Reading at Primary Stages May 9

Come if you can.

Mercy by Adam Szymkowicz

Directed by Michelle Bossy

Wed May 9 at 3pm

Primary Stages Studios

307 West 38th Street, Suite 1510, New York, NY 10018

Reservations readings@primarystages.org or call Taylor at 212 840 9705

Synopsis:

When Orville’s pregnant wife is hit by a drunk driver, they are able to save the baby but not her. Orville is trying to get his life back together when he happens to see the drunk driver on the street one day.  Orville inserts himself into the man's life and pretends to be someone else.  But is this coping or self destruction?  Will Orville be able to move past the tragedy and be a father or will revenge get the best of him?

I Interview Playwrights Part 446: Adriano Shaplin

photo by Duska Radosavljevic

Adriano Shaplin

Hometown: Burlington, Vermont

Current Town: Jersey City & Philadelphia

Q:  Tell me about Sophie Gets the Horns.

A:  It’s about a group of young artists attending a liberal arts college in the ‘90s. Just as I was starting to work on the piece, I saw an amazing student production of The Glass Menagerie, so I was thinking about memory plays. I was also reading a lot of Sylvia Plath, mainly her diaries as well as The Bell Jar and reading a bit about her relationship with Ted Hughes. I was drawn to something in these stories, something about the way they used their pasts, and that started me writing about young artist in the 90’s, attending an elite school, and I started to want to measure the distance between then and now. The Riot Group was formed when we were all freshman at Sarah Lawrence College, and a lot of shit went down there; a lot of great shit, but also some really scary shit. Those experiences absolutely shaped who we are as individuals and who we are together. As of last month, we’ve been collaborating for 15 years, and something felt right about reaching back and telling a story inspired by our collective past. Of course, that was only the beginnings--a few pages of ideas and prompts. Soon after that, all the other artists join the project and bring their own associations and desires to the piece, and the story grows from there.

Q:  Can you describe the process by which you create work with The Riot Group?

A:  Yeah, it always starts with some seed of a desire to express something that isn’t easily expressed. I make some notes and sketch some voices and just basically throw some darts at the wall. I write some disembodied soliloquies and fragments of dialogue. And long, long before there is anything that resembles a script we all begin working together, the cast and director and designers, to create the show. As the writer, I usually bring in new pages, but everybody writes, everyone generates proposals, and we throw tons of shit away, and start over many times. We build the physical language of the piece alongside the text, brick by brick. Text isn’t always the mover of what’s happening. I’m really inspired by actors. Each actor is a given in the piece before anything has been worked out about their “character”. I like to tailor and shape the role for the actor and collaborate with them in creating it. We stalk the story for a long time before we find it. Every piece is a new collaboration of some kind, with new performers or designers or a director working alongside the long-standing ensemble members, so the new encounters are also always feeding the piece.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  Well, I’m also acting in Sophie Gets the Horns, so I’m working on my choreography and memorizing lines while also finessing the script and generally getting ready to perform the piece, and rehearsing everyday. This is our first time working with Rebecca Wright, which has been incredible: she is the ultimate collaborative director, but her rehearsals are also very physically demanding. I’ll just speak for myself and say that it is kicking my ass, but I’m loving it, and can’t wait to do it again.

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 liked to draw as a child. That was what I was into. If I remembered a dream, I would draw it. I had a little army of characters I would draw and some of them were from movies or TV and some of them were from my dreams. Then I would draw pictures of these characters racing into battle with each other.

Also, I remember taking an after-school drama class when I was very young, like elementary school. And we were improvising, and I figured out that if I put a wooden block underneath my shirt and hit that part of my shirt with my fist, it would help me create the illusion that I was Frankenstein. I don’t think I actually knew who Frankenstein was—I guess I thought he was a robot or something, and wood was the closest I could come to metal—but I remember that moment, and being excited by the potential for conjuration and transformation.

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

A:  I would kill all the blurbs before they kill us. No. I don’t know. I spent a lot of my youth concerned with the state of theater in general and what I thought needed to change about it (hence the name Riot Group) but I’m not so certain about those things these days. I think it would be cool if there were more artistic directors who were actors, writers, or designers. I also think it would be great if artists could make a living wage while also letting audiences see the work for free.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I would say that Hulk Hogan and Meredith Monk were my theatrical heroes in terms of early influence and that today it is Vegard Vinge and Ida Muller, no question. They have shaken me to the core. I was there when their 12-hour production of John Gabriel Borkman was shut down in Berlin, and it definitely changed the way I think about what I’m doing. They are unafraid to pursue their obsessions all the way to the end. Their work is totally uncompromising, totally personal, and totally epic, all at once.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like sacrifice and transgression. I like to be scared. I’m looking for that feeling where you float a little bit outside of your body, like when you’re just starting to go to sleep and your dream life is taking over. I want to see artists putting themselves on the line. I also like things that are mysterious. I’m excited by performers who create their own work and designers who perform. I love Sibyl Kempson’s plays and Jim Findlay’s work. I’m way into Sheila Callaghan and Young Jean Lee, and I’m obsessed with Applied Mechanics and, of course, Vegard and Ida.

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

A:  Make friends. Form a gang. Don’t go into it alone. Identify the people around who are inspiring and find a way to work with them. Act. Work in three dimensions; don’t live on the page. Don’t write everyday

I Interview Playwrights Part 445: Adam Kraar

Adam Kraar

Hometown: I was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and grew up in Brooklyn, Virginia, India, Thailand and Singapore.

Current Town: Brooklyn, New York

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’ve just completed a new draft of THE KARPOVSKY VARIATIONS, a dark comedy about the diaspora of an American Jewish family, set mostly in airports. It was workshopped at The Playwrights’ Center, and I’m continuing to develop it with The New Group.

I’m also writing a play for Theatre Novi Most in Minneapolis, about the marriage of American dance pioneer Isadora Duncan and Russian poet Sergei Esenin. Novi Most has gotten funding to develop the piece and will present a workshop in November.

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 love this question, since so much of who I am as a playwright stems from my childhood. When I was about five, my mother took me to a production of THE FLOWER DRUM SONG. During one of the numbers (I realize now it was “I Enjoy Being a Girl”), this actress sat alone on stage in front of her mirror, wearing only a slip. Seeing a scantily-dressed young woman on stage was a strange and exciting experience, so I loudly blurted out, “Mommy, why is that woman taking off her clothes?” Instantly, this electrical energy surged through the room – it was the audience laughing at what I’d said! I was amazed by the way this energy had a life of its own that was bigger than the individuals sitting there. The experience hooked me on the unique power of live theatre.

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

A:  I’d wave a magic wand, and change the entrenched “second-hander” nature of many institutional theatres and play development companies. Instead of companies looking for playwrights that other companies think are hot or commercial, theatres would simply look for plays that spoke to them in some fundamental way. It would mean, of course, theatres would have to read more scripts (relying far less on gate-keepers at other institutions). But if a few more companies had the courage to trust their own gut, it would transform the American theatrical landscape.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Anton Chekhov, for his complex love of people and nature, and the unique way that he conjures that love in the hearts and minds of audiences. Lorraine Hansberry and Tennessee Williams I admire for similar reasons, as well as for their outsized hearts and superhuman courage. My graduate school playwriting teacher, Howard Stein, who urged his students to fight for their idiosyncrasies; and taught them to ask, “Why did I need to write this play?” The theatre designer Robert Edmond Jones, for his visionary idealism, and for reminding us that theatre is not a thing of logic, it’s a thing of emotion. Thornton Wilder, for his insight into the group mind of the audience and his brave willingness to experiment with the audience – and for writing the third act of OUR TOWN.

And: Actors, too numerous to name, who stay open to letting a role transform them in ways they know they can’t preconceive. That definitely requires heroic daring.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Any kind of theatre – from a “well-made play” to an anti-dramatic performance piece – where the audience is collectively surprised and/or moved and/or exalted, and which depends on an imaginative collaboration with the audience. (I’m also greatly excited by poetry and belly-laughs in theatre).

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

A:  I have to defer to Horton Foote (whose writing is nothing like mine!), who told a group of young playwrights, “Find out who you are as a writer, and never let fashion sway you from that.” I’d also advise reading hundreds of plays, watching hundreds of plays – and watching audiences.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  For the latest on my work, please check out my website. My one-act plays are widely available in print, including five editions of BEST AMERICAN SHORT PLAYS.

I Interview Playwrights Part 444: Trish Harnetiaux

Trish Harnetiaux

Hometown: Spokane, Washington

Current Town:  Brooklyn, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I just finished a draft of a new play HOW TO GET INTO BUILDINGS that I wrote in the Soho Rep writer/director lab. It’s my first stab at a strange, exploded-view love story. Also, I’ve been working with the actress Nadia Bowers on a longer monologue piece that is inspired by Dario Fo’s A WOMAN ALONE… it’s loaded with shotguns and nosey neighbors, loud music and trumpets. Currently it’s called BABY. TRUMPET. BOOM. BOOM.

Q:  Tell me about Steel Drum in Space.

A:  Jacob A. Ware and I started Steel Drum in Space last year when we made our short film You Should Be A Better Friend. Since then, we’ve expanded the creative team to include awesome actor/director/DP/editor Tony Arkin and the result has been that we’re making these short comedy videos that depict, as we say on our site, ‘…the issues of tomorrow today with yesterday's science.’ So far we’ve tackled space cars, robot cats, and out of work astronauts with passive aggressive roommates – but really, there’s an entire galaxy of material out there and we’re releasing about one a month… The new one will be out in the next week!

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 have this memory, I must have been very tiny, of taking my parents’ camera and getting really, super close, like one inch away, from the TV screen during an episode of Miami Vice and taking this picture of Don Johnson. He was wearing a pink coat. I took great care not to get the edges of the set in the shot so I could say I was there with him, in Miami or whatever, when I took it. That we had just been hanging out. That photo never came out, and now, as a result– I despise Miami. Then, later, when I was like eight or nine it hit me. It became pretty clear that I would be an astronaut – but then, later, also president of the United States. But before all that I wanted to work in the bakery at the supermarket and hand out the free cookies to kids when they asked.

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

A:  That people would be tripping over themselves to go see shows, and that there was more funding for productions of new plays. Sorry if that’s two things.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Ionesco, Mac Wellman, Caryl Churchill, JM Barrie, Erik Ehn, Ada Limón, Jennifer L. Knox, Kenny Powers, Aristophanes, Salinger, Derek Jeter, Hemmingway, early Tim Burton, Beckett, Dave Eggers, Jenny Schwartz, President Barak Obama, Tina Satter, Erin Courtney, Albee, Normandy Raven Sherwood, Wes Anderson, Eric Nightengale, Jude Domski, Vaclav Havel, Charlie Kaufman, Lou Piniella, Will Eno, Darryl Strawberry, Willie Nelson, Richard Brautigan, Jacob A. Ware, Julian Dibbell, Joe Orton, my dad, Edgar Allan Poe and Shirley Jackson – to name a few.

(Confession: I just had to answer this question for something on the Soho Rep site and totally cut-and-paste. But actually I’ve added a few things that are different.)

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theatre that doesn’t take itself too seriously, is not pretentious, or precious, but transports/takes you on an adventure through language/images/emotions. Usually there is something very off kilter, leaving you slightly disoriented. The best theatre is ultimately satisfying not because it teaches anything, but rather that you feel different/think different/have some sort of unique experience/small stroke/revelation that you didn’t know was even possible. I actually like theater that pushes you to try to articulate the experience properly.

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

A:  Surround yourself by people that you think are fucking awesome and inspirational and drive you and motivate you and push you to be not only a better person, but a better writer.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Watch our comedy videos at steeldruminspace.com

Or/and there’s more about my plays and stuff at trishharnetiaux.com

I Interview Playwrights Part 443: Michael Elyanow

Michael Elyanow

Hometown: Randolph, MA

Current Town(s): Minneapolis & LA

Q:  Tell me about The Children.

A:  It's a re-imagining of the Medea myth, about a member of the Greek chorus who kidnaps Medea's children to save them from their murderous mom. She uses Medea's sorcery book to transport them all away to the ancient city of Athens, but she gets the magic wrong and they all end up in present-day Athens, Maine. The play combines Greek tragedy, broad comedy, and puppetry to tell a story about how we survive through telling stories.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  A play about sociologist Laud Humphreys who, in 1960's St. Louis, did research on the private lives of men who have sex in public restrooms. It was a study that was as controversial for its subject matter as it was for its research method, which was all about voyeurism and deception and disguise. I'm also developing an animated feature film as well as a TV pilot.

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 and my parents went out for the night and left me and my two brothers with a babysitter, I used to write treasure hunts for my parents to come home to. I'd leave a note on the kitchen table that read something like, "Go To The Fireplace." And they'd go to the fireplace and there'd be another note waiting for them that read, "Good Job! Now Go To The Sink." And I'd leave a note for them there. And this went on and on until, after walking all over the house, they'd reach the last note which would declare "I Love You" or "We're Out Of Cereal." I don't know why, but I've always gotten a thrill in taking an audience on a journey. As a middle child, maybe I was so used to having to share all my toys that sharing my imagination was the next logical step...

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

A;  More women! More onstage and behind the scenes and in positions of power and decision. I wrote my most recent play, ROBYN IS HAPPY, simply because I miss seeing women being funny and fierce and physical onstage.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Alan Ayckbourn for his craft. Peter Brooks for The Empty Space. Frank Galati, who taught me how to teach. Any organization (like The Playwrights' Center, The Lark, New Dramatists, TCG) that supports the development of playwrights, plays, and theater artists.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I love a good story well told. But the kind that really feeds my needy creative soul is the kind that fully takes advantage of the theatrical medium itself, that says Here's what you can do with imagination and space and it's something you won't find anywhere else. Suli Holum & Deborah Stein's CHIMERA is a great example of that. So is Dan O'Brien's THE BODY OF AN AMERICAN. And Marcus Gardley's DANCE OF THE HOLY GHOSTS.

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

A:  Read a lot of plays. See a lot of plays. Build relationships, both in the theater and out. Send your material around only when it's ready.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  "The Children" is at The Theatre @ Boston Court, May 3 - June 10. Go to www.bostoncourt.com or www.michaelelyanow.com for more.

I Interview Playwrights Part 442: Forrest Leo

Forrest Leo

Hometown:  Talkeetna, Alaska.

Current Town:  Brooklyn, New York

Q:  Tell me about Friend of the Devil.

A:  It’s a farce about a young poet who marries for money instead of love. Following this unfortunate lapse in judgment, he discovers that (as poetry cannot exist without love) he can no longer write. So he does the logical thing to do, and sells his wife to the devil. When his wife’s older brother (who is an explorer) returns from his adventures abroad and hears the news, he insists that they strike out to win her back. Along the way, the poet discovers that perhaps he maybe doesn’t, in fact, hate his wife quite as entirely as he’d thought….

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  A kids’ book about King Arthur’s childhood.

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 in a log cabin in Alaska. We were five miles from the nearest road--which was accessible only by dogsled--and fifty miles from the nearest town. We didn’t have electricity, so my brothers and I spent a lot of time reading and telling stories and generally finding non-electrical forms of entertainment. (By which I mean, I spent a lot of time reading and asking Ma to tell us stories, and my older brothers spent a lot of time throwing things at me.) My dad’s a writer. Every night I fell asleep sandwiched between my brothers in the sleeping loft, listening to Dad hammer away on his ancient Royal typewriter downstairs. It was my favorite sound in the world, and I knew from as far back as I can remember that I wanted to write.

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

A:  Theatre changes itself; it’s in constant evolution. I’m just along for the ride.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Stoppard, Coward, Rostand, Sheridan, Shakespeare.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  A good story, well told.

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

A:  The thing is, I’m a playwright just starting out. But what I’ve found so far is that the best thing you can do is to write all the time, no matter how you’re feeling, no matter how bad you think it is, no matter anything.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Friend of the Devil, directed by Saheem Ali, part of the Pipeline Theatre Co.’s Whisper & Shout. Tuesday, 24 April, 8:00 pm, at the Connelly Theatre, 220 E. 4th St.