I Interview Playwrights Part 612: Tina Satter

Tina Satter

Hometown: Hopkinton, NH

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about Mona's House of Dance.

A:  It’s a play set in a small-town tap studio, which we’ve recreated in a real dance studio at Abrons Art Center. A seasoned tap teacher (Jim Fletcher) and his piano accompanist (Paul Pontrelli) prepare to teach a solo class to a young student (Jess Barbagallo) in preparation for a tap contest. The room becomes a hotbed of tension, however, when a fourth person played by Elizabeth DeMent crashes their landscape and vulnerabilities are exposed. There are beautiful original songs and a score by Chris Giarmo, and awesome and exciting tap choreography by the tapper and performer Hannah Heller.

I think of it as this crazy dark poem that is also a situation comedy that unfolds in the real-time of this hour-long class that is just unraveling before the characters’ and our eyes.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  Several shows I made with my company Half Straddle over the last couple years and showed in New York City are now touring internationally for the first time, so we’ve been rehearsing and prepping those for tour over the last month. We just got back from the Culturgest festival in Lisbon doing a show called “Away Uniform.” And the day after “House of Dance” closes we travel to Normandy, France to tour our shows “In the Pony Palace/FOOTBALL” and “Seagull (Thinking of you)” at three festivals – so it’s been a lot of work recently and huge learning curve stuff of getting these shows and everyone ready to go on tour in terms of rehearsal and logistics. I have a project called “Ghost Rings” that I have been working on over the last year with the composer Chris Giarmo and the performer/singer Erin Markey on – and we’re going to work on that at some point in the spring through the Wooster Group’s Performing Garage Residency – and excitingly Kristen Sieh will join us then as a the third performer. So we get together when we can on that and make new songs and do bits of rehearsing so that’s currently ongoing. And, then excited for a project we’re doing at The Kitchen over the next year in short open rehearsal residencies leading up to a full show in early 2015, so developing text and video (which is new for me and the company) for another short residency there in early December.

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 my little sister was like 9-years old and threw a giant teddy bear – like a 5-foot tall bear down the cellar stairs without looking and it almost killed my single mother who was walking up the stairs (she barely missed falling off and onto the cement floor which literally could have been deadly) – and my mom was screaming “You could have killed me!!!!” and my sister was crying and I was terrified that we were super screwed up, but under my 11-year old despair there was also this lurking feeling that the moment was also so funny and so full of love – and I knew that somehow, and it feels like the kind of awful, amazing moment I am inspired by theatrically.

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

A:  More exciting, challenging, aesthetically interesting modes of written discourse around theater. Jeff Jones, for example, sends these incredibly smart dynamic emails out about shows he’s seen – or to you if he’s seen your show – and it’s just a level of synthesizing and considering theater that is complicated and smart and inspiring that does not happen in any other theater and performance writing right now in the mainstream modes – there are obviously journals that cover this that go deeper – but I think there is some really smart people that are not just critics thinking and considering this stuff and would love to see it really catch on more. I think Claudia La Rocco (who obviously is a critic but) has an online model that’s interesting and a creative approach that feels like its attempting to be more in dialogue with the spirit of how live work is created and thought about – and I wish more stuff like that that could get a real hold and challenge the space in brains and egos that we (totally including myself) give to the current mainstream press and reviews and really crave a different intellectual context for how it’s being processed that extends beyond, and way more visibly, than the current paradigm.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Mac Wellman, Richard Foreman, Sarah Michelson, Richard Maxwell, Maria Irene Fornes, Liz LeCompte, ERS, Mike Kelley, Kate Valk, Jess Barbagallo

And I always feel incredibly lucky to work with the performers and designers who work on Half Straddle shows.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  It is something the brilliant Kristen Kosmas (who’s also a hero of mine) has described as something like that quality where you don’t know where the show and performance is going and it constantly surprises you, but it feels like on a kind of – in that moment – relevant trajectory that is basically magical, so when that is happening and it holds and I can’t take my eyes off the performers, I am very excited. Also excitement happens more in moments of shows for me, than full shows and I love that – like a shoulder turn by one actor I remember from a Richard Maxwell show – it was perfect. Or one moment of singing like four seconds long by Kate Valk in the Wooster Group’s “House/Lights” that was everything and made the show sublime in that microcosmic moment.

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

A:  Work your ass off. And take advantage of any ways you can to show even small work, cause the spark of those projects always leads to something – once you share and put something out into the world, stuff happens – then it’s having the energy to follow up and keep going with it in some way that feels right.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Big Dance Theater’s “Ich, Kurbisgeist” by Sibyl Kempson, that is opening like now or very soon I think, is pretty insane. And come see House of Dance this run and it reprises for a mini-run during the COIL Festival in January!

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I Interview Playwrights Part 611: Jonas Oppenheim

Photo by Diane Meyer
Jonas Oppenheim

Hometown: Los Angeles, CA

Current Town: L.A. (there were ten years in NYC at some point)

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Revising a play, The Mother Ship, in preparation for a June 2014 world premiere at Sacred Fools in L.A. (I am a co-artistic director there). It’s a sex farce about a couple that is struggling with infertility, then they discover that their water heater is a portal into outer space, and they end up on this big space adventure, where they remember how much they love each other. It was inspired by the British farces from the ’60s, only instead of slamming doors, people are criss-crossing into an alternate dimension. I also recently finished a script that I am sending forth into the world, called What the Texas Board of Education Did On My Summer Vacation, about some ugly historical revisionism that really went down in Texas. A poor white girl with undiagnosed A.D.H.D. battles everyone in her world over the lies in her social studies book. And I’m beginning a new play, The War Fatigue Follies, that is a tripped-out, revue-type comedy about American military action abroad, P.T.S.D., and the blood that is on our hands (and, in this case, the audience). Many of us have fortified ourselves with distractions and denial, so I want to do a “don’t forget!” kind of show.

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 acting in Julius Caesar in high school, and I was like, shoot, I can write way funnier than this guy.

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

A:  Need-dependent sliding scales for all ticket prices. We should also apply the sliding scale to paying artists. If you’re a broke playwright or actor, you should be making Hollywood movie star money to do theater, while Orlando Bloom should just get gas money and a bottle of water.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Reading Accidental Death of An Anarchist by Dario Fo as teenager helped me understand that you can write plays that are political, scathing, physical, and hilarious all at once. And then reading about Fo and Franca Rame improvising shows in factories...very influential. Also Joe Orton and Bill Irwin. Lately it’s been Tony Kushner. And the kids in the Virginia Avenue Project and 52nd Street Project who write amazing plays that leave adult stuff in the dust. Outside of theater, Abbie Hoffman, the Muppets, and rock and roll are often on my mind.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I love it when dialogue goes away and we get to see something physical happening, whether an elaborate theatrical moment or a pratfall. I like it when political theater is funny, and vice versa. I like when a production has made an extra effort to be accessible, like letting neighborhood residents in for free, or performing somewhere other than a theater and letting passersby hang out if they want—I like when the context in which we’re watching the show is taken into account.

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

A:  ABC: Always Be Cwriting. If no one else is putting your show up, find a way to do it yourself. Get a track record. Be nice, at least until you can pay people. Ask older theater people for advice. You can ask me! I’m on Facebook. I’m the Jonas Oppenheim who is not a photographer in Maine.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I’m co-artistic director of Sacred Fools Theater (www.sacredfools.org), where we have a fine season underway that will include the world premiere of my comedy The Mother Ship. In November, I have a short piece in a festival called The Installation in London, produced by A Friend of a Friend Theatre (http://afriendofafriendtheatre.com/). You can check out evidence of Mr. Satan Goes to Wall Street, my street-theater musical that toured NYC parks and the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, at http://www.mrsatangoestowallst.com/.

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Theatre Plays and other stuff I'm doing

Tonight in Chicago, a reading of my play Where You Can't Follow.  Here is an interview I did for it.  

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UBU just closed in NYC.  I wasn't able to see this incarnation but I hear the run of UBU at Intar went great. 

some pull quotes from all 3 incarnations:

Critic’s Pick:  “Obeying its inspiration’s spirit (if not its letter), Adam Szymkowicz’s Ubu shocks and delights by the expedient method of sitting on you and bouncing up and down till you surrender to it in gasping, helpless glee.” –Time Out New York

“Twisted and hilariously absurd, ‘Ubu’ is a play that refuses to be ignored.” –Show Business Weekly

“It's raucous and profane and visceral as all get-out… And Szymkowicz seems here to be stretching in an exciting and surprising way. These artists' collaboration exemplifies the kind of raw, unusual work that NYC's summer festival scene specializes in.” --nytheatre.com

“a surrealistic ejaculation of noise and ideas and motion which constantly breaks convention. If you like daring, vigorous and unconventional theater, do not miss this play.” –Theater Pizzazz

“worth a good look.”—New York Theatre Review

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There's a new glossy called NY Theatre Mag that is BEAUTIFUL.  I did an interview for them with Halley Feiffer and wrote an article about Ryan Andes.  You should probably subscribe to it. 

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Finally here's an extra for Compulsive Love.  Melissa in the Break room.  2 more to come and don't forget to come see us at NYTVF later this month.

http://youtu.be/0UhVLdcyvVM 
 

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I Interview Playwrights Part 610: Brian Watkins

Brian Watkins

Hometown: Parker, Colorado

Current Town: Brooklyn

Q:  Tell me about the Lesser show.

A:  It's called JUST RIGHT JUST NOW. Six short pieces -- all set in a forgotten basement -- from six rather amazing playwrights. My piece, STUDY THAT HOUSE, is a very simple and spooky little tale about a man who inexplicably finds a dog in his basement and the course his life takes in grappling with the mystery of it. Every piece in the production is beautifully different, yet bound by a foundational theme of basements being these complex and dark little underworlds. Lesser A knows how to pick 'em; Laura Ramadei, Dan Abeles, and Nate Miller are such a great team to work with, as they really know how to get the right mix of people in the room. It’s been a joy to work on.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I just finished two new full-lengths: one’s a love story about a Civil War amputee with a peculiar secret. The other is called GAMES FOR AN EMPTY CUL-DE-SAC about 4 orphans that have quarantined themselves in their ramshackle childhood home to compete for parental authority. Now currently writing a play about beer.

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

A:  A lot of my family lives in the Northwest. Every Fourth of July, we’d all get together and ferry out to this island where there was some strange cabin on a clearing in the middle of the woods. My grandfather would gather everyone around and make us watch him leap over blazing fireworks, wearing very short shorts, while he bellowed lyrics from The Music Man.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Plasticene Theatre in Chicago, Sam Shepard, Beckett, Harold Pinter, Caryl Churchill, Eugene O'Neill, Will Eno, Yeats, Conor McPherson. And then there’s those non-theatre theatrical heroes like Bruce Nauman, Flannery O’Connor, and Cormac McCarthy. I could go on and on… so I’ll stop.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theatre that travels long dramatic distances, that is constantly arriving at unexpected places. Bold and risky stuff, written from the gut, that teeters on the edge of falling on its face. It seems this brand of theatre is typically thought of as “visceral” or “sweaty” or “loud” but I think it can also include quiet or contemplative work. For examples, see above list.

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

A:  Pursue playwriting for the love of the craft and the community, not for what the craft and community can give you. Take a posture of ambitious selflessness. This means being a zealous listener. It also means writing every day. Taking risks and failing. Reading. Seeing as much theatre as possible. And sacrificing a whole lot of immediate comfort in exchange for slow, meaningful growth. As every writer knows, turning off the neurotic bullshit in our heads is half the battle. Ironically, I think the practice of focusing outward – of upholding something other than one’s individuality – can garner, in spades, the very things that writers typically strive to self-generate yet can’t sustain: inspiration, higher craftsmanship, a unique voice. You can find some true gems in the theatre community that practice this. When you find one, spend as much time with them as possible.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Go see the Lesser America show! JUST RIGHT JUST NOW is a great offering of work from playwrights Eric Dufault, Clare Barron, Anna Kerrigan, Lauren Morelli, Marco Ramirez, and myself. Stella Powell Jones and Peter James Cook are our two amazing directors. Round it out with a great cast and awesome designers, and boom, you got some ballsy, dark theatre. October 10-27. Get your tickets while you can.

Also, you should check out a rather fascinating collaborative exhibition between AIGA and Little Fury design studio, for which I have the honor of being head writer. We’ve compiled a team of great writers – including some incredible playwrights like Bekah Brunstetter and Eric Dufault – to pen fictional stories about well-designed common goods. The stories are hilarious and touching and fascinating; sort of like a literary/design experience that shines a whole new light on the gap between consumerism and craftsmanship. 5th Ave at 22nd Street. Nov 1-Dec 28.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 609: Lauren Morelli

Lauren Morelli

Hometown:
I was born in Pittsburgh, PA. I'm wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates hat as I type this, which is a little bandwagon-y of me, since they're currently in the playoffs for the first time since '92. I'm told that's really exciting.

Current Town:
I've been in LA for the last 7 years, after spending 6 years in New York.

Q:  Tell me about the Lesser show.

A:  The amazing folks from Lesser America reached out and asked if I'd be interested in writing a play for their next show, "Just Right Just Now." Their only stipulations were that it should be 10-15 minutes and be set in a basement. I was really excited about playing with how much you can accomplish in such a short amount of pages. You really can't be lazy. Somehow I ended up writing this play called "Rat & Roach," which is about a suicidal rat and a roach that falls in love with her. It's weird and hopefully a little beautiful. But mostly weird.

Q:  What is it like to write for Orange Is The New Black?

A:  It's a dream job, truly. Jenji Kohan, our creator and showrunner, has taught me so much about writing over the last two seasons. She pushes me to be better but also allows me space to be a misfit toy, which is probably the role I'm most comfortable playing. I hadn't written on a show previous to this, and couldn't fathom what it might be like to come up with story and characters with a room full of writers. It seemed so far from my own writing process, but as it turns out, it's a total joy to have six other people to bounce ideas off of and brainstorm with. When it's working well, it's like the best volleyball team you've ever seen (I said that like I've ever seen volleyball, or like that's a really common thing people watch. Maybe basketball or some sport that's actually popular?). In any case, you can lob an idea into the air and then someone else will catch it, make it better, throw it back. It's a really exhilarating process. When it's not going well it requires a lot of emotional eating and early drinking.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm developing a pilot about mermaids that I'm pretty excited about.

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

A:  I have a younger brother who is mentally disabled (full disclosure, I would normally just say retarded, but I'm not sure how that reads in print), and when I was 13 I accidentally cut his finger off when I slammed my bedroom door on him. It took us a long time to find the finger, because, as it turned out, it was stuck to the doorframe. The ER doctor commented that I must have slammed it really hard because he'd never seen a wooden door do such damage. They sewed it back on, thankfully. That's pretty much all you need to know about me.

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

A:  I was a dancer for a long time before I started writing, and I was often very frustrated by the lack of accessibility that I saw. I find the same thing to be true of theater in our country-- I often long for bigger audiences and broader dialogues about theater. And I don't mean that the work should be more accessible, I just mean that I would love to figure out how to make theater safer for more people to love and participate in. There's so much incredible work being done that stays in our very small theater circle, and I daydream about what it might be like to expand that bubble beyond major cities.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I get really excited when I find myself being challenged by what I'm seeing. Something that doesn't allow me to relax back in my seat and take a breath. Something that feels emotionally honest and makes me question myself and my choices for a few days afterward. Something that sticks to my ribs.

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

A:  You know, this is a ridiculous thing to say, but it's really important to write. I feel like I meet a lot of people who want to be writers or talk about writing a lot, but the most successful ones are the people who are sitting down every day and doing it. And then when they finish something, they put it aside and start again. It needs to be endless.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  The Lesser America show runs Thursday - Sunday, October 10-27th at Theater for the New City. Tickets at lesseramerica.com. And the second season of Orange Is The New Black will be out sometime in 2014, which the most ambiguous and worst plug ever.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 608: Rosemary Moore

Rosemary Moore

Hometowns: Jersey City NJ, Indianapolis and Washington D.C.

Current Town:  I live in Brooklyn, New York

Q:  Tell me about your upcoming show.

A:  My play SIDE STREET, directed by Ian Morgan, is running now through October 12th at THEATERLAB. Tuesday through Sunday. We are sold out but DO have a waiting list. sidestreettheplay@gmail.com

remaining shows

Tuesday, October 8th at 8pm
Wednesday, October 9th at 8pm
Thursday, October 10th at 8pm
Friday, October 11th at 8pm
Saturday, October 12th at 8pm

In the bewitched parallel universe of my play SIDE STREET, the main character, 48 year old Meg, encounters her long dead mother, Dora, very much alive and on her way into the Upper East Side apartment building where Dora now lives. During their afternoon together in her mother’s apartment, apparently frozen in time, Meg witnesses her mother’s love affair with a Navy lieutenant, which occurred many years earlier, when Meg’s father was in the Marines, fighting in World War Two. As Meg nurses her dying mother for the second time, she discovers her own mortality and her capacity for forgiveness, coming of age at last in middle age.

This production of SIDE STREET at THEATERLAB is one of simplicity and intimacy. By the light of a couple of table lamps, a 22 person audience witnesses Meg and Dora’s strange and dreamlike afternoon together, sitting close enough to touch the fading chintz slipcover on the sofa and hear the sound of the martini being prepared in the cocktail shaker.

How did my production happen?

It’s important to say that I produced SIDE STREET myself! I could have waited to get more theaters to read the play and try to get a production but after sending it around for a few years I got the itch to self produce. My director Ian Morgan who had guided draft after draft and directed all the readings was game! So here is our team!!

PRODUCERS: Rosemary Moore and Lanie Zipoy

DIRECTOR Ian Morgan

NON PROFIT SPONSOR Fractured atlas!

CROWD SOURCING for rasing the money! Indiegogo

CAST and DESIGN TEAM:
Katherine Folk-Sullivan (These Seven Sicknesses, NYC premiere by Sean Graney THE FLEA THEATER), (Office Hours World Premiere by A.R.Gurney THE FLEA THEATER)
Jan Leslie Harding (Breaking the Silence, Edinburgh Fringe 2013, Lie of the Mind, Sam Shepard, PROMENADE, The Green Bird, Broadway).
Gayton Scott (Bunty Berman Presents, Abigail’s Party, THE NEW GROUP, Gypsy, Broadway)
Richard Thieriot (RogerandTom HERE, Clybourne Park, Broadway)

The designers:
sound: Katie Down as our sound designer (recently did extraordinary work in Golden Dragon dir. Ed Iskander THE NEW OHIO)

set designer: Stephen Dobay ( Realists, HERE, David Cromer’s Our Town. Huntington and the Broad Stage)

lighting designer, Paul Toben (The Story of My Life Broadway, with Ken Billington, Electra in a One Piece The Wild Project).
Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  Since I am playwright and producer of this production of SIDE STREET, at this moment, I am not able to do anything else! But soon I will be working to complete my play, Opium Wars; the bar play which takes place during one night in the 1840's when Talon, a sailor in flight from forced labor on a ship docked in New York, time travels forward to 1980, breaking through a brick wall into Maximus, an artist bar on Duane Street in Tribeca NYC. Ivy, Kitten, Pencil, and Informer all fall in love with Talon, who is only in love with opium. How does the sailor’s near slavery and opium addiction transform these ambitious artists and buzzing art flies’ view of themselves?

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

A:  My childhood story is about something I yelled to strangers when I was about three or four years old. I passed the time at the back window of our row house in Jersey City NJ watching the neighbors in their backyards, gardening, hanging their laundry on the clotheslines or just sitting enjoying the outdoors. I would lean out the window and try to converse with them. They were not very talkative. One day I got frustrated and yelled “Hey, you old rosebushers, the cat got your tongue?”

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

A:  I wish theater tickets were not so expensive.


Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Thornton Wilder, Adrienne Kennedy, Tennessee Williams, Chekov, Harold Pinter, Maria Irene Fornes, Tony Kushner, August Wilson, Vaclav Havel.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I prefer to watch an original, interesting play with flaws, over a “well made” play with all the conventional ingredients. I like political theater when it’s done well.

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

A:  Keep an active relationship with other playwrights.

Don’t be afraid to take a break from a play.

Go to the edge.

Writing is a process and your writing might be horrible or beautiful at first but the rule is: many many drafts will be what makes your play good.

Take a class.

Teach a class.

Go to art museums.

Sit in a public place and listen and write down dialogue exactly as you hear it.

Don’t worry if a play doesn’t make sense at first.

When you are writing yet another draft of a play pick one thing to work on as a way to trick yourself into beginning this new draft.

Show your work to dozens of people. Your work will click with someone. Collect rejections proudly!

Make sure to have some sort of production early on, even if it’s one you put on. A play still on paper will only get you so far in knowledge about playwriting.

Keep a journal: just a few sentences a day. Observations…details…specifics.

Join or form a writing group.

Staged Readings of work are a great thing for listening to work and trying different types of actors for your characters. You will discover things. Have a man read a woman’s part, for instance!

You will get better at writing gradually. Don’t watch yourself. It adds up slowly…when you least expect it.

Use the buddy system. Find another writer with whom you can honestly share the joys and hardships of the writing life.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Go to my website.

Rosemarymoore.me

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Now Published

Available now on kindle and you can preorder for hard copies

http://originalworksonline.com/store/full-lengths/why-overhead-the/

Want the whole Adam Szymkowicz collection?  Head over to amazon.  (Includes the just published Hearts Like Fists...and many more) 

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I Interview Playwrights Part 607: Paul Cameron Hardy

Paul Cameron Hardy

Hometown: I spent my formative years in Wenatchee, Washington.

Current Town: Brooklyn

Q:  Tell me about feeling.

A: I wrote this play, feeling., about a woman who has her life upended by her live-in boyfriend of nine years' sudden departure from the relationship. In her shock and grief, she begins to hallucinate a friendship with long-deceased serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer.

Q:  Tell me about Glass Bandits.

A: Glass Bandits are a group of kids who got a theater company together with the express purpose of making work that breaks from the stereotype of a fussy, outmoded form of entertainment. They want to make work that is engaging and accessible to a broad, non-traditional audience, while still making work that experienced theater-goers will find engrossing. They have been kind enough to let me work with them a couple of times, so far.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A: I've got this weird little play about solipsism that I am trying to get people interested in, and I am also working on a play about pornography.

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 five years old, my big sister walked into our garage and was shocked to see me practicing flipping people off. I would stand, casual, unassuming, then turn a rapid 180, feet barely off the ground, landing with the pop of both my feet on concrete and of my middle finger(s) from their fist(s) - a quick draw artist of sorts. I'm not sure that it is a direct metaphor, but I am probably still not much more than a little dipshit trying to be tough/cool in the garage, not as alone as he imagines.

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

A: It would be nice if it were easier to make some sort of living doing it. The continued goal of dehomogenization of both audience and 'theater makers' (w/r/t age, race, gender, et al.) is great, and should continue, and hopefully become more rapid.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Suzan-Lori Parks, Young Jean Lee, Caryl Churchill, Wallace Shawn, Richard Maxwell, loads and loads more....

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A: I like theater that doesn't feel the need to tell me just what it is or how to feel about it.

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

A: It is silly and kind of stupid and, by my mind, you should probably spend a fair amount of time feeling like it is frivolous and you are shirking some tangibly helpful-to-humanity vocation, not to mention the wild amount of rejection you will face, so: make sure you surround yourself with people who you love and trust, and who make you excited to allow the kind of vulnerability needed to make the kind of work that will affect whatever audience you can get. Find good people and keep them close.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Look out for anything by Clare Barron, Brendan Hill, Gail Bennington, Rady & Bloom, St. Fortune Collective, Eliza Bent, Sara Farrington, Frank Boudreaux, Alex Borinsky, The Internationalists. Go watch Zoe Winters and Lauren Blumenfeld in everything they are in. Always support Clubbed Thumb, and let's all start some sort of campaign to get Heidi Schreck's Constitution play up and at a big theater so everyone can go and get their minds blown.

Also come see my play feeling. that opens October 7 at The New Ohio! www.gbtheater.com

 

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I Interview Playwrights Part 606: Tony Meneses

Tony Meneses

Hometown: Dallas

Current Town: Brooklyn

Q:  Tell me about Guadalupe in the Guest Room.

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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I Interview Playwrights Part 605: Matt Dellapina

Matt Dellapina

Hometown:  Bronx, NY

Current Town:  Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about Deacon Of The Bronx.

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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I Interview Playwrights Part 604: Ayad Akhtar

Ayad Akhtar

Hometown:  Milwaukee, WI

Current Town:  NY, NY

Q:  Tell me about Disgraced.

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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