Adam Szymkowicz

Jayme McGhan

Hometown: Minneapolis.    

Current Town: Chicago. Technically, Elmwood Park, which is the first village over on the West side. I know a bunch of proud Chicagoans that would give me hell if I didn’t own up to that.  

 Q: What are you working on now?

A: Lots of revisions for plays I’ve written in the last few years that I haven’t had time to rewrite.

I have a reading of a show called “Damn the River Deep” at Chicago Dramatists this month.

I’m also currently writing and doing pre-production on a feature-length film for Revision Entertainment that I will be co-directing. It’s a heist/adventure/wilderness survival flick set in the Canadian Rockies. The whole film crew will be backpacking for two weeks and shooting as we go, which should prove to be either straight genius or completely moronic. There is something to be said for working on a project where you have to carry a .44 caliber cannon on your hip in case a grizzly attacks.  

Q: How would you characterize the Chicago theater scene?

A: There are so many places at the theatrical table if you’re willing to work hard. Theatre artists bust their butts in this city. They go hard all the time. I love that about this place. I also love the fact that almost every Chicago theatre artist I know is talented in multiple disciplines. It’s an artistic evolution out of necessity. I don’t know anyone who is just a really good actor. I know a lot of really good actors who also happen to kill at costume design or administration or what have you.    

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 serial liar when I was a kid. And I was pretty good at it. I told my second grade class that I went to Australia to cage dive with Great White Sharks and that I was almost eaten by a twenty-footer. I must have been crazy convincing because the class talked about it for a long time. One of the kids went home and told his mom, who then called my mom to get travel advice about where to stay in Sydney. My mom was like, “Jayme’s been to the Florida panhandle. A few years ago. I wasn’t aware that he even knew Australia existed.” At some point the lies transformed themselves in to stories that needed to be told in a different medium; mostly because I was sick of being grounded.
 
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A: The American Theatre’s attempt to create a culture of celebrity. Let’s just stop that. Hollywood is really good at this. We’re not. In one month’s time my Intro to Theatre students will not be able to tell you who David Lindsay-Abaire is even after seeing his show at Steppenwolf and talking about it for two class periods. My folks really liked Joe Dowling’s production of Brian Friehl’s The Home Place at the Guthrie a few years ago but I’ll stake my yearly playwriting earnings (that was a joke) that they have no idea who Joe Dowling is--and that dude has a road named after him! My grandmother might be able to tell you who Bernadette Peters is but I seriously doubt it. You know what they can tell you? All of them can tell you who won “Dancing with the Stars” last night.
Let’s just let Hollywood keep its culture, shall we?    

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Shaw. Williams. O’Casey. Boucicault. Pinter. Albee. To name a few.

Gary Garrison is heroic to me. Gary is out there every day advocating for playwrights. I think every writer I know also knows and loves Gary. That pretty much says it all.

I had a dude crush on Eric Bogosian for a very long time. I still do to some extent. When I was a sophomore in college I wrote to him a few times to ask for some advice on creating solo shows. He took the time out of his no-doubt crazy busy schedule to write back to a nineteen year old kid who had all the drive in the world and absolutely no craft. That was pretty nifty.

 Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Big, Bold, and Challenging. I love stories that hang their hat equally on both language and plot. I like words strung together in a manner that takes your breath away. If you couple that with a moving dramatic arc that has something unique to say about our collective existence then you’ll have a fan for life. I dig spectacle, style, and experimental form as much as the next theatre-goer, but if that’s all your play or production is relying on then count me out.    

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

A: Don’t spend all of your time in front of the computer. If you’ve made the decision to be a playwright then also make the decision to become a committed networker. If you can add a sound understanding of marketing and arts-related business to the pile, all the better. Also, learn how to use a drill and a circular saw. Seriously.    

Q: Plugs, please:

A: I’m a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists and an Associate Artist at Stage Left Theatre. Both are amazing groups of talented people. Show them some love the next time you’re in Chicago.
I’m also an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Concordia University, Chicago where I get to work with some of the brightest and most talented up-and-coming theatre artists in the city. We’ve always got something kicking around.

And because I love my hometown, check out Yellow Tree Theatre in the Twin Cities. Good friends who make lovely theatre.

And because I love my fellow Chicago writers, check out the plays of Barbara Lhota, Andrew Hinderaker, Dana Lynn Formby, Ike Holter, Randall Colburn, Rohina Malik, Steve Spencer, Mia McCullough, Martin Zimmerman, and Reggie Edmund.

Nov 12, 2012

I Interview Playwrights Part 524: Timothy Nolan

Timothy Nolan

Hometown: Bronx, NY by way of Mahopac, NY

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q: Tell me about What's In A Name.

A: What’s In A Name started off as a short play I wrote in 1994 that was loosely based on the Katherine Ann Power story. A young woman is conned into committing a terrible criminal act, and has to make life- altering choices in order to survive, but doesn’t realize until years – really decades – later just how life-altering they were.

What’s made working on this play fascinating is the experience of getting older along with the character. A person living under an assumed identity for 15-something years is interesting, but a person living that way for, say, 40 years is infinitely more compelling. Because your life goes on, usually when you’re not looking, and you continue to make choices, and those choices pull you down a road that you may not even know you are on, until its too late. The story in What’s In A Name is unique, but in a lot of ways I found myself identifying with it in ways I couldn’t even imagine when I first wrote it years ago. The idea that you get to a certain age and think, like David Byrne said, “how did I get here?” And can I keep going in this direction? Should I, even? And what is the price of trying to unspool things?

When Susan, the main character, who hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in forty years, drops her guard and wanders into a bar because she’s reached a point of exhaustion, she sees that she can’t put off dealing with these things any longer. From there, we’re off.

Q: What else are you working on now?

A: Couple of things. I always try to have a few ideas in the hopper. I invite them in and see which choose to stay.

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’m not sure that I have one. I started writing because when I was twelve I wanted to write James Bond movies. I got into theater in ninth grade when a girl I had a wicked crush on asked me to audition for “Arsenic and Old Lace.” It was probably the longest conversation we had. (I got the part, though.) I’m not sure what this says about me or the work, beyond that I still have a 007 screenplay in my desk and that I owe a lot to Ann Marie Giordano.

I do remember one interesting little tale from my teenage years in Mahopac, NY. We had a deacon at our church, young man, very nice, very energetic. First priest or deacon at our church under fifty in a long time. Opened the gym three nights a week so we could play basketball. Killer under the boards. Before too long, everyone in town loved him. Understand that about eighty percent of Mahopac went to this church. So one day, he’s just gone. Gone. Poof. People asked after him, nothing. No explanation, no goodbye, no thanks for the memories. Just a hole, a void of information. And what I learned is just how fast and how madly people will rush to fill that hole. He was with a boy. He had a fight with the Bishop. He discovered something bad in the rectory and wouldn’t keep quiet. He was gay. He was a spy (the 007 fan liked that one best). And these were not the town crazies, they were the people you talked to all the time. In the absence of truth, people will invent their own. Sometimes it’s amusing, sometimes it’s dangerous, but it’s never good. I find a lot of my stories all seem to roll back to what people will do in the absence of truth.

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

A: I’m probably not breaking any new ground here, but the balance between art and commerce is way out of whack. It’s so hard to go to Broadway now, and not for the reasons you think. If you will allow me to digress…

When I go on vacation, I want everything to be perfect. I want nice weather, I want good meals in whatever restaurants I go to, I want any activity I undertake to be just right. Nothing disappointing. So if my vacation was to come to New York City and see theater, I want to make sure it’s perfect, and by gosh, it’s gonna be.

The last two Broadway shows I saw…I won’t say which ones…were good, but they didn’t change my life. And yet, as soon as the final number ended, everyone around me was on their feet applauding like their seats were on fire. Everyone around me is standing and applauding, screaming and flapping. Now, there are worse sins in the world than standing for an ovation that hasn’t quite been earned, so up I go. But it’s not real. It’s almost like the standing ovation is just part of the performance. And I can’t blame folks for acting this way, because this is their vacation and their experience and they spent the money and they spent the time and they’re gonna believe it’s amazing, even if it isn’t.

So what’s happened here is the commerce has so taken over that the art doesn’t matter anymore. That’s how it’s been promoted, that’s how it’s being played, that’s how it’s being received. And that’s very bad for theater in this country, because from Broadway it will only seep down to off-Broadway and regional theaters as they conclude it’s the only way to make money.

Theater needs art and commerce (that’s why it’s not “show art”), but when the commerce gets so far out in front of the art, you have results like this. And it can’t be sustained. After all, what will there be to revive in twenty years?

We need to do a better job building audiences and improving the business model, and most of all getting away somehow from the idea that’s it’s an offense against vacations to take a chance on a show that might not be a sure thing.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Samuel Beckett and Thornton Wilder. Any theater artist who finds a way to harness the form to increase its impact on the audience.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Whenever the form of live theater is used to extract the power of the story. Theater provides what other media cannot… the chance to be in the room with the drama, the chance to feel it as opposed to just seeing and hearing it. The power of a simple story well told.

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

A: If there’s one thing I wish I had been told when I first started, it’s that this is really hard work, real day-in and day-out work, and it’s impossible to do alone. So find the community. Make sure you have artistic kindred spirits around you for support and to keep you accountable. People who, if you say you’ll have a new scene Tuesday, will actually be disappointed if you don’t have a new scene Tuesday. Because you need to work at your writing every day, every damn day, or its not going to happen. And the only way to see your way through that is to be among others. It brings the work out of your head and into the world where it can grow. It’s like raising a child. A play is only finished when it’s not yours anymore, when it can stand in the world on its own. That doesn’t happen if it never leaves your desk.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: Sure!

Variations Theatre Group (variationstheatregroup.com) is putting up this version of What’s In A Name as part of their Harvest Festival, and the reading is November 18th (a second date is TBD). They’ve just turned an old factory and former crack house in LIC into the Chain Theatre; we’ve been rehearsing there and it’s beautiful. We’ve had so many theaters cut down in New York over the past few years, it really is wonderful to see one break the surface and grow. I’m hoping to continue working with them.

Of course you can check out my earlier plays at Indie Theater Now, Martin Denton’s wonderful publishing house of e-plays (is that a word?). Acts of Contrition, The Way Out, Wrong Barbarians, and NotDark Yet are all available for perusal and purchase.

Latest news and info is always up on my site.

Nov 10, 2012

I Interview Playwrights Part 523: Steve J. Spencer

Steve J. Spencer

Hometown: Dayton, OH

Current Town: Chicago, IL

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Couple of plays. One is about a brilliant fourteen-year-old girl being slowly crushed by our culture. Another is about a suicidal game show host. Another is a Winesburg, OH rip-off about bath salts and squatters. Doing readings of three other plays, too.

Q: How would you characterize the Chicago theater scene?

A: Inaccurately. There seems to be a hierarchy, a strict food chain of who is cool and successful and who is beneath contempt. But once you climb the ladder to the next level, you're left puzzled: there seems to be a hierarchy on that level, too, made up of a strict food chain and hapless losers. I suspect the next level up is like that as well. An illusion of class and status at each level, when in reality, we're just a bunch of people contorting ourselves into what we think are appropriate postures. Sure, some people on higher levels shit on you, and some are decent, unpretentious folk. Mostly, we've replicated the same bullshit status system we became artists to escape from, primarily because it's ingrained in us by age four. It is a persistent illusion. And most of us know it. Yet we still act like it's real. Or at least I do.

Oh, and someone said Hollywood is like high school with money. Theater is like high school without money. Bullshit status we know is false but are too afraid to disregard.

And the cool kids in the theater cafeteria deserve our compassion as well.

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

A: Okay. My dad is the best man alive. Kind. Funny. Has worked himself to death his whole life. Growing up, something unfair happened, something that was not his fault. We almost lost him because of it. I was young and I couldn't figure out how such a decent man, a real Father, could be destroyed for doing nothing wrong. It didn't so much as leave me with a sense that life was unfair, it left me with a sense that our way of life is insane. It doesn't work. Look around. Not working. And at the heart of it is inequality.

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

A: Fire Chris Jones. Seriously. He can't write, and he can't write because his taste sucks so he spends the majority of his reviews trying to justify his own taste. It's gotten to the point where he cannot successfully describe the plot of a play because he lacks conviction in his own taste. Which is his only job. His authority is just another illusion, like the theater hierarchy or like money; if we don't believe in him, he'll go away. If he were fired all the church bells in Chicago would ring forever.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: William Sayoran, John Osborne, lots of people. But nobody has influenced me more as a writer than my dad. A kind human.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I want to see theater about something. It doesn't have to be political. It doesn't have to be about a social problem. That'd be nice, considering we're going to shit, but it doesn't even have to be about love. Tell me something that you have to tell me. I often leave the theater and go home and read, say, Milan Kundera and get really sad. I pick up Kundera and he tells me about his life. He tells me what it was like to be a human at his point in existence. He tells me something human. The difference between reading Kundera and seeing most plays is shocking. Most of the plays I see tell me nothing. And not every play has to be about something; it can just be about itself, it can just be entertaining. That's fine. But we have plenty of entertainment. Tell me something that it will kill you not to say.

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

A: Art will not save you. Your career will not save you. It will not keep you warm at night. I wish teachers would tell us that. Art is not the most important thing in the world. It's not more important than the people in your life. That's all you have. I've learned that the hard way.

Other than that, you are free to do whatever you want. If an AD says "we can't do that," please remind him or her that we can and should do whatever the hell we want. "We can't do that." Wrong. We're free. To do whatever the hell we want. You could punch your boss, God won't stop you. You could even produce an unmarketable play.

Oh, and take the traditional trajectory to becoming a playwright (school, MFA, connections, form company). It's a clear-cut path. Just try to say something while you're at it.

I hope I don't come off as too bitter. Eh. So be it. I'm nice in person. Where it counts.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: at the Chicago Dramatists: January 12 Annual Showcase of the NEW Resident Playwrights
FLOATER by Stuart Flack
EARTHQUAKE CHICA by Anne García-Romero
A WORK OF ART by Elaine Romero
INVISIBLE THERAPY FOR THE IMPOSSIBLE WORLD by Steve J. Spencer
and
February 23 MAY YOU LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES by Steve J. Spencer

Nov 9, 2012

I Interview Playwrights Part 522: Carolyn Kras

Carolyn Kras

Hometown: Berwyn, IL (just outside Chicago)

Current Town: Los Angeles

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I’m working on the “Visionary Playwright Commission” from Theater Masters. The play is about a young couple who buys a foreclosed house and is forced to live with strangers when the previous owners won’t move out. This situation is happening across the country due to deceptive bank practices and the long wait times for eviction notices. I wondered what it’s like when people live with housemates they’re trying to kick out.

My historical drama screenplay Magnetic is also in development. It was recently showcased at the Hamptons International Film Festival where Melissa Leo headlined the reading.

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 once woke up to a loud explosion that turned out to be a bomb. A neighborhood restaurant was blasted to pieces, probably by the mafia, which was very active at the time. Luckily, no one was injured since it was early morning and the place was closed. I used to sell school fundraising items, like candy bars, to the restaurant’s owner, and I started to wonder if this benevolent man who liked helping the school was involved in shady dealings or was merely a victim. I suppose this incident helps explain why I’m interested in the extreme actions people take to get or keep power.

Q: Tell me about the Artery Playwrights Project.

A: It’s a new theatre company in Los Angeles that produces the work of its founding playwrights – Dean Poynor, Brian Forrester, and me. This year we produced Linthead, one of Brian’s plays that theatres wouldn’t touch because it required nine actors. So we raised the money on Indiegogo and put it up ourselves. It received a lovely Los Angeles Times review, and an investor is raising money for a commercial production. Rob Handel of 13P was our professor at Carnegie Mellon and advocated that self-production creates more opportunities. We’re planning the next production now.

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

A: We need to find creative ways to make the tickets cost less or else theatre will lose future audiences. One initiative that worked for us was asking donors to donate tickets to audience members who couldn’t afford them. We gave out 80 free tickets from this drive.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Tom Stoppard, Lynn Nottage, Aeschylus, Edward Albee, Richard Greenberg, and Carter W. Lewis – the list goes on.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: A gripping story, the kind where you can feel the audience leaning forward the whole time.

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

A: Write, see new shows, and find collaborators who appreciate your voice. Consider attending an M.F.A. program and/or interning in a literary manager’s office. I read close to a hundred new plays when I was an intern, and that was a great education.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: The new play commissioned by Theater Masters will have a reading at a prominent theatre (TBD) in 2013. You can check my web site, www.carolynkras.com, for updates.

Nov 3, 2012

Reading Today--Arrrrr

My Base and Scurvy Heart

The Musical

Book by Adam Szymkowicz

Music by Dan Moses Schreier

Lyrics by Matt Sherwin

Directed by Peter Ellenstein

Musical Direction by Max Mamon

Starring Cady Huffman, Nellie McKay, Sean McDermott, Hannah Joyce Hoven, Joseph Gomez, Lisa Paige

At William Inge Theater in Independence, KS at 2pm

Adam Szymkowicz

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1100 Playwright Interviews

Nov 13, 2012

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525 Playwright Interviews

I Interview Playwrights Part 525: Jayme McGhan

Nov 12, 2012

I Interview Playwrights Part 524: Timothy Nolan

Nov 10, 2012

I Interview Playwrights Part 523: Steve J. Spencer

Nov 9, 2012

I Interview Playwrights Part 522: Carolyn Kras

Nov 3, 2012

Reading Today--Arrrrr

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