I Interview Playwright Part 467: Chiori Miyagawa

Chiori Miyagawa

Q:  Tell me about DREAM Act Union.

A:  It was a wild ride collectively writing the play, Dream Acts, performing it, and managing the production together. Also trying to collaborate with folks from the advocacy field, who in the end never understood what theater is or what theater artists do, was very challenging. (This is not always my experience collaborating with people outside the theater-I’ve had 3 years of successful collaboration with nuclear disarmament activists and educators. But I found out that the immigration arena is more complicated and territorial.)

There is complete information on dreamactunion.org : about the failed and still failing congressional bill DREAM Act that inspired us, our team, the advisory board members, the production, the panel we put together, press, photos, everything! Also, you can find where to make donations to help undocumented youth continue their education after high school. There may be another production in NYC coming up, which Saviana Stanescu, one of the playwrights is pursuing, and the play should be published online soon at IndieTheaterNow.com – please stay tuned!

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I’m putting politics and activism aside and going back to art and humanity in a larger picture and longer terms.

I’m working on a play titled This Lingering Life, which is very loosely based on 8 Japanese Noh plays from the fourteenth century. It has 27 characters and spans 10 years or 100 years, depending on the audience’s state of mind. It takes place in this life and Bardo (the place in between life and death), with Nirvana (the indescribable ultimate happiness) just out of reach.

Also working on a play, I came to look for you on Tuesday. that has 19 characters (one of them is Goddess of Light). It follows a woman from ages 6 to 50, tracing her non-existent memories of losing her mother to a tsunami when she was a baby to facing an approaching hurricane as an adult. The play takes place on this planet, but not in any particular geographical locations comparable to the world as we know it.

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 don’t have a story like George Washington’s cherry tree, which I seem to remember being told when I was a child. Also, my father used to repeat some proverb from some European country about how children should live in a house at a distance that does not cool the soup—meaning, a grown child (a female child) should cook soup and bring it over to her parents’ house from her own, and the soup should still be hot when the parents eat it. This story definitely made me put an ocean and a continent between my house and my parents’ house.

Aside from that, it became clear to me when I was about twelve that Japan and I were not a good match. I left when I was fifteen. I think it would have been okay if I was born there as an aristocrat in the sixteenth century or as an intellectual in the early twentieth century. Not as a woman--that would have been awful. I don’t particularly want to be a man, so I guess neither case would actually have worked.

I think I’m the writer and the person I am because I was born in the wrong country at the wrong time, and because I have a deep love-love-hate-hate relationship with my chosen country, the U.S. I appreciate my Japanese ancestry though, and I love love NYC.

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

A:  Government subsidy of individual artists. I’m writing to you, Adam, from a huge, nice flat in Berlin that belongs to a Spanish couple who are conceptual choreographers. While my husband and I spend a month in Berlin, our hosts are in their flat in Madrid, working in a performance festival. They don’t live extravagantly, but they are able to make a life for themselves doing theater. There is a certain self-respect and peace of mind that comes with the full-time commitment to one’s art (I only experienced it once when I had a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship—and I knew it would end in a year. I teach for a living, which I consider fortunate given the lack of government funding of artists in the U.S.) But of course, this is not about changing theater. It’s about changing our collective cultural belief and attitude toward artists and attitudes of artists themselves, so I think it’s a little beyond my dreams.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Eugene O’Neill. I can’t say his plays influenced me, but I admire him because he overcame the obstacles in the form of his parents (I know something about this), pulled himself up by the sailor’s boots (I don’t know if those boots even had straps on them) and rose from suicidal darkness to write. And he wrote his best plays at the end of his life, unlike many of his peers whose best work was done in their youth. I find all that hopeful. I wish my hero wasn’t a white male, but he couldn’t help being one. I must mention my major influence and inspiration, even though it’s not theater-- Toni Morrison’s Beloved.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theatrical theater. Theater that can happen only in a theatrical space. There is a lot of successful and impressive theater that can be done just as well or better on TV or film. I don’t see the point in that. I prefer theater that doesn’t have a sofa on stage, or at least a sofa that we are supposed to believe is a “real” sofa. I like plays that has very little language AND plays that have a lot of ideas seriously discussed with lengthy text.

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

A:  First, I would say don’t follow your heart, but instead look around and make a plan. Second, don’t get distracted by what’s popular or what seems important, but write your own unique plays, and make sure each play is THE play that could be your last. They seem like contradictory advice, but they aren’t. I did it completely differently—I followed my heart only and was blind to everything else and madly kept writing as an experiment. I made my life up as I went, always flying by the seat of my pants. I would take my own advice if I was starting over and not live Helter-Skelter style. Maybe. Oh, and start an IRA early!

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  2 books of my plays are published this year. If you’re curious, please purchase them. I don’t get a cent from it, but I’d love the books to be moving around out there. Thank you!

Thousand Years Waiting and Other Plays
http://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Years-Waiting-Other-Seagull/dp/0857420208

America Dreaming and Other Plays
http://nopassport.org/Press

I Interview Playwrights Part 466: Daniel Akiyama

Daniel Akiyama
 
Hometown: Honolulu, Hawai‘i

Current Town: Honolulu, Hawai‘i

Q:  Tell me about A Cage of Fireflies.

A:  A CAGE OF FIREFLIES is about three sisters of the kibei generation -- sent as children to be raised in Okinawa, then returned to Hawai‘i as young women to live and work. The play is set in the year 2000, when the sisters are quite elderly, in a small Honolulu apartment where two of the sisters live and the third visits. A disagreement over a kimono collection forces them to confront the dreams and regrets they’ve carried with them since childhood, the long-hidden hopes and resentments that unite and divide them.

This is my first full-length play. I started writing it because I wanted to understand certain relationships and incidents from my own family’s history -- I suspect a lot of beginning writers do that. I slogged through a first draft in a playwriting class in 2006. Since then, it’s had so many revisions that it bears almost no resemblance to anything that happened in real life, and I’m fine with that.

A CAGE OF FIREFLIES will be developed in July 2012 at the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab and will have its world premiere at Kumu Kahua Theatre in Honolulu, in January 2013.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  Right now I’m trying to devote most of my time to A CAGE OF FIREFLIES, getting ready for Sundance and Kumu Kahua. I have an idea for a second play, but it’s in such an embryonic stage that I don’t feel like talking about it.

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, but I just can’t seem to think of a story with that eureka! moment. Instead, here is a family tradition that’s been part of my life for as long as I can recall.

Every Thanksgiving my family and I fly to the town of Hilo, on the Big Island of Hawai‘i, where my grandmother lives. Thanksgiving morning after everyone arrives, we all pile into cars and drive to Saddle Road, a narrow strip of pavement that snakes through miles of uninhabited ‘ōhi‘a forests between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, the largest mountains in the Hawaiian islands. We spend the day picking flowers and plants along the roadside -- ‘ōhi‘a lehua, false staghorn ferns, club moss, pūkiawe -- being careful to only take tiny cuttings from each plant, and only the plants near the path. Then we go back to my grandmother’s house and get ready for Thanksgiving dinner. The adults take the rest of the weekend to make wreaths out of the cuttings, which we bring back with us to Honolulu to give to friends and neighbors as early Christmas gifts.

I’m not sure why I wanted to share that with you. And I’m not sure what, if anything, it says about me as a person or a writer. Something about family, maybe? About continuity? About tradition?

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  A few names come to mind: Stephen Sondheim, Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, August Wilson, Bernard-Marie Koltès, Lee Cataluna. Actually, I have a hard time answering this. “Hero” is a strange word, and the writers I really admire are those whose work -- the larger body of work as much as the individual pieces -- I find meaningful, whose career and style continue to fascinate me over time, whose attitude towards writing and the theatre resonates with me. There are a lot of writers whose plays I like or even love, whose careers have heroic episodes or a heroic trajectory, but whom I don’t consider my “heroes.”

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theatre in general excites me. I like plays that have a lot of clarity and thought, plays that are built on a solid foundation and assume their audience is smart and aware. I tune out when there’s a lot of shouting, or when I feel like I’m being talked down to.

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

A:  Well, I’m just starting out myself. As I said, A CAGE OF FIREFLIES is my first big play, and I still have a ways to go before I’m done, so I’m not in a position to offer advice. However, I can tell you what seems to be working for me so far.

Here’s one great thing: I found the right director. Phyllis S.K. Look has been helping me shape and re-shape the play for over a year. She directed the play’s first workshop and public reading in Honolulu in 2011, she’ll be directing the workshop at our 2012 Sundance residency, and she’s going to stage the world premiere in 2013. It’s exciting and stimulating to work with Phyllis, a director whose ideas are rich and vivid and incredibly detailed, but who is always committed to the integrity of the play itself. I know the production will be in good hands.

Q: Plugs, please:

A:  A CAGE OF FIREFLIES was a finalist for the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference and will be workshopped at the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab, under the direction of Phyllis S.K. Look and the dramaturgy of Mame Hunt. It will have its world premiere at Kumu Kahua Theatre in Honolulu, Hawai‘i, on January 24, 2013, again directed by Phyllis S.K. Look.

I Interview Playwrights Part 465: Caitlin Saylor Stephens

Caitlin Saylor Stephens

Hometown: Baltimore/NYC

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’ve been doing rewrites for the second play in a trilogy called WHEN WE WENT ELECTRONIC. It’s about these two seemingly vapid American Apparel models named Brittney and Bethany who just had the shit beat outta them. The play is their multiple attempts to remember what happened the night before when they were attacked. Because they are so stupid, they mix things up quite a bit. So even though something very violent and tragic happened to them, their trial and error attempts to retrieve their memory are pretty funny. They also sing and dance which adds to the theatricality of the piece and lightens things up a little. I like that the scope of the play is funny and sexy and also incredibly heartbreaking. I think those ingredients made me want to write it. I also identify a great deal with the characters and what they are going through. When the stakes are high, not remembering something that happened is a terrible feeling. It changes your relationship with what is real and what isn’t. I always like to put my characters in a position where they are trying to solve an impossible puzzle based on a question I have in my own life. I know I’ve missed a step in the formula if it isn’t somewhat humiliating or answerless. Somehow, juicing the personal gives me the freedom to crank the style volume, create a distorted world, and look for some answers.

I also just spent time at Orchard Project beginning the third play in the trilogy. It’s called OUR FUTURE WILL HOLD. I’m still figuring out what it is, but I’ve known all along there’s gonna be a search party and a corpse-fucking scene! I’m pretty excited about it! I also want to include a live kitten in the piece. There aren’t enough live kittens in theatre and I’d really like to pioneer that trend. I know, I know, good luck finding a director for that one.

Q:  Why is everyone always hitting on you?

A:  My guess is booze. Either that or it’s because I don’t feel I have the right to deny a messy moment. I tend to luxuriate in the moments when things go horribly wrong. I call these moments “whoopsie” moments. My life is pretty much composed of one “whoopsie” moment after another. Like, “whoopsie” my boob just fell out of my shirt at an office meeting, or “whoopsie” where do I get my bagel and coffee in this strange neighborhood at 7:30 am on a Wednesday?, or “whoopsie” the guy I met at the wedding and had such a good time with was actually on leave from prison. WHOOPSIE. There. I’ve given away my secret of secrets.

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 raised by writers and artists so my world has always orbited around desire perpetuated conflict. I have this one very potent memory from my childhood that has definitely influenced how I resolve conflict in my plays.

My father had this gorgeous garden when I was a kid. Fresh everything. And every kind of blossoming anything you can imagine. Bleeding hearts. Dogwood. Snapdragons. The most stunning palate of color and hybrids your imagination can see.

My parents went through a very dramatic breakup when I was 10. I remember seeing my father destroying one of the flowerbeds with a shovel one day after a fight. Just weed-whacking the shit out of this beautiful rainbow. Because he was sad or angry or something. He might have just been shoveling aggressively, you know, really planting the shit outta those peonies. But how it looked to me was scary and extreme. I see things in extremes.

This moment creeps in when my characters are on the brink of resolution. And suddenly after something horrible happens they see flowers. Like in I LOVE DEAD THINGS after MOTHER is brutally ambushed and bleeding all over the floor, DAUGHTER sees cherry blossoms and she finally understands her conflict and resigns from her battle of always wanting to keep the love alive. Or in ELECTRONIC, when BRITTANY finally remembers what happened to her the night before, she gives a long speech about how she was murdered. As she describes the attack she is bombarded by “thousands of pollen-filled memories.”

I think seeing the apocalypse of flowerbeds gave most of my plays a heartbeat of beautiful sadness.

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

A:  Theatre needs more fucking. Seriously. It’s fun to watch and it’s fun to do. If fucking actually drove the theatre, people would be less concerned with the point of view crevasse and more propelled by desire. People would make choices based on what the world is craving and fantasizing about. Things would be less about gender, race, politics, and agenda and more about having a good ol’ time. Everything would be about the poetry and suffering that comes from desire. Unified. We’d be unified. Even if for just one night. An orgy of love-making, creativity, and support that ain’t got nothing to do with what boxes you check or don’t check on all of those mind-numbing applications. It would be about the art. The language. The rhythm. The physicality. The mysterious apartment and the foreign mattress. The role-playing. The did we really do that last night? Did we? The anything can happen, let’s fall in love, oh my god, oh my god! I love you. Yes. We all made this bed. And now we’re all gonna sleep in it. Together. More fucking in theatre. I’m starting a campaign. Join me.

I also think we have this tendency to forget that theater isn’t real. You are on a stage and therefore you are not experiencing something as it would happen in real life. There’s an audience! There’s a light that might fall on your head! There are sound cues and costume changes. Theater artists shouldn’t be trained anymore for real. They should be trained for presence, discovery, collaboration, and theatricality. They should be trained to be hybrids.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I love people who invert the expected and give the audience an emotionally immersive experience. My heroes are: Taylor Mac, Cindy Sherman, Lisa Kron, Kate Valk, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Mueller, and every one of my friends.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I am always exited by theater that has a personal artery that’s been struck by both style and character.

Stunning by David Adjmi, God’s Ear by Jenny Schwartz, Faust by Punchdrunk, Emperor Jones by The Wooster Group, The Amoralists, Young Jean Lee, Robert Schenkkan, The TEAM, Maly Theatre Company, John Kelly, anything Taylor Mac. These are to me, the pinnacle of theatrical excitement.

Also, theatre that really uses design and bridges the gap between the art world and the entertainment world is truly exciting to me. I love designers. They have a gigantic technical toolbox that gets my ticker ticking. They know how to use text to immerse and audience in a unique world. Costumes. Glitter. Fake eyelashes. Blood. Projections. Dancing. Music. Awesome lighting from unpredictable sources. Wigs. These things are always fun.

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

A:  If you want people to feel like they are a part of something, give them an experience. To give an experience, model your play on systems or processes that don’t involve arcs. Plays are much prettier when they look like constellations.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Voice and breath with Scott Miller.

La Colombe brews the most bangin’ coffee.

Lookout for BoomBoom my duo/collaboration with Lacy Warner.

Come to the July Amoralab with The Amoralists and see pages from WHEN WE WENT ELECTRONIC.
http://www.theamoralists.com/

Also, I’m single.

I Interview Playwrights Part 464: Greg Paul

Greg Paul

Hometown: Quincy, IL

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  It's a comedy called "Stand Up For Bastards". The jumping off point was Ralph and Montgomery from the movie "Fame" trying to make it after high school, but it has mutated into something else entirely. I'm having fun writing it.

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

A:  My father gave me his toy train set once. I quickly found that the fun part was making the train reach top speed then watching it careen off the track when it hit a curve. Before long, I figured how to unhook the transformer that powered the track, and I discovered that if you plugged it in and touched the bare ends of the wires together you would get these very gratifying sparks. And then, you could steal your sister's Barbie doll, pop its head off, turn off the lights and make sparks over her reclining plastic body. And when you did this you would say "Life! Life! Give my creation life!" But you would have to whisper it, otherwise your Mom might burst in to see if you were playing with yourself. Eventually, your sister would show up and get mad at what you did to Barbie.

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

A:  I guess I wish that more people would take a chance and get involved with it. To me, theatre has always been less about the entertainment and more about the experience of doing it. In any capacity. I'm addicted to the sense of belonging that theatre creates in those whose get involved. It changes people in ways that are both subtle and profound. It creates a temporary autonomous zone, where rules of space and time are broken, bent, reshaped. Where people try on new personas. Where technicians operate heroic intensity and purpose. I love it. I only wish everyone would have a chance to truly taste it.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I have a fondness of Arthur Miller. I really love how he will take an issue and have the guts to say "This is wrong! Look at this!" all while telling a really absorbing story. I also have to say that Robert Wilson blew my mind during my college days. I did a paper on him and it really expanded my notions of theatrical possibility. Also Christopher Bayes! He is so freakin' funny! Making funny freaks of us all! More beauty! More funny!

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like theatre that catches me by surprise. I feel like much of theatre right now is disappointingly consistent in it's socio-political content, so when I see something that violates the current conventions, that's always cool. I like theatre that has guts. I probably like that most of all. Whether it's funny or serious, courageous theatre is always something that I hope to see. And make.

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

A:  Write and write what you enjoy. But even when you don't enjoy it, keep writing. Tell your internal critic to shut up. Share your work when you are ready to (not before), and share it first with people you trust. Then get it out there!

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I have some things in submission currently and a project on the horizon, but nothing plug-worthy yet. Soon! Stay tuned!

I Interview Playwrights Part 463: Jacqueline E. Lawton

photo by Jason Hornick

Jacqueline E. Lawton

Hometown: Tennessee Colony, Texas

Current Town: Washington, D.C.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Right now, I’m finishing Bend and Sway, Don’t Break, which is about the domestic slave trade and fight for freedom in D.C. in the early 19th Century. I started writing it last Spring, but it got usurped by Love Brothers Serenade and The Hampton Years.

Bend and Sway, Don’t Break follows Dr. Jesse Torrey, a Philadelphian physician and philanthropist, who was on a crusade throughout the East Coast to advocate for the establishment of free libraries and public schools. When he arrived in D.C., he learned about the attempted suicide of a slave woman who was about to be sold South apart from her husband and children. She had jumped from the third story window of Miller’s Tavern, which was a notorious slave depot located on 13th and F Streets NW. She broke both arms and injured her back, but survived. Dr. Torrey visited her and discovered two kidnapped people of color, who were also about to be sold into slavery. Torrey went to Francis Scott Key, brilliant attorney and one-hit wonder, for help.

I’m reading the handwritten transcripts of this case and the newspaper articles that capture the response of congress members, who are being forced to confront the atrocity of slavery; it’s riveting! I’m grateful to have the next two weeks to work on it.

This summer, I’ll be working on rewrites on The Hampton Years, which will receive a world premiere at Theater J next season.

Q: Tell me about The Hampton Years.

A: Absolutely! The Hampton Years is set at Hampton Institute from 1939 to 1946. The play dramatizes key events in the life of art professor Viktor Lowenfeld and his students, John Biggers and Samella Lewis. Lowenfeld turned down a teaching position at Harvard to work at Hampton (a Negro school), which was absolutely unheard of at the time! John Biggers, who started off learning how to be a plumber, went on to become an internationally acclaimed painter, sculptor, and teacher. Samella Lewis, artist and printmaker, was a transfer from the University of Iowa. She had fiery and passionate temper, which led to a contentious, but truly respectful relationship with Lowenfeld. She’s in her 80s now and still works as an artist.

Recently, I met Hazel Biggers, widow of the late John Biggers, at the opening reception of African American Art: From Harlem Renaissance to Civil Rights Era and Beyond at the American Art Museum. She’s so excited about the play! Also, Samella Lewis read the play and had this say about it, “It’s good. Girl, it brought me back. I hadn’t expected that.” How exciting is that?!

Q: Can you talk about the Locally Grown Festival and working with Theater J?

A: Okay, so back in May of 2011, Shirley Serotsky, Theater J's Director of Literary and Public Programs, contacted me about submitting a proposal for their first ever “"Locally Grown: New Plays From Our Own Garden (or Community Supported Arts)" festival. The festival premiered Renee Calarco’s The Religion Thing; included readings of new plays by Gwydion Suilebhan, Stephen Spotswood, and myself; and featured workshop presentations of new works by solo performing artists Jon Spelman and Laura Zam.

I submitted The Hampton Years, which was originally conceived in November of 2010 after a conversation with Shirley about Theater J’s interest in exploring the Black and Jewish relationship. Since The Hampton Years, explores the relationship between Jewish scholars and Black students in the segregated south during the 1940s, it was perfect match for Theater J's mission and they commissioned it as part of the festival.

Working with Theater J has been and continues to be amazing! Their Locally Grown Festival supports the work of D.C. area playwrights in a nurturing environment and allowed us to contribute our voices to an already vibrant theater season. Having this level of investment and commitment at the early stages of the writing process was so invigorating! What’s more, the entire Theater J staff is so attentive, encouraging and passionate about the work we’re presented and their continued investment in us has been thrilling! I’m over the moon with joy and excitement about the upcoming production!

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! When I was in 3rd Grade, we were given an assignment to write a short story about Halloween. At this point, I was already writing adventure stories about my stuffed animals, so this assignment was a piece of cake! What’s more, I adored my 3rd Grade teacher, Mrs. Jordan, and had the biggest little girl crush on her two daughters, who were always very nice to me. (They both had gorgeous curly red hair, which reminded of Anne of Green Gables.) I wrote a haunted house story about all of them and Mrs. Jordan loved it! She loved it so much in fact that she asked me read it aloud in class. Horror upon horrors, I felt betrayed! I begged her not to make me do it. Despite the ME you know now, 3rd Grade Me was painfully shy and terrified to speak in public. Oh, I was so scared. I resisted with every fiber of my being, but ultimately ... I did as instructed. I read the story to my class. Every now and then, I would lift my eyes up from the page, which was gripped so tightly in my shaking and sweating hands, just to see if the class was looking and listening. They were, and they seemed to enjoy it! When I finished, they applauded so loudly! It was a room full of smiles and it felt amazing! Now, you can’t keep me from the stage; all thanks to Mrs. Jordan. That experience literally changed my life.

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

A: I want to rid this great work of ours of the incendiary bigotry, racism, sexism and elitism that runs rampant and silences so many beautiful, powerful and essential voices. I want more diversity on our stages not only in gender, ethnicity, and race, but also in content, style, and voice. I want theater producers, administrators, boards, artists, donors, patrons, and audiences to stop with all the nonsense, do better and be smarter! Plain and simple.

Q: How would you describe the DC theater scene?

A: Diverse, thriving, passionate, determined, brave, generous, eager, defiant, accomplished, and outstanding!

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Interns! They are brave souls venturing forth into the world. Also, these playwrights: Amparo Garcia Crow, John Guare, Adrienne Kennedy, Terrence MacNally, Ruth Margraff, Arthur Miller, Lynn Nottage, Harold Pinter, Jose Rivera, Sarah Ruhl, and Tennessee Williams. These playwrights cracked open my heart and changed my world view. I am not the same for having encountered their writing, vision, passion, and devotion to theater. I am grateful to them.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Theater that is magic. That provokes and pushes boundaries. That poses difficult questions. That reflects the human condition. That shows us how awful and beautiful we can be to one another ...and that we have a choice in how we behave. That uses powerful and provocative language. That introduces us to interesting and compelling characters. That is intimate, funny, honest, scary, ugly, messy, poetic, and beautiful. Theater, that while ephemeral, remains with you forever.

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

A: Be bold, honest, and determined. See as many plays and readings as you can. Make friends with other theater artists. Talk, argue, complain, yell and cry to them about the kind of work you want to be creating, the kind that isn’t being created where you live, and then go create it. Honor and protect your writing time. Don't ever stop writing!

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My lovely website: www.jacquelinelawton.com

August 5, 2012 from 11:30am to 1:00pm: Staging Strife and Solidarity: Black-Jewish Relations in American Drama at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) annual conference with Kwame Kwei-Armah (Artistic Director, Centerstage), Jacqueline E. Lawton (The Hampton Years/Theater J commission), Ari Roth (Artistic Director, Theater J), and Gavin Witt (Associate Artistic Director, CenterStage), moderated by Faedra Chatard Carpenter (Assistant Professor, University of Maryland) and LaRonika Thomas (Doctoral Candidate, University of Maryland).

World Premiere of The Hampton Years at Theater J under the direction of Shirley Serotsky with performances running May 29th to June 30th, 2013.

I Interview Playwrights Part 462: Nastaran Ahmadi

Nastaran Ahmadi

Hometown:  Nashville, TN

Current Town:  Brooklyn, NY

Q:  What are you bringing to the Orchard Project?

A:  I hope to finish a draft of Rocket Song, which is inspired by Patti Smith's book "Just Kids". The play is about a singer/songwriter duo and incorporates a lot of original songs and music, which is not familiar territory for me, so the writing of this piece has been an exciting venture into the unkown.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm working on a couple of plays, both in very nascent stages, that I'm writing under working titles The Bet and Brothers. The first is very loosely inspired by Chekhov's short story of the same name, and the second is about a pair of Iranian brothers who are living in England circa 1950 and the Iranian-American woman who tries to write a play about them in America circa now. I'll work on one of these scripts in the Fall of 2012 when I'm in residence at Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Black Swan Lab. And, I started writing my first feature length screenplay recently, which is proving to be a thrilling ride. I also just finished writing fifteen pages of what I'm pretty sure is the beginning of a web series called "Under Appreciated".

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 seven years old (or perhaps five, or six), I became aware of a thing called Christmas wherein children receive toys for no apparant reason by one Santa Clause on a day in late December. We had no such day at my house, so I set about to correct this injustice. I called in the cavalry in the form of my best friend, Courtney, who came over to tell my parents that there should be a tall green tree in the middle of the living room, and they should buy toys and wrap them up and place them underneath said tree in the middle of the night while my sister and I were asleep. And the next morning, we would all wake up, go to the tree, note the presents and thank Santa Clause for the bounty that my parents had supplied. Courtney instructed us not to acknowledge that my parents were the real givers of these delights, for that would "mess the whole thing up". So, we went to wherever you go to buy a big plastic green tree (the same tree we would re-use for this event for the next ten years) and brought it home. Courtney came over to help us decorate, which seemed more like a chore than a delightful family event. And there it was, in the middle of the living room, Christmas. I patted myself on the back for a job well done, and went off with Courtney to eat pixie sticks and watch Jem and the Holograms, or Knight Rider, or both. I can't remember what I got for that first year of Christmas, but I remember the pride I felt for having ushered America gently into our fray without dismantling the household my parents had worked hard to build. I think that explains a bit about who I am as a writer and as a person. I like to bring people new perspectives, new lenses with which to see the world, but I won't ask you to toss the ones you already have.

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

A:  Does anyone answer this question with anything other than something having to do with money? I'd make it less expensive to produce plays. I'd make more opportunities for production for all the plays that are developed into a state where production is the next logical step and then get forgotten because there are a fifty plays vying for three or four emerging writer production slots. Being in production is the way a writer hones her craft; it's how she learns how her craft is different from another writer's; it's how she completes the journey of her authority over her voice and her story, and it's also how she learns to let go of the play. And I'm actually a firm believer in developing a play, as long as it's being developed towards production. If I could change the fact that so many playwrights find their plays lingering in post-development purgatory, I would.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Polly Carl is my most recent theatrical hero. She wrote this, and in writing that she put her finger on why I feel so underrepresented in the world that supposedly embraces me and my voice. She also put her finger on why it's so difficult to get established institutions to shake off their pre-conceived notions of what journeys their audiences are willing to take. I read her post and felt like the conversation I'd been waiting for us all to have had finally begun. Other heroes include, but are not at all limited to: Edward Albee, Anton Chekhov, Caryl Churchill, John Guare, Naomi Iizuka, Sarah Kane, Lisa Kron, Simon McBurney, Lynn Nottage, Lisa Peterson, Harold Pinter, Wallace Shawn, Sam Shepard, and on, and on, and on.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I'm excited by theater that shifts my heart from whatever position it's in to a new one, while simultaneously taking me on an intellectual journey through a world that vibrates with all the realness of the one where I live, but presents a new paradigm for living that I've never thought to invent before. That kind of story can take the shape of a monologue play on a bare stage, or it can be an athletic event - if you make it bold and specific and scary and funny and thrilling and enervating and brave, then I'm all in.

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

A:  Write. Keep writing. Write more. Every play is a building stone, and you are making a castle. Read. Read plays. Read novels. Read poetry. Read the news. Apply to things. Apply to things repeatedly.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Watch out for a workshop of Rocket Song in the Fall of 2012!

I Interview Playwrights Part 461: Max Posner

photo by Kate Owen

Max Posner

Hometown: Denver, Colorado

Current Town: Brooklyn, New York

Q:  Tell me about the play you'll work on with P73.

A:  The play is called SNORE & OTHER SORTS OF BREATHING. It's a play about a large group of young people, and it takes place at each of their birthday parties over one year. All of them are pursuing "the common good" professionally - working for non-profits, NGO's, immigration law firms. They're breaking up with each other and visiting foreign countries and are very blessed to be very educated. This play is about the difficulty of evolving, together, as an organism of friends, trying to keep relationships the same and do everything "right", whatever that means.

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 11 and followed my sister into her "Creative Dramatics" class. I gathered a grain of courage and went onstage to improvise a scene. Boldly, I decided I was going to be a Pickpocket. The girl I was onstage with was wearing an unusually long T-Shirt. Down to her ankles. In order to "pick" her "pocket", I would need to pull her shirt up. I did. The teacher gasped. Then, the squawking and blushing and insta-gossip of our pubescent peers. I urinated in my cargo pants. My face was very hot. I sat in the men's room alone, legs soaked. It was a terrible, thrilling feeling. I had to go back into that room, I had to tell them I peed myself, perhaps I would say I was sorry, or perhaps I would shout that I wasn't sorry. Those gut feelings: humiliation, agony, and hope - these are the things I'm most interested in.

I took things very seriously as a child, which meant I was laughed at quite often by my own family. I wore shoes that were way too big because they felt right. I would trip down the stairs. I wanted to go to clown college. I've always been interested in accidents, and therefore theatre.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Samuel Beckett, Wallace Shawn, Maria Irene Fornes. My mentors and teachers: Erik Ehn, Lisa D'Amour, Bonnie Metzgar, Paula Vogel, Greg Moss.

Adrienne Rich, Frank O'Hara. I read poetry, and I think it really informs how I think about plays, because it makes room for multiple meanings. The same poem completely transforms depending on where and when and how it hits you.

Also, this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmO_0tIGo-4

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theatre that isn't sure what it's imitating, that asks us to learn how to watch it.

I like plays where people don't fully understand each other or themselves. I like plays that really do express the giant sadnesses and wishes and loves of their writers and collaborators. Plays that don't stare too directly into what they are About, because there is a certain mystery or a certain chase we're leaning into. Plays where conflict exists within characters, as much as it exists between them.

I also like to Laugh - to laugh when laughter might be inappropriate, to laugh in multiple directions, as a reflex and a celebration, because something is funny and happening on the body-level.

Q:  Plugs:

A:  There's gonna be a reading of my play THE THING ABOUT AIR TRAVEL at Williamstown Theatre Festival on August 10th, directed by Kerry Whigham.

And stay tuned for more Page 73 presentations in the fall!

I Interview Playwrights Part 460: Tim J. Lord

Tim J. Lord

Hometown: St. Louis, MO

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:   Tell me about your LA show.

A:  It's called Down in the face of God and it's being produced by this exciting, young company called AthroughZ who are an honest-to-goodness theater company making vibrant, physical theater right in the heart of the film monster's lair. The play began when director Jerry Ruiz was doing a Van Lier Fellowship at Second Stage here in New York. He and the other fellows were interested in putting together an evening of 1-acts based on Greek myths & plays and he approached me about doing a riff on The Bacchae. I took Euripides' idea, transferred it present day Southern Illinois, then swirled in various other Greek stories set in Thebes. I created a 4-hander that I was real excited about and started sending it around to no avail. Then last December Caitlin Hart, the director and co-artistic director of AthroughZ, contacted me about producing the play. The catch: they had a large company of actors at their disposal and would I be interested in adding characters. After I put my brains back in my head, I said, "How many total characters are we talking about?" Caitlin said, "Seven?" And I said, "How about eight?" They flew me out in February to spend a week workshopping the new version and now it's about to wrap up a 3-week run at Studio/Stage in Hollywood.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I created a whole world/faith/mythology for Down... and I have this ongoing love affair with the Midwest which gets tangled up with a love/hate relationship with Aeschylus, so I decided to rediscover and re-imagine his lost Oedipus trilogy. Down... is the 3rd part. And when the whole thing is done it'll comprise 3 generations of betrayal and striving for redemption in my version of life on the Mississippi. Then there are two plays that revolve around military veterans. The first is a play called Fault & Fold and follows two sets of siblings--a brother and sister in Iowa and a brother and sister in Afghanistan--as their lives become intertwined following an act of violence; and the other is a commission for the Veterans Center for the Performing Arts called Over Before We Get There. The VCPA exists to use theater to help vets transition back to civilian life. They were handed a collection of short stories written by Nick Corea, a Marine who served in Vietnam, and told they could adapt them for use by the company and I was asked to find a way to make that happen.

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

A:  The story, as my parents tell it, goes like this: I was pretty young and we were hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park--I was actually riding in one of those kid-carriers on my dad's back. The wind was whipping about, blowing through the cliffs above us, and I said something along the lines of, "The rocks are talking to me, Daddy." So my folks knew long before I did that I was going to grow up to be a creative type. Plus, I'm still a serious hiker and mountain climber, so nothing's changed much in the last 35 years.

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

A:  Burn the Regionals. Then see what we can build from their ashes. Or, at the very least, I'd like to reignite the idea that vibrant, exciting, new theater can be made outside of New York.

How do we find new ways of creating? How do we create works for an early 21st century audience? How do we get young people back in the theater? Some of the Regionals are starting to find ways to address all this, but they need to be doing more. Subscribers are literally dying off and young people don't even realize that there are actual, living playwrights creating new works. The furor over the announcement of the Guthrie's 2012-13 season is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. I have great hope for the new artistic leadership at Actors Theater of Louisville, but I'd like to see more bold moves like that across the country. The regional movement was a revolution. It's time for a new one.

And while we're at it, maybe we should take down Off-Broadway too(?)

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Rich Moran, Liz Carlin-Metz, the now defunct Primitive Science, Terry Gilliam, Anne Bogart, Paul Vogel, everyone in Theatre & Dance at UC San Diego, and my parents who have found a way to support this theater habit of mine through the years

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The kind that leaves me feeling out of sorts. Primitive Science created a play called Hunger based on Kafka's hunger artist stories, and I left not even knowing if what I'd seen was theater; but the result of engaging with work like that was that it expanded my idea of what theater could be and do. The SITI Company's bobrauschenbergamerica and War of the Worlds affected me like that too.

Or plays that I just can't stop thinking about for one reason or another: Julia Cho's Piano Teacher, Alex Lewin's The Near East, Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice, Tracey Letts' August: Osage County. I call them "gauntlet plays" because they challenge me to do more with my own work.

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

A:  No one's ever going to pay you enough to live on in this business. I'm a crazy optimist but dreams of making money from the plays you write should be forced out of your head. Please approach playwriting with that in mind. I don't say that to scare anyone away from the form. Rather I want there to be more of us out there, asking the tough questions, telling the difficult stories in a medium that forces human beings to actually live with and listen to one another. But unless you're a trust fund baby, you need to find a job you don't hate that will both pay the bills and allow you the time and space to live as a writer. This is advice no one ever gave me when I was starting out and if I'd known it was going to take as long as it has to start getting noticed, I would've looked different ways to support myself in the meantime. And by "meantime" I mean yesterday, today, tomorrow...

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  If you're in LA June 2-4, go see Cry, Havoc! at the Veterans Center for the Performing Arts: http://govcpa.com

My website: http://timjlord.wordpress.com

Journal of the revolution: http://bloodinthestone.wordpress.com

I Interview Playwrights Part 459: Adrienne Dawes

Adrienne Dawes

Hometown: Austin, TX

Current Town: Austin, TX

Q:  Tell me about Am I White.

A:   I distinctly remember my senior year of college sitting behind a huge, messy pile of paperwork (old notes and shitty first drafts) and thinking out loud, “This is it. This is my play.”

I first read about Leo Felton in an article in MAVIN magazine and couldn’t believe I hadn’t encountered his story elsewhere (especially as I was living on the East Coast at that time). First incarcerated at age 19 for assault, Leo Felton entered the prison system with the word “Skinhead” tattooed onto his scalp. During his eleven year stint, he quickly rose in the ranks of the White Order of Thule, described as an "esoteric brotherhood” dedicated to “revitalizing the Culture-Soul of European people." Eighty days after his release, Leo and girlfriend Erica Chase were arrested exchanging counterfeit bills at a Dunkin Donuts. The subsequent search of their apartment found bomb-making materials, illegal weapons and plans targeting the New England Holocaust Memorial. Shortly after his arrest in the summer of 2001, the press revealed Leo’s mixed race heritage: his father, a Black architect and his mother, a former nun with Jewish ancestry. Leo’s parents married just a few years after Loving vs. Virginia passed.

I began the sort of draft that came quite naturally as a twenty-one year old playwright: “HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? WHO IS THIS PERSON? Blah blah blah add some AVANT-GARDE SHIT.”

Several years and several messy drafts later, Leo wrote me (via email through a pen pal on the outside) after he found out about my play. This was pretty unsettling for a number of reasons: 1) Aside from a reading at Salvage Vanguard Theater in Austin, TX, the play only existed in my brain; 2) someone actually reads my blog; and 3) my lead character basically wanted to talk to me - from prison.

I had never, ever had direct contact with anyone that inspired any of my plays, despite the fact that just about everything I write comes from what I read in the newspaper (or in the case of You Are Pretty, what I watch on HBO really late at night). It took a few letters for us to determine a comfortable communication process. I had to make it very clear that I was creating a fictional piece based on his story. Overall, our exchanges have been very positive. As Leo has been completing his memoir, I’ve been writing my play.

So I’m in this story now. This is it. This is my play.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  As if Am I White wasn’t heavy enough, I’m working on a play about the Haitian earthquake, violent sex and PTSD. I’m in a real mood right now . . .

I’m also developing two screenplay projects and in post-production on my web series, Completely Normal Activity. Completely Normal Activity is an improvised paranormal comedy about a twenty-something slacker who tries to document suspected paranormal activity in his apartment. Our second season is a prequel (a nod to the Paranormal Activity movies) so we like to pitch it as “what happened before nothing happened.” New episodes will be released this Fall but the entire first season is available online for free, forever, at http://www.completelynormalactivity.com

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 taught myself to read when I was three years old so very early on, I felt a sense of ownership of story. I could escape to my books whenever I wanted, with or without my parents. I experienced a great deal of emotional trauma as a young child and my transition to storytelling was extremely empowering. When I could not speak, I could always write and did so voraciously.

My earliest stories were autobiographical, attempts to explain my “difference.” Let me just say that I grew up in Central Texas in the early 90s (pre-Jolie-Pitt era). I’ll also say that I am mixed-race, I have White adoptive parents and come from an interracial, differently-abled family. There was a lot of explaining to do.

I was excited to find my first audience in my classmates, who would excitedly pass around handwritten pages of my Wiccan sagas and pester me for advance chapters. I was extremely shy and introverted, so this was a huge push of encouragement to share my voice.

Unfortunately, this also meant I could get in trouble for what I wrote. I’m embarrassed to admit that I authored and illustrated several inappropriate comic strips, based on playground gossip or national tragedy. I was in every other respect a model, straight A student so my terrible sense of humor came as quite a shock to my teachers.

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

A:   Lack of an inclusive community.

In part, it’s us. Theater folk. For all our ability to transform and transport audiences, theater artists lack a lot of basic social skills when the house lights rise. “Thanks for your $35, now get out.” Audiences and emerging artists desperately want in. Open a door or in the very least, open a window. There’s room for all of us.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:   Naomi Iizuka, Suzan Lori Parks, Vicky Boone, Jenny Larson and Christine Farrell. Special love to Mary Siewert Scruggs and to Paul Ryan Rudd, who helped me fall in love with Shakespeare again.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Two productions changed everything for me: Classical Theater of Harlem’s production of The Blacks and Propeller’s production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream.

Now I want every play to be dangerous, strange and funny. I want to be an active participant of a theatrical event that cannot be reproduced or accurately recorded by any form of technology. I want narrative in the moment and only in that moment. I want to go home after a show and dream about it that night.

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

A: Truth be told, I’m still just starting out. I’m about ten years into my career and I hope I get another ten to continue to “emerge.” I will say that it’s impossible to be a playwright without a supportive community. An academic environment comes with a lot of built-in resources but if you are just out of school or in an academic limbo (as I am), you have to find your artistic home(s). You have to seek out creative partners and collaborators. And quite frankly, you have to stage manage a whole lot of shows before anyone will remember your name.

I found a way to work with every company in Austin after college and that’s how I met most of my collaborators. I’m not particularly out-going or extroverted but I work really hard and am organized. I believe if you put good work karma out into the community, it will return to you.

Be grateful whenever anyone reads your work. Have a law school friend or family member to help you read contracts carefully. Expand your friend circle to include some non-theater friends. Find some “extracurricular activities” to exercise other creative muscles and distract from writer’s block. Go easy on yourself (playwriting is not a competitive sport) and your peers (please do not under any circumstances talk trash about a show in the theater lobby or bathroom directly after a performance).

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  like meat loves salt will be produced as part of Eat Street Players’ Fresh Bites One Act Festival (Minneapolis, MN) which runs May 31st thru June 9th: http://www.eatstreetplayers.org/onstage/freshbites.html

My short comedy LARPers in Love will premiere as part of American Theater Company’s Big Shoulders New Play Festival (Chicago, IL) June 19th at 7:30pm: http://www.atcweb.org/about/about.php

Am I White will receive a reading as part of Blackboard’s Reading Series (NYC) in November. More details will be up shortly on my website: http://www.adriennedawes.com and http://www.blackboardplays.com

I Interview Playwrights Part 458: Susan Soon He Stanton

Susan Soon He Stanton

Hometown: Aiea, Hawai‘i

Current Town: New York City

Q:  Tell me about your show at Clubbed Thumb.

A:  Takarazuka!!! is set in the Takarazuka Women’s Revue in Japan, where women perform all roles in lavish Broadway style musicals.

I was inspired to write this play after watching an interview of a Takarazuka “male star.” She explained, “I always dreamed of joining Takarazuka. I never imagined what would happen when the dream would end.”

After hearing this woman's bittersweet interview, I began to research Takarazuka. I became obsessed with the lurid, surreal, and oddly compelling performances. I was introduced to the strange ritual of forced retirement that these actresses undergo, a tradition unique to the Takarazuka Revue. This play is my imagining of what happens when “the dream ended.”

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  At the moment, I’m developing The Underneath (a commission from Kumu Kahua) with Rising Circle. The Underneath is a story about Col, a young man who returns home to Hawaii after receiving a mysterious SOS note from his estranged brother, whom Col had left behind. When Col returns home, nothing is the way he remembers and Honolulu becomes a dark and unfamiliar backdrop. Although this play is stylized and draws from film noir, particularly The Third Man, The Underneath is a very personal play for me that explores complicated emotions I have about leaving home and living abroad.

I’m also working on a play called Murdo at the Public’s Emerging Writers Group. Murdo is about hoarding as well as the exodus of a small town in South Dakota. The play focuses on Paul, a Desert Storm Vet, now a hoarder and possibly the town’s final resident, and Paul’s hyper-sexualized eleven-year-old daughter, Bitna. I’m really excited about Bitna. I had forgotten how terrifying eleven-year-old girls can be. Even though I’m from Hawai‘i, my father is from the Midwest. This is the first time I’m exploring that landscape.

In addition, I’m developing a few short films and working on my first musical with Michael McQuilken.

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

A:  There is no explanation for me. But here's a story.

When I was five-years-old, I was lost for hours in a Beijing market. There were stalls displaying pigs’ heads and innards, live turtles, and chickens. I was pushed to the ground by the shouting, jostling crowd. A tall stranger grabbed me by my wrist and lifted me into the air. He said, "Do you know what happens to little girls who run away from their mothers? Their eyes are gouged out and their hands and feet cut off. Then they are shipped to Malaysia to beg and they never see their families again."

I was pretty sure this was my fate until my mother ran up to me. Turns out this charming man was a business associate of my mother's, who was irritated to have been asked to look for me. The fear that I would be kidnapped, disfigured, and sent to an unfamiliar place haunted me for years. I will never forget that man’s face or the smells and sights of the market. I want audience to feel vulnerable and engaged while sitting in the theatre. I want my plays to terrify and overwhelm, but also be funny.

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

A:  I wish it was easier to convince people to see plays. People will shell out money to go to a concert but balk at $20 theater tickets. A bad play is far more torturous than any film could ever be. But a good play can change your life.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  My mentors are Paula Vogel, John Guare, and Jose Rivera (they are also my heroes). My heroes also include Gabriel Garcia Lorca, David Lynch, Caryl Churchill, Witold Gombrowicz, and Charles Ludlam.

And if I can be old-school about this…Euripides. Even thousands of years later, his plays still feel shockingly modern. I also appreciate a controversial playwright. Euripides was controversial in life and in death. While in exile, it was said he was either killed by his rival’s hunting dogs or torn apart by women. That’s living life with the same intensity as your art.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like spectacle and seeing how magic is created in small spaces with tiny budgets. I’m drawn to impossible plays, awkwardness, and stories in which anything can happen at any moment.

That said there’s no one particular kind of style that I favor over the other. I think certain theater-makers create work that challenges their audience and demands to be seen.

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

A:  I think every playwright should read Jose Rivera's 36 Assumptions.

I also received this piece of advice from Martin Epstein. His advice stuck with me because I received it at a time when I was questioning whether or not I should continue playwriting.

“If you haven't already begun, read. Cannibalize the classics and track down great plays of the present moment—discover what 'great' means, but never imitate until you've absorbed the influence in ways to stimulate your own take on things. And see as many plays as you can afford until you can't stand it. It's best to see amazing plays and terrible plays.”

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Running from May 26 to June 4, 2012 please check out Takarazuka!!! at Clubbed Thumb. http://www.clubbedthumb.org/

June 7th I have a reading of The Underneath at Rising Circle. [http://playrise2012.eventbrite.com/].

I Interview Playwrights Part 457: Kendall Sherwood

Kendall Sherwood

Hometown: Madison, GA

Current Town: Los Angeles, CA

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I'm honored to be working for 10 great writers on "Major Crimes" (TNT's new crime drama, a spin-off of "The Closer"), so I'm soaking up lots of knowledge about screenwriting and playwrighting, both. But as far as my own writing goes, I'm thinking about a new play - an absurdist drama about a woman who refuses to give birth to her baby when labor pains bring up suppressed memories. Unfortunately, I've been stuck in the thinking phase for a long time -- maybe I'm scared to tackle some of those issues. To balance it out, I'm working on an action-adventure Buffy-style TV pilot, which is so far out of my pocket that it's just a thrill to be able to write a single page.

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 to tell a story about church, as a lot of my writing centers on organized religion, particularly of the down-home, rural Southern variety. I have a distinct memory of being in the basement of the baptist church for "Bible Drills." For those who are unfamiliar, you memorize bible verses and perform them for a judge, competing with your classmates (or - if you're lucky - against the whole county!). The teacher left the room for a minute and, in some conversation that I've now forgotten, I used the word "hell." Not even in a "go to hell" sort of way -- more like a "I don't know what the hell Ezekiel 14:3 is." Of course, the room erupted in a chorus of "oooos" and I was immediately humiliated and felt so, so, so much shame. I think it may have been the first time I ever cursed. I tried to explain myself - that I didn't mean to say it, I didn't know WHY I said it. Yikes, I'm practically blushing now, remembering it. So much shame over 4 letters. There's something in there about the power of language, I guess. And it's probably needless to say, but these days I swear like a sailor and stay out of churches.

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

A:  It should be free. I also think everything should be free.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  So glad I get to answer this in writing. In person, when I'm asked this, every name and title immediately leaves my head. It's like I've never read or seen a single play. At different times, I've found myself drawn to the works of Martin McDonagh, Edward Albee, Caryl Churchill, Rajiv Joseph, Lynn Nottage, Sarah Ruhl, and Rebecca Gilman, who I had the honor of learning from at Northwestern.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  To be honest, I'm fascinated by simple stories that are interrupted by horrible acts of violence. The intersection of the mundane with that kind of mortality is kind of the definition of humanity, I think. I also dig plays by chicks. They are much too few and far between.

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

A:  I want to say that a broke writer's best tool is a box of wine, but I also don't want to leave out people who don't enjoy alcohol. What I mean to say is: use whatever method you can to keep perfectionism at bay. Whatever seems perfect today will read like shit tomorrow. And vice versa. So trust your words and just keep going.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My play, THE RECORD BREAKERS, will be featured in the Athena Project Festival in Denver July 12-29. Find info here: http://www.athenaprojectfestival.org/events.html

And check out "Major Crimes," which premieres August 13th on TNT.

I Interview Playwrights Part 456: Wendy Dann

Wendy Dann

Hometown:  Morrisville, NY

Current Town: Ithaca, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I'm writing a play with music called The Liberator, a project I've been researching and writing for a few years now. Starting work with a composer soon. And revising everything else. As always.

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 with two college professors as parents, and surrounded by eighteen acres of land...my parents were friends but never slept in the same bedroom my whole life...I don't think I ever put together what was going on until I was an adult, but I spent a lot of time in the woods playing make believe...turning rocks into horses and trees into gods...

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

A:  More people would go. Productions would all be great so people would come back.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I took a SITI workshop in grad school, so Anne Bogart. When I turned to her and said, "I feel like I need to think differently," she replied "No, you need to see and hear differently." That changed everything for me.

At the same time I was studying with Bob Moss, and learned a huge amount from his other directing proteges: people like Michael Mayer and Kevin Moriarty.

And from afar: George C. Wolfe, Tina Landau, Paula Vogel, Tony Kushner, Donald Margulies, Sarah Ruhl, Annie Baker, Tom Stoppard, Brian Friel.

Wishing they were still here: Harold Pinter. Samuel Beckett. Chekhov. Shakespeare.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Stories that feel so close to home I get embarrassed. They force me to reexamine my own choices, my own decisions, and how to move forward.

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

A:  Endurance. Sit down every day (jeez, Wendy, listen to that yourself)

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Check out our new theatre company:
www.breakingbreadtheatre.com

And my ongoing project:
www.sammyandme.com

I Interview Playwrights Part 455: Ken Kaissar

Ken Kaissar

Hometown: Indianapolis, IN

Current Town: Yardley, PA (Philly Suburb)

Q:  Tell me about A Modest Suggestion.

A:  A MODEST SUGESTION is a dark comedy that explores the absurdity of hatred and bigotry towards people of a certain ethnicity. It deals with genocide against Jews in a very flippant manner, which I know is incendiary because the reality of such a horrifying event has not been confined to fiction. I’m not trying to piss people off, though I know that has been the result on a few occasions. I’m sort of making a point that when it comes to genocide, although most people agree that it’s horrible and must be stopped, they are somewhat ambivalent and not all that concerned that it is taking place. It’s happening as we speak, and how many of us are going out of our way to stop it? For all intents and purposes, we’re all somewhat flippant about it. It’s as though our honest to god attitude about it is, “Eh, whatever. What’s for dinner?”

A MODEST SUGGESTION became complicated, however. I realized as I was writing that I was tackling more than just hatred and genocide. I was writing about identity as a whole. I didn’t mean to do this. It just happened organically through an earnest desire to find the comedy of the situation, making it all the more absurd.

As the 4 businessmen in my play decide they are going to kill a Jew to see how it feels, I thought, wouldn’t it be funny if these guys decided that their victim is not Jewish enough?

Jewish identity in America is complicated. There are Jews who observe their religion on so many different levels, and each group is constantly judging the other. The Orthodox judge Reform Jews for not being observant enough. And Reform Jews judge the Orthodox for not living in a more modern, American world grounded in the immediate needs and concerns of today. There is great tension between these groups. So I naturally wanted to poke fun at these disagreements and exploit the tension for comic affect.

The play is about an intensely serious subject and draws from a very dark moment in human history. But there are parts of it that truly make me laugh, and it makes me happy when I can get others to suspend their seriousness for a few moments and laugh with me.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I’m currently writing a comedy that takes place at a nudist colony. Good luck getting that one produced, right? But when we can get over our hang-ups about nudity and divorce the body from the usual sexual context that it’s always trapped in, I think the naked body is downright hilarious!

I hope this play will be another opportunity for people to laugh about something we take so damn serious. In general, I think everyone just needs to lighten up, about almost everything!

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 a member of an immigrant family that constantly struggled to understand the culture in which it lived. My family was constantly trying to go with the flow as a way of getting a handle on American society. We were lost, and I learned very early on that my parents were not making headway on “getting it”. So I had to take initiative. I started becoming an astute observer and student of American behavior to try to figure out how I could fit in more.

To give you an idea of how lost my parents were, my father received a marketing call once and they told him that if he came into the office to hear a sales pitch, he would receive a free gift. Well, most Americans would hang up on such a call. Not my father. Not only did he go, but the entire family dropped everything we were doing, we all put on our Sunday best (I wore a suit), and we all attended a sales pitch on carving knives.

Another time, our next door neighbor knocked on our door to fundraise for some social cause that she was working for. My mother assumed the beer can she was holding was a receptacle for the collection. As she tried tenaciously to slip a bill into the beer, the woman jerked the can away with the following verbal reflex: “Get out of my beer.” My mother assumed the beer can was a pushke, a traditional Jewish can used for collecting charity. We were all lost.

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

A:  What I would change has less to do with theater itself and more to do with how people perceive theater. Everyone is so obsessed with content. What’s the play about? Who cares? It’s a play. It’s an expression of what it means to be alive. It’s about life. It’s about being a human being. Just come, someone has something to say. We are gathering to hear what it is.

I hate that content always makes or breaks whether someone will attend a piece of theatre. I write a lot about Jews and about the Middle East (I was born in Israel). Everyone is always interested in these plays, and I’m glad. I’m not complaining. But I’ve also written beautiful plays that are simple: a man meets a beautiful woman on a park bench. These plays always get ignored. People want the big stuff. The more subtle expressions just don’t get much stage time.

If I could, I would make people more open towards expression in the theatre and get them to stop asking, “What’s the play about?” as a determining factor of whether to attend or not? This question should always be answered as follows: “It’s about you.”

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Oscar Wilde. Anton Chekhov. Bernard Shaw. David Mamet. Charles Mee. Tony Kushner. Gina Gionfriddo. Annie Baker.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Incendiary theatre that tends to get the audience’s goat. Challenging theatre. Bold theatre. Theatre that is the opposite of PC. I also enjoy theatre that breaks all the rules. Work that excites me is work that someone once responded to with, “you can’t do that in theatre.” I like when opinions like that get shut down.

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

A:  Be kind and open to everybody. This business is all about networking and that doesn’t mean kissing up to famous people at a cocktail party. It means working with your peers and friends, and having them be excited about working with you. So be kind to everyone. Make every member of your community a friend. There is simply no room for bad blood in this field. Have lots of patience and enjoy the ride.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My play CEASEFIRE is being produced by the Fusion Theatre Company in Albuquerque running June 7 – 11th. My play THE VICTIMS OR WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO ABOUT IT is being produced by the Jewish Theatre Workshop in Baltimore next June.

Right Now and Coming Soon

1.  I was a finalist at O'Neill for my play Where You Can't Follow.  If you work at a lit office and I haven't sent it to you already please let me know if you want to read it.  Description and sample here:

https://sites.google.com/a/theoneill.org/npc-2012-finalists/where-you-can-t-follow-by-adam-szymkowicz
  
2.  This weekend Incendiary opened in Chicago.

https://www.facebook.com/events/285741174849839/ 

3.  Next up is UBU in NYC. 
 

http://www.indiegogo.com/UBU?c=gallery


https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/244166

Thursday, June 7 at 9:00 pm
Sunday, June 10 at 6:30 pm
Tuesday, June 12 at 9:00 pm
Friday, June 15 at 7:00 pm
Saturday, June 16 at 4:00 pm

Inspired by Ubu Roi, UBU is the King of the Great Expanding Universe who will allow a privileged few into his mansion to watch him eat steak. Along the way, he may play music, read you poetry and tell of his lost loves and purchased politicians - it all depends on the mood of the King. A kinetic romp through the absurdist world of the most powerful CEO in the universe.

4.   Then Hearts Like Fists in LA in late July


http://www.indiegogo.com/heartslikefists

I Interview Playwrights Part 454: Norman Allen

Norman Allen

Hometown: Corte Madera, California

Current Town: Washington, DC

Q: Tell me about your show in the Source Festival.

A: On the surface, “The House Halfway” is about a bed & breakfast inn on an island in the Caribbean, where people go to commit suicide. But it soon becomes apparent that there’s much more going on than that. Audiences who come thinking they’re going to see an “issue play” about assisted suicide are going to be greatly surprised. I don’t want to say more than that, because I want the play to reveal itself, but folks should come ready to listen, and ready to argue on the way home.

I will add that the play comes from multiple and seemingly incongruous sources. There’s a hint of J. M. Barrie’s mystical Edwardian drama “Dear Brutus” in the structure of the piece, and a touch of Noel Coward in the rhythm of the comedy, but then the themes lying beneath that come from the work of folks like Joseph Campbell and Elaine Pagels, and the Gnostic Gospels themselves. And all with a comic tone.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  At the moment I’m packing for a trip to Slovenia, where my play “Nijinsky’s Last Dance” is part of the Mladinsko Theatre’s Overflight Festival, and where I’ll be leading a two-day playwrights’ workshop on using historic figures to reflect contemporary issues. I’m also in the process of adapting a big-ass Victorian novel, taking 750 pages and making it work for a two-hour performance with eight actors, which has been a blast. And I’m collaborating with a dance company for a piece that uses text and movement to explore Isadora Duncan’s years in post-revolutionary Russia.

Q:  Can you talk a little about writing documentaries? What is that like? How does it compare to writing plays?

A:  I loved working on those PBS projects. Each of them was a biography of a major artist, so I got to dig into the lives of Van Gogh, Cezanne, Cassatt and Sargent. It was a great lesson in structure, taking the mess of a person’s life and fitting it into the three acts that make up an hour of television. And I got to spend my days reading these people’s letters, or stories about them, and calling it “work.” How great is that? The actual paintings were shot in HD after the exhibits had closed for the day. We’d be at the National Gallery in the middle of the night, and I’d manage to stay one room ahead of the crew so I could be alone with these incredible works of art, with no one’s head in the way.

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 seven, and my sister was ten, my mother sat us down in front a record player and put on the cast album of “My Fair Lady.” After each song, she lifted the needle and filled in the story, so we got the whole scope of the show. The next day we drove into San Francisco and went to a matinee (with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., playing Higgins!) It was magic, but it was magic because we had been very carefully prepared for the experience. There are still certain images that I remember from that afternoon, specifically the green of Eliza’s dress in the Rain In Spain scene.

From that beginning, everything else unfolded. My parents recognized how important the theatre was to me and were diligent in expanding my horizons. We went to Shakespeare festivals in the summer, to ballet, to bag-lunch opera. At a very young age I saw productions that are now legendary – Peter Brook’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and “Cyrano de Bergerac” with Peter Donat and Marsha Mason. All of that shapes who I am as a writer, and as a lover of theatre. But it all comes back to sitting in front of that record player.

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

A:  It needs to be cheaper, plain and simple. Commercial producers, in particular, need to recognize their responsibility to future generations of theatre artists by making their productions accessible to a larger range of people, especially young people. I saw the original “Angels In America” on Broadway by getting one of the cheap tickets made available each day to people willing to wait in line. I was so high in the balcony, I was practically in Jersey, but I got to see that amazing piece of theatre because the producers and author had a sense of responsibility to their audience.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  When I think of theatrical heroes, I think about all the artists whose work I’ll never be able to experience. I would give a lot to see Robert Armin play Feste at the Globe in 1600-something, or to see the premiere of Nijinsky’s “Rite of Spring” in Paris, or Ellen Terry in anything at all. I wish I could thank Rostand for Cyrano. I wish I could thank Arthur Miller for All My Sons.

Q:  What kind of theatre excites you?

A:  I like great story-telling. I especially like when great story-telling converges with the exploration of un-answerable questions, which makes me a huge fan of Tom Stoppard. I feel very lucky to live in Washington, DC, where someone with eclectic tastes has lots of choices. In the last month or so I’ve seen big-house productions of “Strange Interlude” and “Long Day’s Journey into Night,” and an incredibly funny and moving production of Mary Zimmerman’s “Metamorphoses” in a black-box space. And Capital Fringe is right around the corner.

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

A:  Don’t wait for someone else to tell you that your work is worthy of production – produce it yourself. But make sure you have the tools to make that production a success. I got my start self-producing in a 47-seat house at the Boston Center for the Arts, but I did it with a background in PR & Marketing, and some great press connections. We had word-of-mouth, we got some reviews and, eventually, I got an agent out of the experience. Just make sure you’ve got strong collaborators and supporters before you begin.

Q:  Plugs please:

A:  Come see “The House Halfway” at the Source Theatre Festival starting June 14th! And don’t miss all the other Festival offerings. This is a great opportunity to experience a wide range of new work.

I Interview Playwrights Part 453: Larry Pontius

Larry Pontius

Hometown: Normal, IL

Current Town: Los Angeles, CA

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Quite a few things, actually. My wife and I are making a short film, I'm Associate Producer on a film called Atari Christmas by Brett Neveu, I'm working on a new play called Analogue, about mourning and multiple Earths, and finally, I'm in LA, so, I'm working on specs and original pilots. And I'm having a baby.

Q: You write for Pakistan TV? How did that happen? What is that like?

A: It happened in New York. My wife is Indian and an actor. Someone was doing a Pakistani serial in New York, where she was living at the time. Urdu and Hindi are very closely related. The director, Mehreen Jabbar and my wife hit it off. Deepti introduced me, and Mehreen needed writers for an anthology, which I wrote a few episodes for. She and her father liked what I did, and got me a few more serials all of my own. It's weird. And great. (a fantastic story to tell at meetings.) I have to write an ENORMOUS amount of material by myself that can be shot very cheaply and for a culture that has grown even more conservative in the years that I've done it. I don't know if I would want to do it for the rest of my life, but it gave me the skills to create/rewrite on the spot. And sometimes write 20 pages in a day.

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 I'm still figuring out who I am as a writer. And as a person. I'll tell this story... I was pretty young, maybe around 8 or 9, and I had been out that night playing cops and robbers--do kids still do that?---and once the sun went down, I headed home. I ended up in front of the TV, watching, of all things, this PBS documentary about Charlie Chaplin... and I was HOOKED. It was AMAZING. That's what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Be that guy. Which  as it turns out... I didn't become him.

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

A:  I'm gonna cheat and say two things: make it cheaper to attend and more local

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I have to admit, I'm a bit of a hero whore. For a while I was really into Stoppard--but then he got to smart for me. I love Lindsay-Abaire's work (both the old and the new) I like Brecht's ideas. I adore The Empty Space. Nicky Silver comes to mind. Commedia Dell'Arte. The Three Stooges. Alan Moore. Bugs Bunny. Richard Curtis and Ben Elton for giving us Black Adder. Oh, and mad props to Anton Chekhov. And any playwright that wrote behind the Iron Curtain. And Shakespeare.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that relies on the imagination of the performer and the audience. Playful theater. Theater that is hard to move into a different medium. Theater that moves me emotionally and can surprise me.

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

A:  Self produce, self produce, self produce. And meet people. And work FOR people. Learn. Read. If you're just starting out, most likely you're already fearless... hold onto that.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A: http://lpontius.com/blog/ , Happythefilm.com (the movie my wife and I are making, @LarryPontius (me on twitter), http://www.playwrightsunion.com/ (a group that I'm a part of in LA.)