I Interview Playwrights Part 542: Chelsea Sutton

Chelsea Sutton

Hometown: Murrieta, CA

Current Town: North Hollywood, CA

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Oh, it feels like a million things! I’ve started three different plays with three different writers groups I’m involved with in Los Angeles. With The Vagrancy, I’m writing a post-apocalyptic play called H.A.P. about a trunk that might have magical powers and a group of people who worship it. With The Eclectic Company Theatre, I’m writing The Many Deaths of Kassie McGreevy about a girl who quite literally dies all the time. And with the Katselas Playlab I’m writing The Sudden Urge to Jump – a love story in a video store. In January I’m also doing an eight-day intensive workshop with The Vagrancy of my play The Dead Woman – so I’ll be busy with rewrites. Oh, and I’m working on finishing a novel and a short story collection too, with another novel and novella in the docket.

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 painfully shy child and even had trouble speaking early on – I couldn’t even pronounce my name in first grade and had to go to speech therapy. But I was always writing stories. That’s how I communicated. And I was always reading. Mostly ghost stories like the Goosebumps series for quite a long time, which is probably why there’s death in just about everything I write. As cliché as it sounds, becoming a dancer in elementary school and then an actor in high school helped me break out of this – it was easy to play out stories on stage, first with movement then with speech, because I didn’t have to be myself. So somehow I started out as a shy reclusive kid with a mild speech impediment and became the girl who gave a speech at her high school graduation in front of thousands of people and made half of them cry. And I’m still struggling between those two people almost every day. That’s how most people are, I think – struggling with at least two different versions of themselves at any one time.

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

A:  I wish we could redefine what “producible” means for a play. It seems almost impossible to get a play produced if it has more than four characters and runs longer than 90 minutes. Producers and fellow writers have told me this many times, in fact. If it has a big cast it better be a musical – and one with a built in fan base. If the writer is unknown and a woman, producers seem even less inclined to seriously tackle the material – the studies done in Los Angeles alone by the LA Female Playwrights Initiative show that women playwrights are produced at a lower rate than their male counterparts. And if you do get a production, getting the second or third is hard because everyone wants the world premiere – because a world premiere is marketable. I hope that if the next Great American Play came along that happened to have twelve characters, there would be a producer willing to put it out into the world. But I can’t help be cynical about it. Even our mid-size and large theaters in LA produce small cast and one person shows more often than anything else. It’s just a financial reality right now.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Sarah Ruhl, Paula Vogel, Naomi Iizuka, Edward Albee, Anne Garcia-Romero, Howard Ashman, Caryl Churchill, Tom Stoppard, Luis Alfaro, Sheila Callaghan, Samuel Beckett…I could go on.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  This is going to sound simplistic – but I like theater that really creates an emotional reaction in me. And that doesn’t happen often. I’ve seen so much theater that has an interesting plot or a beautiful design or a big Hollywood star – but I just don’t care about the characters and end up feeling nothing in the end. It’s really the most important thing for me – even if I know where the plot may be heading, tragedy or otherwise, if I really care about the characters and the stakes, I’ll hoping against the inevitable and my heart will still break even if I saw the storm coming from the first scene. And that feels so good, sitting in an audience, holding your breath. That being said, I love magical realism, puppets, dark/macabre themes and designs, sci-fi theater, dance and anything that really pushes the boundaries of the two-people-in-a-living-room-in-NY-talking-about-their-love-lives-drama/comedy mold.

So basically theater that makes me hold my breath…with dancing puppets.

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

A:  Write. A lot. Take every opportunity that comes your way. Meet people. Learn how to do all the other jobs in a theater – direct something, do the marketing for a show, stage manage, get on stage and do a monologue, design costumes. Do it all! Write. Find your tribe, people you can create with and fail with. Produce your own work at least once. Write something outside of your comfort zone. Listen to the critics, glean what you can from their reviews, politely thank them for spending quite a bit of time thinking about your work, and quickly throw out all those negative thoughts that will otherwise haunt you. Submit everywhere, to everything. Write.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I’m directing a new play called Low Tech by Jeff Folschinsky at The Eclectic Company Theatre in North Hollywood, CA. It will have dances and masks and funny things. It opens April 12, 2013. I’m a staff writer for an online fiction magazine called Fictionade:  http://www.fictionade.com/ You can also check out my website for readings and things that should happen in the near future:  http://withcoffeespoons.com/

I Interview Playwrights Part 541: Laura Marks

Laura Marks

Hometown: Lexington, KY

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about Bethany.

A:  I wrote this play in early 2009 right after I’d been laid off. It’s a darkly funny study of desperate people in desperate times, set in a community that’s been decimated by the foreclosure crisis. Since writing it, I’ll confess that I’ve been anxiously watching the news for signs of economic recovery, worrying that my play would stop feeling relevant. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I don’t think that’s been the case…

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I have a spooky play called Mine that’s getting its Chicago premiere at the Gift Theater this summer, and I’m working on a new play called Gather at the River which is about religion, morality and the extreme ends of the blue-state vs. red-state divide. It draws on my Kentucky roots.

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 can’t think of a truly definitive story, but there’s a character in Bethany who’s a wilderness survival enthusiast, among other things; and working on that play reminds me that one of my favorite childhood books was the US Air Force Combat Survival Manual. I don’t even know why we had this in the house. My dad must have bought it at some Army-Navy store around the same time when he started keeping canisters of freeze-dried eggs and sausage in the garage, just in case of nuclear winter. He’s a thoroughly rational guy, a doctor —not your typical doomsday prepper. But I have a bunch of his love letters to my mom when they were in college, and even as a young man he had this strain of concern that I find very moving: he was already worrying about protecting my mom and their as-yet-unborn children.

So anyway, we had this insane book. And it was about the stuff every kid wants to know: how to stay alive after you’ve been shot down in enemy territory. You didn’t just learn the basics like how to build a lean-to or ensnare wild animals. There was crazy shit in there, like how to distill your own urine if you couldn’t find clean water. And there was a first-person account from a guy in a Vietnamese POW camp who had performed a hemorrhoidectomy using the sharpened steel arch support from his combat boot. He described the postoperative patient as “living in considerably greater comfort.” I mean, you can’t read that as a kid and not have it etched in your brain.

I have two little girls of my own now, and I’m often surprised at the extreme scenarios they’re drawn to in their make-believe games. But it seems utterly normal and healthy for them to work a few things out this way. Marsha Norman once said, “Plays are about survival.” And I think that’s true, whether the plays are being done with LEGOs in the living room or on a professional stage. We all like to imagine how we’d act under different types and levels of duress, how we’d function and survive.

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

A:  I wish it wasn’t just for the rarefied few. I wish that audiences—and the people who make theater—were more representative of the whole community.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  For sheer pluck and doggedness, I’d say Helene Hanff and Moss Hart. They’re not heroes in the Olympian sense. They feel accessible. Hanff wrote a book called Underfoot in Show Business—I believe it’s out of print now, but it’s this wonderful, humble memoir of her time as a young playwright trying to get produced in the 1940’s and 50’s. It’s the perfect antidote to self-pity. And Moss Hart’s memoir, Act One, has the most epic account of a rewrite that I’ve ever read.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  “To see deep difficulty braved is at any time, for the really addicted artist, to feel almost even as a pang the beautiful incentive, and to feel it verily in such sort as to wish the danger intensified. The difficulty most worth tackling can only be… the greatest the case permits of.” – Henry James

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

A:  Apply to the Emerging Writers’ Group at the Public. Apply to Juilliard’s playwriting program. Send your stuff to the Lark Play Development Center. Apply to New Dramatists. Join the Dramatists Guild.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  This spring, I can’t wait to see Dominique Morisseau’s Detroit ’67 at the Public and Tanya Barfield’s The Call at Playwrights Horizons.

And my play Bethany will be at City Center Stage II, running January 11-February 17, 2013. The Women’s Project is producing it, Gaye Taylor Upchurch is directing it, and the cast and creative team are an absolute joy.

I Interview Playwrights Part 540: Don Zolidis

Don Zolidis

Hometown: Janesville, Wisconsin. 



Current Town: Austin, Texas and Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. 



Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’ve got about 800 new projects. I just finished a new play, TRUE BELIEVERS, about a disgraced Astrophysicist who teams up with fundamentalist Christians to write a biblically-based Astronomy Textbook. 



Q:  Tell me about the Edgerton Foundation New American Play Awards and the two plays you are having produced as part of them.

A:  The Edgerton New American Play Awards are grants given to theatres to help with producing new work. The theatres apply for them, and then the Foundation selects the winners. They’ve had a pretty good track record for picking the most-heralded plays of the year. Unbeknownst to me, both of the theatres producing my plays in 2012, The Purple Rose Theatre in Michigan and The Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis, applied for awards independently. Both of them won, which was quite a shock to me.

The plays I had selected really couldn’t be more different. WHITE BUFFALO, which ran in the spring at The Purple Rose, is the story of a miracle birth on a small farm in Wisconsin. CURRENT ECONOMIC CONDITIONS, which is a comedy about a 20-something returning to live at home after losing her job, played at the Phoenix.

I was honored to receive both awards, but I only learned about it from Google alerts! Funny. 



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


A:  Like most children of the eighties, I spent a great deal of time in front of the television watching cartoons. Most of that time I was violently annoyed that the heroes always seemed to win and the villains were always morons. I was usually yelling at the screen for the villains to simply get their entire gang together (why did Skeletor only choose one of his henchmen for a task? Send everybody!) and then pick off the heroes one by one. I spent a lot of time diagramming how this would happen, and playing out scenarios in my mind where the good guys were captured and murdered and the bad guys won. I don’t think I was really an evil kid, but without getting too pretentious about it, I think I was striving for narrative complexity and actual danger. The preordained happy ending drained the drama out of everything. I guess that’s why I like writing plays, where the outcome is often in doubt and not always happy, and probably why I also like Game of Thrones.

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


A:  Just one thing? I’d like to confront the mindset of New York City as not only the center of the theatrical world, but the only place where important theatre happens. There are many great regional theatres in America producing outstanding work (Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis, DC, etc…) and there are certain publishers who won’t even look at plays that didn’t play in New York. This may seem like a small thing, but it undercuts a play’s ability to live after its first production, if it premiered in a smaller market. It’s hard enough making a living as a playwright, but when your career seems arbitrarily defined by your ability to land a New York production, it makes it even harder. I don’t like to whine, but there is excellent theater being done outside of New York, and making it unpublishable and unproduceable is a shame.


Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?


A:  David Lindsay-Abaire, Christopher Durang, Eugene O’Neill, Shakespeare, Paula Vogel, Sarah Ruhl, I could go on and on…


Q:  What kind of theater excites you?


A:  I like theatre where the situation is clear but the outcome is in doubt and the path is surprising. I know that’s vague, but it’s hard to be specific about this entirely. I think a lot of theatre out there now is intentionally obscure and atmospheric rather than dramatic.

I also like huge theatre. Theatre that takes risks, that has twenty people on the stage, and deals with enormous, world-shaking themes. You know, the kind of stuff that’s almost impossible to get done.

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


A:  Hook in with a theatre group of your peers. It’s so hard to be sitting alone somewhere, emailing out stuff for eternity and listening to silence. You need to be part of a community of like-minded individuals. Get together with your friends and produce your own work. It’s not that expensive to rent a miserable little dive, charge a few bucks at the door, and put on a show.


Q:  Plugs, please:


A:  My newest play, MILES AND ELLIE, will open June 20th at the Purple Rose Theatre in Chelsea, Michigan and run through August 31st. (a 77-performance run for a world premiere! It’s such a joy to work with them. From there, it will move to the Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis and then the Montgomery Theatre outside of Philadelphia. Playscripts will be publishing my 48th play, A BRIGHT SWARM OF BEETLES, about the life of Soviet playwright Mikhail Bulgakov, early next year. Also you can check out my website at www.donzolidis.com

Entrevisto a Dramaturgos: Concepción León Mora

Concepción León Mora

¿De qué estás trabajando ahora?

En un texto que cuestione la pertinencia del ritual en una sociedad tan confundida y egoísta como la actual. La “particular” interpretación del fín del mundo en el calendario Maya ha sido uno de los grandes temas tocados por mucha gente, como Yucateca, creo que es un buen momento para ponerlo a tela teatral. Escribo la historia de un anciano sabio que debe preparar la bebida sagrada para salvar al pueblo. Esta bebida incluye alcohol, el sabio fue alcohólico, omnubildado por el alcohol mató a su hijo a golpes. Ahora debe elegir entre rechazar su sabiduría o volver a beber.

Dime, si se quiere, una historia de su infancia que explica quién es usted como escritor o como persona.

La relación con mi abuela es mi motor de escritura, ella era una narradora nata, plena de sabiduría y amor, escribo como parte de aquel ritual nuestro que nos mantenía la boca llena de historias y el espíritu asombrado.

Si pudieras cambiar algo de teatro, ¿qué sería?

Las formas de producir y las estrategias de publicidad.

¿Quiénes son o fueron sus héroes de teatro?

No creo en héroes, en todo caso eso sirve para las taquillas del cine, al teatro le sirven los seres humanos, sin capacidades fantásticas e omnipotentes pero con finitas cualidades humanas. En ese sentido admiro a todos los que hacen teatro sin estar persiguiendo o arañando tal o cual beca.

¿Qué tipo de teatro te excita?

El que no tiene una producción apabullante y confía en la capacidad de los actores para llenar el espacio vacío.

Plugs, Por Favor 

Mis más recientes colaboraciones con “Teatro de ciertos habitantes” y “Carretera 45” son obras que recuperan la memoria convocando algunos miedos de infancia y poniendo en primer plano la identidad de los que estamos en escena.

I Interview Playwrights Part 539: Concepción León Mora

Translated by Andrea Thome and Lily Padilla
Concepción León Mora

Q:  What are you working on now?


A:  A text which questions the relevance of ritual in a society as confused and selfish as our present one. Many people have been making their own strange interpretations of the Mayan calendar’s supposed “end of the world.” As a Yucatecan myself, I think now is a good moment to address this this on stage. I’m writing the story of an old wise man who is supposed to prepare a sacred drink in order to save his town. This drink contains alcohol, but the old man had been an alcoholic before and, possessed by alcohol, had beaten his son to death. Now he must choose between rejecting his own knowledge or having to drink 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:  My relationship with my grandmother is my fuel as a writer. She was a born storyteller, full of wisdom and love. I write as part of that ritual of ours that kept out mouths mouth full of stories and our spirits amazed.

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


A:  Forms of production and publicity strategies. 


Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  
I don’t believe in heroes; in any case, those are useful to movie theater box offices. What’s useful to theater is human beings without fantastic or omnipotent abilities but with finite human qualities. In that sense, I admire everyone who makes theater without chasing or grabbing for this or that grant.


Q:  What kind of theater excites you?


A:  That which doesn’t have overwhelming production values and which believes in the ability of the actors to fill the empty space.


Q:  Plugs, please:


A:  My most recent collaborations with “Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes” and “Carretera 45” are works which recover memory, drawing on certain childhood fears and highlighting the identitites of those of us who are onstage.

Sunday 7pm at the Lark, reading of Mestiza Power, translated by Virginia Grise and directed by Daniel Jáquez

I Interview Playwrights Part 538: Saúl Enríquez

Translated by Andrea Thome and Lily Padilla

Saúl Enríquez

Hometown: I’m from Cardel, Veracruz, a beautiful town in the Gulf of Mexico, but I grew up in a magnificent valley in Orizaba, Veracruz.

Current City: Cancún, Quintana Roo, Mexico



Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m creating a play about the reckless side of teenagers. It is part of a three play series on adolescence that I’m working on.

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 place where people are used to creating stories; talking about legends that are constantly breaking down and being reconstructed. I remember one time when people swore they had found a werewolf on a mountain and that he had been captured by soldiers. I was a child, but to me the story seemed implausible. I was more fascinated by the fact that people believed this story than by the story itself.

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


A:  The theater is a rare animal without rules…I like this. 


Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?


A:  I don’t know about heroes, but playwrights that I have always admired are Shakespeare, Racine, Moliere, Beckett, Chekhov, Strindberg, Mamet, Albee, Miller, Kane. And the Mexicans: Liera, Gonzales Dávila y Olguìn, Leñero, Berman. Directors and actors are another list.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?


A:  All theater that creates a new universe and stays true to its own invented logic.

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

A:  I am beginning. But I like to focus on substance over form.


Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My theater company’s facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nuncamerlot-Teatro/336899535544?fref=ts



Reading of Schnauzer Duck at the Lark in New York this Sunday at 3 translated by Mariana Carreño King and directed by May Adrales.

Entrevisto a Dramaturgos: Saúl Enríquez

Saúl Enríquez

Procedencia: Soy de Cardel Veracruz, un pueblito hermoso del golfo de México, pero crecí en Orizaba Veracruz un valle magifico.

Ciudad Actual: Cancún, Quintana Roo, Mexico


¿En qué estás trabajando ahora?


Estoy construyendo una obra sobre el lado temerario de los adolescentes, pretendo escribir 3 obras sobre adolescentes.

Dime, si se quiere, una historia de su infancia que explica quién es usted como escritor o como persona.


Crecí en un sitio donde la gente tiene por costumbre crear historias, platicar leyendas que se están quebrando y construyendo todo el tiempo. Recuerdo una vez que, la gente juraba que habían encontrado un hombre lobo en una montaña y que lo había sido apresado por los soldados. Yo era un niño, pero la historia me parecía inverosimil, encontraba mas fascinación en que la gente creyera esta historia más que en la historia misma.

Si pudieras cambiar algo de teatro, ¿qué sería?

El teatro es un animal raro y sin reglas... eso me gusta

¿Quiénes son o fueron sus héroes de teatro?¿Qué tipo de teatro te excita?

No sé si héroes pero dramaturgos que siempre he admirado: Es Shakespeare, Racine. Molliere, Beckett, Chejov, Strindberg, Mamet, Albee, Miller, Kane... y mexicanos: Liera, Gonzales Dávila y Olguìn, Leñero, Berman. Directores y Actores esa es otra lista.

¿Qué tipo de teatro te excita?

Todo aquel que crea un universo nuevo y se sostiene sobre sus propias reglas.


 ¿Qué consejo le darías a los dramaturgos acaba de empezar?

Yo voy empezando. Pero me gusta ponderar en el fondo sobre la forma.

Plugs, Por Favor


La pagina de mi grupo: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nuncamerlot-Teatro/336899535544?fref=ts

Entrevisto a Dramaturgos: Bárbara Colio

Bárbara Colio

Procedencia: Mexicali, Baja California, México.

Ciudad actual: Ciudad de México.

¿En qué estás trabajando ahora?:

Estoy trabajando con tres estupendos actores mexicanos, mi obra "vuelve cuando hayas ganado la guerra" ésta obra la terminé de escribir hace poco, pero esta vez, como no lo hacía desde hace varios años, la quiero dirigir yo misma, como una extensión de la escritura. Volver a meterme a la escena viva para aprender de ella. La estrenaremos en abril del 2013 en un espacio alternativo.

También estoy ansiosa por asistir al estreno de  mi obra "Cuerdas" en Madrid, en febrero 2013, la misma obra que estoy trabajando en esta residencia con Lark Play Development Center.

Dime, si se quiere, una historia de su infancia que explica quién es usted como escritor o como persona.

Cuando era niña, cada domingo, mi papá me llevaba a lo que se llamaba "el bosque de la ciudad" en mi ciudad natal. Mientras yo me divertía en los juegos y con los animales del pequeño zoológico que había ahí, mi papá practicaba su hobby favorito: la fotografía. Tengo cientos de fotos mí, en ese bosque, de cada domingo. Mi favorita, una donde estoy con cara de susto, cargando a un pequeño tigre, que mi papá hizo que sacaran de su jaula, solo para que posara conmigo.

Si esa foto no existiera, yo hubiera olvidado que un día, abracé a un tigre.

Si pudieras cambiar algo de teatro, ¿qué sería?

En Mexico, que existieran más facilidades para producir teatro.

¿Qué tipo de teatro te excita?

El que no me da respuestas, sino que me deja pensando en más de una pregunta.

¿Qué consejo le darías a los dramaturgos acaba de empezar?

Que lean, que vean, que escuchen, que vivan, que se detengan un momento a contemplar lo excepcional.

I Interview Playwrights Part 537: Bárbara Colio

translated by Andrea Thome and Lily Padilla

Bárbara Colio

Hometown:  Mexicali, Baja California, México.

Current Town: Mexico City

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I am working with three stupendous Mexican actors on my play “come back when you have won the war”. I recently finished writing it and this time, as I have not done in a many years, I am going to direct it myself as an extension of the writing. I’d like to immerse myself in the live, active scene to learn from it. The premiere is in April 2013 in an alternative space, a building in Mexico City’s historical center.

Also, I’m eager to attend the premiere of my play “Ropes” in Madrid in February 2013, the same play I’m working on in my residency at the Lark Play Development Center.

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 a little girl, every Sunday my father would take me to a park called “The City Forest” in my hometown. While I was playing on the playground and looking at zoo animals, my father practiced his favorite hobby: photography. I have hundreds of photos of myself; my favorite one is of me looking terrified, holding a baby tiger that my father asked the zookeepers to take out of his cage, only for the photograph.

If this photo didn’t exist, I would have forgotten that one day, I held a tiger.

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

A:  That in Mexico, there would be more support for producing theater.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  That which doesn’t give me answers, but which leaves me thinking about more than one question.

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

A: Read, observe, listen, live and pause a moment to contemplate the exceptional.

Q: Plugs?

A: Reading at the Lark of Ropes, translated by Maria Alexandria Beech and directed by Lou Moreno. Saturday at 7.

I Interview Playwrights Part 536: Liza Birkenmeier

Liza Birkenmeier

Hometown: St. Louis, MO

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q: What are you working on now?

A:  I am working with collaborator-director-friend Katherine Brook on a piece that uses archival audio from interviews I recorded at a coffee house in Missouri. We are in the process of chopping up recordings of young transgender and queer people in the Midwest and gluing them to the structure of Arthur Miller’s ALL MY SONS. It follows a piece that we collaborated on called AMERICAN REALISM that used congressional archive recordings from the Dust Bowl. (We recently traveled with it to the San Diego Museum of art and LACE in Los Angeles). Also…I’m drafting some commissioned pieces—one is musical collaboration with Christopher Limber and Shakespeare Festival St. Louis, another is collaboration with Washington University and a large PR2 robot, and the third is a site-specific play that will premiere at a Laundromat next summer.

I'm also writing a play called INFIRMARY SHAKES about the Kentucky Narcotics Farm and the invention of gunpowder.

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 had an extremely blue time shortly before I turned twelve. I became spontaneously terrified of everything. In this painful, pre-pubescent era, I found incredible comfort in fantasizing that I was personally chosen as this planet’s primary liaison. Alien families were sent to me to learn about earth when they arrived. I would imagine taking them to my house, explaining the purpose of carpet, cooking them meals (they may never have seen food), telling them about how grass grew, showing them why humans had knees, and witnessing their first experience of hearing a song or drinking an orange soda. It made the world (even my small suburban-chain-link-fence- Wonderbread one) an incomprehensibly beautiful living museum, crammed with oddities and wonder.

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

A:  Everyone, EVERYONE, everyone, all people from all places in all income brackets with all interests, would get really excited to see it. More excited than for scratch-off lotto tickets, Christmas, the Oscars, a PBR bucket special, low gas prices, or seeing a celebrity at the airport.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Some people who have changed/influenced my brain chemistry in the past couple of years: Rob Handel, Madeleine George, and the rest of 13P, Sid Vicious, Carter W. Lewis, Marisa Wegrzyn, RN Healey, Stefanie Zadravec, Will Eno, Lisa D’Amour, Gregory S Moss, Andy Warhol, Tennessee Williams, Katherine Brook, Daniel Fish, Karen O, Len Jenkin, Mac Wellman, Son House.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Many kinds. Quiet plays, epic plays, short plays, violent plays, operas, musicals, the circus, rodeos, elementary school holiday pageants, confrontational bathroom graffiti, rock concerts, intimate and public cell phone conversations, drunk arguments on the L train, debutante balls, family gatherings, laboratory experiments, sidewalk preaching, glass blowing…excite me very much.

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

A:  I either AM or at least FEEL like a playwright just starting out…I will share this one thing I'm in the process of learning: The perfect, healthy day with no obligation or worry, with no “other work” or family need, with no sleepiness or social plans, with only the ideal, sunny room or quiet dark—isn’t really on its way. The plan to have spontaneous and concurrent freedom and genius is a myth. Write the entire play now, in the hour you have in the hotel lobby, in the two-hour plane ride, in your bed when you wake. Write it on the living room floor and finish it. Don’t let anyone read it until you are finished. Their criticisms/questions will be confusing or even insulting when they are guiding what the rest of the play will be. They will only make the “end” farther from you. Don’t rewrite th first act forty times before you start the second. Finish it. The ache that says tomorrow/next week/next month will be a better time is the fear that the end won’t be as “good” as your initial spark. It won’t be! It’s the inertia of work. It isn’t always going to be hayrides, petunias, and muses. Parts will suck. PARTS OF YOUR PLAY WILL SUCK, MAYBE TERRIBLY. Just write them down, regardless. Usually, after a first draft, I’m pretty sure my ENTIRE PLAY SUCKS TERRIBLY. This doesn’t have to be scary. Writing forward and deleting things can be acts that are not precious or spiritual. Truth/beauty/brilliance aren’t waiting in some corner/time you haven’t yet discovered. Allow your play to suck today instead of waiting for it to be perfect next winter. Most of the work will be repairing it, anyway. SO. Finish it now. Shaping it into the glory-genius-potential you once imagined won’t actually begin until it is written. Trusted voices can comment on the whole journey. Take notes, start again, do what you will to fill the gaps and sculpt the world/words. Today…finish the play.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Look out for Katherine Brook’s LADY HAN in February at Incubator Arts. Stefanie Zadravec’s THE ELECTRIC BABY will be in Chicago and New Jersey in 2013. I’m excited to see I HATE FUCKING MEXICANS, now extended at The Flea.

I Interview Playwrights Part 535: David Gaitán

David Gaitán

Hometown: Mexico City


Current Town: Mexico City

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I'm writing a play for a specific group of actors; the peculiar thing (for me, at least) is that their average age is 75. I've always worked with people around my age... I’m writing a play based on the idea of randomness; I’ve seen this done on stage many times, but not often as an experiment that departs from the script itself. 


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 born with a deformity in my legs. I had two surgeries in order to correct this; later on, I used special shoes until I turned 6. During that time, my parents would make sure that my special shoes (up to the knees) were not seen (by me or the rest of the kids), so that nobody could identify me as handicapped. Along with this, I was encouraged to do everything... walk, run, jump, play soccer, dance... 
Eat the whole cake.
  Now, I work as an actor, playwright, and director.  Many times, simultaneously.


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


A:  I would make it for free.
 Always.
 And somehow manage to pay everybody in the play.


Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  They've been changing lately.
I began with the obvious, classic ones: Shakespeare, etc.
Then it changed to my direct teachers.
Now, I don't know.
I would think that my heroes are my closest friends, those who are trying to understand theater in a different way.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?


A:  That which that suggests a different way of doing things.  Given that theater is a system in itself, I admire those who manipulate the system in order to create something new, to make the spectator's experience evolve.


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

A:  Learn the technique.
Then, go against it.
But first, learn it.


Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  In New York, at The Lark, Saturday, December 8, a reading of Leakages and Anticoagulants, translated by Julián Mesri and directed by Mallory Catlett.


In Mexico City I will be acting in Disertaciones Sobre Un Charco, written by Edgar Chías, directed by David Jiménez. I will also be acting in El Camino del Insecto, which I wrote, also directed by David Jiménez. Both these plays are produced and performed by our company, Ocho Metros Cúbicos.

I Interview Playwrights Part 534: Stephen Spotswood

Stephen Spotswood

Hometown: North East, MD (it's not a compass point; it's the name of an actual town)

Current Town: Washington, D.C.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I have a tendency to work on multiple projects at once so, in an effort to keep myself from rambling, I'm going to keep this to work I'm doing on the actual day I filled out this interview (Nov. 27th--happy birthday to me!). I spent the morning working on a short play for the HeyDay Players--a troupe of senior citizens who take classes at Round House Theatre's Education Center and tour readings of short plays to nearby nursing homes and senior centers. I've been lucky to write for them for three years now, and it's a joy to write for an age group that you rarely see on stage.

I'll be spending the first half of the afternoon at Woolly Mammoth Theatre recording a podcast play I was commissioned to write for the National New Play Network's Showcase which, in my timestream, is this coming weekend. I'm one of four D.C. playwrights commissioned by NNPN to craft short audio plays that people will listen to on iPods as they walk in one of four directions from the theatre. My play will be taking folks South to the National Mall. The Washington Monument? Best set piece ever.

And this evening, prior to celebrating my 35th, I'll be (hopefully) finishing the tweaks on new marketing art for WE TIRESIAS, which won Best Drama at the 2012 Capital Fringe, and is being remounted courtesy of Forum Theatre.

Then there will be drinking.

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 a kid I used to go to church with my parents on Sunday evening services. When it let out, I would run right to the car to turn on the radio, because on Sunday evenings 1210 AM ran recordings of old radio shows. So while my parents were talking with their friends in the church parking lot, I was sitting in a dark car, radio glowing, listening to stories of The Shadow, Jack Benny, The Green Hornet, The Outer Limits, etc. Does this explain me as a writer or a person? Not entirely. But a lot of my work is heavily narrative, with as much direct storytelling as dialogue. And the topic of religion and people coming to terms with/struggling against it comes up more times than I can count.

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

A:  I would take everyone’s definition of theatre (even my own), throw it in an oil barrel, and set it on fire.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  A lot of my theatrical heroes create work at that intersection of traditional theatre, music, performance, and storytelling. Amanda Palmer, Taylor Mac, Mike Daisey and Eric Ehn to name a few.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I love theatre that takes chances—where actors, writers, designers, whole companies are trying things they don’t know they’re capable of. Punching above their weight class, so to speak. I like to walk out of a show not wanting to ever write another word because I could never do something that brilliant. And then, a few hours later, wanting to outdo it.

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

A:  See all the theatre you possibly can. Meet the people that make it—the actors, the directors, the designers, the other writers. Take them out for coffee or beer or wine or whiskey. Find out about them; tell them about yourself; see their work; show them yours if they ask. Write a play. Then write another one. Then write another one. And if you can’t find somebody to produce the first three, write a fourth and produce it yourself. Ask the other artists you’ve befriended to help. Invite everyone you know and everyone they know and as many strangers to come and see it. Then do it all over again. And if people like your work and like working with you, things begin to move of their own volition.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  WE TIRESIAS opens at Round House Silver Spring on January 3. It’s a story about the future and doomed love and old tragedies told from the point of view of a boy who becomes a woman who becomes the old, blind man destined to give Oedipus the bad news.

I Interview Playwrights Part 533: Erica Saleh

Erica Saleh

Hometown: Dryden, NY

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I'm deep into rewrites on a play I wrote earlier this year, The Morning After, about a young woman who is, rather suddenly, forced to confront the ways in which her politics and theory and feminism do or do not line up with her personal desires and private life. It's also very concerned with the semantics of the word rape, Austin Texas, and pop culture.

I'm also just starting work on a commission from Dramatics Magazine to write a play for a large cast of high schoolers, which is fun and messy and a really good antidote to wrestling with revisions and incessantly thinking about feminism and rape.

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

A: Ah. Ok. I usually claim that I wasn't really a theater kid, but then I remember this embarrassing story and wonder if I'm lying to myself about not having been a theater kid...

When I was in middle school my friends all suddenly revealed themselves to be really good athletes and decided that playing pick up basketball after school was a really fun thing to do. I, on the other hand, was scrawny and uncoordinated and thought playing basketball after school was significantly less fun than being in school. But I obviously played anyway, because that's what you do. One day the game wasn't going very well, I don't remember why or what that even means, I just remember everyone was frustrated. And one of the girls stopped and said "do you guys want to stop and make up plays?" And I got SO excited, and felt SO relieved, and blurted out "Yeah! Or like, dances or something?!" and everyone stared at me and I quickly realized that she had meant basketball plays, not play plays. And it was the kind of embarrassing moment that just sort of burns into your being because you've accidentally revealed yourself? The kind that you think about for months afterward and feel ashamed? And then don't think about for years because you were so embarrassed and then 17 years later remember and realize it's not actually embarrassing at all but a confirmation of the person you've become.

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

A: I would shift the dialogue between theatermakers to one of positivity. It is so easy to talk about what we don't like. It is so easy to say that things are unfair. And that's not wrong. There is inequity, there is unfairness, and it is, of course, worth talking about constructively and working to change. But there is also so much to be celebrated. There is so much that is exciting and fortunate and good about what we do. There is so much good theater being made. I would challenge all of us to talk about that. To go into plays with an open heart and and optimistic mind and look for things to admire and respect rather than things to criticize. I would challenge all of us to realize that we have picked a life that is difficult, but also a life that is awesome, and to remind ourselves and each other of why we do it. To call out the magic when we see it. And if we don't see it enough, to actively look for it, because it's there.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Caryl Churchill. Sara Kane. Gina Gionfriddo. Tennessee Williams. And all of my former teachers, but I want to specifically call out Daniel Alexander Jones for his beautiful work but also for his generous spirit and inspirational relationship with his art and community; and Sherry Kramer for her wonderful work but also for her humor and honesty and kindness. These two taught me not only how to be a better playwright but how to be a better person and community member.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Something that excites me about theater that excites me is that the only pattern I can find is that it excites me. Plays that have knocked me over in the past few years have been wildly different form one another. Some of these, in no particular order, were: Becky Shaw, Banana Bag and Bodice's Beowulf, Hand to God, Circle Mirror Transformation, The Select(The Sun Also Rises), The Whale, Milk Milk Lemonade, Rapture Blister Burn... I could keep going and going, see above about how there is SO much good theater being made. But the point is that these plays are all really really different form each other. That said, I think, the common thread that triggers the excitement for me, is that they are all honest, and in that honesty they are simultaneously heartbreaking and hopeful. So I guess the short answer to what excites me is theater that breaks my heart but leaves me hopeful.

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

A: Be kind to yourself. Be honest in your work. Be generous to your community.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: Three Graces will be hosting reading of my play The Morning After at The Gin Mill on January 22nd, and I have a play in an evening of short plays written for teenagers (and written by a whole slew of awesome playwrights) at the 52nd street project in early February.

I Interview Playwrights Part 532: Mira Gibson

Photo credit: Benjamin Kosman

Mira Gibson

Hometown: Sanbornton, NH

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY


Q: What are you working on now?
A:  At the moment I have a few scripts in the works that center on foot fetishism. Head Over Heels, my latest play, is about a young woman desperate for fast cash. She is presented with an opportunity to be a “foot fetish model”. On her first day of work, she expects to show up at a club and have her work supervised by a bouncer. Instead, she arrives at a private residential studio apartment in the East Village where a 22 Korean-American student struggles through an English explanation of “always keeping a sharp object nearby” and “no foot-jobs”. There is no bouncer or protection of any kind, and she is left alone to navigate through the dark and often humorous underbelly of this very strange and psychological fetish. I’m writing this topic as a screenplay and TV show as well….yes, TV show…not my idea by the way, but I was encouraged so what the hell?

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

A:  It’s no secret that I was sexually abused by my dad from about 5 years old to age 13. My dad is a textbook pedophile and is currently in prison for the abuse he inflicted on me. This trauma is absolutely the source of nearly 90% of my writing, especially since I often write about myself and the very tangled and specific mess I am left with. What am I supposed to do with all this? Writing helps me figure it out. And I feel extremely lucky that I have the courage to stand here and reveal myself. I give a voice to a lot of people who have had the same experience as me. Something astounding, which I think about often, is that often when I have a play reading, or production, or screening of my movie Warfield, at least one person from the audience has approached me afterwards to share that they are also a survivor. I try not to write bleak stories, however. So even though I write on this topic, often the soul of the story is about the hope and willingness to change, improve, and evolve into our best selves. I always wanted my dad to be a great father, and you know what, he did too. And as a kid I honestly saw him try, but he always failed. In my writing I give my dad a chance to succeed, and be the person I always deeply hoped he would be.

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

A:  Only two things: most importantly I would change the number of people it reaches. Theater, by the very art form that it is, is incredibly limited in the number of people that can see it, just from a geographical standpoint. I’ve actually have been getting into writing movies in large part because it can reach more people. The second I would change is its cost. I cannot tell you how much theater I opt not to see because it’s too costly. And then I have my dear friends who mention that with certain programs I can see a play for $35, sorry but that’s too much for me. I should mention, however, that I’m perpetually on the brink of extinction financially.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  The reason I write plays, and not books or poems or short werewolf novellas (which was my childhood dream by the way) is because a friend of my mothers handed me Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke the summer before I went to college. Reading that play stirred something in me that compelled me to focus on playwriting from that moment on. So I give huge credit to Williams. Another hero of mine is Paula Vogel, whose work I was introduced to in college. Reading How I Learned To Drive was a pivotal point for me because it showed me you can reveal yourself and it just might make you a better writer. Other heroes of mine are actually playwright peers and friends whose plays and even personalities inspire me on a daily basis. In lieu of listing them here, just check out anyone who’s ever been in Youngblood.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Dirty downtown theater, baby!

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

A:  To keep writing. You want to write because you have something to say and that’s no accident. If people didn’t need to hear it, you wouldn’t want to say it. What you’re doing is important. And never, for one second, believe that rejection is an indication that what you’re writing doesn’t matter. It matters, and you matter.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Please check out my feature film, Warfield which was the pilot project of my new theater and film production company, Summer Smoke Productions (yes, named after the Tennessee Williams play) http://summersmokeproductions.squarespace.com/ In addition to screening at film festivals, I’ve started an initiative to distribute to prisons, registered sex offender rehabilitation programs, and to organizations that council survivors of sexual abuse and domestic violence.

I Interview Playwrights Part 531: E. J. C. Calvert

E. J. C. Calvert

Hometown:  I was born in St. Louis, MO, and lived there long enough to form a couple foggy memories. Then I grew up primarily in Rochester, NY, with stints in Palo Alto and Pittsburgh, before returning to St. Louis for some of high school and undergrad. So... St. Louis, I guess, because that’s where I started drinking beer.

Current Town:  Chicago, Il. Come visit me, we’ll get tacos.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m currently writing for the upcoming web series Annie & Brie. It follows two women trying to survive their intermediate acting class, trying to navigate the city, and trying to be friends and roommates without throttling each other. It’s going to be a raucous good time; I’ve had a huge amount of fun writing these episodes.

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

A:  So, I don’t want to say I was a bossy kid. It’s just that I’m the oldest of three siblings, and somebody needed to keep everyone on their marks and make sure they knew their lines by the time our parents and their friends finished their wine and were ready to leave. “Time for Brian and Danny to go home,” our parents call down to the basement.” I could hear the adults gathering car keys and putting on their coats. “WAIT!” Little Auteur Calvert shouts up the stairs, “Come downstairs, we have a play for you!”

I wonder if they had been bracing themselves for this announcement. It is commendable that I have no memory of hearing them groan as they came down the basement stairs to take their places in the row of child-size chairs I set out.

Our stage was an old mattress with a door laying on it, which gave our productions an air of seasickness. The exhausted adults perched uncomfortably, trying not to yawn too frequently as they watched their children pitch across the unsteady stage, reciting pun after impeccably-drilled pun.

So maybe I didn’t get the hint when my mom was flashing repeated “wrap-it-up” gestures. I promise that, since then, I’ve gotten better at receiving criticism. Plus, now I understand the joy of letting your audience drink their wine while they’re in their uncomfortable, child-size seats, instead of expecting them to finish drinking pre-show.

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

A:  It always comes down to money, doesn’t it? Theater folks do amazing things on shoestring budgets, but even with all our thrifty ingenuity, ticket prices can make shows inaccessible to potential audiences. Okay, everybody, one, two, three: group frown!

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  13P and Alfred Jarry.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I’m a big fan of nudity, violence, jokes and swears. I’m still on the fence about puns, though, and I have a uncontrollable eye-roll complex when it comes to extended scientific metaphors. I enjoy site-specific theater and theater in non-traditional spaces. I’ve gone to shows solely because critics panned them for being too pretentious, which probably says something unpleasant about me.

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

A:  Three things, in list form:

1.  Produce your own work. This will be hard and terrible, but that play isn’t doing you any good sitting on your hard drive. If your play isn’t on its feet, it’s just an improperly formatted, dialogue-heavy novel that no one will ever read.

2.  Whatever you do, write something you want to see. Then you can skip circles around sneering talk-back audiences, sing-songing “There’s no accounting for taste!” (Maybe don’t do that, though, nobody likes an asshole.)

3.  Don’t read any of these lists, it’ll give you a complex.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I’m half of comedy-duo Lizanda, and we’re gearing up to perform the first NYC production of #1 Besties with Boy Trouble, a semi-scripted hour-long comedy that premiered at Chicago Fringe Festival this summer. We’ll be at The Creek and the Cave this Friday at 8 p.m.

Annie & Brie will be premiering in Spring 2013. facebook.com/annieandbrie

I Interview Playwrights Part 530: Nick Gandiello

Nick Gandiello

Hometown: Baldwin, NY. Long Island.

Current Town: Harlem.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I finished a first draft about a month ago, so now I'm in that weird place where I want to rush ahead with new ideas but should probably be a grown up and do a rewrite. To that end... I'm lucky to be participating in The New School for Drama's Alumni Project in February. We'll be doing a workshop and reading of my newest play, Black Fly Spring. It's about a young woman whose sister died on the job as a war photographer and how the aftermath affects her relationships and her views on the world.

I recently stepped into the role of Literary Manager of Young Playwrights Inc, and I'm looking forward to the readings of our National Competition winners in January. Those kids are inspiring.

And The Ars Nova Play Group's production of short plays goes up in January. We start rehearsing my play "Hip-Hop Documentaries" soon!

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

A:  After my parents split up, I went to a child psychologist. I hope he was earning my parents' money; all I remember is playing with blocks and making a wood carving of an elephant in his shop. We brought my mom and brother in once and I played therapist and crossed my legs and rubbed my chin thoughtfully and asked them stuff like "and how does that make you feel?" It didn't go well. I remember crying and yelling "I had a shell! My shell is broken!" I was like six! I think I try really hard to empathize with others, sometimes to a fault, and to give others a chance to empathize, and a lot of times I think we all need to cry and acknowledge the shell. And I'm a psychology nerd.

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

A:  Money.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Sam Shepard, Caryl Churchill, Harold Pinter, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Paula Vogel, Eugene O'Neill, William Shakespeare, Simon Stephens, Sophocles, Seneca.

I wouldn't have become a playwright or kept on writing plays without these people:
TJ Terranova, Kevin Harrington, Jack Hrkach, Jim Utz, Laura Maria Censabella, Chris Shinn, Pippin Parker, Michael Weller, Frank Pugliese, Erin Callahan.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I'm a catharsis junkie. I want to weep openly and laugh uncontrollably. I dig psychological complexity and moral ambiguity but as long as it feels honest and it moves me, I'm good. And I go nuts over theater that lets us confront the essential stuff that is most scary to deal with in our day-to-day: mortality, sex, identity, etc.

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

A:  I feel like I'm just starting out! But this is what I've been learning, for what it's worth:
As an artist, figure out how it is you can be most honest and embrace it. As a professional, cultivate gratitude and generosity. Writing is difficult enough, so don't punish yourself; try to eat well and sleep well. And get the pages done. Just get the pages done.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Check out the New Voices Festival at The New School for Drama this spring for writers you should know. And next spring too!

The readings at Young Playwrights Inc in January are going to fantastic.

Anything that happens at Ars Nova should be on your calendar. Come check out The Netflix Plays in January, and all the Out Loud readings!

Ready Set Go Theatre Company and Ugly Rhino Productions are two companies I like to talk up.

And if you need a snack, check out www.kettlecornnyc.com. The original is the most popular; spicy cheddar is my favorite.

Upcoming Shows--New York

1. First up, it's Hearts Like Fists at Flux Theater Ensemble Nov 30-Dec 15  This show had the best reviews of my life this summer in LA.  Now Flux is doing their version.  Rehearsals are going great.  Can't wait for you to see it.

directed by Kelly O’Donnell
Nov 30 – Dec 15, 2012
At The Secret Theatre

PURCHASE TICKETS AT: https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/3012

THE STORY: Hearts Like Fists is a superhero noir comedy about the dangers of love. The city’s heart beats with fear: Doctor X is sneaking into apartments and injecting lovers with a lethal poison. Lisa’s heart beats with hope: now that she’s joined the elite Crimefighters, maybe she can live a life with meaning. And every beat of Peter’s wounded heart brings him closer to death, but he’s designing an artificial replacement that will never break. Can the Crimefighters stop Doctor X? Do Peter and Lisa have a chance at love? And who is the girl with a face like a plate?

Featuring: Becky Byers*, Aja Houston*, Rachael Hip-Flores, Jennifer Somers Kipley, Susan Louise O’Connor*, Chester Poon, August Schulenburg, Marnie Schulenburg*, Chinaza Uche*, and Chris Wight

Creative Team: Stage Manager - Jodi Witherell, Set Design - Will Lowry, Lighting Design - Kia Rogers, Costume Design - Stephanie Levin, Sound Design - Janie Bullard, Fight Director - Adam Swiderski, Assistant Fight Director - Rocío Mendez, Jennifer Somers Kipley - Assistant Director, Emily Owens, PR - Press Relations

FLUX THEATRE ENSEMBLE: http://www.fluxtheatre.org/hearts-like-fists/

The Secret Theatre
44-02 23rd Street
LIC, NY 11101
www.secrettheatre.com

2. Then it's a slightly tweaked version of the experimental movement piece UBU we did at SoloNOVA festival at TerraNOVA last year.  It sold really well so they put it in their season.

UBU
presented by

terraNOVA Collective, One-Eighth & IRT

Written by Adam Szymkowicz
Directed and Performed by Daniel Irizarry


December 4 -- 16 , Tuesday -- Sunday (Mondays dark) at 8:30pm
Ticket Price: $20.00 At IRT: 154 Christopher st. #3B (third floor)
-- Running time 1 hour.

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. Join this kinetic romp through the absurdist world of the most powerful CEO in the universe.

Don't miss the relaunch of UBU, back from a successful run for the 2012 soloNOVA Arts Festival at the New Ohio Theater.

Martin Denton from nytheatre.com said it was:
“…a monster of mammoth size and ravenous appetite, sort of like the Tasmasian Devil on steroids by way of Monty Python's Mr. Creosote...”
http://www.nytheatre.com/Show/Review/ubu14508

And Olivia Jane Smith from New York Theatre review said:
‘…Irizarry’s singular stage presence and the productions beautifully grotesque little world make this…expanding universe worth a good look.’

Assistant Director Laura Butler Rivera
Marketing/ Associate Producer Homa Hynes
UBU Servants - Laura Butler Rivera, Shang-Ho Huang, & Homa Hynes
Scenic Design Mikiko Suzuki Macadams
Sound Design Marcelo Anez
Lighting Design Lucrecia Briceno
Puppets and Props Frankenstudio
Costume Design Marea Judilla and Edith Raw
Stage Manager Zina Goodall

Tickets:  http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/286935

See UBU's trailer at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvSO6tb_6J0

I Interview Playwrights Part 529: Tania Richard

Tania Richard

Hometown: Western Springs, IL.

Current Town: Evanston, IL.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  A play called "Angry Black Woman" and a sister solo piece called "Angry Black Women" The plan is for them to debut in Evanston, IL. The solo piece will also tour.

Q:  How would you characterize the Chicago theater scene?

A:  It's a great city to start your career because of all the non-equity theaters that produce really solid work. This community also gives you room to reinvent yourself and have multiple careers. I am a writer, actress and teacher and I've had success in all three without having to leave Chicago.

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 started writing short stories very early. By grade school I was already carrying a notebook with me everywhere. I'd write during class instead of paying attention. I use to draw comic strips about totally mundane things like a girl getting a hair cut. Making comic strips taught me about action in playwriting. Every box had to contain an event that moved the story forward.

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

A:  The lack of diversity in casting. As a black pIaywright some of my writing is race specific but a good deal of my writing doesn't require a specific ethnicity. In my cast descriptions I encourage non traditional casting to the point where I often write a character and specify that they are a minority even though their race has nothing to do with the character or the story. I want to see casts that reflect the diversity we see in the world. I would rather see diverse casts than "the all Black play" or the "all Asian play" It's time to stop segregating our theater.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Harvey Fierstein, Tony Kushner, Lanford Wilson, Lorraine Hansberry, Tennesee Williams. I fell in love with theatre by reading "Torch Song Trilogy" when I was in high school. I feel like Harvey Fierstein is my fairy godfather or something (no pun intended) Tony Kushner is brilliant and even though he is given his due for "Angels In America" I think people take his genius for granted. He is a master of marrying the personal and the political. If I could write like him I would be so in love with myself I'd never leave the house.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I love theatre that has a mix of the theatrical, great language (which does not mean it has to be verbose) and strong relationships. Also, I love first and second act rock 'em sock 'em endings. August Wilson has some of the best final lines in all theatre. The ending of "Fences" on Broadway knocked me off my seat. The ending of "Angels In America" was jaw dropping. I love a great final line and the lights fading to black. Good clean fun.

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

A:  You have to allow yourself a lousy first draft. Take pleasure in how bad it is. Get all the muck out then start to revise. If you wait for the right time to have children you will never have children. If you wait to write a perfect first draft it will never get written so write crap and get on with it. Also, choose who gives you feedback wisely. Be protective of your plays. Don't seek approval or validation through the feedback you receive. If you choose the right people to give you feedback then there's no need to take what they say personally.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Currently appearing as Mrs. Cratchit in A Christmas Carol at The Goodman Theatre (an example of colorblind casting with a multiracial Cratchit family), my blog is http://trichard3.blogspot.com, my website is www.taniarichard.com

I Interview Playwrights Part 528: Lloyd Suh

Lloyd Suh

Hometown: Greenwood, Indiana

Current Town: Brooklyn, New York

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  The most immediate thing chronologically is a play called JESUS IN INDIA that is going up in February with Ma-Yi Theatre Co at the Theatre at St. Clements. It was produced at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco earlier this year, and I'm doing some big retooling for this production. I also have a play for young audiences that was commissioned by Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis called THE WONG KIDS IN SPACE CHUPACABRA FREAK SHOW BATTLE GO! that I'm workshopping, and a play about an all-Asian country band that was initially developed in the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab that I'm working on with NAATCO (National Asian American Theatre Company). In the earlier stages is an EST Sloan commission that looks at the inventions of Benjamin Franklin as a sort of precursor to his invention of America.

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

A:  I like to think that any of us in fact CAN change lots of things about theater, though of course some things are harder to change than others. For me, the thing I spend most of my time and energy on has to do with just trying to make the lives of playwrights better. The challenges and obstacles that writers face are enormous and well-publicized elsewhere, and so for my day job (as a program director at the Lark Play Development Center), the work I do is about trying to provide resources - through artistic programs, community building, advocacy or financial support - that improve the type of livelihood that writers can expect to lead. At the risk of sounding sanctimonious about it, I also have to believe that what playwrights do is of incredible value to the world, as a way for us as a culture to explore what it is to be human in the way we live now, and create a conversation for a society to confront itself in the present tense. So by helping to change the way we assign value to the writers who generate that living conversation, and by enabling those voices - especially if it can be done with a multitude - is a way of changing the quality of the conversation that we're having in the world. Included in that, of course, are the big questions of who comes to see theater, who has access to it, and so there are a lot more specific things I'd like to change in that regard as well. On that level, I hope that I'm doing my part, because obviously we're all in this together.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Ralph Pena. Mia Katigbak. They started out at a time in American theater (heck, in America) when Asian Americans weren’t just grossly underrepresented, they were virtually invisible, and so when they built these companies like Ma-Yi and NAATCO to build on the movement started by East West Players and Pan Asian Rep, they were deciding that they would not only create their own opportunities (which they did) - they were also going to lay the foundation for subsequent generations of Asian American theater artists to have a permanent seat at the table. It’s really inspiring to me, and I feel really lucky to be able to count them as mentors, peers, collaborators and friends. They constantly remind me of some really huge things: that nobody's going to hand anyone anything, that we're individually capable of building our own opportunities, and that nothing we ever do is divorced from a larger community. The effect of that has been really palpable, and you still see Asian American theater artists starting from scratch and building their own companies, like what Welly Yang did with Second Generation, what Qui Nguyen did with Vampire Cowboys, what Young Jean Lee did with her company, and what this incredible generation of Asian American playwrights is doing every day. I feel like we’re in a really exciting and pivotal time in Asian American playwriting, where a great diversity of material is being generated, developed and produced; it feels like a movement, and my personal heroes of that movement are Ralph and Mia, who not only helped to build the infrastructure for it back in the day, but continue to be at the forefront of that work - as artists themselves, and as leaders who support those voices in visionary ways today.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I've always preferred ambitious failures over tidy successes. In general, I think of overreaching as a virtue and underreaching as a waste of time, so most of the time I like things that are really raw, uneasy, and difficult, but strive for something noble and complex - whether it's completely achieved or not. I tend to be allergic to "slick". I prefer theater that asks really difficult questions, rather than the kind which answers easier ones.

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

A:  I can't pretend to really know what might be useful to anyone else, but the best piece of advice I ever got for my own personal shit was in fact playwriting advice that has ultimately become really useful life advice as well. My playwriting teacher at Indiana University, the great Dennis Reardon, once said that when you sit down to write a play you should have absolutely everything entirely mapped out in your head - from beginning to middle to end, to know where you're going and how to get there, to understand what you want to say and what it all means - but that once you sit down to start writing, you should completely let go of all of it and absolutely under no circumstances follow that map. I think it's similar to the way actors work - they have an "objective", they prepare everything they need, including research, character work, an accent or something physical, but then once they're in the scene they let go of all that preparation, trust that they know what they're doing, and then try to be present and reactive to whatever happens organically. It's been useful to life in general in that it forces me to think about what I want, short-term and long-term, but also forces me to be ready to change my mind and be nimble enough to deal with whatever surprises might come along. Because a writer's life (or any freelancer's life, for that matter) can feel so random and shifting, and it's so easy to fall into the trap of being reactive to what presents itself, rather than focused on your own trajectory. So it's good to constantly be rigorous about what it is that you actually want, on a grand scale and a micro scale, so that when things happen to put you off course, you know how to get back to your shit.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Please come and see Ma-Yi's production of JESUS IN INDIA, directed by Daniella Topol at the Theater at St. Clements, February 13-March 10! ma-yitheatre.org

I Interview Playwrights Part 527: Robert Koon

Robert Koon

Hometown: I’m an Air Force brat, so this is a tough question. I was born in Harlingen, Texas, grew up mostly in central California, and there are also odd sprinklings of Virginia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama, and Oklahoma.



Current Town: Chicago. I’ve lived here longer than anywhere else, so that’s where I say I’m from.



Q: What are you working on now?

A: Rewrites of three plays (HOMECOMING 1972, CYCLIST ATTACKED BY MOUNTAIN LION, and THE GREEN COMMAND, plus notes on a new one. I’m also working on a fifth of Jameson’s.



Q: How would you characterize the Chicago theater scene?

A: Everyone uses the word “community,” and it’s the perfect word to use. People are conscious of being in a community, of how the success of the community benefits everyone. Companies work together, individual artists cross the boundaries of company affiliation fairly easily, people always go to see other people’s shows, relationships are tremendously important. I don’t know whether this is a product of the Chicago focus on the ensemble, or whether the focus on the ensemble is a natural product of working in a community, but people work together—fairly successfully for the most part. Which is really how it should be, and it’s always a surprise when I go somewhere else and find that it doesn’t really work that way all the time. Successful communities support each other, and Chicago’s community is pretty successful.



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 a kid we moved a lot, every year it seemed, and it was difficult to feel a sense of belonging, of rootedness. And my grandmother would come visit and tell me stories of growing up in western Oklahoma in the time when it was still basically the frontier (pre-WW I), and even though that time was far removed from where we were I still felt connected to the time, rooted in the place, and part of those people. I think that’s still what drives me—the need to tell stories to find connection with the times, with a place, and with people.



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

A: That more people could get paid decently for their work, even if it means that fewer get paid exorbitantly. That people who deserve to have their work seen would have their work seen, regardless of gender, age, or ethnicity. That an ethic that says that the work is more important than the building was more widely held. That literary offices were not the first things to go when there are financial challenges. That informed and engaged criticism were the rule rather than the exception. OK, that’s five things, but if I have the power to change things about theater I’m not stopping at one thing.



Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: I don’t know what it means to have a hero, really, but whenever anyone asks me that question the name Horton Foote always comes to mind. Of course, there is a lot of other work I admire, by a lot of different people—writers, actors, directors—but I don’t know if I would attach the word “hero” to them. Of course, if you think of a hero as someone who has great visions and dares great things in the face of some pretty steep odds, then you can find heroes in any theatre anywhere. And I don’t care if that sounds like pandering—if the people around you don’t inspire you, you really need to start hanging around with new people.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Theatre that embraces a sense of the unpredictable. When a character in a play does something that seems 100% opposite to what you might expect, and yet you see that of course it was the only thing they could do, that’s a Wow moment for me. Then, anything can happen. I like ragged edges, I like knowing that it’s all happening in front of me and feeling like it’s the first time it ever happened and no one knows what’s coming next. People are unpredictable and contrary, and when characters are unpredictable and defy expectation—and it works—then that is tremendously exciting. Live performance lives more in the moments where it’s not perfect than where it is, and while we always try to get it right the gap between our ability to aspire and our ability to achieve is where the humanity comes into our work. Transcendence lives in that gap, and when we are able to make that leap, that’s amazing.


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

A: Hmmm…how about “Go slam your hand in a car door, because trying to live by using your fingers is just going to cause you pain and you might as well get used to it.” Maybe that’s not entirely inspiring or informative, though…

See lots of plays. Read. Write lots, even if you don’t think it’s good. Remember that when you stop trying to make everything perfect you have a much better chance of actually being good. Study acting—theatre is an actor’s medium, and the thing that gets an audience from “Lights up” to “End of play” is not our wit, or our poetry, or the great social themes we embrace, but rather the relationship they form with the people on stage. Giving characters things to do is more important than giving them things to say. Every writer hates their work at some point—do the work anyway. Finish your plays--the big difference between writers who get produced and writers who don’t is that writers who get produced finish their plays. Then they send them out—that is important, too. If you wait until it’s perfect, you’ll never get anything done.



Q: Plugs, please:

A: ODIN’S HORSE just closed in Seattle, so the next thing is HOMECOMING 1972, opening this spring at Chicago Dramatists.


I Interview Playwrights Part 526: Ron Hirsen

Ron Hirsen

Hometown: Chicago

Current town: Chicago

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:   I'm preparing to self-produce a play of mine in Chicago next year. The play, Elegy, has had readings in Chicago and New York and was produced in Philadelphia a number of years ago but has never had a production in Chicago. I am confident that there is an audience for this play here, and, to paraphrase the old saying, if you want something done-- at all, you have to do it yourself. So, here I go.

Q:  How would you characterize the Chicago theater scene?

A:  Theater people in Chicago are enormously generous and supportive of their fellow theater artists. We all want each other have the chance to do work, to get produced, to succeed and feel satisfied with our work. I don't think this goes on in quite the same way anywhere else, certainly not in New York or LA.

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 a child, my mother would take my brother and me to the Goodman Children's Theater, which is now called Chicago Playworks at DePaul's Merle Reskin Theater. The productions featured students of what was then the Goodman School of Drama, and I thought they were wonderful. I remember Rip Van Winkle waking after years of slumber, Tom and Huck hiding under a bench as they attended their own funeral, and other delightful moments in the theater. The old Goodman Theater had a gold asbestos curtain, which remained lowered, masking the set behind it, until right before each performance was about to begin. Before the house lights would dim, the gold curtain would begin slowly to rise. I used to love to watch that curtain ascend ever so slowly and wait in eager anticipation to see what was behind it. That curiousity about what's about to take place has remained with me ever since. Whenever I am sitting in a theater waiting for a play to begin, the sense of the wondrous possibilities is palpable and exciting. I will never tire of it, and I try always to keep it in mind as I imagine and write plays.

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

A:  American theater needs vastly greater government subsidy. It costs way too much to see a play, theater artists struggle way too hard to earn even a modest living, and way too many worthy plays never see the light of day because no one will risk producing them when costs are so high.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Writers, mostly. Anton Chekhov because of his enormous compassion for his characters, Eugene O'Neill because of the magnitude of his vision and the depth of his emotion, Tom Stoppard because he's so damn smart, August Wilson because he completed such an ambitious cycle of plays (he could really write a scene, too), Arthur Miller because he wrote Death of a Salesman, and Tony Kushner because he wrote Angels in America.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater has to be intimate, human in scale, immediate and communal. The most exciting moments in the theater occur when everyone in the room, actors, musicians, audience, all think the same thought or feel the same passion at the same instant. When that instant occurs, it is most thrilling, inspiring, uplifting, and delightful. It doesn't happen often, but whenever it does, it renews my enthusiasm for the theater and makes me want to go see a play.

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

A:  Don't do it. If there is anything else in the world that can make you happy, do that instead. If not, read as many plays as you can, see as many plays as you can, and act.

Q:  Plug:

A:  Please keep your eye out for Elegy about a year from now, in a production directed by Victory Gardens Artistic Director Emeritus Dennis Zacek featuring a strong cast of accomplished Chicago actors. The play, about a Holocaust survivor and his son, will be presented as a Holocaust and survivor awareness program in part as a benefit for the Illinois Holocaust Museum in Skokie. The production will coincide with the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the November Pogroms of 1938.

Those interested in supporting this enterprise can make tax-deductibe contributions to The Elegy Project, Inc. Just contact me by email: ronhirsen@gmail.com. Thank you.