Adam Szymkowicz

Zack Calhoon

Hometown: Salem, Oregon

Current Town: New York City

Q: Tell me about RINO.

A: RINO is a new play that is getting produced in association with Core Creative Productions and Resonance Ensemble which will be part of the Brick Theater’s Democracy Festival this June. In 2010, Resonance Ensemble commissioned me to write a play that was inspired by Henry IV, Part 1. RINO explores several themes: What does it mean to be a citizen? How far is a person willing to go to achieve their goals? The term RINO (Republican in Name Only) is actually a slur within the party proper, referring to someone who does not pass the purity test as a conservative. Shakespeare’s play Henriad takes place during an English Civil War. I decided to write a comedy that would explore the civil war being waged within the Republican party. I also thought that trying to write a modern day equivalent of Falstaff (one of the most complex characters in Shakespeare’s canon next to Hamlet) was a fool’s errand, so the leads in my play are women.

When the play begins, Senator Henry Harrison has just won the Utah Primary, clinching the Republican nomination for President only to discover that the tabloids are broadcasting footage of his party-girl daughter, Halley and her entourage (including the larger than life Isabella Castellucci) in a state of intoxication. Harrison’s campaign staff (and the GOP at large) are waging a civil war for the identity and soul of the party’s future.

The play will go up right before the Republican National Convention, and like the GOP primaries, it is a rip-roaring farce and will be a lot of fun to watch.

Q: What else are you working on now?

A: I am working on a new play commission for Rising Phoenix Rep, and I am about to begin rehearsals to play the title role in Boomerang Theatre’s upcoming production of HAMLET.

Q: Tell me about Visible Soul and People You Should Know.

A: I started my blog, when I was doing SUBURBAN PEEPSHOW with Nosedive Productions. It seemed like something all the cool theatre geeks were doing. Then over the years, my opinions about theatre and our community have evolved.

I’ve always been a huge fan of autobiographies written by actors, writers, directors, etc., and often lamented the sycophantic tone of the show Inside The Actors Studio. I’d have to say Howard Sherman is one of the best theatre interviewers there is on the planet. I listen to his interviews on the American Theatre Wing’s Downstage Center podcast all the time. He always manages to get his subjects to share insight, anecdotes and secrets about their craft. I wish he was still doing them. Anyway, one day, I started my little feature, People You Should Know. The only thought that occurred to me when I posted the first interview was, “Maybe I could pimp a few of my friends so that people might cast them.” This segment like the rest of the blog, evolved into something very different. Now, these interviews are read all over the world, and I am able to showcase the work of hundreds of different kinds of artists every month.

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 third grade I attended the closing performances of a public summer theatre program called Children’s Educational Theater in Salem, Oregon. I came home to my mother and told her that I might like to enroll in the program the following year. Since she was a single parent, she thought it solved having me running around all summer unsupervised.

C.E.T. was a very popular program and also very difficult to get into. My mom stayed up all night standing outside in the cold so that she could register me for the program. Thankfully, I got in. After the five-week program ended, I decided then and there that I wanted to be an actor. With a withered smile, my mother said, “Okay, but you’re going to be an educated one.” From then on, I had her encouragement and support - taking dance and singing lessons, you name it.

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

A: I would encourage producing organizations to do more than “take chances” on established and recognized talent.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Sir Antony Sher, Mark Rylance, Harold Pinter, Joe Penhall, Eugene O’Neill, Daniel Talbott, Sam McMurray, Sarah Kane, Kathleen Chalfant, Buzz Goodbody, Derek Jacobi, Kenneth Branagh, Samuel Beckett, and Susan Ferrara.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Theatre that makes me lean forward in my seat. Theatre that avoids being precious. I love theatre that is visceral, honest, and personal.

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

A: Read everything you again: plays, novels, teleplays, and especially the news. Have opinions about things. Healthy addiction to reading will help any writer. Try to write everyday. Even if that means journaling. See everything you can. Take everything in.

Q: Plugs, please:

A:

HAMLET: http://www.boomerangtheatre.org/boom/show.php?id=80

RINO: http://zackcalhoon.blogspot.com/2012/05/come-see-rino-this-summer-at-brick.html

May 11, 2012

Long Live 13P

The thirteenth play from 13P is going to go up soon (a new play by Sarah Ruhl). Now 13P has said that after that play they will cease to exist which is both sad and kind of spectacular. They have been an amazing force in New York theater and I can only hope another group of playwrights decides to harness their own collective energy to self produce the way 13P has. I'm waiting to find out who that would be.

My question to you is, if you were creating your own band of super playwrights, who would be your 13 playwrights (or 14 or 15)?

May 9, 2012

I Interview Playwrights Part 449: Jennie Contuzzi

Jennie Contuzzi

Hometown: Belle Mead, NJ

Current Town: Astoria, NY

Q: What are you working on now?

A: A play I've been working on for nearly three years, BODY LANGUAGE, has just gone into rehearsal, so I've been spending a lot of time getting that script into the best place it can be. I'm also trying to get my head around a new play where the main character journeys to a commune to try and escape her problems, only to discover the key to healing is to face herself and her past. I actually traveled out to a Nevada commune last summer with a friend to do some research and it was really fascinating-nothing at all like what I expected.

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

A: Writer's groups, readings, and workshops are all wonderful tools for a writer, but I don't think you can really know your play until you see it in production. Financial constraints really limit the amount of risk theater companies can take on new writers, and I know many talented people who have had reading after reading all over the country and still have not had an actual production. The reason BODY LANGUAGE is being produced right now is because The Active Theater, and especially artistic director Nathaniel Shaw, took a real risk on an unknown writer (me). I had absolutely no connection to the group until Nathaniel read a skeletal version of the play, saw something in it that he liked, and made a commitment to it. When I say skeletal, I really mean it-I think the draft he read was about 1/4 the size of what it is now. And yes, we spent a lot time developing the play, but it was always, from the first meeting, with the understanding that if I did the work, the play would be produced. It makes a huge difference, knowing someone is interested in you in that way. There are other smaller companies who have a similar focus, but I'd love for bigger theaters to embrace new writers on their main stages. It's wonderful that these large companies sponsor writers groups and create programs for new writers, but when you look at what's actually being produced, and you notice there's no overlap between the work and writers they are "developing" and the work and writers they are producing, that's a problem.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: I'm a big fan of the unsung heroes-the stage managers, techies, production managers, rehearsal studio staff, ushers, box office staff-the people who make the entire magical process run smoothly, efficiently, and comfortably for the rest of us-and who make our audiences feel comfortable so they can more fully absorb what we're trying to say. My professors at the New School for Drama-all professional people who choose to take time from their own writing schedules to help other writers find their voices. And Stephen Adly Guirgis. Love him.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: The darker the better. I love Mark Schultz's work for that reason. I like really sparse, focused work as well. How much you can say without actually having to say anything.

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

A: Try not to compare your successes or failures to those of other writers you know. It's ultimately just a huge waste of energy. Focus on your own work and don't let the speed with which success comes to you be a measure of your talent or the potential longevity of your career.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: Did I mention the upcoming production of my play BODY LANGUAGE? It's dark, angsty, and occasionally very funny. May 25th-June 10th at the Workshop Theater. Please visit www.theactivetheater.com for more information about the play and this up-and-coming company of artists.

May 7, 2012

I Interview Playwrights Part 448: Monet Hurst-Mendoza

Monet Hurst-Mendoza

Hometown: Pasadena, CA

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q: Tell me about Veil'd.

A: Veilʼd began as my undergraduate playwriting thesis at Marymount Manhattan College. During my fall semester I was lucky enough to stumble upon an article by Naomi Wolf in which she interviews Afghani women about their burqas. Two groups emerged: 1) women thoroughly opposed to wearing burqas, and 2) women who saw the burqa as a symbol of sexuality, protection, and empowerment. I thought the latter was an interesting viewpoint that I, as an American woman, had never been exposed to. Shortly after reading this, I was visiting my niece, Elle, in California. As a toddler she was diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS), a condition on the Autism spectrum. Symptoms can include a range of complications, including difficulty socializing with others, repetitive behaviors, and heightened sensitivities to certain stimuli, etc. When Elle was very young, she had a particular aversion to being touched (that has since passed). She once told me that it felt “like fire” when I brushed against her arm; somehow this phrase always stuck with me. Every time I see my niece, I find myself looking at the world with new eyes because she sees everything so differently; everything about nature is precious to her and sheʼs always asking questions without provocation. It makes me wonder how we, as adults, lose that raw, honest instinct that we had as children. I wanted to explore these themes in Veilʼd, so I model a lot of my protagonist, Dima, after Elle and my thoughts on the article. As for the rest? Sharks, magical realism, Ebay, hipsters and fairy tales are all irrational obsessions that I have and refuse to answer for.

Since then, Veil'd has gone on receive various development opportunities from Rising Circle Theater Collective, The Kupferberg Center, |the claque|, and The Lark. It's been a very exciting process!

Q: What else are you working on now?

A: My friend, Karron Karr, and I are currently collaborating on a performance piece about online dating. We are interested in how it's changing the way we communicate, court; that it's essentially changing our culture. The piece will be multimedia, incorporating live actors, video, projection, and possibly even live feed on the internet. We are applying for a space grant for performance space some time in June, July or August. The space is a windowed storefront, so the performance will be free and accessible to everyone. If this goes well, we hope the piece will have a longer life in venues more equipped to deal with pieces dealing with technology.

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

A: One of my most defining childhood moments was the day I stopped believing in Peter Pan.

I was 4, and I was sitting on the top bunk of the Ikea bunk bed set my sister, Esprit, and I shared. Esprit and I were playing and at some point, she left me to go to the bathroom. In an effort to keep me safe (or trapped), she took the ladder off the bunk bed, so that I wouldn't fall. Big mistake. She must have found something else of interest because she was gone for a lot longer than she said she would be. I wanted to get down, but I couldn't.

At the time, I was obsessed with Mary Martin in the musical version of Peter Pan -- I even had a costume my mom made for me that I would wear all the time and refuse to take off! So, I figured, "think a happy thought" and I jumped off and landed head first on a chair, splitting my head open. I ran into the kitchen, blood rushing out, and I think my dad nearly fainted. 5 stitches. I just remember crying the entire car ride, not from the pain, but from the sheer fact that Peter Pan was a liar. And ever since then, I've been trying to find alternate ways to fly.

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

A: More women. More artists of color. More opportunities for "emerging" writers that are actually "emerging."

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Oh gosh, there are so many. Sarah Kane, JoAnne Akalaitis, Deborah Warner, Naomi Iizuka, Young Jean Lee, Anne Bogart, Sarah Ruhl, Sheila Callaghan, Katori Hall, Paula Vogel, Lynn Nottage, Mac Wellman, Rollin Jones, Samuel Beckett, Jules Feiffer, Jean-Paul Sartre.... I could go on forever.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Variety excites me. I like seeing a-typical stories told from various perspectives. Subjects that make me want to laugh, cry, dry heave, clench my fists, and stand up & make something out of my life are always winners in my book. There are 4 specific theatrical experiences whose stories got to the core of me that I always bring up in conversation because I was so moved. They are, Crooked by Catherine Trieschmann at Women's Project, Iphigenia 2.0 by Chuck Mee at Signature Theatre, Blasted by Sarah Kane at Soho Rep, and Lear by Young Jean Lee, also at Soho Rep.

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

A: I myself am still starting out, but this is what has worked for me:

Find an artistic home with people who believe in your work -- friends, other artists, theatre company big wigs, anyone who is positive and loves to read/see your work. Support is so important to your well-being as an artist and a person. Theatre that you create in your living room is just as relevant and wonderful as packing a full house at Lincoln Center. See plays. Read plays. When opportunities rain, it pours; if it's been a dry season, you're not a failure. Try something new that scares you as a writer. Don't give up on yourself. Be persistent. Apply, apply, apply. Sooner or later, someone cool will read your play, love it, and ask you to be interviewed for their blog :)

Q: Plugs, please:

A: Veil'd is having a workshop with simple design elements at Queens College May 12 & 13th. It's directed by Nicole A. Watson and will be co-presented by Rising Circle Theater Collective and the Kupferberg Center for the Performing Arts. http://kupferbergcenter.org/veild.htm

I'm also co-producing the PlayRISE Summer Play Festival for Rising Circle Theater Collective at Theater Row June 6th-10th. It's a celebration for emerging writers of color who have gone through our 12-week play lab intensive, INKtank. This year we are presenting readings of plays by Matthew Paul Olmos, Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, Susan Soon-He Stanton, and Raquel Almazan. www.risingcircle.org

I try to maintain a blog (and do podcasts!) here: www.angrypatrons.com

Apr 30, 2012

I Interview Playwrights Part 447: Marc Palmieri

Marc Palmieri

Hometown: Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey -

Current Town : Queens, New York.

Q: Tell me about the play you had a reading of at SCR.

A: The play is called THE GROUNDLING and it was inspired by the final moments ofShakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, with which I have been obsessed since being in the play for the first time about 16 years ago. Basically, it's about a Long Island man who has never seen a play before who sees LLL and is deeply affected. He writes his own verse play and hires two New York City theatre types to help him mount it in his garage on Long Island. I hope it's about how we, as theatre people so wrapped up in surviving and sustaining a place in the theatre, might be reminded now and then of the reason we're really doing this thing: the audience.

Q: What else are you working on now?

A: My novel, WHEN I WORE FLOODS and a webseries called THE THING, which is about a group of New York theatre types who never "made it" and left the scene years ago but who come back together for one more off-off Broadway experience. This project may be the first of a sequence of midlife crises, but I'm enjoying it.

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

A: In terms of NY theatre, I wish somehow that it appealed more to people not in the theatre. It's not the fault of theatres necessarily - but it often seems to me that much of theatre in our city is written, produced, publicized and critiqued for people in the theatre. I say that and here I am having written a play about a play...but in it there's a guy who's just discovered the power of theatre and is so moved he writes his own. I really wish more people who know nobody involved in the production - or theatre in general- could be in the seats (and I'm not talking about Broadway)...but again, there's much blame to go around for this...unless I'm just wrong.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Anyone who produces, buys, or even talks about my plays. Kidding, but not really. The real answer: Teachers of theatre I've had. Dr. Harold Tedford at Wake Forest University who invited me, a jock majoring in baseball, to take his theatre class. Deloss Brown of NYU, who cast me in...you guessed it...Love's Labour's Lost when I first came to New York in the '90s to be an actor. Both teachers, both people who devote their lives to spreading the word about theatre to those who may not otherwise ever find it in life, both who feel theatre is for and about everyone. I 'm lucky enough to plays at City College. I try to emulate them.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: So many different kinds it's impossible to answer. I get an extra kick out of theatre that works with no budget. But really, I'm ready to be excited at any show big, small, classical, new, professional, amateur, New York, anywhere.

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

A: See plays. Read plays. And revise, revise, revise. Get to know actors and have readings of your play- in your apartment, in front of an audience, wherever- and realize that 3 years from first draft to opening night is pretty damn good. The Lark Theatre is a place for playwrights to meet directors. I met Shelley Butler there who directed a bang-up reading at SCR. Long live the Lark.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: My bootleg website: www.marcpalmieri.com

Apr 25, 2012

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?

Apr 24, 2012

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

Apr 22, 2012

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.

Apr 20, 2012

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

Apr 19, 2012

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.

Apr 18, 2012

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.

Apr 17, 2012

I Interview Playwrights Part 441: Ginger Lazarus

Ginger Lazarus

Hometown: Brookline, MA

Current Town: Arlington, MA

Q: Tell me about the play you're doing with Fresh Ink.

A: THE EMBRYOS is about a couple, Mommy and Daddy, who try to conceive but are unsuccessful with in vitro fertilization. They don't want to give up their frozen embryos, so they take them home and attempt to raise them as children. As it turns out, the embryos are unusually animate, but not in a good way: they eat voraciously, watch way too much TV, and want to be famous. I see them as kind of consummately id-driven blobs of base desire and ambition. Pandemonium ensues.

I'm very, very excited that Fresh Ink chose THE EMBRYOS for their 2012-2013 season. This is a new company on the Boston scene, entirely devoted to new work by local writers. EMBRYOS will get a staged reading, a workshop, and a production by the end of this year. It sounds like a great process for where I'm at. The play has talking embryos in it (they are live, played by actors), and I'm really interested to see how this and other absurdist elements work out on stage. Also, there is some overt political commentary that seems suddenly relevant. I actually started writing the play years ago, back in the Bush era when right-wing ideology was holding sway on things like stem cell research and embryonic rights. When the administration changed, I wondered if the play might lose some of its zip...as it turns out, the recent "personhood" amendments and other firestorms over reproductive rights have shown that embryos are as hot a topic as ever. I might have to make the play even more absurd to keep up with the times.

Q: What else are you working on now?

A: I'm working on a new play called BURNING, a realistic drama, very different from THE EMBRYOS. It's a contemporary riff on the Cyrano de Bergerac story; the main character is a rabble-rousing blogger/poet who was kicked out of the Army for being a lesbian. She agrees to help a young soldier court a friend of hers, with whom she's secretly in love herself. And her former commander shows up to haunt her with demons from her past, etc. It's pretty intense and different from what I usually write.

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

A: My mom says that, as a child, I had a rich inner life. This is a nice way of saying I spent a lot of time playing alone in my room. I had a vivid imagination and made up a great many elaborate stories about my model horses and dolls--whole sagas. I think I continue to live in my own little world to some extent.

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

A: Cheaper tickets would be awesome.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Chekhov, Caryl Churchill, Tom Stoppard, Oscar Wilde, Vaclav Havel, Paula Vogel, August Wilson, Christopher Durang, The Five Lesbian Brothers (best name of a group ever), many others. Closer to home, Kate Snodgrass, artistic director of Boston Playwrights' Theatre, mentor, and new play champion extraordinaire. Also Iain Ryrie, my high school drama teacher, who died last year. Fortunately, the lessons he drilled into me about dramatic structure and making plays that mean something are still very much alive.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Anything that has the audacity to be either scathingly ironic or heart-breakingly sincere. Or both.

Q: Plugs, please:

A:
I'm on board to write something (I don't know what, but it will be a musical) for the Boston 48 Hour Film Project next month.

In June, I'll be participating in another home-grown spontaneous-creation event called The T Plays.

And stayed tuned for THE EMBRYOS at Fresh Ink later this year.

Apr 16, 2012

I Interview Artistic Directors Part 8: Hal Brooks

Hal Brooks

Hometown: Philadelphia, PA (Elkins Park).

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q: Tell me about the Cape Cod Theater Project.

A: Now in its 18th year - CCTP has developed almost 60 plays, 44 of which have gone on to have further productions (one on Broadway, many Off Broadway). We develop one play a week each week in July. The actors, playwright and director arrive on Sunday, rehearsing Mon-Sat. Each Thursday, Friday and Saturday night, there is a presentation and talkback. Playwrights can then do re-writes Friday and Saturday, and rehearse them, for that evening's presentation. We have a very sophisticated audience and their participation in talkbacks has been instrumental in CCTP's success.

Q: How do you create your season?

A: This was my first time - so I am certain I will learn a lot once the season is up and running. I received about 200 applications this year. I created a reading committee, divvied up the scripts and read a bunch of plays on my own. Based on the readers's reports, and my own tastes, I weeded that list down to 10 plays and decided on four works from that. I attempted to find playwrights at varying stages in their careers and scripts that I thought were at varying levels of development. Of the four "mainstage" shows, I chose plays that are very different stylistically. I am really happy that Mike Daisey will be coming up to work on what's next. CCTP has been a real home for him. And Neil LaBute's play, The Money Shot, is a hilarious read. I can't wait to see it up on its feet. I've gotten to know Bess Wohl at Ojai Playwrights Conference: I watched her do amazing rewrites on her play, Barcelona, so I know she is game for development time. Josh Allen's play, Chrysalis, was totally unusual: fun, smart, scary, dark. I can't wait to hear the audience's reactions.

Ultimately, I wanted to choose a season that I hope will do two things very well: allow playwrights to further develop their plays, and excite our audiences to be part of the development process. Definitely, a longstanding goal is to choose plays that go on and have successful productions. I also initiated a playwright residency. I've invited Meghan Kennedy whose play Too Much, Too Much, Too Many I love, as well as two playwrights I've worked with (Sharr White and Mona Mansour) to come up and work on new pieces.

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

A: I played Barney O'Toole, an elderly Irishman, in my fifth grade production of "Show Biz Iz". That should say it all.

Q: If you could change one thing about the Cape Cod Theater Project, what would it be?

A: For what I want to do at Cape Cod Theatre Project, I really need to find more housing options. In Falmouth, there is no boarding school (like there is in Ojai) or dormitories (like at NY Stage and Film) so we really rely on the kindness of donors. We are therefore limited in the number of projects we can do at anytime. This year, I am going to initiate a writer-in-residence program so that way at least we'll have more than one playwright up at a time. In my ideal world, we'd be able to have multiple productions there, and a real festival weekend each July, where we could invite industry to see a host of new plays.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Whatever I am working on, especially new play development.

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

A: That would be telling. But for starters, the playwrights that I've worked with: Sam Hunter, Mona Mansour, Will Eno; and the playwrights that I am going to work with: Alena Smith.

Q: What do you aspire to in your work?

A: Creating a home, full of creative people doing innovative work.

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

A: Apply! And let me know about your work: your readings, your workshops, your rough drafts. AND COME VISIT!

Apr 10, 2012

I Interview Playwrights Part 440: Daniel John Kelley

Daniel John Kelley

Hometown: Brooklyn, NY

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q: What are you working on now?

A: My latest play is Wall, Ball, Summer And Fall (A Coney Island Adventure). It's a play about Handball. It follows a young, privileged boy from Brooklyn Heights who runs away to Coney Island when he discovers his dad has lost his job. There, he meets Moses Dirko- the master of handball, who speaks like he lives in ancient times, but actually lives with his grandmother. Moses takes the boy under his wing, and shows him his world and the majestic, mythic ways of handball. Is this man a hero of legend, to be revered and followed? Or is he merely delusional manchild who worships a kid's game? The boy must decide the path he will take before Coney Island crumbles around him, and summer turns into fall…

I'm also starting to work on a new play about opera lovers who work at a small publishing firm, and experience the collapse of their own personal lives, their company and the American economy over the course of five years as they attend a new production of Wagner's Ring Cycle. Are these merely people whose lives have broken apart? Or are they the fallen Gods themselves? That kind of a thing.

Q: Tell me about the program you're in at Hunter.

A: The Hunter MFA in playwriting is run by the inspiring Tina Howe, along with the equally lovely Mark Bly. It's affordable, and manageable with a full time job, which is really ideal, given the economics of playwriting. And Tina is so wonderful to be in class with! She's been in theatre all her life, seen triumphs and not triumphs, but remains completely unjaded, and passionate about the work- excited to see what you bring in, thrilled at your triumphs, encouraging with your not triumphs. She inspires you to be like her in spirit- to stay unjaded, and to write the big-hearted stories that move you.

Q: You're pro opera. Tell me about why people love opera.

A: I think people love to see the human experience made grand. Despite the tragic nature of many of the stories, opera is a hopeful medium- the largeness of the event, the years of training necessary to play in the orchestra or to sing the music, and the sheer size of opera houses, speak to a belief that human experiences mean something huge and powerful and cosmic, and that that is worth exalting and celebrating. I think people love to feel like they and their experiences matter, in some lofty cosmic way, and so they love the opera.

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 loved old, epic things when I was a kid. Greek Mythology, Norse Mythology, Arthurian legend, Robin Hood, if it was old and epic, I loved it. So naturally I had a very strong interest in classical theatre- one that my parents enthusiastically encouraged. I must have seen every production of Hamlet that was in New York in the 90s, along with all sorts of Chekhov, Ibsen, Calderon, Schiller and the Greeks. In a few years in my formative pre-teens days, however, most of my extended family passed away for various natural or unnatural reasons. So in addition to spending evenings in dark rooms watching old plays by dead people then, I also spent a good deal of time in brightly lit rooms full of old people speaking about the recently deceased. I think the combination of my fascination with the glories of old and forgotten worlds, and my experience of seeing so many family members slip away so suddenly made me acutely aware of both the potential for immortality that we have as humans (something we have absolutely no control over) and how temporary life is (which we also have no control over at all). I like to think that my plays reflect this- that we, and our worlds, can potentially live on forever, and isn't that wondrous and horrifying! But also, everything could end tomorrow, and doesn't that have its own kind of glory and terror as well?

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

A: Everyone says it, but really, access- who gets to be the audience and who gets to be the artists. More kinds of people should be able to see more new stories from more varied perspectives.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: I’d say…Verdi, Wagner, The Marx Brothers, Paula Vogel, Tina Howe, Caryl Churchill, Shakespeare, Chekhov and Ionesco.

But also my playwriting teachers, who nudged and encouraged and supported me over the years: Scott Martin, Stuart Spencer, and most recently, Tina Howe.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I love theatre by playwrights that dig deep into unique subject matter in order to ask big questions and reveal startling truths about human nature. I don’t really care what a play is about in terms of subject matter, so long as you dig deep enough at the human roots of the thing you’re writing about, and discover what it is that make us love or loathe it. I love it when I see a play that’s about something I have absolutely no connection to, and the playwright shows me how I not only can connect to it, but makes me question a part of my life because of that connection.

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

A: I'm just starting out myself, I feel, so I don't think any "career" advice from me is appropriate. But I will steal something I heard recently from Dan LeFranc when he talked recently at the Dramatist Guild: He talked about having his beginning playwriting students approach their first assignments as "cocktails." Not plays, but "cocktails"- Throw in your favorite flavors, both bitter and sweet, stir, and see if you've got anything that you'd like to drink, that maybe you think you might want to offer to someone else sometime. What I took away from that is the need to approach playwriting from a place of joy: take the things you love and dump them into a play, and see what happens. Write the story about the people you want to celebrate, who have never been celebrated on stage before! Try to make people care about those people as much as you do, to see their pain and struggle and triumphs and failures, so that their story will live for all the ages! Why not try for that? Because, honestly, we could all be dead tomorrow.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: You can read more about my many adventures in playwriting (and my plays) at www.danieljohnkelley.com

I’m curating a project for Howlround this summer called “The Here and Now Project”- you can read more about it here: http://www.howlround.com/the-here-now-project-a-call-for-submissions/

Apr 6, 2012

upcoming spring/summer

Readings:

Hearts Like Fists with by Moxie Street Picture Shows at the Nuyorican (nyc) April 12 at 9 pm.

Clown Bar with Pipeline in nyc May 1. The Connelly Theater (220 east 4th St)

Mercy (my newest play) at Primary Stages May 9 at 3pm. Primary Stages Studio (email readings at primarystages dot org for reservation)

Productions:

Nerve at Cal State Fullerton in CA April 27- May 12

Deflowering Waldo at Eckerd College in FL May 3-6

Incendiary at Wishbone in Chicago May 18-June 9

UBU at the New Ohio in NYC June 7-16

Hearts Like Fists in LA at Theater of Note July 27-Sept 1

Why Overhead in NYC , Zootopia TBA Aug/Sept

Hearts Like Fists in NYC by Flux in Nov

Apr 3, 2012

I Interview Playwrights Part 439: Fengar Gael

Fengar Gael

Hometown: None. As a self-proclaimed resident alien in despair over the recent loss of civil liberties in this mad, militaristic, security-obsessed nation, I claim no town, no country, though my heart’s home is New York.

Current Town: New York City (where going to the theatre is a way of life)

Q: What are you working on now?

A: A full length science fiction play that takes place in The Garment District called The Draper's Eye, and I'm continuing work on a musical called Soul on Vinyl with the composer, Dennis McCarthy.

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

A: Since my plays tend to have metaphysical dimensions and feature outcasts with megalomaniacal ideas about salvaging an endangered world, I believe my story began when I was stricken with a severe case of bronchitis and bedridden on the day of my first holy communion. Weeks later, utterly alone, wearing the traditional white dress and veil, I nervously stepped down the aisle where a kindly nun drew me aside and told me I was special, that god had singled me out for reasons that only god knew. So for years I actually believed I had a sacred mission and was convinced I’d become a Catholic missionary. But life and literature have since turned me into an atheist, weary and wary of male gods, male clerics, and religions of every kind. That said, I’ve taken enough drugs and seen enough marvels to believe their are dimensions we cannot yet perceive, including hidden realms of the spirit.

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

A: The American Theatre’s relentless preference for domestic realism, linear “carpet-slipper plays” that tread softly, offend no one, and simply mirror or affirm our quotidian lives (which television and movies do very well). I wish that literary managers in the gate positions of theatres, as well as their artistic directors, would cease underestimating the imaginations of audiences, and start producing more creative, theatrical plays that take the audience to less familiar worlds. Also our paganistic celebrity-worshipping culture has hurt the theatre in that plays seem to be chosen to accommodate movie or television stars and not for the merit of the plays themselves. I also wish there were more plays produced that were written for women by women.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I prefer theatre that takes me to unfamiliar worlds, a theatre of heightened passions that’s imaginative, subversive, confrontational, and is a fusion of art forms, reflecting the collage of sounds and images that bombard us daily, yet is as dark, dense, and mysterious as our collective cultural myths. Since the first playwrights were poets and myth-makers, I think plays should aspire to being epic and poetic, with characters who live within the context of history and the social forces surrounding them, but are also brave, mythic protagonists willing to battle the gods. I prefer plays that communicate compelling ideas and images by employing slanted speech that risks being heretical, scenery of uncommon, even alien landscapes, and acting styles that reach beyond the confines of verisimilitude towards song and dance. I am excited by radiant language that lifts me from numbness and conformity, that dares to speak the unspeakable, to question everything, even the moral foundations that inspire our symbols and metaphors. The theatre can also be a place to escape the unrelenting presence of the Internet, FaceBook, and Twitter. I truly believe that the theatre, with its roots in myth, poetry, and spectacle, is starving for visionary creators to continue its honored purpose as the most vital and defining cultural art. But it also needs courageous producers, directors, and audiences willing to participate intellectually and emotionally so that going to the theatre becomes a creative act unto itself.

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

A: Read poetry, drink wine, taste everything, cultivate all your aesthetic senses and sensibilities; enrich your life with fascinating friends, haunt museums and galleries, attend concerts of every kind; try to avoid social networks or the compulsion to flip to the Internet while writing, and thereby wasting hours of your precious life and causing the muse to flee; try to find sacred, solitary time for just writing as often as possible, and to quote Emily Dickinson, "Be a fire that lights itself." Don't wait for commissions or even kind words of encouragement; be your own inspiration, and it helps to join or create a group that reads and critiques plays-in-process. If playwriting is your literary form, and you possess a quixotic belief in the transforming power of language, remember that words live on the page as well as the stage, so try to make the script a pleasure to read as well as to perform (because it may takes years to find a producer). I should add that theatre can be a humbling profession and you’ll be subject to the hill-valley syndrome of great news (your play is being produced) followed by devastating news (the theatre lost its funding), which means you risk becoming a bipolar manic depressive with delusions of grandeur and multiple personality syndrome, so try to have other outlets and hobbies and take up a sport, like running. Try not to be discouraged by cruel rejection letters sent by merciless, even sadistic literary managers, and then there are those “avoidance directors” who secretly wish playwrights were deaf, dumb, blind, and preferably deceased. Also and most importantly, never police your own imagination: Just because you’re not African, Asian, Jewish, Catholic, or Muslim, or old, young, male or female, or lived through wars, experienced poverty, imprisonment, hideous cancers, and other assorted miseries, doesn’t mean you can’t imagine anything you wish. The great evolutionary triumph of the species is imagination, so to define yourself in terms of your creatureliness, your gender, age, race or ethnicity is to be forever stranded on a smaller planet, so have fun, dabble in everything at every level. I should add that it’s important to keep revising and recrafting your plays, for as the French poet, Paul Valery wrote: "A poem is never finished; it is only abandoned." The same is true of a play so as you evolve, your plays evolve, and you can reenter and refine and restructure their worlds. Although Aristotle wrote (and I tend to agree) that “the essence of drama is story,” I think that the theatre is still evolving, so be inventive, dare to break the rules and know that so much more is still possible. The great advantage of writing for the theatre is that unlike actors, directors, designers and virtually everyone else in the profession, you’re not at the mercy of opportunity. Playwrights can write plays in a prison cell in Muleshoe, Texas, miles away from an actual theatre. Also avoid people who say there’s no future in writing for the theatre. I think people will come to the theatre more than ever before, if only to heal their damaged attention spans, to finally focus on the perpetual wide screen of the stage where no bullying cameras are telling us precisely where to look, no soundtrack assaulting our ears, where we’re no longer isolated but in the company of other human beings, and where our presence actually matters, so keep writing plays. A good rehearsal with an inspired company is right up there with the great sensual pleasures of life!

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: You, Adam, and all the playwrights, directors actors, designers, producers, managers, audiences, ushers, and everyone everywhere struggling to create illusions in theatres today simply because they love it and believe it can be as great as it ever was in defining our culture. I’ve had the great good blessing of working with wonderful developmental and producing theatres in and out of New York, like New Jersey Rep, Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, InterAct of Philadelphia, Seanachai in Chicago, the Rorschach Theatre in D. C., the Moxie Theatre, the Hunger Artists Theatre, South Coast Repertory, Sundance, the Axial Theatre, and in New York: MultiStages, CAP 21, the Abingdon Theatre, Playwrights Gallery, Flux Theatre Ensemble, Reverie Productions, and many others.

Apr 2, 2012

I Interview Playwrights Part 438: Katharine Sherman

Katharine Sherman

Hometown: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Current Town: Iowa City, Iowa

Q: Tell me about Christopher Marlowe's Chloroform Dreams.

A: We're calling it an Elizabethan noir fairy tale - it lives in a kind of collage universe that plays around with genre, myth, legend and language. Moments reinterpreting myths and fairy tales mingle with tropes and familiar noir characters, the legend around Kit Marlowe's own turbulent biography and the mythology of the play itself - which is on its own a very loose adaptation of Marlowe's poetic rendition of the myth of hero and leander. It's being produced by Lunar Energy Productions, a company Phil Gates and I started in 2009, out of a love of myth and magic. Phil is directing this show and The Red Room Theater used to be a speakeasy, so the stars are aligning...

Q: What else are you working on now?

A: I've just started rehearsals for a play called ondine which will be presented as part of the 2012 Iowa New Play Festival this May. It's a kinda medieval romantic fairy tale that cracks and breaks down in form and content as the speakers in the frame go longer and longer without sleep. My director, David Hanzal is all about the beautiful and visceral, and we're planning one hell of a show. I'm really interested in form right now - we just took this awesome class on structure with Mead Hunter, and right now I'm pretty obsessed with how form and content are the same thing - how structure is story. It's informing everything i'm writing.

I'm also working on another play in the Marlowe trilogy, christopher marlowe's mystery play, which was developed at wordBRIDGE playwrights laboratory last summer - it's fun to know a character and stay with him as he's plopped down into an entirely different linguistic and aesthetic universe. And how the forms of those plays work towards telling those different stories as well.

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

A: I was really shy and sensitive and didn't speak until I was three even though I already knew how, and then when I was caught and forced to use my words I did so in these long and apparently perfectly grammatical sentences, and I was this tiny little baby-looking thing being all, 'I am doing very well this morning, thank you for asking, how are you?' and people would just laugh. And then I would burst into tears and run away. And now it's like, where my writing kind of lives is in the language.

At one point I had a running list on a piece of paper divided into columns that served as my review system of episodes of Full House - like, date it was on, episode title, story synopsis, and my 'rating' of the episode out of ten, sometimes with what I would've liked to see happen in the episode. I'd like to say that shows my early grasp onto the importance of character and narrative and all that but it also might mean I really liked Full House

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

A: Expectations - like, ideas in minds of what a play is, and the reverberations of those expectations. Also, money

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Caryl Churchill, Jose Rivera, Mary Zimmerman, Charles Mee, August Strindberg, Federico Garcia Lorca, Henrik Ibsen, Jean Cocteau, Sarah Kane, Antonin Artaud, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Pedro Calderon De La Barca, Robert Lepage, Suzan-Lori Parks. a few that come to mind in other disciplines: Hans Christian Andersen, Arthur Rimbaud, James Tate, Gregory Crewdson, Edward Hopper, Greer Lankton.

Three films also had a huge impact in shaping how I see theater - Ingmar Bergman's The Magic Flute, Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, and Baz Lurmann's Romeo + Juliet. I saw that when I was ten and it changed everything.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Onstage I love to see magic, beauty, any and all kinds of virtuosity, transformation. I want it to be visceral, powerful, a punch in the stomach that hurts even harder because you're so close. Shows that lean towards being multidisciplinary. Shows that use form and structure to tell stories in different and exciting ways.

I'm also really excited by pieces that are undeniably theatrical - that could not be done in any other medium, that take advantage of the community of actors and audience, that really use the fact that we are all humans here together breathing the same air. Whether that's casting the audience in a role, turning the piece into a ritual - I've been thinking about ritual and narrative a lot lately, actually - about how a lot of rituals we know have narratives that they're built around - so why shouldn't we just flip it and have there be a ritual surrounding whatever narrative it is that we're telling in the theater.

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

A: Love what you do.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: christopher marlowe's chloroform dreams - playing at The Red Room in the East Village April 18-may 5. info, tickets, and some stuff to look at here - www.lunarenergyproductions.com

ondine - Friday, May 4th at 5:30 & 9:00. Tea parties, sequins, heartbreak, leeches. It's one of four productions, a workshop presentation and five readings in this year's Iowa New Play Festival. It's going to be grand so if you're in or near Iowa City come check it out! Informative things here: http://theatre.uiowa.edu/production/new-play-festival

Also this June is the third annual Hollywood Fringe Festival - there's going to be some really cool and innovative stuff, art of all kinds so I totally recommend checking it out if you're in California - it's June 14-24 of this year. everything you need: http://www.hollywoodfringe.org. Two shows in this year's fringe that i know are going to be excellent:
Nostalgium, by Matt Benyo, directed by Alex Scott - http://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/743 and
Eggshell, written and directed by Søren Olsen - http://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/921

Last plug: wordBRIDGE Playwrights Laboratory is up there with the best people you will ever meet and what they're doing is incredibly important. Check em out: http://www.wordbridge.org/

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May 12, 2012