I Interview Playwrights Part 618: Lisa Lewis

Lisa Lewis

Hometown: I grew up mainly in Louisville, KY and Naperville, IL.

Current Town: Astoria, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  A half-hour sitcom pilot called THE GAMBLE, based on my play TRIPLE CHERRY.

Q:  Tell me about NY Theatre Mag.

A:  This is a great upstart magazine for the theatre community. Beautiful, glossy, photo and editorial rich, it aims to do in-depth stories on leaders and innovators on the NY theatre scene, predominately Broadway and Off-Broadway institutions. What makes this magazine so exciting is its desire to really illuminate artists’ lives. Very often it has theatre people interviewing theatre people, so there’s a great sense of intimacy and understanding in the writing – you get the best stories that way.

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 parents met at a singing lesson in New York in the 70s. My dad was living at the Y and doing children's theatre and wanted to be Robert Goulet. My mom was an actress who later started an experimental theatre company in our hometown of Louisville, KY, and resembled in her glamour and chutzpah the great diva of the era, Miss Piggy. They put their only child in their plays at the state fair (I was a flea and a toaster!) and my grandmother would take me to the famed Actors Theatre and the Guffman-esque Derby Dinner Playhouse. In college, when I moved into my first walk-up in New York, my dad carried the boxes up the stairs while reciting the opening to Barefoot in the Park. Theatre was a big part of our lives. And in such a theatrical family, there was a lot of drama, big personalities and emotions. Sometimes as a kid, I’d pretend that I was watching a play and we were all characters and it was absurd, and funny, and sad, and wonderfully melodramatic. I think a lot of kids do that, look at their life - or the difficult parts of it - as a story. This gave me some distance, and when I started actually writing, some control. As a writer, I tend towards funny, poignant, tragicomedies. Though someday I'd like to do a big, crazy, slamming door farce, with music! I try not to write about my actual family, but they do sneak in here and there. They're eccentric, funny people.

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

A:  Oh gosh, I’m in the middle of my first self-production and it’s so expensive! And that expense inevitably shapes the content of shows from Off-Off Broadway to the Belasco. But it also forces us as artists to be creative, to work in unusual places, push theatre beyond the proscenium, and write shows that work in non-traditional venues. Crowdfunding has given opportunities to an incredible array of new voices and become a revolutionary answer to the economic challenges of putting up a show. As artists we’re always reacting, adapting and rebelling to the environment we’re in. So, yes, making theatre is expensive, but we must let it be a force of creative change that gives birth to something new and exciting.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  It started with Tennessee Williams, his lyricism and family dramas, then it was Anna Deavere Smith for telling the stories of everyday people in their own words, then Aaron Sorkin for making politics admirable, and Eric Bogosian for being dirty and brilliant, and Donald Margulies and Christopher Durang and Annie Baker, but always there was Woody Allen. Though technically much of his work is in film - it’s been his humor, his insight, his playful neuroticism, his romanticism, that has pushed me to go deeper, be funnier, embrace the digression, and believe in the eccentricity of my own voice.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I love comedies, and especially ones that are heart wrenching. My favorite plays last year were Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike and Annie Baker’s The Flick. Plays about people suffering hilariously. That to me is the perfect mirror on real life, which is not all sad and not all funny, but some surreal in-between.

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

A:  Writing takes time, so take your time with it. It’s not all about productions, it’s also about process and also different artists work at different paces, so give yourself that. And, jealousy/envy is self-destructive. It comes from the fear that there is only so much success to go around, which I don’t believe. I worked in film for many years, and the amazing thing in film development is that the cream rises, good work gets read. There will always be room for another great voice.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Please look out for my play SCHOOLED coming to New York in August 2014 – and very soon, keep your eyes out for the SCHOOLED Crowdfunding campaign. And check out the future issues of New York Theatre Magazine where I’ll be continuing to contribute: http://nytheatremag.com

You can find me at www.LisaLewisWriting.com

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I Interview Playwrights Part 617: Mallery Avidon

 
Mallery Avidon
 
Hometown:  Seattle, WA

Current Town:  Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about Mary-Kate Olsen is in Love

A:  We had our final run thru before tech last Friday. Afterwards Kristan Seemel, the director, and I were outside with the lighting designer, John Eckert.

It was the first time John had actually seen any of it on its feet and John said "This might be an insult but the play is WAY funnier than I thought it was. I mean when I read it I thought it was funny but..."

Which is of course not at all an insult...I always hope my plays are funnier and sadder and weirder and more beautiful when people are doing them than they are on the page...I think (hope) that's the point...

But yes: It's a FUNNY play about SAD PEOPLE

We start previews Friday Nov 1(tomorrow!) and it's been great being at The Flea. The Bats are so game and committed and just awesome to work with and I'm thrilled to be working with Kristan again. He directed the workshop of O Guru Guru Guru when we were at Brown together and we worked together a lot in grad school and then haven't had the chance since and it feels like a nice sort of homecoming. I think our collaborators are so important. I've had a bunch of workshops and readings of this play over time and gotten to work with a bunch of different actors and directors on it and I think I talk about the downside of play development but really I only like doing rewrites when I'm in a workshop/rehearsal setting and have awesome smart people around me challenging and giving life to whatever thing I've written.

We had an in-house reading of Mary-Kate for Jim Simpson in the spring and afterwards he said "this is done right?" Which was such an amazing thing to hear from an artistic director, but also speaks to all the work that had gone into the play in its earlier workshop/reading iterations.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  Mary-Kate will be my fourth world premiere in the last 12 months. breaks & bikes last November with Pavement Group in Chicago, O Guru Guru Guru, or why I don't want to go to yoga class with you at the Humana festival in April queerSpawn with a collection of shiny objects at Here Arts Center in June and now Mary-Kate.

It's really difficult for me to write things other than the show that is actually in preproduction or rehearsals so I hadn't written a new play in over a year which felt crazy.

I finally wrote a a first draft over the summer called a to z that I did a reading of at the Bushwick Starr in July and is having a reading with Satori Group in Seattle later in November.

Thus far mostly people have told me it's VERY sad.

I quit smoking a couple weeks ago and I've been worried about writing without smoking so I started a new play that I'm writing in the notes on my phone and I'm only writing it when I'm on the subway where I can't smoke no matter what. It's called We Will Be Ephemeral (which is a tag I saw on the Williamsburg Bridge and couldn't stop thinking about) and it takes place at a pot dealer's apartment in Seattle (where pot just became legal)...like video store employees, being a pot dealer will soon no longer be a job in Seattle.

I'm doing a Target Margin Theater Lab at Abrons Arts Center in February as part of Beyond The Pale, their investigation of Yiddish Work. I'm adapting a Celia Dropkin short story called At The Rich Relatives (about teenage revolutionaries) into a short musical that my friend Margot Bordelon is directing.

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 parents met in Santa Cruz in the 70's they did weird theater and my dad cooked at a restaurant and my mom worked at a bookstore. And they basically had no money but it was ok because it was the 70's in Santa Cruz and they were hippies. One summer Spalding Gray came to town to teach a workshop in autobiographical solo performance. My parents wanted to take the workshop, but again, had no money...so they made a deal with Spalding that they would help out in exchange for the workshop...this seems to have consisted entirely of them getting him pot and playing scrabble with him. I wasn't born yet but there is photographic evidence that at least some version of these events happened.

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

A:  A magical world where all the tickets are way way less and everyone gets paid more...

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Caryl Churchill, Maria Irene Fornes, Les Waters, John Kazanjian & Mary Ewald, David Herskovits, David Zinn, Lenore Doxsee, Erik Ehn, Lisa D'Amour, Adam Rapp, Will Eno

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that wants me to be there. Theater that might be called performance. Theater with amazing language.

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

A:  Write! Figure out where and when and how you like to write. Write as much as you can and then write some more. Figure out how to see your writing up on its feet with people who have worked on it and maybe some design ideas. This could be in your apartment or an abandoned building or your neighborhood bar/gallery/bookstore that has space in the back and is willing to let you use it for free. Find collaborators! Say yes to things! If you've written one full length play and "no one wants to produce it" write another one. Do other things in theater if you haven't! Stage Manage! Assist a director! See what other people do to make theater happen. Read lots of plays! See lots of theater! Don't just see the stuff your friends are in...see things you know nothing about! Talk to people you admire who make theater...if you ask nicely people will often have a coffee with you and answer questions...If you're already an actor or coming from some other part of theater when you read plays read them like a writer...how are they put together how is the language stacking up what is it doing...Figure out in really concrete terms what can indicate success for you that isn't money. Don't worry about getting an agent.

Go to other kinds of live events: music dance sports parties how are these the same/different. Go to museums. See visual art. Take long walks and don't listen to headphones and don't look at your phone.

Give yourself Time to Think and Daydream.

Pursue your obsessions.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Mary-Kate Olsen is in Love @ The Flea! If you come to previews between the 1 & 14 I'll be there and we can hang out!
a to z reading with The Satori Group in Seattle!
O Guru Guru Guru, or why I don't want to go to yoga class with you @ Carolina Actors Studio Theater in Charlotte, North Carolina
Beyond The Pale Target Margin Lab! So Many Great Artists!
The Bushwick Starr Reading Series that I co-curate with William Burke and Mark Sitko! (also all the shows at The Starr Always!)
Ryan Mitchell's Company Saint Genet who I am a dramaturge for!

Adam Rapp's play The Edge of Our Bodies performed by Samie Detzer at Washington Ensemble Theater in the Spring
Bo-Nita by Elizabeth Heffron directed by Paul Budraitis at Seattle Rep Right Now!
Iska Dhaaf!
Donna!
Infinite Jest!

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I Interview Playwrights Part 616: Andrew Farmer

Andrew Farmer

Hometown: It's a split between Laconia, New Hampshire and Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. As a result, I'm very resilient to the cold but I'm also terrified of getting stung by Portuguese Man o' War.

Current Town:  Brooklyn, NY.

Q:  Tell me about your current and upcoming shows.

A:  I'm just finishing up a workshop production run of my ghost story play, "The Gray Man" at HERE Arts through the writers group Smith + Tinker. I've been developing it with one of my favorite directors, Andrew Neisler, and a killer group of actors, for a couple years now and this has been our first chance staging it and seeing how the pieces work in front of an audience. It's a bit of a departure for me. It started out as an out and out horror play and ended up a piece about a lonely man who's just lost his mother, stranded in turn-of-the-century Manhattan. There's a bogeyman involved too, so rest assured, there are definitely still moments of horror. I like to think it's become a ghost story with a heart beating inside of it.

Coming up is a very different play called "The Fall of Hotel Mudafier to The Toltecs" directed by ANOTHER one of my favorite directors, Annie Tippe. We're doing a one night experiment of it at Swift Hibernian Lounge on Sunday, November 10th at 7PM. It's been so fun. It began as a scene that Annie directed at Williamstown about two women discussing one's imminent wedding in an upscale hotel cafe while everyone around them is being surreptitiously killed by poison blow darts. It was so strange and in an odd way, kind of joyful too, so we came up with an idea to make an anthology play around it. I picked 19 actors who I love, randomly split them up and then wrote scenes for each of them. What we ended up with is a glimpse into the quasi-future in which the whole world has turned into a vicious jungle, forcing the remaining cultural elites to hide out in the last beacon of luxury, Hotel Mudafier.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  Oh loads of stuff. This December, Neisler is directing Ryann Weir and I in a two person incarnation of "A Christmas Carol." But there won't be any Cockney accents. Ryann and I play a young couple who decide to read a bit of "A Christmas Carol" every day in December and we learn about their lives through the telling of a story that everyone knows. The goal for the show is to start a holiday tradition. We want the experience to be intimate and warm and more than a little boozy.

I've also been developing another piece with Claire Rothrock, Ryann Weir and Annie Tippe called "I Heard Sex Noises: A Glimpse at Gardening on Roosevelt Island." It's inspired by this insane New York Times article about a political coup within a senior citizen garden club. There's so much intrigue, I can't even begin to talk about it. All I can say is arson and bullfrogs are involved.

Some other things in the works include a folk-song storytelling piece I'm writing with Andrew R. Butler, a new sketch and improv show with my comedy group Gentlemen Party, and a one man play about The Wolf Man.

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

A:  I had a lot of surgeries as a kid, so I spent quite a bit of time reading, drawing and watching E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial on repeat. Before I could write, I would draw stories. When I was four, I drew a story titled They Weren't Themselves. They Were Mice. It was an oddly sobering tale about two boys who woke up one morning to find they no longer humans, they were now mice. There was no reasoning behind it or any identifiable cause, they were just mice now and there was nothing they could do about it. The story followed their exploits in which they were pursued by a giant that had living alligator shoes. One of the mice was desperate to return to his previous state while the other was relieved to be free from human obligations, so there was a lot of tension between the two that they'd occasionally have to put aside in order to escape various dangers. I'm not sure that that came across in the drawings but it was definitely going on in my head.

Anyway, I don't think my interests as a writer have changed much since then.

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

A:  This isn't so much something that needs to be changed, but rather something that IS changing and I want us all to keep it up. I'm SO happy to see risky, ambitious and complicated stuff like Ann Washburn's Mr. Burns and Dave Malloy's Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 get exposure on a wider scale. They're pieces of theater that NEED to be be theater. And man, that's just the best.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Oh God. Too many to name. But here goes!

The first play I saw in New York was The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh. He made the audience scream and laugh and cry all within 90 minutes and that was the first time I realized a story can do that to people. David Cromer's productions of Our Town and Tribes just destroyed me: how he doesn't need to throw a concept on top of a play to make it his. He goes back to the text and let's it reveal itself. Rachel Chavkin and the TEAM. Their work always seems to glow with excitement and wonder and humanity. It never feels crafted as much as it feels like it's bursting from the minds of all the collaborators for the first time. Sam Hunter, Young Jean Lee, Annie Baker, Wallace Shawn, Tom Stoppard, Suzan Lori Parks and every other playwright I go to when my battery needs recharging.

Then of course the heroes I'm surrounded by. Young theater companies like Fresh Ground Pepper, AGGROCRAG, Theater Reconstruction Ensemble, Pipeline Theatre Company; who find a way to put out SO much incredible work, while at the same time providing development resources to artists just starting out. And of course the good people at Ars Nova and id Theater who help new work get seen.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Anything that makes good on the promise that I couldn't have the same experience watching it on a TV or computer screen in my pajamas at home. Anything that makes me say "Thank God I went OUT!"

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

A:  Write the play you're dying to see. Write a lot of them actually. Then find people you love working with and put those plays up.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  The Gray Man runs one more night at Smith + Tinker's "Ladder to the Moon"! (Saturday, November 2nd, at 8:30PM) And I absolutely recommend you check out the other plays by Francis Weiss Rabkin, Jerry Lieblich, Amanda Szeglowski and Ryann Weir. http://here.org/shows/detail/1300/ for details and tickets!

The Fall of Hotel Mudafier to the Toltecs has a one night only showing at Swift Hibernian Lounge (34 E. 4th St, 10003) on Sunday, November 10th at 7PM!

And A Christmas Carol is coming this December! Feel free to email me for updates! andrewduncanfarmer@gmail.com.

 

 

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I Interview Playwrights Part 615: Jaime Robledo

Jaime Robledo

Hometown: It's a point of contention between me and my friends. I like saying it's Bronx, NY where I lived the first 13 or so years of my life. Some might say Orlando, FL where I went to High School, but if my legend is to be written by me, then my hometown is The Bronx.

Current Town: West Los Angeles

Q:  Tell me about Watson and Watson/Houdini:

A:  I wanted to write something for my closest friends and what I knew to be their strengths as performers as well as tell as big a "Lawrence of Arabia"-type epic adventure as I could on an empty stage with no budget. So It began as a lark for a late night serialized sketch comedy show called Serial Killers. The tagline for that show is "Five plays enter and three plays leave." If the audience likes your short play, you get to continue the story the next week. This culminates into a playoffs where the the winner gets a trophy, some cash, and glory. Watson went 21 weeks and won the playoffs.

I took the first fifteen or so episodes and fashioned a full-length play "Watson: The Last Great Tale of the Legendary Sherlock Holmes" after a six month workshop process. The last six episodes eventually became the sequel "Watson and the Dark Art of Harry Houdini" which premiered earlier this year. "Watson/Houdini" is a much darker, more mysterious, and much more emotional piece. Both were produced by Sacred Fools Theater Company and they gave me as much free rein as any 99-seat LA waiver theater could give. From there it became way more successful than any first play had the right to be.

I am a fan of big-canvas story telling so I never let silly things like budget or stage space deter me from writing as large as my imagination would let me. I was also the director of both pieces so I gave myself permission to paint myself into a corner, I just had to find a way to be able to leap outside of it.

Besides telling outsized tales, both Watsons are really about the underdog, Sherlock Holmes' sidekick John H. Watson, and his struggles with love and friendship as the world shifts around him. Whether he is racing through Europe on horseback to prevent world war or navigating a demented Hall of Mirrors to catch a mass killer; at the center of it, it's really about Watson's heart and for whom he does the extraordinary.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  Currently I am workshopping "Deadly", a musical about America's first serial killer H.H. Holmes with playwright Vanessa Stewart and composer Ryan Johnson (I'm directing). Besides that a few small projects to close out 2013. I have some big things in store for 2014. Check out my website for updates.  I also recently signed with a manager so I'll be writing a lot more television that will, for the most part, never be seen...until I get television work.

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 big into wrestling, WWF, NWA, AWA. You name it, I watched it. I really was less interested in the athleticism of it all. I took to the storytelling and drama of it all. It really fascinated me why heroes turned heel, villains turned face, the jealousies surrounding valets like Miss Elizabeth and where exactly "Parts Unknown" was. Not satisfied with just watching wrestling every weekend, I bought every wrestling toy my allowance could afford and created my own world. I would even make up my own fight cards.

I was a lonely kid.

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

A:  I wish theater were a more viable place to earn a living. I'd love something like a return of the Federal Theater Project. If more artists were secure in their living they wouldn't have to compromise their time and passions.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  It begins and ends with Sondheim and travels through Des MacAnuff, Ibsen, Kushner, Tracy Letts, George C. Wolfe and a stay at a cottage in Our Town.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I'm a fan of the immersive, the visceral, the ingenious. My favorite moment of theater in the last couple of years was in David Cromer's production of Our Town that came to LA. It was staged with minimal props in modern dress. It felt like you were watching the play in an gymnasium. You could see the people in the risers the entire show. The Stage Manager, played by Helen Hunt walked in and around the audience. You were not just watching the denizens of Grover's Corners, you were one of them. You could have easily have fallen in love with the person in the row across from you as you could George or Emily. And then, a curtain is pulled, and we lose the convention and enter a fully-realized early 20th kitchen...complete with real sizzling bacon. Brilliant! That's the kind of thing that truly excites me.

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

A:  Make mistakes. Don't be aftaid of being bad. You will be for a while until you're not.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Both Watson are available for production through Steele Spring Theatrical Licensing. www.steelespring.com. And you can visit jrobledo.com for more info.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 614: Aleks Merilo

Aleks Merilo

Hometown: Palo Alto, CA

Current Town: Portland, OR

Q:  Tell me about EXIT 27.

A:  EXIT 27 is based on the the true stories of the Lost Boys of Utah. Exiled from their fundamentalist sect in order to eliminate competition for older men seeking additional wives, these boys are pariahs between two worlds: Their former home, and the outside world, which they have been taught for their whole lives is a place of evil.

Q:  What are you working on now?

My newest play is a drama called THE WIDOW OF TOM'S HILL. It's based on the 1918 quarantining of small Washington towns during the great influenza, and a 19 year old widow who is forced to act as the liaison between both sides of the blockade.

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 remember reading as a child that Elizabethan theater troupes would sometimes kidnap boys and force them to work as traveling players. For me, that sounded like absolute Heaven. I would lay awake at night and wonder why feral bands of actors had not yet abducted me. It was a cruel day when I learned I was born about 500 years late, and on the wrong continent. Christ, I still feel like I missed out.

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

A:  Sadly, I think theater sometimes pigeonholes itself as an art of the elite. To recall the historical rabble in the pit at London's Globe or Rose Theaters, the citywide participation during the Festival of Dionysus in Greece, or even morality plays across medieval Europe... These were golden ages of theater because they appealed to not simply the most affluent classes, but to everyone who came to applaud a play.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I deeply admire the scripts of Tennessee Williams for their intimacy, the plays of Peter Shaffer for their enormity, and the texts of Martin McDonnagh for their psychotic, unsentimental drive.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I think dramas are best when they make you laugh, and comedies are best when they make you cry.

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

A:  Take an acting class. I think that acting and writing force you to ask the same questions: What makes this character who they are, what are their aspirations, what is their humanity? For me, one of the first and last questions I ask myself is "Would I be interested in playing this role?"

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  The Sanguine Theater is opening my play EXIT 27 on Nov. 7 at the Medicine theater. This is a great new company, and they are fiercely loyal to playwrights. http://sanguinenyc.com

I also have nothing but praise for David Rainey and The Landing Theatre in Houston, Texas, for their commitment to new playwrights and new scripts. They are just really damn good. http://www.landingtheatre.org

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I Interview Playwrights Part 613: Meghan Kennedy

Meghan Kennedy

Hometown: Lake Champlain, NY

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about Too Much, Too Much, Too Many coming up at Roundabout.

A:  I’m really interested in grief. The ways it can take up space. The hold it has. That’s what the play is about at its core. But it’s also kind of a love letter to love. There are people in my life who have had the kind of love that Rose and James had and seeing it has always completely leveled me. I feel very lucky we got the cast that we did: James Rebhorn, Phyllis Sommerville, Luke Kirby, Rebecca Henderson- they’re all incredible. I want to put them in my pocket and carry them around with me.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I’m working on two new plays right now. One of them I’m not sure how to talk about yet and the other is based on my mother’s adolescence in Brooklyn in a very strict Italian-Catholic family. The story is focused around a moment in time in the winter of 1960 when a plane crashed in her neighborhood very close to her apartment. It’s a very personal play. There’s a lot of Italian spoken in it. A lot of Italian food. I’m always hungry when I work on it.

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 father used to take my older brother and I to get a pack of baseball cards every Saturday. We would come home, open up the waxy, maroon wrapping and break the stick of gum in half and save our pieces for later. We’d pull out our respective card collections, and sit on the carpet of our living room and start our trading ritual. If we were lucky, the pack would have a couple of gems like a Ricky Henderson or a Gary Carter or Dave Winfield or…the blessed Don Mattingly. He was the real treasure. We spent hours sitting on that carpet, talking out who belonged with me and who belonged with him as if we knew these guys personally and we knew who was best suited to take care of each of them. After we were done I would go back to my room with my newest additions and set them out on my bed and I would take out my half stick of gum. Then I would play out these long scenes between the players, fighting for that piece of gum. Most of the time I would end up just breaking the gum into tiny pieces, putting a piece on top of each of their cards. But if Don was involved, it was a different story. He got the whole piece every time.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Maria Irene Fornes. Beckett, Chekhov, Wallace Shawn, Tolstoy, Marilyn Robinson, Anne Carson (I know the last few are fiction writers but I love them very much).

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like theater that makes me sweat. I like to stand up at the end and feel like I’ve been kicked in the head. I want to want to live on the set. I want to leave the theater feeling like I don’t know anything at all or like I didn’t know anything at all until this moment and now I know everything.

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

A:  Hang in there. Be hungry. Learn how to feed your head and your heart and your stomach. Search out the things that give you a little peace and do them on a regular basis. Say yes when someone offers you a ticket to see theater. Even when you’re tired and you want to go home, go to the theater. You will be happy you did. Even if it was terrible you will be happy. Allow yourself to follow your gut. Allow yourself to follow it to the places that you are sure are too stupid or too private or too dark. Make yourself go outside. Find a play or a book that feels like a friend and carry it with you. Put it in your bag and know it’s there. Pull it out whenever you feel a knot in your chest. And find someone who’s been doing this for a long time, someone you really respect, and sit them down and listen to them.

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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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