A: The play is about the titular Guadalupe, a Mexican mother who just lost her daughter and now has to deal with being in this country and not really knowing the language and then also having to deal with the grief-stricken American husband her daughter left behind too.
The inspiration for this play was basically how I grew up and seeing my own parents struggle with language barriers. I was raised within an immigrant family where the kids all spoke English (including with one another) and the only Spanish in the household was solely with my parents. Eventually I started to wonder if this ever made them feel isolated or even lonely. How did it feel to not have a literal voice in the world sometimes, even with those you love? This play is ultimately an attempt to give voice to that experience.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: The piece I’m working on currently (“School Play”) is a sort of treatise on how race, gender, and sexuality is treated in theatre. (Yes, I’m writing a play about theatre). I’ve been struck for a while about the arguments we have about representation (we aren’t producing enough writers of color or women, this play has characters whose identities are nothing more than stereotype). I wanted to tackle these issues not within one isolated group but within all of them, and hopefully broaden the discourse that sometimes isn’t had laterally with each population.
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 pretty much always a well-behaved kid, but apparently there was one night where I refused to take a bath and I kept rebelliously standing up in the tub. My mom got so frustrated with me that she grabbed onto my hair tightly and sternly told me to sit down. Without missing a beat I looked at her dead in the eye and a single tear came running down my cheek. She said she could never punish me again after that.
In short, I am one sensitive little bastard (even when I’m in the wrong…) And that sensitivity, for better or worse, really does kind of translate into how I operate and write plays.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: Oh man, I miss seeing big, ensemble casts. Like 10+ characters. Totally wish that happened more. Seeing shows now with like 6 characters, I’m like ‘oh my god, how did they do that!’
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Thornton Wilder- for his time, he was doing some truly innovative stuff, all the while preserving a sense of humanity we could all connect to. I also weep whenever I see those videos about Shakespeare programs in prisons. How can you not be moved by these men who find expression and even purpose by doing theatre? Isn’t that what this whole thing is all about?
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: Ambitious plays. Plays where I really see writers take a risk with what they’re saying and how they’re saying it. I don’t think we talk about big ideas and even uneasy topics as much as we should. Also, I get very, very excited when I see a cast onstage that isn’t all white, halleloo!
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Never isolate yourself because you “have” to write. What the hell are you writing about if you deny yourself the company of people?
Q: Plugs, please
A: Guadalupe is part of LARK Playwrights Week next week, Thurs. Sept. 26th @7pm. It’s directed by Daniella Topol who is every kind of amazing.
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A: Deacon Of The Bronx follows the return home of a beloved son, Fab. After a couple of years in the seminary - which is essentially college for those men who wish to become priests - he comes back to his old neighborhood amidst some serious confusion about what he thought was his "calling". I wanted to write the play for a couple reasons: one is that I just haven't seen too many plays in recent years about people who live in the boroughs of new york city - not people who moved there recently to open a high-end coffee roaster in the middle of a leather factory, but the folks who've called it home for more practical purposes for decades now. And strangely, the Bronx has been rather shut out of the whole recent sweep of borough gentrification. It still kind of exists as it did 20-30 years ago. For better and for worse.
I also wanted to take a look at why there'd been such a marked decline in those entering the priesthood in recent years. I'd figured that between the parallel wars we've been fighting and the dragging economic slump, more men would be jumping into spiritual community leadership. Or at least, more men would want to remove themselves from the noise of our current reality, quieting themselves and their surrounding world down. But it's been the reverse. I thought it'd be fun to look at that through the eyes of Fab, his friends and family, and see what keeps a man in the "real" world. And what can drive him from it.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: I just competed this residency with the Civilians' R&D Group - where I'm expounding on this musical about Barabbas. Barabbas was the guy who went free (via public vote) when Jesus was condemned to die. I always thought that was such an interesting historical fork-in-the-road. And Barabbas is not really explored much in the Bible - there's only a couple sentences about him. So I'm playing with a "And Then What Happened?" kind of story. With rock songs. It's been fun.
I'm also setting out on a new play about a middle-aged white teacher chauffeuring his black student to protect him from the social wars at school.
Also, in the middle of editing this very fun film project I did with Sean Christopher Lewis. We wrote this movie, shot it on the road on a shoestring budget this summer. Watching that come together has been very exciting.
And with Slant Theatre Project - a company I'm in with Wes Grantom, Adam Knight, and Mat Smart - I've got this ongoing hosting/writing thing called On This Island. It's an NYC Storytelling series, mixing fiction, personal essay, music, play, and film. We've had a standing show at Ars Nova for the last year, release it as a podcast, and have had stellar guests working outside their usual specialties. That whole thing really fills my cup.
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 younger, we couldn't really afford summer camp or anything like that, so my folks would dump me upstate where my grandparents lived for weeks at a time. And my grandparents were (and are, my grandmother Maddalena is still wonderfully alive) spectacular storytellers. They've really led the whole hero's journey - poor beginnings in the hills of northern Italy, where you'd eat things like "moon cheese" - a spot of moonlight on a kitchen table that you could dip your bread into, imagining it was cheese.
And from there, the boat over to New York where some pioneering relatives brought news of actual work. Then, washing dishes and bussing tables at midtown restaurants, sewing fabrics in the West 30s all day, saving some coins and slowly, steadily, building a life together through broken English.
I'd learn all these stories over the long Italian lunches up in the country.
But one thing really comes to mind.
It was late July and I'd been up there for some time. And I was bored and restless. I was a sporty kid with a lot of nervous energy and there's only so much catch you can play with your 55-year old grandmother. I think she had sniffed out the malaise in my my 6-year old heart. I missed my brother, who was back at home. I missed my friends. I missed my parents. So my grandmother, asked, "Hey, how about we go fishing?" I loved fishing and she knew that, so I jumped up and was like, "Yeah!"
We packed a lunch box, put on our fishing caps, got a couple of janky rods and set out.
So we started walking down this country road, cars passing occasionally and I realized that, wait, we'd never gone fishing around here. The only times we went anywhere really, was when my grandfather was up there too with a car. My grandmother could not drive. I asked, "Where do we fish around here?" And she was like, "Oh, I know a place... just a little more walking."
The weather had started to turn. As it darkened, she asked what kind of fish I liked. How we waned to cook it once we caught it. What kinds of bait I was gonna use. We started digging for worms - futilely - on the side of the road.
The sky darkened. It was clear it was gonna pour on us. But still she kept saying, "No I think the pond is somewhere up the road! Come on!" By then, I knew we wouldn't find any pond before the rain took us. And it did. It started thundering and lighting like crazy. I got scared, but my grandmother just started to laugh. It poured on us. This 6 year old kid and his 55 year old grandma on the side of a country road with a tackle box and 2 fishing rods. Just a ridiculous scene. She was laughing really hard. And I did too.
Years later, she told me that she knew there was no fishing pond around, but she felt bad for me and wanted to get me out of the house. So she mocked up a little fishing trip and, though no fishing was to be had, it was the best fishing trip I'd ever been on.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: Actors should have a quote for every play they do in the city. So, if you do your first professional gig in town, you get the Equity minimum for that theater. But for your 2nd pro gig, you'd get the Equity minimum for that theater (even if it's a different one), but you'd get an extra $25 a week, say. For you 3rd pro gig, you'd get the minimum plus $50. For the 4th gig, you'd get minimum plus $75. And so on. This feels fair, establishes a sense of progress, and I don't think it would break the theater's bank. A quote system, basically. This can be done. It has to, because the meager percentage raises we get after Equity negotiations do not keep up with the soaring cost of living in this city.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes:
A: I'd say that John Patrick Shanley was a great influence on me. The first time I read his plays was the first time I felt grabbed a work of drama. Nicky Silver too. I'd never really laughed so much from reading a play. And I always felt - and still feel - that his work is so sneakily stirring and profound. His "Pterodactyls" was a real special read. A couple others are David Greenspan, whose work seems to find a way to bend time - it's miraculous. His solo show "The Myopia" blew my mind. And John Kelly's work is always mesmerizing. Those are some.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: Stuff from the gut. Stuff that feels like it could've been written in one sitting, to be honest. But on the flip side, I've always gone in for the more daring, experimental work produced by the likes of The Foundry, Richard Foreman, and the like. Just unique, unsafe, nearly freaky theatrical voices that play with form.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Well I'm only several years into classifying as even a peripheral "playwright". But coming from it as an actor, I will say that nothing has helped my acting more than doing improv and writing plays.
Q: Plugs:
A: My play, Deacon Of The Bronx, is part of the 2013 Lark Playwrights' Week. Public reading is Wednesday, 9/25 @ 3pm. And listen & subscribe to Slant Theatre Project's ON THIS ISLAND podcast series on itunes - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/on-this-island/id580211869 - recorded live at Ars Nova.
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A: The basic story of Disgraced tracks the unraveling of a Pakistani-American corporate attorney's marriage and career as the long-guarded secret of his Muslim origins comes out at work. The body of the play is a dinner party where a group of successful New York professionals begin to talk about Islam, and Amir, under extreme stress from his work situation, begins to unloose long-stanched emotions related both to his Islamic heritage -- which he is profoundly at odds with -- but also with being Muslim in America.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: I have a new play going up in 2014 at La Jolla Playhouse and at Lincoln Center's LCT3 in New York. It's called The Who & The What, and is a partly comedic exploration of Muslim-American matrimonial mores. Also at work on a heavy rewrite of a play called The Invisible Hand. It has new productions in Seattle and Portland at the end of next summer. Have a couple of commissions I am plugging away on, as well as my next novel. I'm keeping busy.
Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: This is a story I've told a few times. But it's really the central one when it comes to my story as a writer. I had an amazing high school teacher who changed my life, who made me want to write. Her name was Diane Doerfler. (We called her Ms Doerfler.) She was in her late fifties at the time that I took her class, an eccentric, remarkable woman, who lived on sixty acres of land in forest-country north west of Milwaukee, with a farm-sized garden she awoke at four AM to tend every morning, usually surrounded by her ten great danes. She'd been married five times, divorced all her husbands, and carried herself with an assuredness that belied her station as a high-school teacher. Her bearing was at once regal and acute. She didn't suffer fools well. And she didn't take kindly to kids who didn't do the evening assignment. Suffice it to say, I don't recall a single incident of insubordination in her class.
Our first assignment that semester was to read Friedrich Durrenmatt's short story, "The Tunnel." It's about a man who wakes up on a train and doesn't understand how he got there, or where the train is going. He goes from car to car, asking the passengers, the conductor, the workers, but no one seems to know. Most don't care and shrug. Others point to someone else further up the chain of command for an answer. Finally, having made his way to the locomotive, the protagonist finds the driver: A madman shoveling coal maniacally into the engine. The protagonist asks him where the train is going. All the driver can do is point at the ceiling. The protagonist climbs the short ladder and peers over the perch to see: A tunnel of darkness into which the train is headed with unstoppable fury.
I hadn't the slightest idea what to make of it. When Ms Doerfler strode purposefully into class the next day, her right hand buried -- as it always was -- in her sport coat pocket and playing with a set of keys there, she asked us to explain the meaning of the story. I was confounded. I couldn't understand how anything so incoherent as the story I'd read the previous night could have a meaning. No one had an answer. And so she proceeded to explain: The train was life. And sometimes we awaken to the question of where it is headed, how it began. Unfortunately, as we look for an answer from others, they often have no interest in the question, and those who might have an interest have no answer. The most that one could do was to confront the truth -- after great effort -- and that was itself a conundrum: That life is unknown headed into a deeper unknown.
I was stunned. I remember the moment I understood what she was saying. It was like lemon juice on the surface of milk, parting the murkiness, revealing something clear underneath. It struck me then (and it still does) that giving shape in stories to the deeper questions of existence was the most remarkable thing I could imagine doing.
Ms Doerfler responded to my newfound passion with care and guidance. I spent a great deal of time around her my senior year, doing independent studies and writing essays about what she had me read. She introduced me to Thomas Mann, Robert Musil, Albert Camus, and Franz Kafka. And when I was done with those, she had me read Sartre and Rilke and Mishima and Proust. It was a baptism in world literature, a formation I still draw from everyday...
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: Ticket prices!
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Eleanora Duse, Andre Gregory, Arthur Miller, Jerzy Grotowski, David Mamet, Ariane Mnouchkine, Kate Valk, Tony Kushner, Solomon Mikhoels, Ibsen, Reza Abdoh, Jean Genet, Anatoly Vasiliev, Kazuo Ohno, Cherry Jones, Bertolt Brecht.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: Theater that takes audience engagement seriously, which isn't to mean work that panders to the audience. It's a matter of who the primary interlocutor of the work really is. Is it dramaturgy, form, the process of storytelling? Or is it the audience? To me, this is the distinguishing line. Not that the former isn't valid. I admire so many writers whose primary interlocutor is really the form. But I find that it just doesn't excite me as much.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Keep at it. Stay open to criticism from those you admire and trust. Work hard. Expect that it may take much much longer than you would ever imagine. Show business is about attrition more than anything else. You have to have the staying power -- which I associate with creative drive -- to keep at it.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: Little, Brown and Company is bringing out an edition of Disgraced the second week of September 2013. Aasif Mandvi -- who starred in the play at Lincoln Center -- will be joining me for a reading and discussion at the Union Square Barnes and Noble on Thursday Sept 12 at 7.00 PM. Aasif is a very talented and funny guy. Should be a lot of fun. http://store-locator.barnesandnoble.com/event/81350
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A: As somebody put it in rehearsal the other day, Eudaemonia is “Faust for hipsters.”
The play focuses on three people reaching the end of the first third of their lives, the end of the period of selfish, self-involved self-development that characterizes your mid-twenties. These people are not happy with themselves – they don't want to be who they are, but don't know exactly who (or what) they want to be.
So they each summon into their lives magical, demonic forces to bring about this desired (if misdirected) change. The play tracks how this desire for change, this desire to create a new self, in effect destroys a previous self – how making a new “I” by necessity destroys the old “I.”
But it's also funny, and bizarre, and there's a demon, and a giant egg, and music, and dancing, and Marshall Pailet has done an unbelievable job putting this nearly-impossible play on its feet.
It's going up as part of an event I created with Kevin Armento and Jaclyn Backhaus called (not just) 3 New Plays. We're producing our three plays in rep, sharing a budget, space, set, and production team. We figure that joining forces, we're more capable than any one of us alone.
Their plays, KILLERS and SHOOT THE FREAK, are gorgeous – I'm humbled to be sharing a stage with them.
We've also invited over 60 other artists to use our space for free before and after the shows. So every night there's going to be pay-what-you-can performances – we've got dancers, comedians, filmmakers, photographers, musicians, all sorts. Plus, during the day, artists and companies will get to use the theater as free rehearsal space. We've turned the Paradise Factory into a little pop-up arts ecosystem, and we think that's pretty cool.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: I'm working on a horror play about a junkyard that eats people. I'm also trying to adapt a play my grandma wrote in the 80's – she passed away several years ago, and so the though of co-writing a play with her based on this manuscript I found is pretty alluring.
I'm also making a devised piece about ghost stories with director Stefanie Abel Horowitz and our company, Tiny Little Band. It's still pretty nascent, but in essence it's an examination of belief – what does it mean to believe in ghosts? In true love? In anything? If I hold fundamentally different foundational beliefs from you, how can we ever speak the same language? And in what ways is fear just an extension of belief?
Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: On the first day of first grade, my teacher (a lovely white haired lady with the excellent name Mrs. Costabile), handed out a diagnostic math test.
I started answering the questions – 1+2, 3-1, etc. After about a minute, though, I stood up on my chair, crumpled up the test, threw it on the floor, and shouted “What do you think I am, some kind of idiot?”
Now I don't actually remember this happening – I've only heard about it second hand. But I think it's a pretty funny – if more than a little incriminating – origin story.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: Space has got to be more affordable. Rehearsal space, yes, but particularly performance space. It's hard to take risks in your writing if the costs of production are so high. I dream of a theater culture in which everybody is making work all the time – like Fringe, but always. We'd eliminate the cycle of “developmental purgatory,” and be able to take bigger, bolder risks with lower stakes.
This is the main thing we've been trying to combat with (not just) 3 New Plays – by teaming up, we've made it much more affordable for the three of us to produce our work. And by opening the space up as free performance and rehearsal space before and after our shows, we've given free space to over 60 artists who otherwise wouldn't have it. We're grateful to have them on board – it makes an instant community around our work. And they're grateful for the space to make and show their work. Everybody wins.
I think if we can all be a little more community minded in the ways we make our art, we can allow for a more vibrant, more diverse arts community. And when that happens, well, everybody wins.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Oh man, so many. Anne Washburn, Melissa James Gibson, Jenny Schwartz, David Greenspan, Glen Berger, Richard Foreman, Richard Maxwell, Sibyl Kempson, Kristen Kosmas, Madeline George, Annie Baker, Karen Hartman, Dan LeFranc, Jordan Harrison, Lucas Hnath, Caryl Churchill, The Debate Society, Elevator Repair Service, Rude Mechs, Mac Wellman, and of course my first playwriting teachers Deb Margolin and Donald Margulies.
I'm also always impressed by the immensity of the work being created by the artists in my cohort. The Smith + Tinker gang, The Cockpit Writers Group, the Extremely Famous Writers Group – these folks have really got it going on.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I'm turned on by theater that experiments with language and form. Jenny Schwartz and Melissa James Gibson do such incredible things with words – reading or seeing one of their plays makes you think you've never heard the English language before. Kristen Kosmas and Sibyl Kempson similarly have this way of turning words into concrete things – objects with sound, weight, and shape, rather than just reference.
I'm always a sucker for a play that takes you through an experience, rather than depicts that experience. Anne Carson once described that (in reference to poetry) as subjective mimesis, and I think that's totally right. You leave having felt something new, having experienced something new, instead of simply watching other people feel and experience things (which is the most boring sort of voyeurism, in my book). I'm thinking specifically of plays like THE INTERNATIONALIST or the ridiculously genius MR. BURNS that use form as their primary (and extraordinarily effective) means of communication.
I love plays that give me space and agency as an audience member, plays that don't do my thinking for me, but invite me to fill in the gaps. Be just a little confusing, so I've got something to do while I'm in the audience.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Write write write. Read read read. But also do other stuff. Be a person.
Also, ask for advice! Everybody who's doing this is doing it with the help and guidance of a whole army of great mentors, heroes, and friends. And, at least in my experience, most people are more than happy to pay it forward.
For instance, me! E-mail me – j.a.lieblich@gmail.com – I'd be happy to go out for coffee and talk about this weird and impossible thing we're all trying to do.
Q: Plugs, please:
A:
EUDAEMONIA by Jerry Lieblich directed by Marshall Pailet
KILLERS by Kevin Armento directed by Stefanie Abel Horowitz
SHOOT THE FREAK by Jaclyn Backhaus directed by Andrew Neisler
All shows run Sept 8-29 at the Paradise Factory (64 E 4th St., next to LaMAMA).
ALSO! There are so many amazing performances happening in the space all month. Stop by any night and you'll see something super cool! I promise! For instance, on September 14th my roommate is performing a kickass cabaret of folk-rock re-imaginings of musical theater songs! How can you say no!?
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Hometown: Lawrence, New York, one of the "Five Towns" - the others are Inwood, Cedarhurst, Woodmere and Hewlett. Johnny Drama stars in a show about them on Entourage, directed by Ed Burns. They are a punchline on that show and kind of a punchline in my life. The joke was on me as a kid but as I am now middle aged, I often find myself dreaming of the pizza places and record stores of my youth. I set the new play there, part of it anyway, and give a shout out to Friendlier, a real pizza place. I was in Friendlier in Woodmere when the Challenger exploded.
Current Town: Makin' Money Manhattan (I'm making no money)
A: It's a romance. Guy meets girl. Guy sleeps with girl. Girl steals guys watch. Guy meets girl again. Girl (not a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, mind) convinces the guy to confront his demons which is in this case, a guitar teacher who deeply scarred him in 1993. As it's very, very easy to find people from the past these days, they track the now aged guy down (think the Don Ciccio scene in Godfather 2) and mete out vengeance. She has ulterior motives of course. She is not who she seems to be. Mayhem ensues. There's a lot of sex and violence and pop references, it's kind of a throwback in that case to my older plays but I could not have written this at 28. It takes a middle aged man with a little humility to pull some of this off. It also marks the first time I'm directing one of my own plays after about a dozen produced Off Off. Again, I'm old now and if not now, when. It's so personal and there are only three actors so i figured why not? I saw a Woody Allen doc. where he said if you wrote it and surround yourself with good people then why can't you direct and that hit home.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: I am writing a story for the New York Times on punk film, the good ones and the bad ones, and I am finishing up a book on an aesthetic that some people call Twee and others call... Indie when they are trying not to offend people who are twee. It starts post War (Disney's feature films, Salinger, Seuss, Dean, Capote) and goes all the way up to New Girl. An epic. I am also working on not being suicidally depressed. That's a bit easier than writing a big book. They have pills now. The book will be out in the second half of 2014 from IT Books/Harper Collins. It's my eighth book. I released a memoir in February called Poseur: A Memoir of Downtown New York in the 90s, which took me three years to write and might have contributed to the above mentioned suicidal depression. I also wrote Revenge during this period.
Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: Well much of it is covered in the memoir, I mentioned above but Revenge in particular stems from a real incident. You know I never wanted to be a rock critic which is how I made and still sometimes make my living. I wanted to be a rock star. But I was unlucky when it came to teachers (yes, I blame them not my utter lack of natural talent). My piano teacher would not teach me the piano riff to "Rock the Casbah" and when I went to learn the drums I was basically told that I was uncoordinated and asked if I was "good at sports?" The implication being I was an utter physical reject-o. So there's a bit of me in Cal. I've never forgotten those lessons and in moments I wonder what could have been had I a more impatient instructor (or one who was a Clash fan). It's why there's power in this play whereas some of the recent ones I've done seem more like larks. There's painful truth in it. About regret, getting older, realizing things you will never be. And coming to accept what you are, which when you scour away the anger and regret, is most of the time, not so bad at all.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: Rentals would be cheaper for young playwrights. When I began doing plays on the Lower East Side in the late 1990s, if a producer like Aaron Beall liked your play or your coat, he would give you his space and split the door with you. He would also champion you and mentor you. I think that's just about gone with this sanitized, new LES. And all the small theaters are now in Brooklyn but I am a romantic about downtown theater in Manhattan (makin no money). It's why I like the Kraine where we are now. You can smell the history there. And sometimes fish.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: I always wanted to write Burn This. Not be Lanford Wilson per se but to have written Burn This. Burn This by Marc Spitz. I've re read it recently as I've read the Forced Entries by Jim Carroll and neither are as good as I remember but when I was young and hungry they fired me up. Also Durang. Nicky Silver. Orton. Pinter. Rabe. Kushner. Albee. Shepard obviously. I once saw him at the Washington Square Park dog run walking a large black poodle. Kushner for different reasons. I love reading him and respect his ambition but I know I can never touch him. Whereas I like pretending I have a chance at the others. Hero worship at my age is bad anyway. I want to be a hero myself. You know that piece of Christopher Street in front of the Lucille Lortel with all the stars? I think they just gave Neil LaBute one. There are a lot of blank stars left. I want one of those stars. And until I get one, I am happy to let my two basset hounds pee on them. Especially on LaBute. I will say
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I am no fan of the avant garde. I like loud, ,violent, darkly funny plays. I tried to see a Robert Wilson play once and a bunch of stuff at PS 122 and I just shift and feel like I'm back in math class.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Go to Brooklyn I guess? Or Queens. Or Staten Island. Or stay here and fight. Take back Ludlow Street, Le Miz style.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: Listen to the Plugz.
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A: The Capables is a play about a family buried beneath the matriarch's hoard. Her daughter enlists a reality television show to come and remove the hoard, but their agenda is less about cleaning house than about getting folks to cry on camera. It's about what we do for the people we love and how we try to soften, if not heal, their specific pain.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: I'm working on the AmoraLABs for the fall and winter season with The Amoralists. AmoraLABs are semi-regular gatherings at which the ensemble reads selections from four or five plays by writers new to the company. It's less a development series than a showcase. It serves a dual purpose - one of surveying some work by writers with whom we share an aesthetic and whose work may be something we include in future seasons; alternatively it's meant for writers who are close to our aesthetic but different enough from it to give the ensemble something new with which to work. It gives the playwright an opportunity to work with our ensemble and our actors an opportunity to perform for excellent playwrights.
I'm also working on a play about psychics and 9/11, which involves me getting my palm read at as many different psychics as I can afford.
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 thirteen, I spent the summer with my parents' video camera making parodies of a Regis and Kathy Lee type variety show. My cousin Jenn, visiting from out of town, was my all-too willing co-star and on the first day of her visit I worked us for so many hours and did so many takes to get it right that Jenn's pony tail, which she had pulled tightly onto the top of her head for the sake of verisimilitude, incapacitated her with a headache the next day. I'm still apologizing. But we did get the take and it was awesome.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: I still feel very new to this "club" and still, oddly, see it through rose-tinted glasses. It's tough for me to have a specific thing about theater I'd like to change since doing the work and making it at all are such liberating and soul-filling tasks aside other things like accounting, or corporate litigation. It's not that I'm blinded to its problems as much as it's that I can't believe my luck that I'm doing this instead of getting pear-shaped in an Aeron chair in midtown.
If I were to say one thing, though, I wish theater spaces in New York City were less expensive to rent.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: I didn't grow up in the theater, or even around it so this question makes me a little self-conscious. Like, in the same way that it's very hard for me to go to Marie's Crisis and not feel like a complete failure. Still, I have a few playwrights whose works have changed what I think is possible in performance. Terrence McNally, Conor McPherson, Young Jean Lee, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Stew, and Larry Kramer are a few of my favorite theater artists so far based on their work. I'd also say that so many of my heroes are people that I make theater with, friends whose crafts are still growing and in sometimes astounding, unpredictable ways, friends who inspire awe by their dedication and development.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I like to be afraid, terrified, unsettled. I also like to cry; I find it transformative to be silenced by overwhelming emotion. I've only ever experienced that in the theater, though, felt grabbed by the throat, and completely inhabited by an experience that can linger and incapacitate and change a person.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Hmmm...I'm still starting out and, I'll be honest, I spend a lot of time reading this section from other interviews on this site, so the first piece of advice I have is:
Read Adam's blog.
And, if they're helpful, (and I'm not sure they will be) these are the things that I tell myself to when I'm feeling pretty pessimistic about my own art-making:
Remember neuroplasticity. Keep in mind that if your brain can change and grow (and in some cases regenerate) then the determinism of innate ability might not really apply, either. You can teach yourself a new skill, like playwriting, if you're observant, and if you practice enough, and if you're open to change.
Remember that skills (like playwriting) take many years to learn and those years are measured not in time but in pages.
Remember that the act of making something that can't sell thousands of tickets or make someone (if not yourself) rich, is itself a radical act in our society. Therefore, nearly all theater is itself radical and there is a reason for it that can't be measured in coin.
Remember that making theater is SO MUCH BETTER than doing nearly anything else, even if those other things reward you handsomely. You'll still just be daydreaming about making theater.
Commit to writing. Stop checking out other degree programs for jobs that offer you a 9 to 5 work schedule and weekends. You're an artist, not a social worker!
Remember art-making is arduous. Not every moment will be blissful. Maybe 1% of moments are blissful. But those 1% offer more bliss than doing anything else. And for others, others who aren't doing stuff they like, maybe no percent of moments are blissful. Bliss = rare.
Read things that give you big ideas. Maybe not plays. Read things other than plays. But read plays, too.
Write
Write
Write
Take an acting class.
Write
See the work of others.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: My play, The Capables, is in its final week of performance at the Gym at Judson in Washington Square Park: 7pm on Tuesday and Wednesday and 8pm on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
AmoraLAB is this Wednesday, July 31st, 7:30pm at The Counting Room in Williamsburg.
Mailing list to be invited to readings, productions, and events
