Plays

I added an Amazon store of plays by playwrights I've interviewed, along with a few I haven't interviewed and a stray novel or two by playwrights I like.  You can get there by scrolling all the way down the page or going here.

http://astore.amazon.com/adamszymk-20

Let me stress it took a lot of time but it is in no way all-inclusive.  If you see a play I should add please let me know and if I missed your play, I'm sorry.  Let me know and I'll add it.

Artistic Director Interviews So Far

Chad Rabinovitz
Jim Simpson
Marty Stanberry
Russ Tutterow
Andrew Leynse
Mimi O'Donnell
Marc Masterson

I Interview Playwrights Part 437: Alex Lubischer

Alex Lubischer

Hometown: Humphrey, Nebraska

Current Town: Chicago, IL

Q:  Tell me about THE Xylophone West.

A:  Often, the desire to explore a certain relationship will inspire me to begin a new play. With The Xylophone West, I wanted explore the unbreakable bond between two boys growing up in rural Nebraska- a relationship that, for most of their community, is too close for comfort.

I wasn’t interested in creating a clear-cut relationship; one defined as distinctly ‘a friendship’ or ‘a gay relationship’. They’re 14-year-old-boys. I don’t think they know what to call it themselves; they only know it’s good. And I think there’s a lot of truth in relationships and ideas when we’re younger. There’s more honesty in the world’s lack of definition at that age. It’s only when we get older that we start forcing ourselves into boxes: “I’m this, she’s that. We fit neatly into these categories.” I think life is more nuanced than that and it’s something I explore in my writing.

Halfway into the first draft I discovered a Mark Twain quote– “It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.” That fascinated me and informed the rest of my process. I think it rings especially true in today’s world.
Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  A comedy! I’m fascinated by the Elysian quality of golf courses, their Zen characteristics, but also the bizarre Midsummer-esque feel they take on at night. This new play, which hopefully will come to fruition soon, is essentially a love story between a young man and young woman- both of who are closer to the edge of sanity than most. It’s set in the world of golf.

Q:  Tell me about Route 66. Have you read anything there lately that you're excited about?

A:  As Literary Manager for Route 66 I have the opportunity to develop the work of other exciting young artists; it’s a job that’s very dear to me. In April, we’ll be launching our outreach program for early career artists through a special collaboration with the National Theater Institute’s Advanced Playwrights program. The emerging playwrights in the program – Haygen Brice Walker and Mike Poe- will each workshop a play over the course of a weekend, culminating in a public reading for Route 66’s patrons. Working with The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s Literary Manager Martin Kettling on this project, as well as Erica Weiss, Route 66’s Associate Artistic Director, has been so rewarding.

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, I wrote a one-page paper about my greatest hero: Grandpa Ron. Grandpa had been a radio operator and load master/flight attendant in the Air Force in the 50s, 60s, and 70s and continues to lead a truly remarkable life. As a 7-year-old, however, I was not especially cognizant of the facts of Grandpa’s past. Instead, I imagined a story about his years as a fighter pilot, flying deadly missions against the Nazis in World War II.

I think where I’m at now, as a 23-year-old playwright, is akin to that moment in my life. People fascinate me, I admire heroism, and for me, what I’m working toward is finding the authenticity that occurs in everyday life along with the sensationalism. There is a level of romanticism that will always have a place in my storytelling. I’m constantly trying to strike that balance: to find truth through fiction, to tell stories that hurdle the boundaries between romanticism and true life.

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

A:  The money, quite frankly. We live in a society where a vast majority of artists cannot earn a living wage making art. As an early career playwright, you have to accept a life of relative poverty in which you’re working two or three jobs to get by, while writing your plays for little to no money. I think we’ve lost a lot of potentially brilliant playwrights to other professions. I want to make art, I love the theater, but at the end of the day I also want to eat, have health care, and be able to afford to have a family someday. So if I could change anything about theater in this nation, it would be to live in an America that supports its artists.

Q:  Who are your theatrical heroes?

A:  Tennessee Williams and Tom Waits.

Tennessee gave everything for his art. He threw all of his hopes and dreams and demons into it, often with profound results. I admire his devotion to his craft. His plays are at once brutal and sympathetic.

In Tom Waits, I see an artist who utilizes theatricality better than any other storyteller alive today. His songs- his stories, essentially- all submerge you in a unique atmosphere that’s simultaneously otherworldly and American. And in his live performances he makes flesh the theatricality he’s written into every song. He can transport his audience to another world with hat, a megaphone, and a fistful of glitter.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I just saw Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind for the second time in Chicago. That kind of raw authenticity and connection with the audience -that bare-bones kind of theater- thrills me. It’s funny, because that kind of theater also diminishes the role of the playwright as master storyteller.

In terms of more traditional theater, I will always gravitate toward a story that strives for universality. Rarely is it actually achieved, but the effort must be present. It was crucial for me that Xylophone raised the damning consequences of intolerance and hate to where they exist in real life. In a peripheral sort of way, the play ended up tackling anti-gay bullying in America. Now, I’m proud of that and I think that’s an issue we need to have more effective dialogue about.

Cormac McCarthy (who’s probably my favorite novelist and also has a terrific play, The Sunset Limited) once said that the only real literature is that which explores issues of life and death. I apply that same principle to theater. A play may be comedic, it may be about love or any number of themes, but it must transcend a very specific situation to attain universality. The risk of the play’s situation must be every bit as palpable for an audience in rural Nebraska or south-central Los Angeles as it is to an affluent, liberal theatergoer.

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

A:  I just read Sweet Bird of Youth by Tennessee Williams for the first time, and in the forward of my book he tells this anecdote.

My esteemed colleague said to me, “Tennessee, don’t you feel that you are blocked as a writer?”

I didn’t stop to think of an answer; it came immediately off my tongue without any pause for planning. I said, “Oh, yes, I’ve always been blocked as a writer but my desire to write has been so strong that it has always broken down the block and gone past it.”

I think there’s a lot of truth in that. I think you have to have that, and you have to cultivate that drive and work at it, too. I also find- and this is frustrating- that the best things I write, time and time again, are the things that terrify me, that reveal emotional truths in my soul I would rather have kept hidden. I think you have to write stories that you are afraid to write, and to always push yourself, and never settle for good enough. I say these things not because I’ve mastered them, but because I’ve been struggling with them from the very beginning and continue to do so daily. But it’s good work to do.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  The Xylophone West runs March 16 – April 4 at Red Tape Theatre, 621 W. Belmont Ave, Chicago IL

Tickets are available at thefineprinttheatre.org and brownpapertickets.com

For more on Alex Lubischer’s plays, prose, and freelance, visit www.alexlubischer.com

I Interview Playwrights Part 436: Robert Quillen Camp

Robert Quillen Camp

Hometown:  NYC

Current Town:  Santa Barbara, CA

Q:  Tell me about All Hands.

A:  All Hands, my collaboration with Alec Duffy’s Hoi Polloi company, is a performance of the strange rituals of an unnamed secret society. One way I like to think about it is as an exercise in mise-en-abyme, in which everything you see, including very everyday language, is constantly recontextualized as something else, as potentially part of a ritual. The piece never makes it clear: this part is a ritual, this part is an enacted drama, this part is really happening. This constant opening up of the ground creates the abyme, the abyss. One of the questions this piece throws up is whether the desire to collectivize is a desire to retreat from the the individual self, in other words, to desire the absence of the self. When the self recedes, and the group takes over, the possibility for narrative recedes as well, and we are left with the strange pleasures of rituals in themselves (on which composer Dave Malloy and choreographer Dan Safer have done amazing work). All Hands is intended to be a strange, beautiful and messy trip, in the way that I think reality is messy, strange, and beautiful.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I have a project in a very early stage, about extremely long duration and the way that concepts of the distant future are only comprehensible through our vocabulary of the distant past, i.e. myth. I’m spending most of my time working on a Ph.D. in theater and performance studies at UC Santa Barbara.

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

A:  When I was in kindergarten, I had to keep a journal. Each page of the journal was split into two parts, with a square drawing area on the top half of the page and lines for writing on the bottom half of the page. The idea was that we would represent, in drawing and in words, something that happened that day at school. I always sketched the scene in the form of a floor plan (viewed from above), until one day my teacher told me that I had to draw the scene from the side, like the other kids did. I cried and cried. Eventually I acquiesced, but I retained a strong sense of the injustice about the whole thing. The first play I ever published, in the literary journal Conjunctions, featured exactly the same kind of diagrams that my teacher had prohibited. I could say something about the value of looking at things differently, etc., but I would also point out the perhaps less laudatory side of my character that this anecdote presents: namely my deep and simmering desire for vindication and revenge.

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

A:  I wouldn’t change anything. The theater keeps fucking up, but that’s the only way it’s ever going to learn.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Mac Wellman, Wolfgang Bauer, Elizabeth LeCompte, Heinrich von Kleist, August Strindberg, Gertrude Stein, Richard Maxwell, Richard Foreman, John Cage, Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, many many more.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  It sounds trite, but I like theater that is truly surprising. I think that’s one of the things the form has going for it, the capacity to surprise, to defy expectation. I’m thinking about this especially in terms of form, genre, space, and discipline. I like the way in composer/director Heiner Goebbels’s work, for example, a classical music performance suddenly becomes a theatrical performance.

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

A:  Also do something else. Like Chekhov. Then bring that other body of knowledge, that other competency, that other perceptual lens back to the theater. The theater will thank you for it.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Go see All Hands! It’s at the Incubator Arts Project (formerly the Ontological) in NYC until March 31! http://incubatorarts.org/ 

I Interview Playwrights Part 435: Lauren Feldman

 
Lauren Feldman
 

Hometown: Miami, FL
 

Current Town:  Brooklyn, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?
 

A:  - Revising my play THE EGG-LAYERS, on the heels of its development (summer 2011-winter 2012) and recent production (March 2012) through Barnard College and New Georges, directed by Alice Reagan.

- Writing/devising/rehearsing THE ORPHEUS VARIATIONS with director Adam J. Thompson and the Deconstructive Theatre Project

- Writing/devising THE FOOD PLAY with director Pirronne Yousefzadeh and an ensemble of actors and playwrights.

- Starting work on a new play about John Milton and his daughters and the writing/dictating of Paradise Lost.

- Figuring out how to be a better and better teacher of playwriting. (This spring I’m teaching Playwriting & Dramatic Structure at Fairleigh Dickinson University; next fall, at Bryn Mawr.)

- Learning how to be an acrobat.
 

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

A:  Hmm. Jeez. Surely I must have a handful of good, rich childhood stories… But for some reason this is the one that keeps coming to mind today. Why is that?

When I was in elementary school, they gave us pre-tests and post-tests surrounding each grammar lesson. Well I remember getting a pre-test once on active and passive voice, and though the concept was new to me, the correct answers seemed intuitive, and I ended up getting 100%. My teacher, kinda surprised, came over and told me I could use the lesson as free time, since I clearly didn’t need to be taught this information. So I sat at the free-time station and tried to read a book or something, but really I spent the entire time feeling guilty and trying to surreptitiously eavesdrop on the lesson that I’d never formally learned.

I think this story pretty much encapsulates my susceptibility to Imposter Syndrome. Thankfully, though, I’ve mellowed out a tad since then.

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

A:  For new plays to be produced more than read & developed – both of which seem like they’re increasingly becoming a stand-in for productions.

Also: for ticket prices to be affordable for a wider audience demographic.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
 

A:  Off the top of my head…
David Greenspan
Paula Vogel
Suzan-Lori Parks
Sarah Ruhl
Taylor Mac
Lisa Kron
Deb Margolin
Charles Mee
Mary Zimmerman
Tina Landau
Theatre de Complicite
Shakespeare

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?
 

A:  Theater that’s characterized by theatricality, by magic, by transcendence and transformation

Theater that involves the body; that’s muscular; that really utilizes physical expression

Theater that feels virtuosic (in any way)

Theater that’s created by and shared by a true ensemble

Theater that (genuinely) acknowledges the audience as a formative, vital presence

Theater that tugs at the imagination

Theater that’s playful

Theater that’s verbally (and visually too, why not) poetic; theater whose text soars

Theater that tells stories in unconventional ways

Theater that deftly and stubbornly breaks convention

Theater that tells the stories of folks in non-mainstream demographics

Theater that feels like an event, like an experience

Theater that takes risks

Minimalist theater

Theater that tells the truth

Theater whose truth-telling looks different from (but equally true to) how life actually looks

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

A:  Well, two of the things I always come back to each time I start a new play are:

Write from a place of hunger, honesty, & courage.

And

In your play, anything is possible, anything goes.

Q:  Plugs, please:
 

A:  For a play of mine:

Grace, or the Art of Climbing will be produced at the Denver Center Theatre next season (Jan-Feb 2013), directed by Mike Donahue.

For a play not of mine:

Dan LeFranc’s new play THE BIG MEAL just opened at Playwrights Horizons, and it’s stunning.

I Interview Playwrights Part 434: Dorothy Fortenberry

Dorothy Fortenberry

Hometown: Washington, DC

Current Town: Los Angeles

Q:  Tell me about Status Update.

A:  It's a play with songs about moving to a city you don't want to live in because your partner needs to be there, and becoming deeply addicted to the Internet. I wrote it a few months after moving to LA when I noticed that my most intense relationships were taking place over Facebook. It's also an Alice in Wonderland play, featuring Keyboard Cat, some pan-European houseguests, and several references to The Great Gatsby and the oeuvre of Kathy Acker.

Q:   What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm developing a play with Chalk Rep called Mommune about a minimum security facility for wayward mothers, set in the near future. Working with Chalk is fun because they produce site-specifically, so you get to write knowing that your actors can do things that would normally be off-limits. I also was just at the MacDowell Colony writing a play called Partners that I'll be workshopping with Page 73 this summer in New Haven about what the point of marriage is.


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 grew up as an only child in a 2-person family, so I spent a lot of time by myself and a lot of time with grownups. My favorite thing to do was just to listen. When my mom went to visit friends of hers in other cities, she'd bring me along, and I'd just stay at the dinner table, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, trusting that as the adults had more wine, the evening would get more interesting. And it usually did. Eventually, she would realize I was there, and she'd send me up to bed, but I would just listen from the top of the stairs. Or, I would search through all the books in her friends' guest room for passages about sex, which is how I speed-read Portnoy's Complaint at 13. Anyway, that hunger to find out how people tick and the notion that the answers can best be found in listening and literary sex scenes: still with me.

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

A:  I think, at the end of the day, all theater is community theater. It's local, it's hand-made, and the magic that is taking place is the same transformation that happens when your town mailman is Harold Hill. But I think currently, it really only feels like a community if you're a working theater artist -- I know that if I go see a play in New York or LA, I'm going to run into someone I know in the lobby, but if I were a lawyer or a gym teacher, I probably wouldn't. Which is all to say that I wish community were a bigger part of all levels of theater -- one of the main reasons I don't live in DC is that the wonderful theaters in town rarely produce local playwrights. Which seems nuts. Instead they bring in a cast and a director from New York to put on a play that was a hit in New York, and, well, it seems like that pretty effectively undermines half of what's interesting about theater to begin with.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Oh man, so many. When I was in high school, the school library was being renovated and they were going to throw out any book that hadn't been checked out in the last 5 years, and, to save the plays, I checked out and read their entire drama section, so 15-year-old me got super-into Charles Ludlam and Christopher Durang and Terrance McNally. Also, when I was in high school, a production of Baltimore Waltz at Studio Theatre blew my mind (I know I just undermined the point I made above, but it featured local actors, thank you). Escape from Happiness by George F. Walker will always be a touchstone to me of how "hilariously funny" and "deeply sad" are essentially the same thing. Lynne Nottage's Ruined is a play I study over and over again for its structure and bravery. The Rude Mechs' Method Gun was one of the best things I saw last year. Pig Iron, or course, Pig Iron. Chekov. And, while I'm not making a hierarchy, at the top has to go Caryl Churchill. Every play I've ever written is essentially my attempt to write Top Girls, as is every play I intend to write from here on out.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Scary theater. Theater that pokes at assumptions and comfort zones. Funny theater. Theater of big ideas. Theater that creates tension. Theater that makes me feel like I'm in good hands and then pulls the rug out from under me. Beautiful theater. Watching Pig Iron's Chekhov Lizard Brain thrilled me to the point of tears because it placed me inside the brain of someone in my family who no one in Pig Iron had ever met. And it had to be theater. It was completely and totally theater, it was precise and rehearsed and technically smart, and yet unlike anything I'd ever seen before. It scares me to think that I could have not taken the train in to New York that night and not seen that show. I would be less of a person for it.

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

A:  All right, so, keeping in mind that I, too, am just starting out, I pass along this advice from David Foster Wallace's commencement address at Kenyon, which is, to my mind, the most effective DIY guide to being a decent human being: "In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship." By all means worship theater, but try not to worship your own success or perceived lack thereof. That shit will eat you alive.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My play Species Native to California has a reading this Sunday, March 18 at IAMA Theater Company in LA at 7pm (1017 N. Orange Dr) Status Update goes up at Center Rep in Walnut Creek, CA in October. Anything by fellow Titled Field members Jacob Padrón, Teresa Avia Lim, Michael Locher, Roberta Pereira, or Becca Wolff. Also, I am a giant fan of and so grateful to Jen Haley for starting the Playwrights' Union in LA. I wouldn't have written Status Update without their annual Writing Challenge, and I am about to share my first draft of Partners with the same folks at this year's Challenge weekend.

I Interview Playwrights Part 433: Ethan Lipton

Ethan Lipton

Hometown: Van Nuys, California.

Current Town: Red Hook, Brooklyn

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m rehearsing NO PLACE TO GO, a musical I wrote for my band, which the Public is producing in Joe’s Pub, and I’m prepping for a production of my play LUTHER, which Clubbed Thumb is doing this June. Feeling exceedingly grateful for both opportunities.

Q:  Tell me about Ethan Lipton and His Orchestra.

A;  That’s my band. We play all over NYC and sometimes beyond, and we’ve been together almost seven years. The guys I play with (Eben Levy, Ian Riggs, Vito Dieterle) are all great musicians, which I can’t really relate to, but they are also silly, immature old men at heart, and in that sense we are kindred spirits. For a long time the music was my respite from playwriting. Songs are short (plays long), I write them while looking the other way (plays I write hunched over, trying to bore a hole through the keyboard), and performing is immediate (whereas play gestation is more like whale gestation). Recently, though, I’ve been trying to integrate the two in a few projects, which is both exciting and scary; kinda like introducing your two best friends and waiting to see if they’ll get along.

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 first grade I started a mime troupe with Emily Strickstein and Kristin Olson. We explored a number of narratives and themes, most of which culminated in me getting hit in the groin with an imaginary ball. From there I learned how to cross both eyes, then one eye at a time, then how to indulge my sadness, and before I knew it my path as an artist was set.

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

A:  Today? Let’s see. Actually, if I’ve learned one thing during my relationship with theater, it’s that I can’t change it. Theater has to want to change itself. Then it has to talk it over with the board of directors and figure out a way to integrate an education component, and then, maybe, it can have a fundraiser. After which a talk-back is probably in order, and if we could do all that before pilot season, so much the better. See, the only real problem with theater, I think, is human beings. It requires their participation. Lots and lots of them. And that’s what makes it awful, but it’s also what makes it awesome, all of these grown-ups working together to create “make believe” for other grown-ups. So, you know, we should probably be totally overhauling the art form every couple of years – from our creative processes to our aesthetic expectations to the way we run our organizations – but since that seems to be more work than most of us are willing to do, my short-term solution would be just to involve more animals. Oh, and I’d say we should put as much money into paying artists as we put into paying arts administrators, but I think everyone knows that already.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I love art that takes inspiration from other art forms and I have tons of heroes who make other kinds of art, but as far as theater-makers, I definitely owe a debt to people like Ionesco, Albee, Bulgolkov, Churchill, Guare, Shawn, Howe, the Wooster Group, Fornes, Foreman, O’Neill, and Checkov.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A;  A dumb idea deeply committed to.

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

A:  Wonder. And consider risking everything.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  NO PLACE TO GO, Joe’s Pub, March 14-April 8.
LUTHER, Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks, this June.

I Interview Playwrights Part 432: Riti Sachdeva

Riti Sachdeva

Hometown:  Complicated question for an immigrant – born in Bhilai (Chateesgarh) India, grew up in North Cambridge, MA

Current Town: Complicated question for a Gypsy -recently relocated from Albuquerque to Brooklyn.

Q:  Tell me about Parts of Parts & Stitches.

A:  It’s a play set in 1947 during the partition of Pakistan and India, towards the end of British colonial rule in the region. Members of my family were among 1 million murdered and 40 million displaced. Many of the situations and even characters are stories that my aunts, uncles, and papa shared with me. It’s about lovers, friends, neighbors, communities, and nations that are sacrificed for land, water, and political power; it’s about the physical and psychic shock of loss and displacement; and it’s about the courage that makes me wonder “could I possibly make a decision like that – to sacrifice my safety, my body -for someone else’s?”

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  When Parts closes, I’ll be in rehearsal for a solo piece Scene/Unseen, directed by Antonio Miniño, being featured in the Planet Connections Festival at Bleecker St. Theatre in June. With the Emerging Writers Group at The Public, I’m 10 pages deep into a revenge fantasy play about a widow of a suicided Indian farmer who comes to work as a maid in the home of the CEO of a multinational bio-tech corporation; in June, I go to the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis to further develop The Rug Dealer, which takes place in a Persian carpet shop in Boston; and I’m looking for an ensemble and funding to keep evolving my flamenco play La Fea: A FlamenChoreoMyth.

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

A:  I think it was our first Xmas in the U.S., I was six, and my parents wanted me to experience an American Xmas. They didn’t have much money so my mom bought a big dollar bag of accessories for my generic barbie and individually wrapped each tiny accessory – the high heels, coffee mug, necklace, etc.- so I’d have lots of presents to openJ Can you imagine how she came up with that idea, then spent the time wrapping these items that were a fraction of the size of her pinky (after working a twelve hour day?) How this story explains me as a person and artist: I believe in being resourceful - it’s a kind of alchemy - making magic out of the mundane.

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

A:  Capitalism.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Guillermo Gomez-Peña and Coco Fusco; Carmen Amaya, the late great flamenco dancer; flash mobs; Luis Valdez; Rekha the Bollywood star; Kathakali dance theatre; Miss Piggy; Suzan Lori Parks; Nilo Cruz; GWAR.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Gritty, raw, emotionally and morally complex but not sentimental; fantastical; historical; structurally playful and innovative; movement and music driven.

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

A:  Write, dance, sing, rewrite, cook, garden, rewrite, build community, see shows, rewrite, self-produce.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A;  My solo show, Scene/Unseen at the Bleecker St. Theatre, Planet Connections Festival in June; everything MTWorks puts up; the world premiere of Draw the Circle by Mashuq Deen at InterAct Theatre in Philly April 4-8; Arooj Aftab and Arif Lohar at Asia Society April 28; http://www.facebook.com/midniteschild

I Interview Playwrights Part 431: Melissa Gawlowski

Melissa Gawlowski

Hometown: Hell, Michigan (yes, really).

Current Town: Brooklyn.

Q:  Tell me about Spring Tides.

A:  I started Spring Tides in my last year of the MFA playwriting program at Ohio University. It started as a satire about a guy named Joe who wakes up one morning to find himself in Hell with a greaser named Frankie and a nun named Bernardina. They then team up to kill God. Obviously, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the current play. Happily I had opportunities for lots of development, including (besides Boomerang) a production in Philly with Cardboard Box Collaborative (I believe they procured a literal ton of sand for the show), and a developmental reading in Alaska with the Last Frontier Theatre Conference. It all helped me find what I really wanted to say. Time helps, too. I think I’ve grown up a lot since my mid-twenties. And happily my plays have come with me.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm working on a new full-length play that's a loose riff on the Orpheus/Euridice myth, when I’m not slammed with the reading/writing required for my schoolwork. I’m in my first year of the PhD program in Educational Theatre for Colleges and Communities at NYU. Arts education is another deep passion of mine—I work in the management of teaching artists and school partners at Lincoln Center Institute (with many wonderful colleagues). And I'm also working on planning a wedding and moving to a new apartment with my amazing fiancé. Life is full! But it’s all happy stuff.

Q:  Tell me about Analogous.

A:  Analogous is an organization founded by Marie Evelyn focused on interaction art, which is a term for artworks in various genres that resonate with the concepts of complexity theory. This ranges from the exhibition of visual artworks created with recycled materials to improvised experimental music to rule-based performance. My focus with the company is performance work involving language, as Co-director of Dialogue-as-Performance. One major project we worked on was Metis, which had a couple of different incarnations. The goal was to bring together playwrights and improvisational musicians and explore how a playwright might “improvise” with written words to share sonic/visual space with the musicians. We performed it at The Tank back in 2007 with six playwrights and six musicians. Our second version (last year) focused on the language, using an algorithm Marie and I came up with (she’s a master of algorithms) to determine the direction of the dialogue. It’s fun sometimes to work on things that are quite different from my other playwriting work.

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

A:  Well, this is a disturbing story that I may regret sharing, but when I was a little girl I had a stuffed bunny that served as my imaginary friend. Going to school I’d imagine he was roller-skating alongside the school bus. Also he had wings and could fly. Also he had magic-dust in his tail. One day, to mess with me, my dad told me about how people kill rabbits by holding them upside-down and breaking their necks (I warned you). I obviously found that highly upsetting. That night, I think because I was tempted by the horribleness of it, and I was hitting the age where I was starting to realize, “It’s just a toy. You can’t really hurt it,” I held my bunny upside-down and “broke his neck”. And then cried and cried. But then I consoled myself with the idea that he was a magic bunny, after all. So I took the magic-dust from his tail and resurrected him. Creepy as it is, I think maybe that story came to mind because it’s sort of like my writing—it has magic, and it’s dark, but also hopeful. I won’t say that this explains me as a person, though—I have a pet bunny at present, in fact, and I assure you that he is very well cared-for. No breaking real bunnies. That was a totally terrible story to share.

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

A:  Ummm… more funding would be nice. But besides that, wouldn’t it be great if there was cross-pollination between independent theatre companies across the country? A way for the amazing work being done in NYC to make its way over to Chicago, say, and vice-versa. So that companies could communicate with and inspire each other directly. Places like Portland, too, where they’re doing interesting stuff. And other cities we might not think about. Tulsa—I bet somebody’s doing something totally awesome in Tulsa. I’m a Midwesterner, so I like the idea of sharing more with the region between the coasts.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  There are so many exciting and wonderful writers out there. But heroes? Jacquelyn Reingold writes plays that are beautiful, touching, and incredibly funny. She's the writer I hope to be someday. Other heroes, shoot—well, Shakespeare, man. Beckett. Ionesco. Pinter. Churchill. Those guys are for serious.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I really like playwrights who use a magical quality, who ask big questions, and also make me laugh. Like Fornes, Rivera, Lucas, Ruhl, Durang too, and others. So many others! I recently read Griselda Gambaro’s Information for Foreigners, and that play shook me up. I also have to say that I am very excited by compelling theatrical design. I am so blown away by the work of scenic and lighting and costume designers—their insights and vision can be stunning. I was reminded of this upon seeing the work of Boomerang’s team for my show—I’m so very humbled by the talent I’ve been lucky enough to work with.

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

A:  Write, write, write, and see, see, see. It’s so important to see stuff (theater and dance and music, too), though the expense can be a challenge. It’s very easy to get stuck only seeing the work of your friends, but it’s really valuable to see what else is out there, both small-scale and large. Plus you’ll start to get the opportunity to meet more people, which I’ve found to be critical. Probably 90% of the work I’ve done has been with somebody I’ve met already, or through some personal connection. I think it can be tough being noticed when the group knows nothing about you already. There are a lot of playwrights out there.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Spring Tides opens Friday, March 9th and runs through the 25th at The Secret Theatre. Tickets are available through www.boomerangtheatre.org.  I also have a short play opening the same weekend as Spring Tides, as part of a short play festival by Full Circle Theater Company called “Unlikely Allies”. It runs for four consecutive Sundays starting March 11th at 4 p.m. in the basement of Triple Crown bar in Chelsea. I’ll also plug the work of my fiancé Dan Pratt, because I think keeping aware of work in other disciplines is really valuable. He’s a jazz saxophonist and has several albums out, most recently with his Dan Pratt Organ Quartet. He is phenomenally talented, as are the players in the band, and I’m not just saying that because I’m marrying the guy.

I Interview Playwrights Part 430: Aaron Landsman

Aaron Landsman

Hometown:  Minneapolis, MN

Current Town:  Towns actually. I live part time in Urbana, IL, while my wife Johanna Meyer is in grad school, and part time in Brooklyn, NY.

Q:  Tell me about City Council Meeting.

A:  City Council Meeting is somewhere between theater and a kind of conceptual art performance. It's an interactive piece where audience members perform transcriptions of city council meetings from around the country, creating a fictional city that lives in the space as long as it's spoken. Audience members can choose to participate, or not, in several ways. The goal is, in part, to allow people to speak another person's words, often someone who is or believes much differently than they do. It's about both holding a mirror up to power, and learning to empathize with a stranger, in a room full of strangers. The piece is being developed concurrently at HERE in New York, DiverseWorks in Houston, ASU/Gammage in Tempe, AZ, and Zspace in San Francisco, with local cohorts of artists and non artists. It's not political theater as much as the theater of politics. In each city we're building the piece with a local cohort of artists, non-artists, politicians or their staff, and other citizens.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I have two more play-like plays that I am trying to get into production. One is called Running Away From The One With The Knife, about suicide and religious faith. The other is Special Tonight, which is about intimacy, voyeurism, nostalgia and something I can't put my finger on, in contemporary urban existence.

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

A:  Here is a triptych. 1) My mother started writing seriously when I was a kid, getting up at 5 AM to write for an hour, before everyone else was awake, before she had to go to work teaching high school. That made me understand the writing life in a way that made sense early. Later, when I was in high school, my friend Carl and I would sneak out of our houses at night to sit up at Embers' Grille on Lake Street, drinking coffee, plotting adventures and writing. Even now I find the best time to write is when everyone else is asleep, or is supposed to be. 2) I came to theater as both an actor and a writer, and the misfits and punks I encountered in the little Minneapolis church-basement theater troupe I was part of were the first community I ever belonged to, felt welcomed in. 3) I tried a lot of drugs in high school, and writing helped keep me from following several friends down a path of serious usage. I found myself the chronicler of our misadventures, and that demanded too much of my time to get hooked

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

A:  I would make it less formally conservative - I'd want more theater artists to think conceptually as much as narratively. I'd make it braver about formal risk and provocation.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  In no particular order: The Wooster Group, Roger Guenevere Smith, John Collins and ERS, Richard Maxwell, Tanya Barfield, Anton Chekhov, Mallory Catlett, April Matthis, Melanie Joseph, David Hancock, Rude Mechs, Free Theater Belarus.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that seems like it might derail at any moment. Theater that makes something abstract palpable. Work that can't quite contain itself, that doesn't explain itself fully, but that is just as carefully wrought as the most narrative fourth-wall play. Theater that finds the sweet spot of allowing me to suspend my disbelief while honoring the fact that we are all in the room together, now.

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

A:  Write a lot. Find ways to hear the work read out loud so you can hear your habits. Learn whose advice is helpful and whose is bullshit. Nod whenever people give you feedback and write it down.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  City Council Meeting in 2013, all over NYC!

I Interview Playwrights Part 429: Joe Tracz

Joe Tracz

Hometown: Northville, Michigan

Current Town: Brooklyn, NYC

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Two musicals. One is with composer Craig Carnelia, and it's based on a recent true event. The other, with Joe Iconis, is an adaptation of a young adult sci-fi novel called Be More Chill. Weirdly, both touch on the same concern -- the way we use technology to build an identity, and what happens when that technology betrays us. I don't recommend writing two musicals at the same time, but it seems to be working out: where one story is tragic and true, the other is poppy and genre-riffy, so it's like using the same DNA to build two very different monsters. Uh, children. Did I say monsters? I meant children.

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 middle school, I entered a competition sponsored by the Henry Ford Museum where you had to present a diorama of a futuristic city. My writer brain devised a future where overpopulation was solved by zapping cities with a shrink ray and launching them into space. I convinced my team (hardcore science kids, all) that we should wear flightsuits and pretend to be astronauts who discovered one of these cities in, like, a wormhole or something. The brilliant part -- or so I thought -- was that we could claim our diorama wasn't a scale model, it was the ACTUAL CITY ITSELF!! Also, there were puppets.

When we showed up at the museum, I realized I'd gotten it horribly, horribly wrong. The judges wanted science, not science fiction. They wanted a factual discussion of urban planning and we were giving them Farscape. I was devastated, I felt like I'd let my team down. Of course New Lilliput lost. But my teammates forgave me when the camera crew showed up and went straight for our table. It turns out puppets and flightsuits make great visuals for the evening news.

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

A:  Beyond the usual wishlist -- expanded audience base, lower ticket prices, fewer plays set in upper middle class living rooms -- I'd love to see greater national cross-pollination. While I heart localized theatre, as a New York writer I feel disconnected from what's happening in Chicago, or Atlanta, or California. Not to mention internationally. We live in the age of instant networks; we should be creating locally but sharing on a bigger scale.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  From Kushner, I learned to be unafraid of going big and risking messy (a lesson I maybe learned too well), and from Churchill I learned the power of letting content dictate form. Also, I just picked up the book Eminent Outlaws, which traces the LGBT progress of the 20th century back to writers, many of them playwrights, who challenged conventional notions on what stories could be told. So that's all in there. But regular shots of inspiration come from the writers I interact with -- the Ars Nova Play Group gang, my classmates from NYU, and, right now, the Sons of Tennessee, which is a group some friends and I just formed inspired by this gay poets' salon we read about in the Times. I get to grab a beer with my heroes on a regular basis. How many people in other professions can say that?

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Looking at all the remakes and sequels in movies and on TV, it sometimes feels like theatre is one of the last safe homes for truly original stories. I'd rather see a new play by a playwright I've never heard of and know nothing about, than another really solid production of The Seagull. I love sitting in the audience and having no idea what kind of experience I'm in for. And think about it: a play has never been ruined because they showed all the good parts in the trailer.

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

A;  Learn to take criticism well, and smartly. Even if a note seems wrong, don't dismiss it out of hand. Try to figure out what's really being asked, and how to incorporate it in a way that still honors your intentions. I watch shows like Chopped and Project Runway, and I scream at the TV because half the time, the contestants are too defensive to realize the judges genuinely want their work to get better. Then I realize I could take that to heart myself. So that's my advice: watch more Food Network. (But seriously, you can learn a lot about your own work from watching creative people in other fields.)

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  In March, I'm having a reading of my play UP NORTH with the awesome people at Playwrights Realm. Also, my day job is with Blue Sky Studios, the feature animation house at 20th Century Fox, writing on an action fantasy film called LEAFMEN. Our first teaser trailer should be coming soon to a big-screen near you. I'm a lifelong animation geek; my twelve-year old self couldn't be more psyched.

I Interview Playwrights Part 428: Nat Cassidy

Nat Cassidy

Hometown:
I was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, but apparently my parents decided that wouldn't do for our burgeoning meth habit (the family that tweaks together ... ), so we relocated to Phoenix, AZ when I was like 3, where I was raised. However, I'm really, really, really not a fan of Phoenix, so I tend to consider Tucson, where I went to school, my hometown (all of the desert loveliness, maybe 30% of the racism).

Current Town:
Right now, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. I love my borough passionately, and Bay Ridge is a phenomenal neighborhood, but I'm definitely yearning to move a little further North. Although, I do get some good writing done on my often-more-than-an-hour commute.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I'm finishing up the first draft of a script that's actually been kicking my ass for many months now. It's the closest thing to a romance I've ever written, with none of the genre-y supernatural plot mechanics I usually like to play with, so it's been a big challenge on a whole host of levels. It's called Old Familiar Faces, and it's a four-hander concerning two couples: Charles and Mary Lamb, the brother/sister team (no funny business, don't worry) who wrote, among other things, the famous children's book Tales from Shakespeare, and who both suffered from severe mental issues (Mary had a breakdown and stabbed their mother to death with a carving knife one day), and a contemporary American couple modeled after Laurence Olivier and Vivian Leigh, who are similarly no walk in the mental wellness park. While their stories don't interact, they weave in and out of each other, along with scenes from the works of Shakespeare almost like numbers in a musicals, and the whole thing's a kind of love letter to the Bard, but also an examination of why such damaged people might find solace in his words.

After I finish this little beastie, I've got a number of other scripts lined up: an evening of monologues about a haunted house called Foundations, a sequel to my play The Reckoning of Kit & LIttle Boots called The Romantics' Comedy, a multi-play arc following a trickster god through different awful moments in history, and a couple of fun space dramas. I try to write two full-lengths a year, so these'll take a little while, but I'm kinda picking at them all at the moment, and I don't know which one will jump up and demand to be written exclusively next.

Q:  Tell me about your band.

A:  Nat Cassidy & the Nines is a melodicfolkrock outfit that's taken the world by storm (if by world, we mean very, very, very small rooms of people in, usually, Park Slope). The band is comprised of me and whomever I can trick into coming onstage and playing with me. But I like to track a lot when I record songs (I have three albums done now and am working on a fourth), so it's fun to pretend there's an actually band playing on my records and not just a sometimes-inept jackass with Garage Band. Hence, Nat Cassidy & the Nines. However, I do play a lot in a handful of other bands (usually "supergroups" with other singer-songwriters, like Brian Pluta, Alexis Thomason, and/or Angela Hamilton) that sometimes play as the Nines--it usually depends on who booked the gig.

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

A:  Well, there was that one time that Henrik Ibsen touched me in my bathingsuit area, but I'm not allowed to talk about that, legally, so here are two quick anecdotes I can think of that pretty much sum me up as a kid (and ex-kid), for better or worse.

I was raised by a single mom in a pretty poor area in Phoenix, where you can't really go out and play because a) there's not much you can do with concrete and weeds and b) you run the risk of immediately catching on fire. To make matters worse, we were only one of, I think, two families in our immediate area that owned a house--everyone else rented and would usually move away within a year or so--so, 90% of the time, there weren't even any kids around. Plus, my mom had MS and could only work part-time, so we really couldn't afford to do many fun things. This resulted in me being on my own most of the time, and usually left to entertain myself--so I read a lot and I got into A LOT of trouble (fights, setting things on fire, trying to throw rocks into passing cars, etc.).

So, I was a terror in school, and a teacher's nightmare. I was especially at odds with my first grade teacher (a shriveled, blue-haired goblin of a woman, if memory serves), who made me sit at her desk instead of having my own (something two other teachers would try in later years), and who put me on this ad hoc system whereby I had to bring home a red or a green card to be signed by my mom everyday, so she could know whether I had been good or evil. None of that really stopped me from being a general asshole, though - the one thing she did that actually succeeded in calming me down was one day, when she was giving a slide presentation of a recent trip to Greece, she showed a picture of a theatre where she saw a production of Macbeth. She started telling the basic plot of the show, and at the mention of witches and murder, she saw me perk up and start paying attention. After that, she challenged me to try to read the play - which I agreed to do immediately, most likely out of spite. And, though it took me pretty much the remainder of the school year, and though I make no assumptions about how much of it I actually *got,* I did it and it was then that I got hooked on Shakespeare. So, I've been reading Shakespeare since I was in first grade, thanks to a demonically cruel teacher who still somehow accidentally made a huge impact on my life, the hag.

The other quick illustrative anecdote is: when some kids finally did move onto our block when I was like 12 or 13, they were a few years younger than me, so I decided to see if I could convince them that I was a werewolf. I gathered up all these, for lack of a better word, candid photos of coyotes and wolves that I had taken at the Desert Museum (a big Arizona backyard that acts as a sort of zoo), along with some fake diary entries (torn and tattered, when appropriate, along with scrawled, werewolfic handwriting documenting The Change). It totally fucking worked. It also succeeded in preventing those kids from ever hanging out with me again. And if that doesn't sum up what I do as a playwright, I don't know what does.

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

A:  God, that's a great question. If I had to pick just one and only one thing, it would be: we'd be allowed to video tape our well-attended (thanks to cheaper, more efficacious wide-spread advertising and an audience more eager and prepared for live performance) productions, which were all taking place in one of the myriad affordable, modern theatres made possible by the staggering number of arts subsidies available. That's the one thing.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  As an actor, I was raised on the classic British Aaaaactors like Olivier, Burton, O'Toole, Gielgud, and the like. My capacity for such lugubrious lachrymosity has cooled in my ripe old age, but they certainly had their impact on me and kept my love of classical texts roiling for most of my life (I was also a HUUUGE Branagh fan when I was younger, but all it took was seeing his Frankenstein movie in my early 20s to snap myself out of that love affair). As I writer, I'd say I often go to the works of Shakespeare, Stoppard, Ionesco, and cats like that for inspiration--and, if I can plug a couple of non-theatrical people who were probably the biggest influences on me as a writer, it'd be Stephen King, Kids in the Hall, Mr. Show, and The Beatles. However, all that being said, these days my real theatrical heroes are the scrappy indie kids who are producing their own work and trying to make it better each and every time.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I absolutely love the kind of work that Nosedive, Gideon, Vampire Cowboys, Flux, et al. do - original scripts with often twisted mentalities exploring real people in somewhat unreal situations. Basically, if it's honest and it's a little fucked up, then count me in (but it's gotta be both. And a body count never hurts). It's seriously such an honor to be a contemporary in the independent theatre scene these days. It's maddening to have to choose what shows to see and what shows to have to miss forever, but, particularly with the companies above, I know that I'll come away from any production with that perfect combination of jealousy and excitement that drives me to try to make something as good.

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

A:  Not to sound like a shill for Nike or anything, but when it comes to writing, the biggest thing is to just fucking do it. Write that first draft. Let it be crap. Let it embarrass you. Just get it done. It can be helpful to think about having your characters say only what they absolutely need to say, no matter how clunky or obvious, to move the plot and the characterization along and worry about making it exponentially less shitty once it's out of you. It's about 4 millions times easier to rewrite than it is to write, so just fucking do it.

Beyond that, once you feel that your script is how you want it to be, you're going to experience about 8,000 people telling you all the things you could do with every single moment. Theatre, for some reason, is the most backseat-driver-prone artform imaginable. Listen, digest, never feel you've got to change a thing, but pay attention if there's a consensus.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  No dates are set at the moment, but I'm working on putting up one of my newest scripts called Songs of Love: A Theatrical Mixtape. It's a series of short plays--some dramatic, some comedic--all centered on one theme (in this case, bizarre relationships), interspersed with original music performed onstage by a singer-songwriter (in this case, me), creating, as it were, a theatrical mixtape. I wanted to combine my songwriting and my background in sketch comedy (especially as my full-lengths scripts threaten to get longer and longer) into one 90-minute evening that's essentially a celebration of those love-filled cassettes we're all still hanging onto somewhere in our hearts/apartments. Hopefully, we'll have firm dates for that soon, since it's a really fun show that I can't wait to share with folks, and doubly so because I'm hoping to make it the first in an indefinite series, with future mixtapes featuring different playwrights and singer-songwriters.

Beyond that, I'll hopefully be appearing in the Off-Broadway remount of Retro Theatre Productions' (another of my favorite companies) revival of THE RUNNER STUMBLES, which ran to much acclaim last November and is a really, really lovely piece of work. If you'd like to donate any amount of money to the cause and be a hero forever, you can find more information at www.retroproductions.org

I Interview Playwrights Part 427: David Rush

David Rush

Hometown: Chicago, the theatrical heart of the nation.

Current Town: Murphysboro, Illinois. I used to work at SIUC.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  A couple things: a new play which is going slowly, and a book which is tentatively titled THE PLAYWRIGHT IN THE ROOM, which is about how to collaborate with one. I’m also looking for a composer to collaborate with me on an opera I’m playing with. And I’ve picked up some freelance content writing jobs.

Q:  Tell me about your guide to play analysis.

A:  For years I taught an undergraduate course in the subject, required of all majors and minors. One day I realized that if I put my lectures into a book, I’d never have to lecture again. So I did. The book is a self-contained one-semester course, looking at plays through various critical windows: a typical well-made play structure (using Freytag and Aristotle as models), classes of genres (tragedy, comedy, farce, melodrama and Chekov), and styles (the “isms”.) It also has a chapter on post-modernism, so you can get through Mac Wellman if you need to. They tell me it’s required reading in over a dozen schools. I think it’s particularly useful for playwrights, since it can provide you with templates to help jumpstart your creative flow.

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

A:  When I was in high school, I skipped classes one afternoon to sneak into the city to see a matinee performance of a touring production of “The Skin of Our Teeth,” starring Mary Martin, Helen Hayes, and George Abbot. There’s a spot in the last act when Wilder breaks down the 4th wall and presents a scene which is too complicated to explain here, but creates that magical sense of awe and wonder that great theater uses so well when it works. And it worked on that 17-year old kid. I was crying when I left the theater because I had been touched by beauty. And it was then I knew I would be a playwright. All the rest has been filling in the blanks with the rest of my life.

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

A:  (Does it have to be only one?)
I assume you mean theater as it’s practiced in the USA today? If so, here’s a brief list:
. I would find a way to legislate more government support. The Brits do it very well.
. I would eliminate age-ism from play buyers.
. I would make dramaturgs who work with new plays have to take some sort of exam to get licensed. They do that with horse doctors, people doctors, and finance doctors; why not with play doctors just as well. There’s a reason the Hippocratic oath says something about “do no harm.”

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Thornton Wilder, Eugene O’Neil, Chekov, Tennessee Williams,  Eric Overmeyer of “On the Verge,” Russ Tutterow.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that demands the audience join in. I don’t mean 60’s style “Get-up-and-hug-me” theater, nor do I mean “Sing along” theater. I mean theater that makes you pay attention so you don’t miss the
wonder that’s coming in just another minute.

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

A:  Several things:

When I teach, I write three words on the board: “Crap Is Good,” and  I elaborate by telling my students to eliminate fear when they sit down. Fear of “not being good” is a destroyer. Write it as best you can because you can always get rid of it. Even Shakespeare must have shredded garbage. After all, it’s why God made delete keys.

I also tell them to keep in mind that NOBODY EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THEATER has written or will ever write the kind of plays they will. They are unique. Discover what that means and go with it.

I also tell them to be very careful whom they show their plays to. Keep in mind that everybody in the world will see your play through THEIR eyes and not yours. Learn how to read their critics to understand whether or not their advice is any good.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I got accepted as one of the mainstage plays at this year’s Great Plains Theater Conference. There are some other potentially nice things in the wings I can’t talk about just yet. And I'm looking for a
composer.       

 

Upcoming

This Sat (Feb 18) a reading of Fat Cat Killers in nyc  http://fireworktheater.com/winter-reading-series-2012#4

Next Wed, (Feb 22) a reading of Where You Can't Follow in Orange County, CA  http://www.chancetheater.com/season_2011/sp_otr/index.php

Starting Feb 23, Pretty Theft at Beloit College in WI http://www.beloit.edu/news/?story_id=341770&textonly=1

In March, Food For Fish at Armstrong in Savannah, GA http://www.armstrong.edu/Liberal_Arts/amt_box_office/amt_masquers_present_food_for_fish

Coming in March, A web series I wrote--Compulsive Love  https://www.facebook.com/compulsivelove

This spring, Incendiary in Chicago  http://www.wishbonetheatre.org/

This summer, Hearts Like Fists at Theatre of Note in Los Angeles http://www.theatreofnote.com/

In the fall, Hearts Like Fists at Flux Theater Ensemble in NYC  http://www.fluxtheatre.org/2011/12/help-us-bring-alive-our-season-five/

And possibly 8 other productions this year which aren't online yet.  And plenty of readings too.

I Interview Playwrights Part 426: Josh Koenigsberg

Josh Koenigsberg

Hometown:  Greenwich Village, New York City

Current Town:  Park Slope, New York City

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Well I recently got hired to adapt one of my favorite books, "The Boys of Summer" by Roger Kahn. It's about the 1950's Jackie Robinson-era Brooklyn Dodgers and it's really exciting for me because I'm a sports nut and a theater nut, and it's rare when those two things overlap. The producers want to do it on Broadway in 2013, so fingers crossed. I'm also writing a play about a group of New York City bouncers in the meat packing district planning a heist during fashion week. It's not based on a true story but I might tell people it is.

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 little I used to sneak into my parents' room to watch movies on HBO. One day I turn on the TV and there's this cop movie on that looks like every other cop movie...until the cop suddenly jumps over a railing and lands gracefully about 20 feet below. I'm stunned. He grabs a dying man and wants to know where the villain is. "You're too late..." the man says with his last breath. "Hapsburg is...is..." but he dies before he can finish. So the cop goes "All right, who else is almost dead?" Another hand goes up. The cop goes over to him. "Okay now talk!" "You're too late..." the dying man says. "He already said that." The dying guy swallows. "Where did he leave off?" The movie was The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear and my life was never the same. I couldn't believe you could break the rules like that. So naturally I memorized the entire movie and would recite it for my really tolerant family when we went on vacation. All I hope for as a writer is that one day I can write a scene that blows a kid's mind as much that one blew mine.
(Here's a link to the actual clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJWLdQ9vylA&feature=relmfu)

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

A:  Well look, I think it's great that big New York theater companies like Roundabout, Atlantic, Lincoln Center and Second Stage all produce emerging writers at their 'supplemental spaces'...but if someone elected me "President Overlord of All Off-Broadway Theater" I would immediately double the amount of those productions and cut the current budget for each one in half. That way you could produce twice as many writers, just with more scaled down productions. I think if you asked most playwrights if they'd rather have a scaled down show or no show, they'd pick the former and be excited that more plays could now be produced as a by-product.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Oh man. Well writer-wise I really like Clifford Odets and August Wilson and George Kaufman and Moss Hart. And everybody in Play Group with me at Ars Nova. And also my fellow At Play writers, Bekah Brunstetter, Laura Jacqmin, Mike Lew, and Harrison Rivers. And Don Nguyen who runs Sad Playwright, which is a great simple site that I've lost many hours of my life to.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like plays where things catch me off-guard. Not in the "we're gonna plant an actor under your seat who's gonna pop out and scare you" way, but I remember I saw this farce called "The Play What I Wrote" on Broadway several years ago, and there was this one moment I'll never forget. The two main characters are in a fight and one of them goes to the train station to leave and the other one tries to get him to stay, and says "Where are you even going?" And the second guy goes "I don't know yet." And the first guy goes "Well say your next line." And the second guy goes "Florida" -- then looks up shocked, like he really wasn't expecting to be going to Florida. I just thought that was so amazing.

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

A:  Write about something that really tickles you, get a good writing schedule down, and you don't always have to wait for the laundry hamper to overflow before you do your laundry.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Atlantic is doing a reading of my play "The Mnemonist of Dutchess County" on February 13th at 6:30pm at Stage 2. And go check out The Urban Dictionary Plays at Ars Nova if you haven't already. Also The Rockettes.

I Interview Artistic Directors Part 7: Chad Rabinovitz

Chad Rabinovitz

Hometown: Eldersburg, MD

Current Town: Bloomington, IN

Q:  Tell me about Bloomington Playwright's Project.

A:  The Bloomington Playwrights Project is the only professional theatre in the entire state of Indiana focused solely on new plays.

Q:  How do you create your season?

A:  We have two playwriting contests that are set in the season each year: the Woodward/Newman Drama Award and the Reva Shiner Comedy Award. Our literary committee which is comprised of about 30 readers go through the hundreds of submissions. Each one ends up on my desk and I either skim or read through each one (depending on the ratings from the 2 previous reads) and ultimately select a winner in each category. I then work with agents to find a new musical each year. I try to stay up to date as much as possible on what's going on in NYC for our Off-Broadway/On-Ninth slot where we produce a second or a third production of a show that premiered in the NY area. And finally I commission playwrights to write on a common theme in partnership with Indiana University.

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

A:  Senior year of high school I was president of the drama club (after having known what theatre was for a whole year at this point) and always tried to plan trips for my group to various theaters. At this time in my life I had never seen even a community theatre play so I was super excited to be scheduling them. Well my principal decided that I had gone on enough field trips so he turned down my request to rent a bus and go an hour north to Baltimore to see Les Mis. So I raised all the upfront money I needed on my own and did it anyway, separate from my school. I sold every ticket and seat on the bus.

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

A:  More new plays. I fear theatre is becoming a museum and that we're not training our audiences to take risks.

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

A:  We just finished a $100,000 renovation of the entire theatre and had our Grand Re-Opening a few days ago, so for now I think I'm perfectly happy with it. But ask me next week and I'll tell you that I want to enhance the lighting system.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  New Plays! I love plays centered around a unique idea or told through an original plot structure.

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

A:  Laura Wade, Amanda Rogers, Henry Murray, Christine Whitley, Barton Bishop, Michael Lluberes, Jeremy Schonfeld and many more. I'm really excited about our theater's upcoming production of Three Views of the Same Object. The script is incredibly innovative and groundbreaking.

Q:  What do you aspire to in your work?

A:  To continue to be fortunate enough to be able to do it for a living.

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

A:  Submit. I can't produce a play that never comes across my desk. And keep your cover letter/synopsis short! I'm more likely to get excited about a play with an intriguing synopsis that keeps me wanting more than a list of all the plot points in the script.

425 Playwright Interviews (Alphabetical)

Sean Abley
Rob Ackerman
Liz Duffy Adams
Johnna Adams
Tony Adams 
David Adjmi
Keith Josef Adkins   
Derek Ahonen
Kathleen Akerley    
Zakiyyah Alexander
Luis Alfaro
Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro 
Lucy Alibar
Joshua Allen
Mando Alvarado 
Sofia Alvarez 
Christina Anderson
Eddie Antar
Terence Anthony
David Anzuelo
Rob Askins
Alice Austen 
Elaine Avila   
Rachel Axler
Jenny Lyn Bader
Bianca Bagatourian   
Annie Baker
Trista Baldwin
David Bar Katz
Jennifer Barclay 
Courtney Baron
Abi Basch 
Mike Batistick 
Brian Bauman
Neena Beber
Chad Beckim
Nikole Beckwith 
Maria Alexandria Beech
France-Luce Benson
Kari Bentley-Quinn 
Alan Berks
Brooke Berman
Susan Bernfield
Jay Bernzweig 
Hilary Bettis 
Mickey Birnbaum  
Barton Bishop
Martin Blank
Radha Blank
Lee Blessing
Jonathan Blitstein
Adam Bock
Jerrod Bogard
Emily Bohannon
Rachel Bonds
Margot Bordelon
Deron Bos
Hannah Bos
Leslie Bramm
Jami Brandli
George Brant
Tim Braun
Deborah Brevoort  
Delaney Britt Brewer
Jessica Brickman  
Erin Browne
Julia Brownell  
Bekah Brunstetter
Monica Byrne
Renee Calarco   
Sheila Callaghan
Darren Canady
Ruben Carbajal
Ed Cardona, Jr.
Jonathan Caren
Aaron Carter
James Carter 
David Caudle
Emily Chadick Weiss 
Eugenie Chan 
Clay McLeod Chapman
Christopher Chen
Kirsten Childs 
Jason Chimonides  
Andrea Ciannavei
Eliza Clark
Alexis Clements
Paul Cohen 
Alexandra Collier
James Comtois
Joshua Conkel
Kara Lee Corthron
Kia Corthron  
Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas
Erin Courtney
Cusi Cram
Lisa D'Amour
Heidi Darchuk
Stacy Davidowitz
Philip Dawkins
Dylan Dawson
Gabriel Jason Dean
Vincent Delaney
Emily DeVoti
Kristoffer Diaz
Jessica Dickey
Dan Dietz
Lisa Dillman
Zayd Dohrn
Bathsheba Doran
Anton Dudley
Laura Eason
Fielding Edlow
Reginald Edmund 
Erik Ehn
Yussef El Guindi
Libby Emmons
Jennie Berman Eng  
Christine Evans 
Jennifer Fawcett 
Joshua Fardon
Catherine Filloux   
Kenny Finkle
Stephanie Fleischmann
Kate Fodor
Sam Forman 
Dana Lynn Formby 
Darcy Fowler  
Kevin R. Free
Matthew Freeman
Edith Freni
Patrick Gabridge 
Anne Garcia-Romero
Gary Garrison
Philip Gawthorne
Madeleine George
Meg Gibson
Sean Gill
Sigrid Gilmer 
Peter Gil-Sheridan
Gina Gionfriddo
Kelley Girod 
Michael Golamco
Jessica Goldberg
Daniel Goldfarb
Jacqueline Goldfinger
Jeff Goode
Idris Goodwin
Tasha Gordon-Solmon
Christina Gorman
Craig "muMs" Grant
Katharine Clark Gray
Elana Greenfield   
Kirsten Greenidge
David Grimm  
Jason Grote
Sarah Gubbins
Stephen Adly Guirgis
Lauren Gunderson
Laurel Haines 
Jennifer Haley
Ashlin Halfnight   
Christina Ham
Sarah Hammond
Rob Handel
Jordan Harrison
Leslye Headland
Ann Marie Healy
Julie Hebert 
Marielle Heller
Charity Henson-Ballard 
Amy Herzog
Ian W. Hill  
Andrew Hinderaker
Cory Hinkle
Richard Martin Hirsch
Lucas Hnath
David Holstein
J. Holtham
Miranda Huba  
Quiara Alegria Hudes 
Les Hunter
Sam Hunter
Chisa Hutchinson
Arlene Hutton
Lameece Issaq 
Tom Jacobson  
Laura Jacqmin
Joshua James
Julia Jarcho
Kyle Jarrow
Rachel Jendrzejewski   
Karla Jennings
David Johnston
Daniel Alexander Jones  
Nick Jones
Julia Jordan
Rajiv Joseph
Aditi Brennan Kapil
Lila Rose Kaplan
Stephen Karam  
Jeremy Kareken 
Lally Katz
Lynne Kaufman
Daniel Keene 
Karinne Keithley 
Greg Keller
Sibyl Kempson
Jon Kern 
Anna Kerrigan
Kait Kerrigan
Boo Killebrew
Callie Kimball
Alessandro King 
Johnny Klein 
Krista Knight
John Kolvenbach
Kristen Kosmas 
Sherry Kramer
Andrea Kuchlewska
Larry Kunofsky
Eric Lane  
Jennifer Lane
Deborah Zoe Laufer 
J. C. Lee
Young Jean Lee
Dan LeFranc
Andrea Lepcio
Victor Lesniewski 
Steven Levenson
Barry Levey
Mark Harvey Levine  
Michael Lew
Alex Lewin  
EM Lewis
Sean Christopher Lewis
Jeff Lewonczyk
Kenneth Lin
Michael Lluberes
David J. Loehr 
Matthew Lopez
Stacey Luftig
Kirk Lynn
Taylor Mac  
Mariah MacCarthy
Heather Lynn MacDonald 
Laura Lynn MacDonald
Maya Macdonald
Wendy MacLeod 
Cheri Magid
Jennifer Maisel
Martyna Majok  
Karen Malpede   
Kara Manning
Mona Mansour 
Warren Manzi 
Israela Margalit 
Ellen Margolis
Ruth Margraff
Sam Marks
Katie May
Oliver Mayer
Tarell Alvin McCraney
Mia McCullough  
Daniel McCoy 
Ruth McKee
Gabe McKinley  
Ellen McLaughlin 
James McManus
Charlotte Meehan
Carly Mensch
Molly Smith Metzler
Dennis Miles
Charlotte Miller 
Jane Miller  
Winter Miller
Lin-Manuel Miranda
Yusef Miller 
Rehana Mirza
Michael Mitnick
Anna Moench
Honor Molloy
Claire Moodey 
Alejandro Morales
Desi Moreno-Penson
Dominique Morisseau 
Hannah Moscovitch 
Itamar Moses
Gregory Moss
Megan Mostyn-Brown
Kate Mulley 
Paul Mullin
Julie Marie Myatt
Janine Nabers
Peter Sinn Nachtrieb
Brett Neveu
Don Nguyen   
Qui Nguyen
Don Nigro
Dan O'Brien
Matthew Paul Olmos 
Dominic Orlando
Rich Orloff
Marisela Treviño Orta
Sylvan Oswald  
Jamie Pachino
Kristen Palmer
Tira Palmquist
A. Rey Pamatmat
Kyoung H. Park
Jerome A. Parker  
Peter Parnell
Caitlin Montanye Parrish
Julia Pascal
Steve Patterson
Daniel Pearle 
christopher oscar peña
Begonya Plaza 
Brian Polak 
Daria Polatin
John Pollono 
Chana Porter
Craig Pospisil
Jessica Provenz
Michael Puzzo
Brian Quirk  
Marco Ramirez
Adam Rapp
David West Read 
Theresa Rebeck
Amber Reed
Daniel Reitz
M.Z. Ribalow
Molly Rice
Mac Rogers
Joe Roland 
Elaine Romero
Lynn Rosen
Andrew Rosendorf
Kim Rosenstock
Sharyn Rothstein 
Kate E. Ryan
Kate Moira Ryan
Trav S.D.
Sarah Sander
Tanya Saracho
Heidi Schreck
August Schulenburg
Mark Schultz
Jenny Schwartz
Emily Schwend
Jordan Seavey
Erika Sheffer  
Christopher Shinn
Rachel Shukert
Jen Silverman
David Simpatico 
Blair Singer
Crystal Skillman
Mat Smart
Alena Smith
Matthew Stephen Smith  
Tommy Smith
Ben Snyder
Sonya Sobieski  
Lisa Soland
Octavio Solis
E. Hunter Spreen 
Peggy Stafford 
Saviana Stanescu
Nick Starr
Deborah Stein
Jon Steinhagen
Victoria Stewart
Andrea Stolowitz
Lydia Stryk
Gwydion Suilebhan  
Gary Sunshine
Caridad Svich
Jeffrey Sweet
Adam Szymkowicz
Daniel Talbott
Jeff Talbott 
Kate Tarker 
Roland Tec 
Lucy Thurber
Paul Thureen
Melisa Tien   
Josh Tobiessen
Catherine Trieschmann 
Dan Trujillo
Alice Tuan
Jon Tuttle
Ken Urban
Enrique Urueta
Karen Smith Vastola 
Francine Volpe
Kathryn Walat
Ian Walker
Michael I. Walker 
Malachy Walsh
Kathleen Warnock
Anne Washburn
Marisa Wegrzyn
Anthony Weigh   
Ken Weitzman
Sharr White
David Wiener  
Claire Willett
Samuel Brett Williams
Beau Willimon
Pia Wilson
Leah Nanako Winkler 
Gary Winter
Bess Wohl   
Stanton Wood
Craig Wright
Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig
Anu Yadav
Deborah Yarchun
Lauren Yee
Steve Yockey
Kelly Younger
Stefanie Zadravec
Anna Ziegler