anaheim, CA even though I was living in CT most of the time. Got a grant from CT Commission on Culture & Tourism (from the Artist Fellowship Grant Program for playwriting.)

We moved back to Brooklyn.

The interviewing project continues -- It’s up to 416 playwright interviews now, which means I got 117 interviews this year. (I never thought it would continue this far, but really it’s less than 5 percent of the playwrights out there right now) I also started interviewing artistic directors—there are 5 of those up now.

I just finished a play so I’m wondering what’s next. Maybe get back to that novel, maybe write a screenplay. I’ll have to see which way internal and external forces push me in the new year. Here’s hoping to good winds for us all.

Happy New Year!