I Interview Playwrights Part 641: Erin Mallon

Erin Mallon

Hometown: Warminster, PA (“right outside of Philly”)

Current Town: Brooklyn

Q:  Tell me about Branched.

A:  I’ve been calling BRANCHED a “cringe comedy.” InViolet Theater is producing it right now at HERE Arts Center and Robert Ross Parker of Vampire Cowboys directed the hell out of it. Tons of laughs and a whole lotta ick. Womb sounds, nipple acting, a freaky newborn who may or may not be human… we’re having a grand ol’ time. One of our reviewers just called the writing “unapologetic,” which excites me, because I grew up a very good Catholic girl who apologized a lot, so it’s good to know I’m working that out of my system.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I am acting in two projects with Buran Theater Company: MAGIC BULLETS (Incubator May ’14) and MAMMOTH, a piece about love and mammoth tusks in the Siberian tundra. I’ve also been working on a solo show with the remarkable Mac Wellman and director Elena Araoz called HORROCKS (AND TOUTATIS TOO). We had a great run with Sleeping Weazel in Boston and are looking for the right NYC home for it now. I play a “Strange and Tall Young Girl” whose asteroid explodes after her forbidden love affair with a toucan. But… it’s actually not about that at all of course.

I’m working on reviving/revamping The Brooklyn Generator, a project I created and helmed for several years. Initially, we devoted one weekend a month to writing and performing ten-minute plays sparked from a theme. It was a great model, but ran its course. Now, my playwright pal Bixby Elliot and I are brainstorming ways to retool The Generator to inspire and support full-length plays. I’m also incredibly jazzed when I see actors, particularly the female kind, writing and producing as well, so I’m in the process of developing a Mastermind Group for self-generating actresses.

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 older brother and I had these Pound Puppies when we were little. His guy was named Chip, mine was named Jupe. These pups had remarkable daily adventures. They even started their own radio show (i.e. a series of crinkly cassette tapes filled with our saucy dog voices). One day, Jupe went missing. We were devastated, but we kept on doing the “Chip and Jupe” show in spite of his absence. We imagined Jupe was on some wild globe trotting adventure and would return when he was able. Then, whaddaya know, several months later my mom and I were at a neighborhood garage sale (our Saturday morning ritual) and lying on a sheet with a $.05 tag on his head was Jupe! He was missing an eye and had been attacked by some child’s heartless pen scribbles. I purchased him, brought him home, washed away his pen scars and reunited him with Chip. Jupe told us an epic tale of how he’d been kidnapped and tortured by a horrible family. When said horrible family went on a trip to Disneyworld and took him on the flight, he spotted his escape. Jupe jumped out of the plane, knocked his eye out on impact and had been awaiting our rescue on that lawn ever since.

I’m a big believer in “as if” thinking. Act as if the things you want are inevitable. Keep working and carry on as if they’ll come true any moment. With enough belief and steady steps they eventually do.

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

A:  One thing I find unfortunate is when I see playwrights dogging each other because they don’t like the work someone else is doing. There’s a sort of “how dare they” outrage because they would have done it differently. Of course you would. You’re an entirely different human being. Why should someone write plays the way you do? I was at a show the other night, and my body was having all sorts of “I need to get the hell out of here” reactions, that’s how much the play was not working for me. But then, I looked around and the whole audience seemed to be entranced. Their faces were completely lit up with joy. There was a standing ovation at the end and I was sitting there completely flabbergasted as to why I wasn’t feeling the same. That was actually a very inspiring night at the theater. It wasn’t for me, but I’d see it again and again to watch its effect on the audience.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I’m continually psyched by the work New Georges and Clubbed Thumb are doing. EST and the Youngblood playwrights make me giddy. The Great Plains Theater Conference is an absolute gift. Vampire Cowboys make theater-going feel like attending a badass rock concert. The kids and staff at The 52nd Street Project have taught me more about what theater can achieve than possibly anyone, and I think what the NY Neo-Futurists are doing with Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind every week is a wonder. I’m also a huge fan of all women and men everywhere who are raising children and theater careers simultaneously.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like theater that embraces theatricality. I don’t need experiences that look and sound exactly like my everyday life. I've got that covered. When I go to the theater I want it to take me on a friggin ride and drop me somewhere I’ve never been before by the end. I want it to bounce. I want to see actors who are alive and breathing and grooving. I crave work that’s highly stylized, muscular and precise, and I’m also pumped up by theater that’s quick and dirty and put on its feet “before it’s ready.”

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

A:  My life really started opening up once I gave myself permission to fall in love with theater as a whole. By all means, give your full heart and focus to what you do best, but if you’re an actor with a hankering to write? Write. If you’re a playwright and are juiced by the possibility of directing? Direct. This week I’m crafting glittery lightning bolts out of cardboard boxes for a short play I wrote and I feel absurdly energized by this. I’m also realizing more and more the value of remembering what gave you pleasure as a child. There tend to be helpful clues in there for how to sustain your happiness as an adult.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  BRANCHED
Written by Erin Mallon
Directed by Robert Ross Parker
Presented by InViolet Theater
Open now and runs until March 8th
@ HERE Arts Center – 145 Sixth Avenue
http://inviolettheater.com/

SHOTZ TO THE FUTURE
March 3rd at 7pm and 8:30pm
@ The Celebration of Whimsy – 21A Clinton St.
This is Amios’ monthly “theatrical pressure cooker.” My new short play “Stoned” is one of six short plays being presented.
http://www.amiosnyc.org/

NEAR VICKSBURG
Written and directed by Sara Farrington
March 6-16th @ Incubator Arts Project
My dear friend Sara Farrington’s beautiful show is not to be missed.
www.ladyfarrington.com

MAGIC BULLETS
Buran Theatre
Written by Adam Burnett
Directed by Adam Burnett and Justin Knudsen
May 2nd – May 11th @ Incubator Arts Project
www.burantheatre.com


I’m online at www.erinmallon.net, FB at http://on.fb.me/1bW8Acv and Twitter at @ErinMallon.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 640: David Lawson

David Lawson

Hometown:  Annandale, Virginia

Current Town:  New York City. Specifically: Astoria, Queens.

Q:  Tell me about Spermicide.

A:  Spermicide is a multi-character solo show about despicable, depraved and strange men in America circa right now. In terms of the content of the show: There’s a street catcaller character that voices his interior monologue (“Damn girl! I sincerely believe that telling you this on 6th Avenue at 9AM while you’re heading to work is the kinda praise that will make for an amazing start to your day.”) There’s a Starbucks employee who feels his “religious freedom” has been violated because he is fired for sharing his Jennifer Lawrence/Pokemon mashup sex fantasy in the break room. There’s a Brony. There’s a guy doing “showtime!” on the subway…except it’s musical theatre. Yvonne Hartung is directing the show. It’ll be a fun, strange, dirty time.

Most notable about the development of Spermicide is that I’ve been working on the show by performing at “character slams” at UCBeast and the People’s Improv Theatre. Those venues have these open mic nights that are for character monologues as opposed to stand-up or storytelling. I thought they presented a great way to develop a multi-character solo performance.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  A new solo show I wrote called Insomnia in Space. I’m working with director Lillian Meredith on it. We’re calling it “an immersive, solo-performance piece contrasting the vastness of the universe with the minutiae of everyday life.” I’ve been an insomniac since I was thirteen and the thing that has always helped me finally sleep or calmed me down on sleepless nights has been meditating on thoughts of outer space. I’m also working on a play called The Algeria Alternative, about a woman who works at an office facilitating data from drone strikes and how she decides to leak information that’s detrimental to the company. I have been bringing in pages to The Propulsion Lab, the playwriting group of the Queens arts collective Mission to dit(MARS). Director Leta Tremblay will be directing a reading of that one soon.

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

A:  For most of elementary school I was a loudmouth, hyperactive, disruptive little shit. It often went to darker places than just being “class clown.” In 3rd grade after I had learned about the word “FUCK” I decided to write it down in huge letters on a piece of paper and show it off to the class. I got suspended from school. In 4thgrade I forged a kids report card (sloppily, might I add) to be all Fs with stuff like “This kid is totally pointless. His parents should just quit.” I got suspended again. I spent half of my elementary school experience in “time out.”

Then two things happened that changed me. First: I saw The Truman Show when I was twelve. I had a huge epiphany. Because Jim Carrey…the ultimate loudmouth hyperactive disruptive little shit…had brought some nuance into what he did. The connection was clear to me: If the hyperactive kid behaves, they can do something truly great. Like give a compelling performance in a great movie. Second: My sixth grade teacher named Brett Heflin made a deal with me. If I could behave during class, I could put on a little two minute show every morning before class. It worked like a charm. I behaved because I so badly wanted to write and perform that show every morning. Those two things were the first of many, many times art made me change the way I lived my life.

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

A:  Picking one is so tough. So I’ll spitball a few for you. I wish companies would budget things so 25% of the entire run of every production was “pay what you can.” I wish Lincoln Center would work out a revenue stream with all the unions and turn that amazing archive of professionally filmed theatre into a online, streaming “Netflix for theatre.” I wish theatres would adopt the “never be dark” ethos. Because we have these huge expensive theatres that sit completely empty way too often. Why not fill those spaces? 6PM shows. 10PMshows. Midnight shows. Year round. Every night. Even if they’re simple, super low tech productions. I’d love to see a major theatre have a fundraising campaign to pay every artist that comes through the building a living wage instead of just funding construction for the building.

Most personally for me: My favorite parts of being a teenager were 3PM to 6PM in my high school’s theatre. Those hours planted the bug in me to go out to places where I’d learn about folks like August Wilson, Tony Kushner, Anne Bogart, Bertolt Brecht and so much other stuff I would have never discovered if I didn’t have that bug planted. The more money and resources we have towards arts education in public schools, the more bugs we are going to plant.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The kind that makes me laugh really hard at things that are painful, true, dark, terrible and dirty. The kind I walk out of thinking "Wow, I never thought of it THAT WAY." The kind that makes me feel the feelings I get when I'm heartbroken, depressed and frustrated and thus, I believe, leaves me better equipped to deal with those same emotions when they arise in real life situations.

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

A:  Go out. Go out to shows and readings, Q&As and all sorts of other theatre events. Money’s an issue? You can find plenty of stuff for free or cheaper than a movie ticket. If that fails you can probably volunteer as an usher and see something for free. So do it. And when you’re there say hi to people. Strike up conversations. Ask older, more successful artists “What were you doing when you were my age?” I’ve always learned a lot asking that question. If you see someone who once created something that blew your socks off, tell them.

Find a way to fund your work and stage it. Someone told me when I was 21 I would always need “at least $20,000 dollars.” That’s a load of bullshit. You can find a way to put your work up on a budget of a hundred or fifty or zero dollars. Even if you don’t do it at a "theatre theatre" and it’s only a single performance or two or three performances. Do it. Because the only way you’re going to learn to write for the stage is by having your plays actually existing in time and space.

Understand that an experience you hate in the moment could pay massive positive dividends down the line. Understand that those folks you read about in some New York Times profile? Ya know what, sometimes even they have to check coats or sling drinks or lift boxes.

Most importantly have good friends. Good friends to work with. Good friends for mutual emotional support. Good friends to laugh, drink, run around, scream and shoot the shit with. Good friends that you trust to tell you what they honestly think of your work. Those “flaming arrows” they throw at your work are gonna hurt like hell sometimes…but they will help you get better. Love the success of your friends in the same way baseball players celebrate together at home plate when one of their teammates hits a walk off home run…despite the fact that they themselves didn’t hit it.

Be kind. Be patient. Keep creating.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A: Spermicide goes up on March 14th and 15th at the Brooklyn LaunchPad in a double bill with a multi-character solo show by Melissa Gordon called Fresh. My solo show VCR Love is published through Original Works Publishing and my plays Gloves for Guns, Thanks for Traveling and Turning Atomic Tricks are published on Indie Theater Now. I'm online at www.dtlawson.com and I'm @dtlawson on Twitter. Say hello would ya?

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Chasing the Audience

Some numbers:

Pageviews on this blog according to blogger : 746,987 (although blogger started recording this in 2007 and I started this blog in 2005.)

Number of viewers who see a TV episode that has my name on it each time it’s on TV: 1-2 million. (And there are 5 or 6 episodes that I wrote, or which have my name on them. I don’t feel a lot of ownership over them but I probably have a joke or two in 20 or 30 episodes. They are syndicated so it’s hard to say how often they’re on TV. They are also on DVDs.)

Number of people who have seen my web series Compulsive Love: Last time I checked, adding up all the platforms, it’s over 500k.

Number of people who saw or read a play of mine last year: 2500, maybe. (Probably less than 20K over the course of my 15 year playwriting career so far.

I guess the question is, is the point the number of people who see something or their level of engagement? The TV show doesn’t really have much to do with who I think I am artistically. I imagine a lot of people who saw my web series forgot about it soon after, although I’d like to think that’s not the case. I know when I have a play up a lot more people send me messages and talk about it. But something like 20k people in Pakistan saw my web series. How else would I ever be able to reach those people if not through the internet? But did it change them or affect them in any way? I don’t know. Is that even my goal as a storyteller anymore? Is it enough if they laughed? Did they laugh? Or did they stumble upon it while looking for porn and shut it off when it was clear there was no nudity? (I am using Pakistan as an example but I am not suggesting Pakistanis are necessarily looking for porn videos)

The point is, except for impassioned reviews and fan emails, most of the time as an artist, I have no idea what the effect is on my audience. People tell me they like the playwright interviews and I know people are coming to the site to read them. That has little to do with me artistically, but I’m proud to provide a platform for people to read about and talk about theater. Theater is important. Isn’t it? I’m rambling. There is a 5 month baby on my lap asleep and I’m trying to figure out what I’m putting out into the world and why. It’s a question I ask myself a lot but I’m talking in circles and maybe have been for years. Never mind how commerce fits into it all. That's a whole bigger conversation.

Look, I just want to make some cool stuff before I die. I want to make some lives just a little better, to make you think or laugh or break your heart. And I guess I’ll keep trying to figure out ways to do that because I seem to be wired to only be happy when I’m making things. End of rant.

 

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I Interview Playwrights Part 639: David Stallings

David Stallings

Hometown: Galveston, Tx.

Current Town: NYC

Q:  Tell me about Dark Water.

A:  When the Deepwater Horizon oil spill happened in April of 2010, fellow MTWorks Co-founders Antonio Minino and Cristina Alicea told me to write a play about it. Being from the Gulf Coast, it was certainly a topic that haunted and enraged me. But I had no desire to write about BP, the frustrating cover ups surrounding the spill, or the shady chemical clean up that ensued. Several months later however, when dolphins began to have mass miscarriages at sea and shrimp were being born with no eyes (yes this is happening in the Gulf), I decided to write about the animals. Dark Water follows the animals and their journey through the oil spill, using different forms of poetry and song for each species. Rehearsals are inspiring. We are all so excited--the entire team. And director Heather Cohn is truly doing a remarkable job. She assembled the most positive team of actors I have ever had the pleasure of working with.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I am also working on a new play, The Baby Monitor. This was originally a twenty minute play I wrote for Original Binding Productions evening of One Acts. It is now growing into a Full Length Play. The Baby Monitor is about a gay couple raising a child. The child is taken from them when a relative falsely accuses them of inappropriate behavior.

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 being on a beach in Galveston, Tx. I was about twelve at the time. It was dawn. And the beach was covered with baby eels that had washed ashore. They were snapping and writhing on the sand, dying. I was with several adults who were equally disturbed at the sight. We knew the eels would die if they did not make it back in the water. So the group of us grabbed some sticks and tried to get the eels to snap on them and toss them back. We got some in the water, but the waves would just wash them back to shore. It was hopeless. I remember crying about that and wishing there was something I could do.

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

A:  I think the US needs a National Theater again that employs theater artist and is not merely commercial based.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Shakespeare, Hallie Flanagan, Moliere, Tennessee Williams, and Harold Clurman for the start of what is a long list.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I am excited by theater that challenges our cultural and social perspectives. Also, I want theater to be theatrical. I love magic, emotion, and poetry. I love plays with big casts and big ideas, new ideas.

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

A:  Break the rules. Don't listen to producers who want to limit your creativity, cast size, length, number of locations, etc. Let's create a new American Theater!

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Dark Water runs March 14th - 29th! Advance tickets are $18 ($15 Students/$12 Seniors) and are available online or by calling 866-811-4111. Tickets may also be purchased in-person at the theater ½ hour prior to performance.
Running Time: 110 min. One intermission. The Theater at the 14th Street Y is located on 344 East 14th Street (at 1st Avenue)

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I Interview Playwrights Part 638: Dipika Guha

Dipika Guha

Hometown: I don’t really have one. Although I’ve lived in several places that have pieces of my heart-Calcutta, London and New Haven to name three.

Current Town: New York

Q:  Tell me about Blown Youth.

A:  Blown Youth is the result of a commission from the ever amazing New Georges and the New Plays initiative at Barnard College. The commission was a result of director Alice Reagan’s vision for Barnard to be a real home for playwrights to develop new plays and the appetite New Georges have for adventurous, theatrical plays. I’ve had the opportunity to nurture Blown Youth with Alice who is a wonderful director and the super undergrads at Barnard. And of course the support of New Georges who are such a beacon of hope for new plays that go out on a limb in a generally risk averse theatrical culture.

The play is a response to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It was borne out of my desire to challenge to the notion that Hamlet (the character) is the embodiment of human consciousness when he is, in fact, a man. Where Hamlet’s madness smacks of genius, would a woman in his shoes be seen as just as stunningly witty and seductive-or just a pain in the ass hysteric? Trying to write the play with this question in mind was like staring at the sun. I was at my wits end trying to write this play when I threw in Irene Fornes’ Fefu and her Friends into the mix and the play blossomed into a story tracking the lives of seven women in the decade after they leave college. We enter through the eyes of one in particular, Celia, a struggling actress intent on playing a great role. Fornes describes women as ‘live wires’ and says ‘if women should recognize each other-the world will be blown apart’. I was interested in what this meant-and whether it was good or bad and how as women we might be able to live in the world without electrocuting each other!

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  A new play called I Enter the Valley about the life of a legendary poet who at the end of his life has writer’s block. It was inspired by the life of Pablo Neruda. I read his memoir and it fuelled an age old love/hate relationship I have with the Casanova character (I have a Don Juan type in almost all of my plays!). This idea of your past being like a foreign country is also central to the play. That as you get older, you look back and who you were at different points of your life starts to seem utterly foreign to you. It’s an oddly Chekhovian play. Lots of coming and going and feeling very strongly about things! We’re doing a reading of it at The Women’s Project in March.

And a piece called Architecture of Becoming also at The Women’s Project with four wonderful playwrights-Lauren Yee, Vick Grise, Sarah Gancher and Kara Corthron. It’s a piece about the impulse to create in characters who don’t necessarily call themselves artists, a present day response to orientalism and the struggle to tell your story in a way that’s authentic to you. We thought ‘becoming’ was a much nicer word than ‘process’ which, in an intensely collaborative venture like this, is the only thing we are perhaps qualified to talk 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:  As a painfully shy child displaced from Calcutta to East London, no one at my kindergarten had heard my voice. Then they put me on stage in a production of Chicken Licken. I distinctly remember one dress rehearsal (I was maybe four or five) when I stood in my costume and opened my mouth. I remember the eyes of the teachers turning wide. It turned out I’d taken everybody’s lines! I was quite sure that on stage I was invisible (which maybe I was in an oversized animal costume) I liked that feeling a lot. I also liked taking everybody’s lines.

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

A:  Longer rehearsal periods, more breaking bread and drinking with audiences, cheaper tickets, cheaper rent, state subsidized theatre, new forms, new forms, new forms!!!!

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Irene Fornes, Friedrich Durrenmatt, Tennessee Williams, Beckett, Caryl Churchill, Chekhov, Harold Pinter, Sarah Ruhl, Doug Wright, Diana Son, my eternal classmates Christina Anderson and Meg Miroshnik and my uber-hero, Paula Vogel.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I’ll answer this question in two ways: first of all not to cop out, I am still incredibly excited by Robert Wilson, Robert Lepage and that kind of epic, heightened, visually arresting storytelling where things that don’t normally touch, touch. I’m also excited by the re-invention of language through simplicity (where the ordinary turns extraordinary) and where alchemy or the logic of metamorphosis is at play.

I also see theatricality as a mode of being. We sometimes encounter it when we go to the theatre but it’s bigger than that. India, where I grew up, is a tremendously theatrical place. I think this is in part because there’s an awareness of the sacred in the everyday. I think that when you notice this quality about life and you engage in the desire to create ritual however big or small, you are a part of a kind of theatricality. The quality of your attention meeting the everyday can create an elemental force. Theatricality as a mode is accessible because it’s part of our lives-you don’t need to be at the theatre to touch this chord.

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

A:  That longing is everything. You don’t need to have written a play to know that you want to write one. Your yearning is all you need-it sets your course.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:
Blown Youth at Barnard directed by the wonderful Alice Reagan:
http://barnard.edu/events/blown-youth
Come see Architecture of Becoming at Women’s Project
http://wptheater.org/show/the-architecture-of-becoming/
And a part of a play called Mechanics of Love at Ladies Night at INTAR in a few weeks
https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/932049
Meg Miroshnik’s play The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls at Yale Rep

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I Interview Playwrights Part 637: Nandita Shenoy

Nandita Shenoy

Hometown: Buffalo, NY

Current Town: New York, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I've got a workshop of my latest full-length play, "Washer/Dryer" coming up, and so I'm taking another look at that. I've also been working on a commission from Ma-Yi Theatre and the Flea, adapting a play from the Yuan period of Chinese history into a modern one-act.

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

A:  I'm the oldest child of Indian immigrants, so when I was growing up, my parents were kind of figuring out the culture along with me. For instance, when I was about 3 or 4, my mom noticed that in October, everyone put pumpkins out on their porches, so she put one out on ours. She didn't know how to carve one, so she drew a face on the pumpkin so that it would look like the other ones. And I really liked the pumpkin. So one day, she heard me yelling "My pumpkin, my pumpkin!" and looked out the front window to see me running down the sidewalk after a big kid who apparently had taken our pumpkin off of our porch. She said she started to worry because I was a tiny little Indian girl chasing after this big American boy. I have no recollection of this incident, but a few minutes later, my mom told me that she saw me coming back with the pumpkin in my arms. She says that this is when she knew that I would always take care of myself, because I was able to get my pumpkin back. As an adult, my version of getting my pumpkin back is pretty much putting anyone who crosses me into my plays, although I did hit the teenage boy who tried to take my iPhone on the L train once to recover my "electronic pumpkin." I haven't put him in a play. Yet.

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

A:  Just one? Fine. The ethnic make-up of the industry from the actors on stage to the creative teams to the producers. We need more diversity.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  13P because they made it happen.

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

A:  Write short plays first so that you get the satisfaction of finishing one under your belt.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  The workshop of "Washer/Dryer" is coming soon! Public readings will be held on February 25th and 26th at 7:30pm at the Ma-Yi Writers Room, 260 West 35th Street, 2nd floor. Admission is free. "Washer/Dryer" shares an evening with newlyweds Sonya and Michael as they negotiate their living situation with some strange obstacles. It asks the age-old New York question - can love conquer Manhattan real estate? There is also a figurative pumpkin in this play.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 636: Maggie Bofill

Maggie Bofill

Hometown: I was a beach baby. In Indiana. Grew up on Lake Michigan on the Indiana Dunes.

Current Town:New York City.

Q: Tell me about your upcoming reading.

A: WINNERS - crazy play. It's been a blast! It's the culmination of two weeks of workshops (..and
two years of writing it) First workshop is at EST two weeks ago, and then my theater company,
Labyrinth, gave me a fifteen hour workshop. This reading is the final result. My cast and
director, Pam Berlin, is delicious. WINNERS is a wild roller coaster ride about a modern family
dealing with the recession. Dad's been out of work, daughter has gotten weird...the dog and cat
speak up and have scenes.... just all kinds of messiness, that is also beautiful, and real and
poignant...one hopes.... It has eight characters and is huge. For me. biggest play I've ever
written.

Q: What else are you working on now?

A: A nice light romantic comedy called THE HATE INSIDE...well - maybe not that light. Ha!

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 second grade teacher, Mrs. Schoffield, let me put on a play after much begging. So my best
friend San, her life size rag doll Myrtle, and myself, went into rehearsals. I wrote the script and
songs, and in the playground, we perfected my first play - with music - "You Will Be a Queen In
a Palace Ball". it was a hit. Due to popular demand, we performed a different play once a year
after that. Until fourth Grade, when Ms. Lesch said there was no room in the schedule due to the science projects.

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

A: Make it cheaper so more people could see it.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Beckett. Pinter. Carol Churchill, Every writer of every piece I see that carries me away.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: New work that takes risks. Old work that breaks my heart. Again and again. Anything that makes
me laugh for real. Comedy is INCREDIBLY HARD. Brutal honesty makes me want to dance and
make love. So.... whatever is honest.....that's it.

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

A: DEADLINES ARE LIFELINES. Sheer terror is incredibly motivating. Set deadlines so you will be so terrified as it approaches that you will actually write.... Become the train that doesn't stop no
matter what gets thrown in the tracks....and discipline. As Martha Graham always posted
anywhere she rehearsed, "Discipline is freedom". So be free baby - and do what you told
yourself you would.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: WINNERS is CRAZY TERRIFYING for me. In a great way. Would love to have peeps in the
audience to accompany me on the ride. Please come if you like. Weird time - but we are there.
Hope you will be too. Tomorrow, Fri. Jan, 24th, LABYRINTH Bank Street Theater, 155 Bank
Street, 4 p,m. DIRECTED BY PAM BERLIN with Florencia Lozano, Grant Shaud, Dave Gelles,
Lucy DeVito, Jonathan Silver, Paula Pizzi.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 635: Christina Masciotti

Christina Masciotti

Hometown: Reading, PA

Current Town: New York

Q:  Tell me about Adult.

A:  ADULT is a father daughter story that takes place in a gunshop. It’s based on a real place called The Shooting Cellar – which was a rowhouse converted into a 20 yard shooting range, in the heart of center city Reading, PA.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  Several plays in various stages of development (including SOCIAL SECURITY which was recently read at The Bushwick Starr) and a television series called WAYS AND MEANS that I am co-writing with Meghan Falvey.

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 pitiful scrap of paper from my childhood with misshapen kid-letters desperately scrawling in brown marker: “Come to see The Mixst Up Mareg Play!” Based on the date, I was four, and paying attention to way more than I should have been able to at that developmental age. But that first invitation, misspellings and all, turned out to be an odd, little, tattered touchstone for me – for all my work. Because the “mixedupness” in my parents’ relationship was mostly a function of language – one spoke more Greek than English, the other spoke only English. Their interactions exposed things about language, especially spoken language, that may not have been so readily apparent otherwise – like how unreliable language can be – with people regularly saying things they don’t mean, or completely misinterpreting what’s been said. And also how elastic language can be, how it can be stretched and reinvented. For example, when I was last home, my mom looked out the window and said, “The snow came and left.” Obviously, “went” would have been the right word there, but “left” struck me as much more poignant – or at least potentially more so, depending on the context. So I developed an appreciation for these unexpected slips in speech, and what they can bring to light. For better or worse, my ears are permanently tuned to the quirks of misspeaking and I celebrate them in my writing.

In ADULT, for instance – which is a two-character play – neither character has much interest in reading. There’re a lot of words they’ve heard, but never seen in print. That doesn’t stop them from trying to use those words in sentences – really what they end up saying is a slightly off approximation. If you listen closely, you’ll hear a lot of strange things. This is my experience of the world in general.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  It’s nice to be surprised in some way. Whether by a feeling, a character’s mind, an actor’s performance, or a writer disappearing into the story.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  ADULT opens at Abrons Art Center on January 30th and runs through February 15th. For tickets and information: http://www.abronsartscenter.org/performances/adult.html

And look for SOCIAL SECURITY at The Bushwick Starr in the Spring of 2015.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 634: Jake Jeppson

Jake Jeppson

Hometown: Washington, DC

Current Town: Minneapolis, MN for a bit.

Q:  Tell me about the Clearing.

A:  The Clearing opens Jan 19th at the Theater at St. Clements. Josh Hecht is directing. It tells the story of a family frozen by grief and a buried secret. Things start to thaw when a new love interest enters the picture. Yup, it’s one of those. The first act of the play moves backwards in time. The second act moves forwards. In the script, there’s a lot of wondering where God is, so it’s fun to look around the old churchy space at the exposed brick walls and boarded up stained glass windows. Oh, and it takes place in the clearing at the top of a mountain. We’ve got trees in the theater!

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I’m working on a play about a group of women in west Texas in the 1930’s when electricity was introduced to the area. There's a prophecy, music, and representatives of the federal government. We are workshopping it at the Playwrights Center in March.

Q:  You just got back from Latvia?

A:  I did! Through an odd series of events, my play Turtle wound up being translated and produced in a theater in Latvia. I went over there to see the play and teach a series of workshops. I recommend Latvia. Check out Latvia.

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

A:  Eudora Welty talked about how kids listen for stories: "When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole." I am the baby of a gaggle of half-siblings, step-siblings, and ex-step-siblings, as well as cousins, family friends, etc. As the youngest, I think I developed a keen relationship to grief. Not because I grieved more than anyone else, but because as the littlest one in the room, I watched the landscape of my family change as they made choices, experienced change, celebrated life events, and came home to talk about it. I remember sitting silently at dining room tables and watching big people tell their stories. When you're little, you want to help people, but you don't always know how.

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

A:  People act illogically. I think characters can too. So I'd reduce the sometimes gripping need we feel to explain actions and events on stage.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Teachers who work in non-prescriptive ways. Especially: Paula Vogel, Ken Prestininzi, and Donna Dinovelli. My playwriting sisters: Caroline V. McGraw and Martyna Majok. And writers who fill their work with an emotional charge of understanding: Fornes, Chekhov, Churchill, T. Williams.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Playful, spontaneous work that invites us, the audience, to make believe.

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

A:  Get in rooms and listen. It doesn’t matter what label you have – be infected (inspired?) by being part of it. Apprenticeship has value. And then later, when you're an "emerging artist" you'll have a crew of elders to counsel you.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  The Clearing at the Theater at St. Clements. Jan 15-Feb 9.  http://www.TheClearingPlayNYC.com  Come visit the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, where I’m a Jerome Fellow. They have a pretty great online presence with workshops, etc. available via Skype. And if in Latvia in 2014, check out my play Turtle (Rupucis) at the New Riga Theater.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 633: Will Arbery

Will Arbery

Hometown: Dallas, TX

Current Town: Evanston, IL

Q:  Tell me about We Were Nothing!

A:  We Were Nothing! is a play about a friendship that I developed for two actresses in their early twenties. Part of its "setting" is different modes of communication-- phone, text, facebook, email, voicemail, skype. It's sort of a comedy, it's sort of a academic deconstruction of the theatrical formula, and it's mostly just kind of embarrassing and devastating. It's site-specifically performed in an apartment near Union Square. It's a little over an hour long. It's about two girls but I wrote it thinking about my own friendships. It's immersed in a kind of banality and friendly evasion. It has a surprising second act.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm trying to finish my play You're Sadder Than You Realize, which is about Justin Bieber and a cannibal named Tarrare and a Belgian super-fan on the internet. I'm also making a short documentary about my sister, and I'm developing a couple of short films. I'm working on two other full-length plays, but they're in very early stages.

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

A:  I grew up the only boy with seven sisters, which actually ended up being a pretty lonely experience. I had a lot of toys, not because my parents bought a lot for me. Mostly I would find or collect or inherit them. I loved the broken weird ones. I had this "game" where I would put every single toy on my bed, and go around talking to them, one by one, checking in with them, discussing their weird fragmented evolving personal lives. Most of them were really angry, embarrassed, frustrated souls.

The other story from my childhood would probably be the time I peed my friend's bed in the middle of the night, and then stuffed his mom's sheets into my backpack, snuck into their linen closet, remade the bed, and went home the next morning with the soaked sheets.

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

A:  High ticket prices. Old subscribers who don't want to be challenged. Plays about rich people complaining. (Those all count as one.)

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Young Jean Lee. Richard Maxwell. Chekhov. Annie Baker. Maria Irene Fornes. Caryl Churchill.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Embarrassing theater, stuff that makes you afraid to be in the same room as what's happening. Also theater that plays with form, theater with frivolity, hyper-serious messy theater.

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

A:  Well definitely don't take advice from me. A year ago I was trolling this website religiously, trying to get inspired by my playwriting heroes. And I'm not really sure why I'm suddenly in the position to give advice. And I also gotta say that any of this advice should be read with the understanding that I don't follow this advice most of the time. My work habits are pretty erratic. But I think I would say: write on your feet, remember that you have a body, remember that theater is a physical art; listen to people, listen to everyone, don't worry about whether you can use everything for a play; just keep trucking; produce your own stuff; be your own agent; go to the New Dramatists library and read as much as you can; write for specific actors you trust with a goal towards production.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I did the text for boomerang dance's upcoming show Shred at FLICfest. I just made a music video for a great band called Poor Remy. I'll also be in Aspen at the end of the month (and back in NYC in January) representing Northwestern at the Theater Masters MFA Festival.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 632: Graham Farrow

Graham Farrow

Hometown: Middlesbrough, Yorkshire, England

Current Town: Yarm-on-Tees, Yorkshire, England

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I've just finished the screenplay for my own stageplay Talk about the Passion, which is in advanced development as a motion picture with a film company in London; am about to adapt my stageplay Rattlesnakes for another London film company and am currently playing around with a new stageplay. Busy times... ha ha!!

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 being at school and it wasn't particularly cool to be good at English or Maths (or any subject to be honest!) and I was praised by my English teacher for a particularly good story which I had written and she wanted to nominate me for a school merit award. Goaded by some friends, I declined, and was pulled aside by the teacher at the end of the lesson. She told me, in no uncertain terms, to stop acting like a two year old, ignore the idiots in the class and accept that I had a talent for writing and that I should embrace it. I did embrace it and I owe my teacher a huge debt of gratitude. I have never forgotten her. She believed in me!

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

A: Less Shakespeare, Jacobean etc etc theatre and focus on the now and the relevant. And more money.. ha ha!!

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: I've always loved American playwrights; Arthur Miller (who is name checked in Talk about the Passion), Albee, Shepard, La Bute and especially Mamet. He is the man! Exciting, visceral, challenging. American theatre is great and constantly evolving.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Relevant, modern day theatre excites me. Theatre that's not scared to go down, dark and dirty, that's not scared to let other companies produce Shakespeare and go with some lesser known, exciting new voices. There's nothing like theatre when its done well. It's so involving. When you see the spit flying, the blood spurting and the sweat dripping you are really part of something, an experience which is like no other. It's electric!

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

A: Advice? Stick at it! Do your research. Look for companies who produce the sort of work you are writing and who interest you. Approach them, get a rapport going. And see as much theatre as you can to get the feel of it, read plays to understand the structure. Theatre is not like film, it's a totally different medium and needs to be reflected in how you set about initially writing your play. And finally, write, write, write, write, write and write! It took many years for my first production and I never gave up. Now, thankfully, I have a career because I believed in myself. Believe in yourself!

Q: Plugs, please:

A: A busy, exciting twelve months coming up. Looking forward to going to Kansas City in July to see a production of Talk about the Passion and a production of Rattlesnakes by the terrific Springs Ensemble Theatre Company in Colorado Springs. I think that's going to be a top production which I'm really looking forward to. There are a few things in incubation which are very exciting which will mean working with some really great theatre companies and top actors on both sides of the Atlantic.

 

 

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