I Interview Playwrights Part 588: Richard Hellesen

Richard Hellesen
 
Hometown: Orange, California

Current Town: Sacramento, California

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  On being America’s oldest most-promising playwright.....Nah. As you know, things go in cycles--some years you plant, some years you harvest. Last year (2012) I had a couple productions and readings. This year so far has just been about the writing. Recently finished two scripts which have hung around for awhile--a dark comedy about the theatre (is there any other kind?), and a drama about marriage (is there any other kind?)--and then made the mistake of opening a computer file with 26 pages of something else I started years ago and would like to complete. Also have a lot of work to do this summer on a long-aborning project for Peter Ellenstein and the Inge Center, which will keep me from fixing an even longer-aborning script that has sat idle since a reading last December. None of these are getting productions, you understand--not yet anyway--but staying busy is the 50% I can control. You have to realize that I’m very much a regional theatre writer--that’s where all my work has been done, plus I don’t live in a place with a huge theatre community, and while I’d love to talk about my play over coffee on Eighth Avenue, the airfare is prohibitive--so whatever my network is, it’s far-flung and for the most part electronically-personal. That can make it difficult to stay motivated, let alone get work on stage, and I always say I’m about 6 months away from giving it up. The fact that I’ve been saying that every 6 months since late in the Reagan administration is thanks to that small-but-choice network that keeps asking “What are you working on now?”...., Anyway, because they won’t let me off the hook, and because I keep getting ideas (damn it), I’m starting to feel like I might finally know what I’m doing, and should probably shut up and get on with it. But only for another 6 months, and then I’m out.

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

A:  Sometimes I want a program bio that reads, “Richard Hellesen was not born into a family of struggling yet determined artists, who did not take him to Broadway shows as a child where a chance meeting with Arthur Miller did not lead to his graduate study at Yale School of Drama not.” I was merely a small, shy, red-haired, middle-class kid living in a California suburb, with a good childhood, a state college education, who never even saw a professional play until I was in high school. The only hint of my future was a love of words--lots of them--and an inclination to pretend, which were the refuge and eventual release from my shyness, and are still about the only skills I have now that I’m a small, less-shy, grey-haired, middle-class kid living in a California suburb. That and the fact that nobody--nobody--works harder than me (nobody!) in rehearsal. Probably out of fear. OK--love and fear--there’s the story: in junior-high I was the guy that somebody would engage in conversation, while unbeknownst to me somebody else was crawling behind me. And then the first guy would push me over backwards. Writing is engaging in the conversation--which, thank God, I had teachers encouraging (to the point of producing early efforts), and I learned to love being in a room with actors and in the back of the theatre with an audience, which is the only reason to write plays. But I’m also pretty sure while I’m standing there that somebody is crawling behind me....

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

A:  I’m guessing the other 500+ people have covered many of the things I’d change, but OK. This will sound self-serving, being (as I am) in my incredibly late 30s--but since all playwrights are somewhat self-serving anyway (“produce anybody else but me!”, said no playwright ever), here goes. It’s the same thing I’d change about American popular culture in general: its tendency to overpraise the new, the young, the “hot” as the salvation of the art, at the expense of artists who are none of the above--and then repeat the process about every half-generation. Which is not at all to denigrate young talent; merely to say that if art is a lifelong journey--and I believe it is--then there are things you do not know, questions you cannot ask, abilities you haven’t yet refined, until you’ve hiked a pretty good distance up the mountain. It’s no challenge, in my opinion, to find people who want to write plays when they’re 17 or 27--they’re always there, and they’re happy to get the theatrical equivalent of pats on the head and doggy treats. The challenge is to make sure they (and I mean any writer willing to walk the walk) are still wanting and eager and able to write for the theatre when they’re 37, 47, 57--the decades when the very life that’s giving you something more and deeper to write about runs repeatedly into abundant reasons to quit. By all means, we absolutely have to nurture a younger generation of artists--that is indeed the future, and certainly why many of us teach. (OK, pay and benefits too, but I digress...or not...) And I know that professional theatre is always about who gets to play ball and who doesn’t, and who decides. But some great works only come with time, and I would regret our losing--or neglecting--the means to make them happen. (Let’s see, “The Vikings at Helgeland” or “Hedda Gabler”? Anyone? Anyone?)

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Strangely, since I think I’m fairly conventional, I admire playwrights with a vision of their own--who kept after it, often imperfectly, regardless of the opinion of others, regardless of success or failure, over their entire lives, struggling to create what they had to create because that’s who they were. And while I know this applies to many of my contemporaries, for some reason I have a hard time thinking of them as heroes just yet, though I do love and admire them. Maybe because my degree was in theatre history, I lean toward the past--and that includes writers whose end of the theatre I might be lumped into, those who are about as far away from what I write as you can get, and in both cases people who wrote some things I don’t even like. Ibsen. Chekhov. O’Neill. Beckett. In my adult lifetime, August Wilson above all. I’ll never get closer to them than sitting at a very great remove from their feet, but they remind me of the highest aspirations in a craft that I’m swamping around in--and that’s plenty.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Funny: I don’t think in terms of being Excited! about theatre anymore--I think in terms of being moved. Which I’m sure says more about me than either theatre or excitement, and anyway I suppose being moved is a form of excitement, so.....I enjoy anything that moves me, intellectually and/or emotionally--I don’t care if it’s classical, contemporary, word-based, movement-based, drama, comedy, musical, realism, non-realism, intensely kinetic or intensely literary. Whatever, and by whomsoever made--as long as it’s truthful. Sometimes I think we get so amped up about form that we’re willing to give content a pass. I did literary management for a number of years, and the most irritating plays I read (as with any number I’ve seen produced) were the ones that were basically very slick and well-written lies--either something somebody wrote because they were trying to show how clever or cool they were, or because they had a Point to Make and were going to By-God Make It even if it meant pitching honesty in characters and action over the side. (And there’s no shortage of people in the theatre happy to abet both.) For me, given the abundance (willing! reveling in it!) of falsity in our world, I simply want to witness engrossing moments of recognizable human truth, things I knew were true but forgot until the play reminded me--and if possible to be allowed to feel genuine emotion in doing so. And that is not the property of any age, race, gender, or theatrical form--but by the same token, no age, race, gender or theatrical form is absolved of the obligation to provide it. But that’s just me.

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

A:  Assuming you’ve exhausted all other possibilities for a healthy and happy life:

Take an acting class. Take another one.

Crew a show.

Read every play you can, and go to every production you can--they all have something to teach you, even (especially?) the bad ones.

And for every play you read, read something that isn’t a play.

Find a significant other who, when asking why you’re staring out a window, believes you when you say “I’m working.” Then reward their belief.

Live in a place with an actual theatre community. If you can’t, start one. If you can’t, be one.

And then don’t sequester yourself with nothing but artists for friends. Live in the world.

What Mom said about writing even though it was about broccoli: you won’t know if you don’t try it.

Sorry, but the real work starts with the rewrite. Might as well get there as quickly as you can.

Yes, you can stop for a muffin.

The work of others is a gift beyond measure. Learn to collaborate or go home.

That said: tell the truth as you understand it, and stick up for it.

And if you do stay for awhile: get over yourself as soon as you can. Your job, in the end, is to disappear, and leave a piece of charged life behind.

Trust the audience above all. But only in performance--never in a post-show discussion...

Don’t judge the road--of your play or your career--by the part of it you can see today; both are a long walk through all kinds of weather. Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe.

And rejoice. You get to write!

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Nothing to plug. Just a bio. But if you want to do any of my work...!

http://www.dramatistsguild.com/memberdirectory/getmembership.aspx?cid=2338

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I Interview Playwrights Part 587: Sara Farrington

 
Sara Farrington

Hometown: East Hampton, NY

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about Requiem For Black Marie.

A:  I’m so proud and scared of it. I read this book about the inner workings of the Brecht Machine called Brecht & Co., by John Fuegi. Much of the book is shockingly personal stuff about Brecht, which I love finding out about. I love being reminded that adored, historical figures were gross and weird and sexual. Fuegi claims that Brecht’s female lovers were more than just contributors, but that they actually wrote some of his best plays for him, in their entirety, never getting credit or money. True or not, I saw such tragedy in this. I also related to falling in love with a charismatic theater guy, (which has happened to every woman and man in the theater. They’re the most exciting relationships, but often the most dangerous and destructive.) So I focused my playwriting on two of the women I most related to, Elisabeth “Bess” Hauptmann and Margarete Steffin. Requiem For Black Marie is about them. It’s told in seventeen quick, tense, darkly funny scenes directed skillfully by Shannon Sindelar. There’s also a musical score running under the whole play by a live band. The play exists in what I see as one of the most exciting eras for theater, the Weimar Republic in Germany, those few years before Hitler took power in 1933 and right before the Brecht team (some of them) fled to America. So there’s a sense of impending doom shrouded around the playwriting, staging and characters. The Brecht team and community made theater under threat of death, constantly searched by police. Some were executed, some died in camps, some simply disappeared. But yet, making theater was still the priority for them. It was a compulsion, as it is for us now. That’s what this play is about.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I’m really excited for the play I’m going to write this summer after Requiem closes, which is a Civil War play inspired by a lingering fact I learned while in Mexico: Ancient Mayan women who died in childbirth were buried with the same ceremony as Mayan warriors who died in battle. So I’m exploring this ancient parallel between death in childbirth and death in war. Key to the play’s structure is the fact that it took a letter three weeks to be delivered during the worst years of the war. This lag time in information I hope will lend itself to a distorted narrative, which I’ve never really played with. I’m going to attempt to write this using the broken and sometimes indecipherable language of real Civil War letters, fictionalized between a husband and wife. I tried writing this play a few months ago and it was really bad (I often, unknowingly, write a terrible version of a play first, realize it’s terrible, get really depressed about it, then start over months or even years later. Requiem for Black Marie was, back in 2009, a clunky, soap opera-ish, unwieldy and pretty terrible thing. I discarded like 98% of it). Hopefully going to have the Civil War play up in the fall or winter, be it self-produced or not.

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 might actually be one of my first memories: I was in preschool, maybe 4 or 5 years old. I must have been staring into space, deep in thought. All I remember is Karen, my preschool teacher, gently shaking my shoulder saying, “Sara, Sara, come back to us.” And I suddenly snapped out of my daydream and was back in the classroom. I remember feeling really embarrassed and bad that my teacher had caught me absorbed like that. I’ve never thought about this until just now as I write this, but that, in a nutshell, is how I am. I’ll lose myself a lot in daydreams, fantasy, romance, rehearsal, performance, writing, anything for a long stretch of time, but then I always somehow end up with a rude awakening. Thank God the theater allows for this. Personal life definitely does not.

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

A:  Probably excuses. That kind of covers all of it for me. Excuses from actors, playwrights, theaters, etc… it’s really just fear, I guess. Our time is so short! You ( I ) must stop making excuses why things can’t happen and remember: Theater artists are supposedly to be the wily ones, the ones who steal and don’t get caught, the ones brave enough to embarrass themselves, the ones who don’t take “no” for an answer ever, in any regard, about anything. I can’t believe it when theater artists play by anyone’s rules, institutionally, professionally, artistically. Or when they think there’s a science or a specific route to having a successful career in the theater or--- well, believe anything anyone tells them. I’d change people’s excuse-y attitudes. But I’m a victim of it too.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Firstly, my husband Reid Farrington, my ultimate theatrical hero, who, years ago, taught me to “make it work” no matter what it is, in both theater and life. Secondly, (and these I list in random order and for a wide variety of reasons): Mac Wellman, Constance Congdon, Erik Ehn, Eugene O’Neill, Antje Oegel, The Wooster Group, Samuel Beckett, Jeff Jones, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Megan Emery Gaffney, Frank Boudreaux, Erin Mallon, Alexandra Collier, Shannon Sindelar, Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Harold Pinter, Lisa D’Amour, David Jaffe, Michael Cadman, Marya Ursin, Rachel Jett.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  If it’s rigorous, thoughtful, funny and moving and doesn’t involve audience participation, I’m excited. It doesn’t matter what kind of theater it is as long as it’s got that stuff.

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

A:  I would say: I truly believe that making theater in the USA is privilege and not a right. Everything I do as a playwright, I “get” to do. This, I think will make you a happier artist. Something I heard once from a fellow playwright, “No one cares about your play.” Yep. So self-produce, self-promote, max out credit cards if you have to, rehearse/produce in your apartment, anything to make them care. (They still might not care, but at least they saw your play.) I would say: don’t decide to start a theater company, rather, decide to produce your play. I would say: don’t worry about being good, just strive to be good. This involves accepting your bad plays, big time. You can’t get better without failing, making terrible artistic moves and disappointing people. There’s a line from Slings and Arrows from the senior actors Frank and Cyril: “Don’t fret! You have lots of talent, you’ll have loads of success and a very long career. But at the end of it all you’ve got to have some spectacular cock-ups. Because then you’ll have stories! And then… you’ve had a life.” This line makes me tear up. Makes everything okay, makes everything worth it. I’d also say: Start a family at some point. Being an artist doesn’t exclude you from the big, cosmic parts of life. Don’t let financially stable people be the only ones allowing themselves to have kids. That’s not fair to the evolution of the human race. Finally I would say: Don’t ever be late to anything, don’t flake out, check and double check the calendar, say yes a lot, prioritize theater, see theater, spend money on theater even if you don’t have it, write from a personal place and, perhaps the most inspirational thing I heard recently from my dear agent, “Just keep doing what you do.”

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Get tickets online for my upcoming show, Requiem For Black Marie, (aka the Brecht play) which, for me, is about everything. DETAILS: June 13, 14, 15, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, all shows at 8pm, Incubator Arts Project. Tickets at incubatorarts.org. It’s written by me, directed by Shannon Sindelar and features: Megan Emery Gaffney, Erin Mallon, Caleb Hammond, Jocelyn Kuritsky, Wil Petre, Yuki Kawahisa, Natalie Mack, Tatiana Gomberg, Gavin Price, John Gasper. With set/lighting design by Cecilia R. Durbin, costume design by M. Meriwether Snipes, stage management by, R. S. Buck, video design by Reid Farrington, asst. diected by John Moriarty.

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Sunday and Monday

Sunday afternoon I'm participating in Rattlestick's Theatre Jam with my short play, Sleep.

Then on Monday I have a reading for MCC Theater of Mercy, the play which was the first runner up for Yale's Horn Prize this year.


Details below.


THEATREJAM:
Rattlestick Playwrights Theater presents its fourth annual TheaterJam, a one-day festival featuring the work of many of the company’s favorite playwrights, actors and directors.

New works by Knud Adams, David Cale, Emily Daly, Steve DiUbaldo, Halley Feiffer, Mira Gibson, Kathryn Hathaway, Refiloe Lepere, Jonathan Libman, Mariah MacCarthy, Dael Orlandersmith, José Rivera, Ren Santiago, Crystal Skillman, Adam Szymkowicz, Daniel Talbott, Lucy Thurber, Torrey Townsend, Ken Urban, and more!

SUNDAY, JUNE 2nd, 2013
From 2PM to 10PM.
At Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
(224 Waverly Pl.)

FREE to the public!
$10 suggested donation (cash only) includes a FREE BEER!
All proceeds will benefit Rattlestick’s upcoming 2013-14 season!

Drink deep.

And long live the JAM!

1:30pm Doors open. Raffle tickets and beer on sale.

2pm Sleep by Adam Szymkowicz, directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel

Featuring: Emma Galvin, Pico Jogalla, Emily Perkins, and Marie Polizzano

2:15pm Pocketful of Favors by Emily Daly, directed by Jenna Worsham

Featuring: Lisa Jill Anderson, Brian Edelman and Elle Malan

2:30pm Old Flame by Mira Gibson, directed by Kel Haney
Julie Fitzpatrick and Briana Posner, and others TBA

3pm FOREVER, written and performed by Dael Orlandersmith

3:30pm Sometime After Dinner by Daniel Talbott, directed by Sheri Barber

Featuring: Julie Kline and others TBA

4pm heading out, written and performed by Refiloe Lepere, directed by Dael Orlandersmith

4:15pm Accidents Waiting to Happen by Jonathan Libman, directed by Francisco Solorzano

Featuring: Carlo Alban, Nelson Avidon, and Audrey Esparza

4:30pm He's Enlightened by Ren Santiago, directed by Jenna Worsham

Featuring: Alexander Lambie and Lisa Purrone

5pm The Film Makers by Torrey Townsend, directed by Knud Adams.

Featuring: Neil D'Astolfo, Alex Herrald, and Laura Lassy

5:15pm Under the Water Tower by Steve DiUbaldo, directed by Jenna Worsham

Featuring: George West Carruth, Mikaela Feely-Lehmann, Brian Miskell, and Ren Santiago

5:30pm Dinner break.

6pm The Venting Room, written and directed by Kathryn Hathaway

Featuring: Emma Hathaway and Kathryn Hathaway

6:30pm “The Dolphins” from Deep in a Dream of You and “Where?” from The History of Kisses, written and performed by David Cale

6:45pm A piece by Crystal Skillman. Cast and director TBA.

7pm But Enough About Me by David Parr, directed by Dael Orlandersmith
Featuring: Patrice Bell

7:30pm Edgar and Patrick by Ken Urban, directed by Jaclyn Biskup

Featuring: Andy Phelan and Gayton Scott

8pm A piece by Lucy Thurber. Cast and director TBA.

8:15pm The Avenging of Kruppcake by Mariah MacCarthy, directed by Christina Roussos

Featuring: Chet Siegel and Miranda Wilson

8:30pm The Highwayman, written and directed by Knud Adams

Music by Kate Hamilton and Nick Lerangis; Lyrics by Alfred Noyes

Featuring: Kate Hamilton and Nick Lerangis

9pm Another Word for Beauty written and directed by José Rivera

Featuring: Carlo Alban, Veracity Butcher, Danielle Davenport, and Vaishnavi Sharma

9:30pm Frank Amends by Halley Feiffer, directed by Brian Roff

Featuring: Robert Sella and Matt Stadelmann



MERCY:
MCC Theater in New York presents Mercy as part of Playlabs. Ethan McSweeney directs.  Starring  Susan Louise O'Connor, Greg Keller, Patch Darragh and TBA.

June 3

7pm

Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street).

The series is offered free of charge, but reservations are recommended. Reservations can be made by visiting www.mcctheater.org.

synopsis of Mercy:


Orville is grieving the vehicular manslaughter of his beloved wife. When by chance he faces the driver who killed her, he begins an agonizing conflict between revenge and forgiveness.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 586: Hal Corley

Hal Corley

Hometown: Falls Church, Virginia, a Washington, DC suburb.

Current Town: Summit, NJ, after living in NYC for 24 years.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I just finished a working draft of a new two-character comedy I'll be developing via a week's workshop at the Adirondack Theatre Festival in July. It's called The Bailey's Crossroads Opportunity School, and set in December 1959. A couple is teaching their first night school class on household finance as various calamities ensue. It's a challenge, not only because stylistically the material is almost all presentational, addressed to unseen students. But atypical of my work, it's gentle in tone, with a marriage at its center that has issues but isn't the usual proto-feminist Doll's House model, i.e. a husband threatened by a wife's intellect or prowess. I wanted to write about happy (enough) people, and like most period pieces I tackle, the script uses another era as a prism to look at some origins of current phenomena. The wife, the focus, is a kind of driven, entirely self-educated Suze Orman/Martha Stewart before her time, and for a change the husband is the supportive man behind the woman rather than the reverse.

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

A:  Though I'd like to conjure up an anecdote with humor and suspense, a specific snapshot is more defining. A vivid one, with me seemingly the observer. When I was maybe 8, my father took me to the barbershop on a spring Saturday for a pre-Easter trim. Waiting my turn in the crowd, I watched a mentally handicapped teenager there with his dad. The young man seemed to be getting his first adult haircut, the back of his neck coated with thick shaving cream, the barber suddenly brandishing a traditional straight razor. The boy gripped the armrests and froze. I remember how the hyper-protective father tried hard not to be excessively vigilant or instruct the barber. Of course he couldn't resist, and fretted visibly that his son might be terrified to feel the cold, sharp blade. He couldn't stop himself from reaching out, grabbing his son's hand. Yet within seconds, the boy demonstrated the opposite of the father's fear: rather than wince, still holding his dad's hand tightly, he blushed with pride; his whole face lit up. I couldn't stop watching what was a turning point, an overdue rite of passage exacerbated by the father's anxiety that his son couldn't handle a new experience. Yet it ended up a personal triumph for both men. On the sidelines, I was flooded with a powerful sense of heightened perception, but also an ineffable sadness, maybe for the first time hit with the knowledge that growing up would be about detaching, finding my own way some day. When I got home, I burst into tears, and sobbing, hid under my bed until my mother coaxed me out to learn what had so upset me. All through Easter the next day, a favorite holiday, I was unable to explain to baffled parents why a positive ritual observed between total strangers had so shaken me. If memory serves, I finally said "because they looked like poor people." Perhaps a quantifiable chasm between haves and have-nots seemed more tears-inspiring than an acute awareness of a subtle shift in a family dynamic. A couple of decades later, I smugly recalled this incident as a yardstick of my emotional IQ, empathetic antennae revealed at an early age. Look how I picked up all those vibes in other people! Now, I know better. The playwright in me is ultimately not interested in the unknown father and son. The story is the boy who had to hide under his bed. In my writing (and indeed my life) I've repeatedly, though at times unconsciously, explored that impulse -- what it means to be overwhelmed by unbidden emotion, sometimes burdened by it, and then to retreat from the weight of feelings. It's probably not only what I write but also why I write.

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

A:  I wish we practitioners would give up some of our cynicism about the audience. We parse material for its expected commercial vs. artistic appeal, pitched to "tourists" vs. these odd Others, learned aficionados who will "get" scripts because they're more savvy. In truth, many plays attract a diverse demographic. (Full disclosure: I recall a bus emptying on 45th Street, and after rudely assuming that that its riders were Lion King bound, watched them march eagerly into Other Desert Cities.) I was taught early on that "the audience is always right." I'm not sure I completely agree with that adage, but I have learned it's never always wrong. We too readily judge its members, and their supposedly homogeneous taste in a given venue. In the end they're entitled consumers. They want to embrace what they buy, whether on TDF the night before or a premium seat purchased months ahead. And we playwrights who've been through years of script development and weathered countless talkbacks can grow defensive. Yet we must never see those we seek to entertain as the enemy. I've made theater friends angry, but I say, if you don't trust and like the audience, don't try to write, act, design or direct for them.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Two writers spring to mind who have zero in common, never discussed in the same paragraph: William Inge and David Hare. Inge because he's a singular post-war American voice, a man unafraid to find drama in circumstances I once heard described as "the quotidian awfulness of things." He could draw powerful, loving portraits of people overwhelmed by that awfulness. A kitchen sink naturalist, he's usually maligned these days (though a brilliant director of the moment, David Cromer, made a persuasive case for deconstructing Inge's world in Chicago); yet I always feel his influence. And David Hare just inspires awe. He's fearless, scarily prolific, and writes about sociopolitical issues without sacrificing character and storytelling or reverting to agitprop, in plays operatic and epic in shape and scope. I remember seeing Plenty, stunned by the troubled woman's journey without initially understanding some of the stops along the way. His work nails the tangibles of history yet is filled with mystery about human responses to them. And the Stuff Happens production at the Public was to me a masterful staging of an under appreciated play, one that I hope is revived periodically over the next century to remind us what the hell happened in the early days of this decade.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Wildly different types, as my choosing Inge and Hare might suggest.

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

A:  Don't be afraid to dig deeply into your own experiences, to excavate them fully. Not so much to write autobiographically, but to learn exactly how you respond to things. A Virginia Woolf quote comes to mind: “If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”

Q: Plugs, please

A:   June 6 - 15, Dolor, Flush Ink, Asphalt Jungle Shorts IX, Waterloo, Ontario
June 12 - 23, Deflating, Stageworks/Hudson Play-by-Play, Hudson, NY
June 13 - 23, Stalking Pollyanna, Theatre Artists Studio Summer Shorts, Phoenix, AZ
June 20 - 22, The D Word, Theatre Madness, NYC
July 28-29, The Bailey's Crossroads Opportunity School, Workshop, Adirondack Theatre Festival, Glens Falls, NY

 

 

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I Interview Playwrights Part 585: Brad McEntire

Brad McEntire

Hometown: Carrollton, TX (just outside of Dallas)

Current Town: I've moved around a lot, but I consider Dallas, TX my home base currently.

Q:  Tell me about Dinosaur and Robot Stop a Train:

A:  I have lately become really interested in old-school Theatre of the Absurd. You know, from the 1950s, with all those post-WWII playwrights like Beckett and Ionesco. They have been on my radar for years, but at the beginning of this year I had kind of a confluence happen. I finally sat down and read Martin Esslin's book. I also started reading some of Ionesco's book Notes and Counternotes (man, Ionesco originally did not dig theatre at all). I also saw a production of THE CHAIRS for the first time.

My good friend and colleague, and great local actor, Jeff Swearingen, performs in a longform improv duo with me. We've been kicking around ideas for a while to do some sort of two-hander together. These things all came together and I sat down over a two-week period and wrote DINOSAUR AND ROBOT STOP A TRAIN. It is my sort of contemporary take on Theatre of the Absurd with broad comedy, a bit of vaudeville, weird situations, that tinge of the tragic and most of all a flat-out dismissal of realism.

I use a dinosaur from the past and a robot from the future to explore the nature and wonder of purpose. It fits in nicely with the rest of my work, which always kind of touches on misfit characters who are totally out of place.

Q:  Tell me about your comics.

A:  Oh, thanks for asking about that. I used to draw comics when I was a kid. I wanted to grow up and make comics like Charles Schultz or Gary Larson, having them appear in newspapers through a syndicate. But I got into theatre in high school and the drawing sort of fizzled out. Besides a handful of comic strips published while I was in college, I let it totally fall by the wayside. Then in 2010, after reading a bunch of webcomics, I realized I could just self-publish on the internet. So, I launched a series called DONNIE ROCKET TOASTER-FACE. It is about a sort of Every Man character who, inexplicably, has a toaster for a face and rocket pack on his back.

I was doing a comic a week for the first year, but it has slowed to about one a month. I also recently began an experiment I'm calling an improvised comic. I sit down and just draw directly on the paper without any pencil roughs and without knowing where the story is going. It has been pretty fun so far. I think, indirectly, they have both helped my playwriting.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm ramping up for DINOSAUR AND ROBOT STOP A TRAIN. I'm producing it myself with my company Audacity Theatre Lab. I've also started writing a new solo show I hope to perform at fringe festivals next year. It is about this guy with anger issues who is haunted by a mysterious, eternal goldfish. I'm super excited about it.

I've also just started really trying to get my stuff out into world lately. I've been writing for years, but I'm just starting to dip my toe into things like fellowships, residencies, publication and all those other business things playwrights do in this country to get their work out there and part of the national conversation. I'm attending the TCG National Conference this year for the first time. It is here in Dallas and I'm excited about that.

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 surprisingly difficult question. I can't remember stuff for crap. Oh hey, I was a birthday party clown when I was in my early teens. I called myself Frump. I only did a few parties and then some shows at the public library, but looking back on it, it combined a bunch of things I use all the time now... creating original material, producing the show myself, taking into consideration the playing space and audience, even performing solo.

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

A:  I'd like to see a lot more self-initiation. More creative rather than strictly interpretive artists. I had lunch with an actress friend a few years ago. She was pretty experienced and was talking about going on a slew of unsuccessful auditions. I asked her what she wanted as an actor and she said "to get jobs." I asked her if she considered herself an artist. She did. Then I asked what she wanted to say as an artist. She stared at me. What I meant was artists are people who express themselves in the world and as an actor she did this by choosing what roles she played, what themes and stories she championed. It was the first time she thought about her acting in that light.

I don't think playwrights should have a monopoly as the only creative, instigating artists in the theatre. I think directors, designers, actors and so on should create first hand. By that token, I also think playwrights should take full responsibility for their work from time to time and see it through all the way from idea to completion, rather than handing it off for others to do and interpret.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Peter Brook. Samuel Beckett. Ruth Draper. Shakespeare. Oh, can Walt Disney count? As far as contemporaries, I really dig the works of playwright Dan Dietz and monologuist Martin Dockery. Also Mickle Maher of Chicago's Theatre Oobleck.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I dig theatre that pushes the form, but doesn't take itself too seriously. I also get excited when I see really full-throated, super-committed, leave-it-all-on-the-floor theatre that has something genuine to say.

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

A:  I'm kind of just starting out myself. Here are a few that have proven useful to me: Keep a notebook and don't let any idea - great or not so great - get away. Instead of writing what you know, which you'll do anyway since you are you, write the kind of theatre you want to see and experience. Take responsibility for your own work and produce it yourself from time to time. Get interested in the history and theory of theatre. See more theatre than you read. See a lot. Surround yourself with kick-ass collaborators. Don't be discouraged when the realization hits that it is really hard work to create theatre from scratch.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  DINOSAUR AND ROBOT STOP A TRAIN premieres at the 2013 Festival of Independent Theatres, June 7-22. Info HERE.
DONNIE ROCKET TOASTER-FACE and other comics at DribbleFunkComics.com
And, my website is a good gateway to what I'm up to at any given time... www.BradMcEntire.com

 

 

 

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I Interview Playwrights Part 584: Ron Klier

Ron Klier

Hometown:  St. Louis, Missouri

Current Town: Los Angeles, CA

Q:  Tell me about COPS.

A:  My dad was a police officer for the city of St. Louis for forty-plus years, much of it spent either as a district detective, undercover in Narcotics, or heading up the Street Corner Apprehension Team (S.C.A.T.), a unit that targeted drug dealers and gangs in the city’s worst neighborhoods. So we always had cops coming in and out of the house. A colorful way to grow up. In this particular telling, a stranger, a civilian, walks into a bar on a night dedicated solely to police officers and their friends. Half-priced drinks, three or four dollar pitchers, that sort of thing. Trouble ensues. Cops and Friends of Cops takes place in real-time, so the audience is right there in it with the actors. A true ensemble piece, you could make the case it’s any one of the five characters’ play, a mash-up of genre storytelling: thriller, western, morality play, classic tragedy. Plus it’s visceral. Very visceral. There will be blood. At the end of the day, what I hope most is that it’s a meditation on what it means to be a good man.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I just finished a play called You Must Be Certain of the Devil, but it sucks, so it’s getting shoe-boxed. There’s an old acting truism, “Don’t play a mood.” You’ll hear it, “Mood spelled backwards is doom.” Well, don’t write a mood either. Sometimes, it takes you eighty-three pages to learn what you already knew. I’m about one for three with plays working out. I admire playwrights who write something fantastic, or seem to, every time out, but for me, I’m happy (“happy” being a relative term) with the end product about a third of the time. That’s okay. A lot of them turn into pretty good one-acts. I’m a big fan of the short story writer George Saunders and he talks about intending to write a novel and then somehow two hundred pages winds up as a workable ten or twenty. No problem. Not if you’re committed to the process. Beckett said it best: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” I just started a kind of crabby love story called Nobody Wants A Lonely Heart. Got my fingers crossed it’ll work out.

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 pretty diverse neighborhood in North St. Louis County: black, white, burnouts, good ol’ boys, skaters, punks, skinheads, wanna be gangstas -- I kinda floated from group to group, hanging out with everybody. Nobody had a lotta money, or they would’ve probably lived somewhere else, but you couldn’t’ve asked for a better to place to spend your formative years….I was about six. First grade. Had to walk to school. Lusher Elementary. Mile or so from my house. Far enough, you’d never let a six-year old do it by themselves now. Anyway, this third grader D’Ron would wait for me at the intersection, and try to beat me up. Sometimes, he’d catch me in the morning, sometimes the afternoon, but he’d always catch me. Unless he skipped school or something. I’m sure if I could see him now, I’d see D’Ron for what he probably was: this sweet-faced little boy. But he might as well’ve been Ray Lewis or Mike Tyson to my first grade self….Today, I’m going to win. I’d view it as a challenge. Today’ll be different. Why it didn’t occur to me just to take an alternative route, I have no idea. I’m not sure why I didn’t tell my parents either. But everyday we’d battle it out and, gradually, I’d do a little better, the next day a little better maybe. Crowds would gather. A time or two, I swear I almost won. That’s how I choose to remember it….Until…one day…D’Ron had me on the ground, pounding me, and some lady pulls up in her beat-to-shit-Chevette, wearing pink plastic curlers – this is three o’clock in the afternoon – engine running, traffic’s stopped, she gets out, stands on the grassy boulevard, screams, “Get Off Him, You Nigger!” I remember feeling momentary relief. Thank God someone was helping me. Then I looked up and saw D’Ron, crying. His tears falling on my face. Running down my cheeks like they were mine. Had this look, too -- I’ll never forget it – like he’d been scooped out from the inside. D’Ron took off. Bolted. I was devastated. Never saw him again. When I think about that, I consider how much power words have and the concept of communion and how sometimes the same exact moment you get your life saved can also break your heart, and that’s what I’m after, I guess, in my work. That.

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

A:  Folks bemoan the high cost of ticket prices as being the main reason why people don’t wanna go to the theater, and that’s a big part of it obviously, the economics, but I think the real problem runs deeper. The fact is you see a bad movie, and it’s just not that bad, or rarely that bad, particularly if you exercise any degree of selectivity before you buy your tickets. The editing, the music, the performances, usually they add up to some sort of emotional experience, even if it’s fleeting. You see a bad play, it’s like a piece of your soul has been ripped outta your body wholesale. You’re held hostage in that theater, no way out, and you wanna be polite, supportive, but the whole time you’re dying inside. Too often, even with good productions the experience ends up more of an intellectual one than an emotional one, and it’s emotion that’s at the core of all decent storytelling, all art for that matter. Which brings us to acting. Theater is an actor’s medium, more so even than a playwright’s, and yet, I can’t tell you how many directors, playwrights, artistic directors I know who expect the actors to just fend for themselves, that’s “their” thing. Cast well and you’re done. Worse, they rarely create an environment that’s loving and supportive, where an actor is encouraged to do their best work. Many of them even actively despise actors, or at least distrust them, and if you don’t love actors – I mean, they can frustrate you as individuals, sure, but if you don’t love actors and acting in general -- then do everybody a favor, and get the hell outta theater. I mean it. For a play to be great, I don’t care if it’s a world premiere or a chestnut, the actors hafta be willing to put themselves through the ringer. Fight the good fight. Again and again. I see too many productions where the actors live through it once, and then the next night, the next ten nights, become a representation of that first night, dress rehearsal, whatever. When it worked. An approximation. The actors act the “idea.” They don’t always know it either. If life could be so easy. Rarely, does anybody walk out on stage intending to go through the motions. It’s usually a gradual creep to mediocrity and listlessness and nobody does anything to stop it. Every production needs chemistry. A play isn’t a film. You’re gonna see these people, work closely with them, depend on them every night, for however many nights. It’s not about the “take.” I’m not saying you have to love them, but you have to trust them, know they got your back. Collaboration’s not just a touchy-feely word to throw around until it loses its meaning. Anybody that’s drawn to the theater has been damaged in some profound way, whether they realize it or not, and yet I can’t tell you how many toxic production environments I’ve witnessed over the years. The opposite should be the case. The theater should be a safe haven. A place to experiment. To seek our truest selves. Why do you think some of the best work is being done by small collectives rather than institutions? Clearly, they don’t have a monopoly on the best actors or material or money. Far from it. It’s because they’ve created an environment akin to a fairly functional family, or a championship-contending sports team, where people feel supported, they know their roles, and they can call each other out on their bullshit, driving one another to new heights nightly. They’re invested. 100%. They bleed for their art and all of us can feel it out there in the dark somewhere and it’s awesome.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I think heroes are important, and I have lots of’em. I mean, I like who everybody else likes: Eugene O’Neill, August Wilson, David Mamet, Sam Shepard, Wallace Shawn, Arthur Miller, David Rabe, Caryl Churchill, Christopher Durang, John Osborne, Kopit, Chekhov, Beckett, Pinter, Strindberg, Ibsen, Odets, Inge, Tennessee Williams, Maria Irene Fornes, etc., etc…all the big dogs….But I’m also inspired by a ton of contemporary playwrights whose new works I look forward to reading the minute I can get my hands on’em: Annie Baker, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Tracy Letts, Adam Rapp, Neil LaBute, Bruce Norris, Theresa Rebeck, Kenneth Lonnergan, Leslye Headland, Rebecca Gilman, Jez Butterworth, Martin McDonagh, John Kolvenbach, Brett Neveu, Bekah Brunstetter, Amy Herzog, Stephen Belber, Will Eno, Itamar Moses, Melissa James Gibson, Sarah Ruhl, Thomas Bradshaw, Suzan Lori-Parks, Sheila Callaghan, Steve Yockey, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, John Pollono, Rajiv Joseph, Blair Singer, Yasmina Reza, etc., etc. By the way, that list includes you, too, Adam….I do most of my work with the Vs. Theatre in Los Angeles, so I’m also indebted to theater companies, past and present, whose work evolved from a committed ensemble -- the Group Theatre, of course, the early days of Steppenwolf, LAByrinth, Naked Angels, Rattlestick, etc. Companies I’ve, unfortunately, had to admire from afar.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like theater that allows actors to act. What I call the magic of sustained performance. Fewer blackouts. The less interruptions the better. Where I feel like the actors’re out there on a high wire, risking emotional life and limb. A giant master shot. There’s nothing better. The flipside is that on the rough nights, where the acting’s heady or overly crafted, it’s tough to think of a whole lot worse places to be. I’m not a big fan of the prevalence of direct address either. I understand narratively it works, and can work really well, in fact, when used judiciously, I just prefer to have the story happening in front of me rather than recounted. But you do what you want.

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

A:  Read everything you can get your hands on. Write a lot. Check. Check. But the single most important thing a playwright can do – and this took me a long time to realize -- is find a community. As a Literary Manager, I can tell you your odds of getting pulled off the slush pile are practically nil. You need to create your own opportunities. Seek out people who excite you. Join a playwriting group. Most theaters need help. Especially smaller theaters. Offer to work in the literary department, or as a dramaturg, an assistant director, whatever. Stage manage. If you’re at all handy help build the sets. Get out of your shell. Even if you’re shy, just do it. See where it takes you. Don’t wait for validation from an institution. Create art with your friends. At the same time, don’t rush a production either. I know so many writers who finish a rough draft of a play and then right away wanna schedule a public reading. Remember what Nabokov said, “Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts.” Take the time to get it right. Nabokov again: “My pencils outlast their erasers.” If you don’t take the music of your play seriously, then how can you expect anybody else to, particularly your actors. Write plays that can expand and become something bigger than they are on the page with the help of your collaborators. Learn to write for actors. Do yourself a favor, and assume they’re great actors. Two, three, four Daniel-Day Lewises and Meryl Streeps. Write parts that will challenge them, scare the hell outta them, parts they’ll crawl through fiery broken glass to play, even if it’s for free, and that they’ll still be talking about ten years after your play’s closed. Let your stories spin out of the characters, not the other way around. If you got the cojones, take an acting class. I’m not an actor, but I’ve taken several. It’s no coincidence that some of our best playwrights were actors first. Some of them very good ones. The better you understand the actor’s process, the better you’ll be as a dramatist. Then, when somebody finally blesses you with a production, and you’re invited into the rehearsal room for the first time, shut your mouth. Fight the urge to spout result-oriented, panicked nonsense, understanding that people need to be bad for a while before they can be amazing. After all, nobody was sitting over your shoulder chiming in when you were writing the thing. Allow them the same freedom. Unless the director sucks. Then good luck.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A: If you’re in the Los Angeles area, please check out Cops and Friends of Cops at the Vs. Theatre Company. It runs Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8pm thru June 1st. The plan, then, is to extend it Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8pm thru June 29th. Tickets available at www.vstheatre.org. Now that Cops is up and running and I got a little more time on my hands, I’m also looking forward to seeing Annapurna by Sharr White at the Odyssey, The North Plan by Jason Wells at the Elephant Theatre, Neil LaBute’s take on Miss Julie over at the Geffen, and The Size of Pike by Lee Wochner at Moving Arts Theatre, all of which I’ve heard wonderful things about.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 583: Andrea Thome

Andrea Thome

Hometown: Madison, WI

Current Town: New York City (uptown, baby! 207th st)

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Besides my play PINKOLANDIA which recently opened at INTAR, I'm working on a new play called THE NECKLACE OF THE DOVE, which integrates text, music and movement. It tells interwoven stories and moves between 2 eras: the world of 21st-century immigrant, transsexual women who gather at an underground club in Queens, and the 11th-century love stories of Arabic-Spanish philosopher Ibn Hazm. These refugees from different eras travel between languages, genders and ways of loving – enacting their own Reconquista and reclaiming a pluralistic world. My collaborators are composer Amir Khosrowpour and director Lisa Rothe, and a kickass group of performers including David Anzuelo, Mariana Carreño, Maria Christina Oliveras and more wonderful artists. We all worked on our feet over several months and shared an initial version through Mabou Mines' Resident Artist Program in January. It's not something that I want to (or can) write alone in a room and then just hand a script to actors -- it needs to come into being on its feet, in time and space, and the writing process integrates what we all discover there.

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 so bad at remembering stories! But here are some random details: I did get into a big fight with my whole 7th grade Social Studies class (and teacher) about Ronald Reagan, like the character Beny in my play Pinkolandia. This was in Madison, Wisconsin in the 1980's, and even though there's big progressive university there, in a public middle school the atmosphere wasn't quite the same. I used to get really fired up about Latin American politics, which other kids thought was weird and unpatriotic. My Dad took me to a march against the invasion of Granada and frat boys threw beer cans at us and called us commie pinkos. I thought it was fun. That's in the play too. Besides the politics, I was kind of a dreamer and loved, loved to read..the crossing guard used to yell at me because I'd cross the street reading books. When I was eleven I tried to invent a contraption that would let me read in the shower without getting the book wet. Nerd!

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

A:  Oh man. I think the following is the result of a limited kind of thinking in our field: lack of access, low presence of artists and audiences of color and less economic privilege, too-high ticket prices (should be no more than the cost of a movie)... Corporate thinking has been embraced too far, to the point where many so-called 'artistic' decisions are made based on what will sell, and even organizational hierarchies and payscales mirror corporate stratification (where often low-paid playwrights and other artists are subsidizing much higher salaries). This can veil an insidious colonialist kind of thinking, where stories by and about people who don't inhabit the 'usual' places of power (or cultural dominance) in our society aren't produced because they're 'unsellable,' or their stories are used to demonstrate a theater's 'diversity' on a superficial level. That's why...we have to keep producing ourselves! And why we still need theaters like INTAR that nourish Latino/a artists, places where we can be our full artistic selves. We can't just wait for people to get a clue. As Patricia Araiza, brilliant Colombian theater artist, once said, if we 'on the margins' keep doing what we're doing, then eventually the center of gravity will move, and the margins will become the center.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Maria Irene Fornes is still my theatrical hero -- even now, with Alzheimer's, when I go see her in the nursing home, her creative spirit. mischievousness, and sensitivity to life are still so present. I never stop learning from her. Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas, Migdalia Cruz, Emily Morse, Deb Margolin, Jose Rivera...these and many more are also heroes of mine, as theater artists and as human beings.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that doesn't just let us stay in our heads, removed, comfortable sitting on our asses (either metaphorically or literally) and which instead affects us viscerally or opens up our emotional and sensory receptors, and connects us more deeply to our whole selves -- which reminds us that we're part of a human community too. Sometimes we need to be surprised into this, to take a ride off the logical path and to have to trust other ways of making sense of things. Like how satire uses laughter to get us to open up on a gut level, so we're more receptive to the suckerpunch of the truth.

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

A:  Just MAKE SHIT! Nourish your relationships with collaborators and create your own work together. Don't just send your plays off to people you've never met and wait for someone to produce you. The best theater education I ever got was running our tiny theater with 4 friends in San Francisco: we each took turns writing or creating the next show, and the rest helped make that person's vision a reality. We did everything from cleaning toilets to building sets out of cast-off construction palettes to acting to writing. We had to have a new play up almost every month in order to pay the rent on the space, and we gave each other complete freedom to make whatever kind of play we wanted -- the rest of us would help. We were very broke and all working other jobs, but in 5 years we created 22 original pieces, grew a wonderful community, and learned the stuff you only learn when an audience is showing up in 5 days and you're still trying to finish the play. This is how I started playwriting (I had been an actor mostly). This was back in the late 90's...13P has done something similar more recently here, which also was a great model. Like them, we decided to end it when we were done and go out with a bang. So please, please, keep making stuff!

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My play PINKOLANDIA is currently playing at INTAR Theatre (through May 26), directed by José Zayas. It's about 2 young sisters, daughters of Chilean exiles, who are growing up in 1980's Wisconsin and who create fantastical worlds to make sense of their parents' experiences and figure out their own story. There are talking bears, Nazis and satirical takes on political figures like Reagan and Kissinger. They just added a special matinee on Saturday May 25 at 3pm, for which all tickets are just $15!

http://www.intartheatre.org/on-stage-now

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I Interview Playwrights Part 582: Kemp Powers

Kemp Powers

Hometown: Brooklyn, NY

Current Town: Los Angeles, CA.

Q:  Tell me about One Night In Miami.

A:  When I was a freshman in college, if you would have asked me who my biggest inspirations were, I would have said four names. Muhammad Ali. Jim Brown. Malcolm X. And Sam Cooke. So, when I found out as a young man that these four were actually friends, my mind was blown. It's the equivalent of accidentally stumbling upon a black Justice League of America. Only the thing bonding these four at the time wasn't their collective status as heroes, but as outlaws. One night was especially fascinating to me. February 25, 1964. That was the night Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston to become heavyweight champion of the world at only 22 years of age. Everyone knows this. Many people also know the very next morning, he announced that he was a member of the Nation of Islam, a group personified by its fiery minister, Malcolm X. But what hardly anyone knows is that between the end of that fight and the announcement the next morning, the new champ spent the night in a tiny motel room with his friends Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown. One night and four not-yet-legendary men seemed like too juicy a setting for me not to explore in a play, and that seed became the basis of One Night in Miami..., where I imagine all of the many things these men could have discussed, disputed and possibly resolved when left alone in a room for one revelatory evening.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm putting the finishing touches on a new play, The Two Reds. Another fun exploration into history that finishes my little "cycle" that began with One Night in Miami... Though this story takes place much earlier. When Malcolm X was still a young hustler named "Detroit Red," he worked in the kitchen at a jazz club alongside another, more outspoken young redheaded black guy called "Chicago Red." Of course, this person would go on to be known as the great comedian Redd Foxx. My play takes place in the kitchen of that jazz club, and includes a greater cross-section of characters, races and personalities from the time. It explores issues of class and race that, though historical, I feel are quite relevant in a contemporary setting as well. But the central protagonists are definitely the two reds, though at no point do we ever call them by their actual names (Malcolm and John). I'm also very excited about this one, and hope to start having some staged readings by the end of this year.

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 more out of necessity than desire as a young man. My buddies and I would create little comic books in our spiral notebooks, and I was always tasked with writing the stories. I guess I was just the best at articulating an idea within our little group of neighborhood kids. I guess you could say that skill has served me well throughout life, as I ended up becoming a journalist and having to give a voice to many people who can't quite put into words what's going on in their world.

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

A:  I'd change the perception that great theater can only originate from a couple of key "theater cities" around the world. It can come from anywhere.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  August Wilson. Sam Shepherd. My fellow Rogue Machine Theatre resident playwrights, such as John Pollono and Henry Murray. It's great to be in a community of playwrights. They are an invaluable sounding board.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I love seeing new plays. And I feel lucky to be in a city where so many writers are taking risks and creating new works on a regular basis. It also gives me a window into the issues that are important to writers of different age, sex and background.

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

A:  Above all else, hone your craft. I participated in so many short-play and 24-hour playwriting programs at Rogue Machine before I had the confidence to begin writing full-length plays. And even then, the painful process of rewriting ends up being how I spend most of my time. It's always wonderful to have a great idea for a play, but it is so much more important to have the skill and craft to execute it. I'd rather see a well-executed play based on a subject I'm less interested in than a poorly-executed play based on something about which I'm passionate.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  One Night in Miami... has its world premiere on June 8 at Rogue Machine Theatre in Los Angeles. The play will be running June 8-July 28, and tickets can be purchased here: http://roguemachinetheatre.com/wordpress/show-info/one-night-in-miami/ I'm very proud of it, and so many people have poured their hearts and souls into this production, so I really hope as many people as possible have an opportunity to see it. It will be a fun night of theater! 

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