Hometown: Milford, NY (small upstate town right next to Cooperstown)
Current Town: Brooklyn, NY Q: Tell me about The March of The Bonus Army.
A: It is a historical play chronicling the events of 1932's Bonus March. Essentially all veterans of World War I were guaranteed a "bonus" payment, which was a wage compensation due to the fact that civilian workers made more than those in combat. The economic devastation of the Great Depression led to over 20,000 veterans marching and camping out in Washington, DC calling for an acceleration of these payments. Their lobbying efforts fell on deaf ears and the Bonus Army was evicted by General MacArthur and the US Army. It is a lesser known event in American history, yet paved the way for future legislation such as the GI Bill. Our hope is that audience members will leave the theater with a different perspective on both Veteran's Rights as well as the American right to demonstrate peacefully.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: I am currently in a heavy stage of re-writes on a full-length play entitled "The Gnome," about an upstate NY Wal-Mart employee who finds a magical lawn gnome after an early spring thaw. My hopes are to have it ready for a 2015 production. I am also in the very early stages of a play combining two of my favorite genres: Science Fiction and Sports (specifically baseball).
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 am old enough to have seen the original theatrical release of "The Empire Strikes Back." The next day in pre-school, I gathered all of my friends and "re-staged" the entire movie using the school's blocks and toys as props. I even directed my friend who was playing Luke Skywalker to have his hand severed. When "Return of the Jedi" was released, my kindergarten friends wanted to re-stage that movie during playtime. I turned it down. I'm an "Empire" guy.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: The economics. Hands down. And I'm not saying all theater artists need to be millionaires and all shows should have free admission. But if all artists involved, at all levels of theater, could just go into working on a project and not have to sweat out the underlying logistics of "how can I do this and only go sort of broke and not totally broke," I think there would be an increase in overall quality and audience.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: I always find myself going back to Harold Pinter's work for inspiration, so he would qualify. My wife Jennifer, never ceases to amaze me in what she can accomplish on-stage (she's the lighting and production designer on the show) as well as her ability to break down and analyze a script.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: The kind of show that while I'm watching it, I know I'll be thinking about it the next day and hopefully beyond. It's exciting to have something trigger your emotions or thoughts, even if you don't know what it is at that exact moment, and to keep mental notes through out the evening. I love that. There usually tends to be some degree of intentional subtlety that lets me really dig for those things.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: During the after-party of my very first New York show, I was on Cloud 9. So after having a few celebratory beers, I went to the men's room. The two guys on each side of me, knew each other but not me or who I was. So with the playwright standing in the middle, they began to make "Urinal Chit-Chat" that consisted of completely ripping apart the play. You will go through extreme highs and extreme lows. Enjoy the highs and wash your hands after the lows.
A: Immersion is a play that asks us to consider what would happen if a group of white 20-something New Yorkers and an immigrant Latino family found themselves unknowingly living in the same apartment. The play utilizes this framework to explore the production of bilingual theatre—the piece veers between English and Spanish with no subtitles provided. The beginning of the piece is oriented around a Spanish lesson for one of the main characters, which means things are constantly being translated into Spanish, and as the situation veers out of control, the English-speaking audience finds itself relying upon the (sometimes unreliable) translation skills of other characters. It ends up creating a very fun, very unique night of theatre that poses questions about immigration, language and housing at a time when all these issues are pertinent, pressing and definitely in need of discussing.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: Right my company Sans Comedia is preparing the rest of the shows for our first season, including my play Lisa and Her Things, a piece set at a truly banal dinner during which the subjects of death and cheese are given equal weight. The show will have a short run at The People’s Improv Theatre.
We are also developing Oedipus Gol, a play that will mash up Oedipus Rex with a soccer game projected on television, exploring the ways in which we sublimate very real suffering into things outside our control, and putting the actors in an active relation to both the text of the play and the “text” of the soccer game.
Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: I grew up in the theater – my mother, Susana Cook is an active downtown writer, director, and performer and when I was younger I would often be in her plays. My first role in her first show in New York City, “The Title” (I gave her the name), was of a boy who would eat Cracker Jacks while one of the actresses, Kate Wison, would play the accordion and tell stories. My only line was “Why?”, over and over again.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: I want to see theatrical structures that encourage diversity in audience, artists, and forms, and to do away with the tyranny of space. This, I feel, is only possible by having theaters put on more plays at once, giving them longer runs and drastically lower ticket prices, and by creating lighter, more disposable, productions. This means theaters expanding their notion of professionalism, and less reliance on huge, expensive, debt-inducing structures in determination of merit.
Ah, that’s definitely more than one thing. More productions with less preciousness. There we go.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: The artists who I feel have influenced my work and inspired me most are – Jean Genet, Antonin Artaud, Caryl Churchill, Rafael Spregelburd, Manuela Infante, Richard Maxwell, Ciro Zorsoli, Reza Abdoh, Maurice Maeterlinck, Tadeusz Kantor, Sasha Waltz, Pina Bausch, and Frank Castorf
Also incredibly important have been my playwriting mentors Alejandro Tantanian and Carson Kreitzer, the amazing artists that have come through INTAR theatre, Rene Buch at Repertorio Español, and the countless theatrical productions that I fell in love with working on as I grew up as part of Susana Cook’s company.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I like theatre that actively engages with me – where I feel I can have a real conversation with the ideas and story and images—that there is something absolutely theatrical about the way it’s being presented to me. I don’t need things overly explained or a structure that’s too predictable – but I do need to be invited in – to be considered and to feel that the artists have really considered this relationship in their work.
Mostly I just want to enjoy myself, see something aesthetically pleasing and hopefully see something I haven’t seen before.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: See your work onstage – don’t just rely on readings. Think of the way you make work and the work you put onstage as a continuing process – and that innovation can be not just in the way in which you tell stories, but in the ways in which you conceive and experience a theatrical process.
Also—don’t be afraid to make a mess. We need those.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: Immersion – coming September 12th at This Theater (soon to be known as “The Treehouse”) (29th and 6th), runs Fridays and Saturdays for five weeks. Tickets are 15 dollars and will be available on our website www.sanscomedia.com as soon as they go on sale.
Also, if you’ve never been, check out a show at one of my personal favorite venues in NYC, INTAR theatre – an amazing space and perhaps an even more amazing theatrical community. Lou Moreno is truly doing some great things there and really goes out of his way to support the cause of Latino artists in New York.
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Hometown: This is the first year in my life I’ve lived in the same city for 3+ years, so lots of hometowns (or none?). My folks live in South Korea, and that’s got some hometown feeling.
Current town: New York
Q: Tell me about your play in the Kilroys List.
A: HANNAH AND THE DREAD GAZEBO is about a woman who receives a mysterious FedEx box from her grandmother in Seoul, containing "a wish" and a suicide note— right before said grandmother jumps off the roof of her retirement home into the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. The play is the family trying to recover her body and figure out why she did it…It’s weird and hopefully funny. The script won the Princess Grace Award and Leah Ryan prize last year.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: I’m collaborating with designer Tristan Jeffers on a play about place/memory through the lenses of cartography, the internet, and John Harrison—the 18th century village clockmaker who invented a hyper-accurate watch that allowed sailors to calculate their longitude on the open sea. We just finished a two-week residency at Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor (incredible, supportive place like no other-- everyone apply!). I’m revising my Soho Rep lab play, a trashy-dark-comedy adaptation of Macbeth set in a high school about scarily competitive Asian twins. And I’m in the verrrrrry early stages of my play for the Emerging Writers Group—it's about a group of young people trying to start a charter school…I think about this in terms of theater a lot—the fact that the blind optimism of well-intentioned young people is necessary for movements to get started, but can play out in funny-tragic-narcissistic-generous-helpful-unhelpful-complicated ways.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: Time/money. I’m confused about them the same way an intro physics student might be confused about time/space. Are they the same? Are they just tangled up? Are they both manifestations of some third thing? Do people smarter than me know the answers?
That came out more glib that I intended…probably because I find those questions genuinely terrifying. I have a great dayjob (I jokingly refer to it as “my rich husband”) that gives me flexibility and funds, and it's scary to acknowledge how much my ability to participate in the arts—at least in this city— is due to that baseline stability.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Jenny Schwartz and Ken Schmoll for creating the gentle, perfect space that was this year’s Soho Rep lab, and because they are magical genius wizard people. Complicite— Mnemonic is still a high-water mark in my memory, Tim Crouch, Diana Son, Leah Ryan, Sarah Ruhl, Lisa Kron, New Dramatists the institution and the individuals who comprise it, Naomi Iizuka, Kyle Donnelly, Luis Alfaro, Prince Gomolvilas, Karen Zacharias, the writers in every writing group I’ve been in because they literally have been my heroes in numerous hours of need, folks who make work that doesn’t look anyone else’s in product or process—the Rude Mechs, Rainpan 43, Deborah Stein and Suli Holum, Improbable. And lastly but really firstly: Connie Congdon. I would not be a playwright if not for her.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: Funny, surprising, sad, smart, warm, physical, music-loving, expansive, challenging. With no intermission.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: I feel like I don’t know anything! But that’s mostly what I’ve been working on—being okay with not “knowing” in advance bc everything I write/do/live in that state seems to be numbingly boring. I’ve really appreciated being in writers groups these last two years…and by “really appreciated” I mean “would have gone insane and/or cried a lot more without”…I feel relatively new to writing bc I slid into it sideways from acting, and my writing group peers have been both school and lifeline.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: This weekend (August 15-17th) I’ve got a short play up for an awesome kid/adult pair at the 52nd Street Project, and if you happen to be in Maine, I’m performing in a show by Jerry Lieblich and Stefanie Horowitz (aka Tiny Little Band) called GHOST STORIES which feels really special, as does the place it’s happening (Mohawk Arts Collective, started by impresario Andrew Simon). The show will be excerpted October 10th as part of the Prelude festival.
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A: MAGIC KINGDOM is an imaginary autobiographical work (narrated by an imaginary playwright named, um, Cory) about a trip to a theme park in Florida. There's a brother and a sister, each of them confronting the end of a relationship, who use this theme park to play out their secret fantasies and (perhaps) avoid the scary next stage of adulthood. Also, there's a guy in a suit named Mickey. I play "myself," and it's pretty wild.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: No upcoming productions, but I'm at work on a musical, which should be ready in about 7.5 years. Also I recently finished shooting a short film I wrote called HENRY AND HENRY.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: I think we should write plays about big, important things. And we should be honest that we're doing that. And we should stop being defensive about it. So many writers say things like this: "Oh, I swear, this ISN'T a political play." Or, "it's not ABOUT gay rights / Afghanistan / child abuse / whatever." Well, why not? If you can't admit that the theater you're making is about something, why spend your precious time and resources on it? Like Albee said, every play should be an act of aggression against the status quo. We should just own it.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Tennessee Williams, for his elegance and prolificness. Stephen Sondheim, for his refusal to "sell out." Cole Porter, for being a genius. Caryl Churchill, for the same reason.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: It's weird, but I get most excited by slow, life-like theater. Especially when people complain about how slow it is. Like, "The Flick" by Annie Baker. One of my favorite theatrical experiences ever. I hope we see more stuff like that.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Don't underestimate how hard it is. It's a full-time job; treat it like one. Also, try to push yourself to write something different every time. You'll discover you're curious/passionate about more things than you think you are.
A: R & J & Z is a new verse play that starts with Act V of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet…and keeps going. It’s inspired by Shakespeare and modern horror movies in equal measure—the idea came after seeing a production of the opera version in which the lovers both die, then get back up and keep singing. Because, opera. As we were walking back to the subway, I joked with my husband: “what are they supposed to be, undead?” I stopped in my tracks and said, “oh my god I have to write a play called Romeo and Juliet and Zombies.” The Stonington Opera House in Maine supported the writing through a series of residencies, and R & J & Z just had its world premiere there. It’s my first full-length play and I also played Juliet, so it was a huge deal for me. I couldn’t have asked for a more outstanding team—our director Joan Jubett, our incredible cast and designers, and the local talent involved were all a dream to work with. It was a good time. We made people jump out of their seats; they laughed a lot and cried a little and on at least one occasion there were high-fives in the audience, so I feel like we did our job.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: I got back from Maine at the end of July and tried to enforce a small break on the work front. Now I’m working on next steps for R & J & Z—we really want to bring the play to NYC. I also have a couple of writing ideas in the hopper, including a two-person Twelfth Night and a long-form version of a favorite Scandinavian fairy tale, and some interesting acting gigs coming up in the fall.
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 Dad was a writer. I remember being very small and watching him, sitting at his old typewriter—he might sit there for ten minutes, motionless, and then he’d start firing off words. I love the sound of a typewriter. It’s good for the creative act to carry some percussion and force. Anyway I was around writers and writing all the time as a kid. Once after a road trip my Dad found a scrap of paper in the car—it was a bit of a poem that I’d written on the ride. I’ll quote it here only because my husband threatened to email it to you if I didn’t: “A glimmering pond in the sunset’s glow/ A white arm holds a jeweled sword/ ‘Tis myth, ‘tis true, but then again/ Could it not be so?” I was ten or eleven and I read a lot of myths and legends. I was somewhat mortified to be discovered; to this day it still makes me feel crazy when someone reads something I’ve written for the first time. My Dad loved it.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: I teach a year-long Shakespeare collaboration with middle schoolers in Brooklyn. We spend a year immersed in one of the plays, and in the spring I direct them in a full production. On our first day I like to ask them, when was the last time you dealt with a doctor? How about a policeman? How about an actor? When we think about it, actors working in their professional capacity are a part of most of our lives on a daily, if not hourly basis. Turn on the television, the radio, go to a movie—actors are constantly feeding us. And yet we persist, as a society, in dismissing what they do as non-essential. Storytelling is essential to us as human beings. We have these huge brains, with an unparalleled capacity for coping with emotional extremity: they need exercise. They get that exercise through the storytelling that happens in plays, movies, books. We need to laugh, cry, get turned on, experience catharsis, feel. You can’t keep a big dog in a small city apartment. Big brains are the same; they need to run. So it bums me out any time someone talks about theatre as something extra, an accessory, a non-essential thing that’s just there to entertain us if we can afford it. It bums me out and it pisses me off! Engaging with stories, whatever the medium, is an essential part of their lives. The people who feed us those stories are serving a fundamental need. Let’s talk about it like that’s the case, and not shuffle around hoping someone will throw us a bone. What we do is essential. I’d like to change the attitude that says it isn’t.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: My heroes are people I love who have touched my life. My mom and dad, who told me my first stories and sang me my first songs. My teachers at Columbia, especially Kristin Linklater and Anne Bogart. Judith Jerome, the visionary Artistic Director of Opera House Arts at the Stonington Opera House, who has been a mentor and inspiration. J.Stephen Brantley, whom I adore as both writer and actor, and who offered me great advice about acting in my own work. My husband David Bennett, who is a genius and my favorite collaborator. I like omnivores—people who work across forms and can do more than one thing. Can an institution be a hero? Because in that case I’d say the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is one of mine. I saw a production of Taming of the Shrew there when I was about nine, and it changed my life. I think you can say OSF is responsible for my come to Shakespeare moment.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I’m a populist at heart, and I love art that is populist. I was raised on the Sesame Street aesthetic. That show was like, joyful to watch as a little kid—and if you go back and watch it today you realize that it’s full of these great, sly, smart references and jokes that were aimed at the parents. Shakespeare’s like that too—aimed at the gentry in the box seats and the groundlings at the same time. If your audience is with you, you can go to all kinds of places: extreme, dark, beautiful, rapturous, raw, funny, sexy, scary, dangerous, heart-breaking, powerful, sublime. You can really get into it. But I like to have permission. I like to give permission, and have it given to me. I guess you could say I like consensual theatre.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: I’m a baby playwright, so I don’t know if I have the right to give advice, but here goes anyway. Follow your bliss. Work fucking hard. Be kind. Be generous. Be fearless. Leave places better than you found them. Find people you love to work with, and work with them whenever you can. Listen to Papa Yeats: “Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.”
Q: Plugs, please:
A: As I said, our production team from the world premiere of R & J & Z is working on bringing the play to NYC. Keep your eye on https://www.facebook.com/RandJandZ for updates and info. If you’re in Maine in August, get down to the Stonington Opera House and check out The Last Ferryman directed by Judith Jerome. If you’re in Cleveland in December, go see my fabulous company-mates in Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant at the Cleveland Public Theater. And you can always keep up with my doings at www.melodybates.com
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A: It’s called Flamingo, and it’s about love and lust, and how you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get… to a place where you make a choice and oof that’s hard. It’s my first full-length play, and I’m getting to act in it, so I feel prrrrrretty nervous and excited and lucky.
A: What else are you working on now?
A: As a writer, a few other plays with bird titles, a screenplay maybe, an immersive theatrical experience, and, someday, the blank Word document I’ve saved as “What the F Happened to Enthusiasm?(!), and What You Can Do About It!!” As an actor, this play, Flamingo.
Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: When I was 16, I ran over a rabbit, and unfortunately it was badly injured but not dead, and my friend Eric got out of the car and went back and mercy killed it with a rock. I went home and cried-n-wrote an ode from the rabbit’s point of view as she died, i.e. the last things she saw and really noticed that warm summer night with all the stars up above. So: maybe I’m both a little hyper-sensitive about and willing to linger inside your everyday mercy killing?
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: Off the top of my head, I would make it part of every kid’s elementary school education. Like gym class. Gym class for emotional intelligence.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: So many playwrights and actors and weirdos, but also my parents, because they were both scientists/”left-brain people” as professionals, but took my brother and me to theater from age 5 on, and go themselves all the time. They recently took an acting class at a community college to “understand” what my brother (also an actor!) and I “go through” – I saw the video of their final exam, which was a monolog presentation, and turns out they are great actors! Like not embarrassing at all, just great.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I think the most exciting theater is the kind where people – and even things - are really listening to each other and responding to what they hear. That is purposefully vague because my excitement horizons are actively expanding.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Stolen science advice! Spend time, just lots of time, writing anything. I think I really believe in the Ten-Thousand Hours rule (a thing convincingly described in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers) whereby one becomes an expert in his/her field after 10,000 hours of dedicated practice. The hard thing is that in my experience, the first many many many hours of doing anything can produce pretty bad stuff… but you have to keep going, it always gets better! Because time. I thought about it, and I probably have 600 hours or so…. Only 9400 left to go.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: Please come see Sanguine Theatre’s Co.’s production of Flamingo at the IRT Theater (154 Christopher Street). Writ by me; acted in by Dylan Lamb, Ian Antal, and me; directed by Jillian Robertson; produced by Sanguine Theatre Company - September 3-14, 2014. Tickets here! (And in 9000 hours when I write lots of other stuff, I’ll notify everyone via www.alextrow.com.)
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A: This play is about navigating the end of childhood and the beginning of adolescence - scary, awkward stuff. But it doesn’t end there; instead it telescopes ahead to the present. So the cast has to play both twelve and thirty-five; be able to shift seamlessly between high-energy comedy and quiet naturalism; break the fourth wall and restore it; and do all of this in the round.
Fortunately, we have a powerhouse cast – Autumn Hurlbert, Eric T. Miller, Lori Prince and Debargo Sanyal. They are rock stars.
And bless Adam Fitzgerald and everyone at kef productions, I brought the first act of this play to them and they asked me to hurry and write the second. And then they committed to producing it and here we are. I know this isn’t how it usually happens and exactly how lucky I am - trust me.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: I have a play I wrote from a story by director Kate Holland called No Provenance in the Fringe that starts performances Sunday (8/10) at noon.
I’m adapting an earlier play of mine with music (I also write music) called At Daybreak into a concert musical with director Jimmy Maize, producer David Carpenter and orchestrator Eli Zoller.
Thanks to producer Doug Nevin, I’m working with director Kevin Newbury on a play about two one hundred year old women called On This Morning.
Director Simón Hanuaki and I are developing a trunk show/music hall theater piece called Decline and Fall; or A Guide to How the End Begins for Those Too Big to Fail.
I’m writing the book for an original musical with composer Patty Weinstein.
I’m co-writing a play with director Cat Miller about the marriage of German chemists Clara Immerwahr and Fritz Haber. Cat and I are slated to do a reading of another play of mine at the end of September with Voyage Theater Company.
I’m sitting on three freshly completed first drafts of plays no one has seen.
Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: Jo March. My mom read me Little Women and I fell in love with Jo March. I thought she was the absolute coolest character (even though it bothered me that she ended up with The Professor and not Laurie, I didn’t get why until I was older).
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: My high school drama teacher, Robin Bennett. She instilled in me a sense of professionalism that led me to a professional career in the theater.
Stuart Thompson – the classiest man on Broadway. I can’t begin to codify all he taught me about theater over the eleven years I worked for him – particularly how producers are also “creative” and the nonmonetary value of commercial production.
My teachers: Connie Congdon, Wendy Woodson, Suzanne Doogan, Michael Birtwistle, Kelly Stuart, Chuck Mee, Gideon Lester, Anne Bogart, Christian Parker, Deborah Brevoort, and Frank Pugliese.
My friend and teaching colleague Gregory Moss. We’ve logged countless hours discussing the craft and process of playwrighting.
Q: Who has been the biggest influence on your writing?
A: My wife Paige - her jokes, her stories, her timing, her rhythm. She’s the funny one. I just write it down. She doesn’t want to perform in public, ever, and I don’t want to see her innate brilliance go to waste. …Is it considered stealing when you’ve been together for nineteen years?
Also I deeply love the work of Pina Bausch, Yanira Castro, Kathy Couch, Patti Smith, Lou Reed, PJ Harvey, William Wells Brown, Cindy Sherman, Virginia Woolf, Bert O. States and Walter Kerr.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: All theater excites me. Even when it’s bad, even when it’s boring - I’m interested in figuring out why that is so. What makes something not work? What do we mean by that? I love this medium and I want to explore all that is possible within it.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Write, write, write. Find your people, make theater. Don’t get hung up on what other people are doing, it’s just a distraction (and it won’t get your plays written).
Go see as much theater as possible. Particularly if you think you won’t like it, if it doesn’t involve your friends (but still support your friends too).
Q: Plugs, please:
A: Christina Quintana’s play Enter Your Sleep at the Fringe.
Libby Skala’s play Felicitas at the Fringe.
My play with Kate Holland No Provenance at the Fringe. www.fringenyc.org
Be on the lookout for Nellie Tinder’s new piece this winter.
It’s Only Kickball, Stupid. August 28- September 14th. For tickets call 866-811-4111 or visit www.kefproductions.com
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A: I wrote Paternus in 2010, as an experiment in non-linear narrative style, and an ode to my paternal grandfather. I became fascinated with the way we compile information in real life, and how that's not mirrored in linear storytelling. The best examples are news stories- the initial report usually only deals with the most current situation, for instance: "two men were found dead in the woods this morning." From there we learn things in reverse, the focus starts pin-tight and gradually widens: "The men were in the woods on an annual camping trip." "Their names were...." "Their jobs are...." "They were born...." And finally we have the whole picture, with the past and present, but we tend to get that information in reverse, and I wanted to know what that would look like on stage. On film we've seen it a number of times, but on stage I was only aware of reverse-chronology being used in "Merrily We Roll Along," so I was eager to explore it. It's a huge boon, having the opportunity to see an experiment to its final stages. For that I am so grateful to Rogue Machine Theatre who took on this strange little play.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: Too many things! I try to create a hierarchy... number one right now is finishing a full length play I've been working on for a while. Second is a TV pilot, an apocalyptic story about the upcoming, inevitable water wars. Then there's a novel, a few short stories, I've never had the issue of writer's block, only of not enough time.
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 whole childhood explains who I am as a writer. I grew up in the opera world. My mom, Catherine Malfitano, is a soprano, so I spent my childhood on the road, backstage, in rehearsals. My earliest lessons in storytelling, structurally and thematically, came from Don Giovanni, Salome, Wozzeck, Tosca, Madama Butterfly. The title character always dies, the stories are filled with rape, lust, murder, vengeance, honor, and betrayal. These were my bedtime stories, and seeing my own mother in these characters allowed me to see through the spectacle, and into the truth of the tale. My parents used to recall this story to explain what kind of child I was: When I was four years old they hesitantly took me to my first Salome rehearsal, starring my mother. Of course they had been worried how a kid would react to such a perverse story. At the end, after Salome has John the Baptist beheaded, and then sings to his severed head, and kisses his dead lips, my father turned to me and asked what I thought. Was it wrong, what Salome was doing? My four year old response was: "No, it's not wrong, she doesn't know he's dead."
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: Funding.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Harold Pinter, Tennessee Williams, Henrik Ibsen, Martin McDonagh, Bertolt Brecht, Tom Waits, The Tiger Lillies.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: Anything that defies the norm. Theatre that tries things that have never been done before, even at the risk of being misunderstood, even at the risk of failing. Storytelling must progress, not stagnate.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Tell your stories, no matter what rules you have to break to do so.
Hometown: Potomac, MD. But I say I’m from Washington DC to sound interesting.
Current Town: Harlem!
Q: Tell me about Less Than Fifty Percent.
A: Less Than Fifty Percentwill make its world premiere in the New York International Fringe Festival this August (www.LessThanFiftyPercent.com). The show is produced by Robb Nanus (I AM HARVEY MILK, DEBUTANTE.), Allison Bressi (TOUGH TITTY, (NOT JUST) THREE NEW PLAYS), myself and directed by Max Freedman (BEERTOWN, PILGRIM). Unofficially we’re calling it “Annie Hall” meets a Charlie Kaufman nightmare with a dash of “Inception” but our Fringe blurb is:
When Gianmarco and Laura ended their five-year relationship, Gianmarco wrote a play about it. This is a play about that play - they are starring in it together - and all of it is exactly as it happened.... at least according to Gianmarco.
Less Than Fifty Percent began as a stand-up comedy bit about the chances of a first, second and third marriage staying together, less Than 50 percent, 40 percent, 27 percent respectively (Mike Birbiglia references the same statistics in his phenomenal “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend” – I promise we come to different conclusions). The bit was part of a larger set (or rant if you ask my Mother) that criticized getting married at a young age, as some of my peers are alarmingly apt to do, or getting married at all for that matter. Coming from a divorced household myself, during a period when both my parents were going through their second divorces, I was and am, though perhaps less so in my old age, cynical about the whole affair.
At the time I was in the midst of what would be a five-year relationship with a fellow actress that was rather wonderful. We spent an absurd amount of time together, as we were in the same conservatory program, did tons of shows, and even put up our own production of “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea”. My plan upon graduation, however, was to break-up. She knew this and my reasoning behind it (I need to find out who I am, all relationships end in disaster, life is meaningless, etc.). Fortunately we were both accepted into an international Meisner-based acting company in Philadelphia during our senior year that temporarily postponed our inevitable split. Unfortunately, the company was short-lived so in a very windy December, my prior plan re-reared its ugly head, no longer looking like a choice but rather a regrettably necessary life stage: I would move to NY, she to LA. BUT I had a solution: I would write a play about our dilemma, starring the two of us, which would reunite us that summer.
That’s where the first version of Less Than Fifty Percent came about a narcissistic, cynical comedian and the girl who was unfortunate enough to fall in love with him, chock full of direct addresses (basically just “Annie Hall”). It wasn’t bad! But it wasn’t good enough for the Fringe. I did not get in. And my long-distance-not-relationship-but-what-is-it-then-we-need-space-can-I-visit?-crying-skyping-too-much-then-too-little-nightmare got a lot more complicated.
Undeterred by rejection on all fronts, I continued work on the play, determined to get in the following year. I was aided by to-be-the-producer Robb Nanus, who was a bit exhausted by the plethora of ‘relationship plays’ in the universe to begin with, priming me for the turns the show was soon to take. Enter Max Freedman, on board as the director despite zero production plans, who challenged me to acknowledge, within the show itself, that I was writing a play about my ex that was to literally star the two of us. From there, over many sleepless nights, the simple play became a play within a play…within a play…and for a brief moment within a play, time got warped, shit got weird, and soon my romantic comedy was anything but.
Fortunately I not only got into the Fringe this year but my ex agreed to be in the show and we’ve created the hopefully hilariously emotional train wreck that is today’s Less Than Fifty Percentnow subtitled
“based on a much simpler play that was never produced.
A: An Actor Unprepared, inspired by Constantin Stanislavski’s “An Actor Prepares” in name only, came about after I watched the short-lived “Smash” series pilot on NBC. The show, which aimed to capture “the beauty and heartbreak of the Broadway theater” had a scene where Katharine McPhee’s (or Megan Hilty’s, I don’t recall…) agent called her to let her know the lead in a Broadway show, which she was up for against one other person, went to said other person. Tears were shed, soft music played, it was all very moving, however, I thought to myself “SHE WAS UP FOR A LEAD IN A FUCKING BROADWAY SHOW! I can’t even get an audition for a…anything!” Until recently, most shows about the biz displayed what life is like at the top; “Entourage” was my guide for what my future in the performing arts would entail. I have been severely disappointed. Thus “An Actor Unprepared” was born, capturing what life was like at the very bottom of the food chain, where the majority of us are.
My goal with the series was partially to explore the life of a narcissist in the most narcissism-inducing career / what happens when you’re not only peddling a completely unwanted product but that product is you. But more so I aimed to shed light on some of the obscene practices that have become the status quo of struggling artists’ lives. In the pilot, Gianmarco has to get ten people to his stand-up comedy show, each required to buy three over-priced drinks, so that he may perform for five minutes, the carrot being that a commercial agent will be in attendance. Now that is an ABSURD requirement for an opportunity that, 99.9% of the time, results in nothing. Yet this has not only come to be acceptable but in some ways a mandatory step, paying for exposure (at least for actors and comics), to break into the industry.
With several episodes written, I was lucky enough to get in touch with Gia Mckenna of 1909 Productions (she cast me in an industrial a year prior as an Italian-accented businessman) who liked the pilot script enough to produce and direct the entire thing on a tiny budget (my first and, I naively thought, last indiegogo campaign ever). Along with her partner, Stephen M. Ditmer, they shot and edited five seven-minutes-ish episodes and I couldn’t be happier with the results.
We’ve no ‘official’ plans for a second season but I have written almost all of it, including an episode tailored for a guest star by my doppelganger: “Gianmarco pathetically struggles to get an appointment for the “Untitled Jeff Goldblum biopic”. Spoiler alert: I don’t get the part.” If you know him please pass this along.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: Besides Less Than Fifty Percent and “An Actor Unprepared” I am
valiantly failing to consume three meals a day, sleep more than 5 hours a night and figure out WTF is going on in HBO’s “The Leftovers”. Where did they go? I could also use a “girlfriend”.
On the playwriting front my next undertaking (which will not feature myself as a main character!) is “Para-”(I insist on obnoxiously odd titles). The show is inspired by Lamar Keen’s autobiography, “Psychic Mafia”, about his rise to stardom as a phony psychic in the still-existing Camp Chesterfield, a hotbed for phonies, charlatans and hucksters looking to make a buck off those with the will to believe. In my wildest dreams the show will open with a full-on séance, all the tricks: cold-reading, disembodied voices, materializations, the same that fooled some of humanity’s sharpest minds ironically including Arthur Conan Doyle. I also want to mix in a story from the Shanti Nilaya Healing Center scandal (famous for Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ frequent attendance) where Facet of the Divinity church leader Jay Barham would pretend to materialize widows’ dead husbands (by wrapping himself in translucent cheese cloth) and then have relations with them, a scheme that was busted when the many ghosts seemed to pass along the exact same STD…Oh, Jay, you silly goose.
I am also in the process of having my first (sort-of) children’s book, “Sisyphus and Sam”, illustrated by the very talented Brian Cheng. I’ve written a good number of these things though I’m not sure if they’re for anyone but myself as they’re generally wildly inappropriate for children and feature infinite amounts of absurd alliteration. To give you an idea, the other titles are “Divorce for Children”, “Science Versus Religion FOR KIDS!”, “Peter Pipsqueak and the Really Big Horn” and “Robb the Blob”, only the latter lacking a lot of four letter words.
lastly, I'm lucky enough to be in your (Adam Szymkowicz) play, “Clown Bar” every Saturday night at The Box. I’m a swing for Happy, an ex-clown cop hell bent on avenging his dead, unfunny brother, Bobo, a slimy mobster and clown bar owner, and Zeezoo, a le Coq school drop-out in charge of the The Box’s bathrooms. It has been a blast, I’ve gotten to play all three characters, which is a swing’s dream, and I hope it runs for the next ten years.
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 cast as the Handsome Prince in Washington Episcopal School’s “The Princess and the Pea” in 2nd grade. My crown was made of gold-spray-painted-Styrofoam. It was a big deal.
In the penultimate scene, Pretty Princess said to me “I love you”. My response was supposed to be “And I love you” [emphasis added]. In the heat of the moment, twenty if not thirty parents’ eyes fixed on me, I stuck my index finger down my opened mouth, tongue outstretched and made a gagging sound. The audience approved. I saw those ten-to-fifteen adults roar with laughter, people who under any other circumstance wouldn’t have given me the time of day (my parents were in the audience as well…), all of us sharing something.
In that moment I became a writer, an actor, and a bit of an asshole all at once.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical writing heroes?
A: Writers, in general: Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David (My Father and I watched it every Thursday, they’ll always be a part of what I find funny), Charlie Kaufman, Leo Tolstoy, Nora Ephron, Orson Welles, Kurt Vonnegut, Edward Albee, David Mamet, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Peter Shaffer, Philip Pullman, J. K. Rowling, Suzanne Collins (I’m a sucker for YA), John Patrick Shanley, Martin Gardner, Nicky Silver, Christopher Durang…so many more but that’s what’s on my mind.
Musical Theater and I broke up after college but I have to say William Finn and Stephen Sondheim changed everything for me.
Stand-Up Comics: Seinfeld, Louis CK, Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, Eddie Murphy, Mike Birbiglia, John Mulaney
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: When I went to “Sleep No More” my first thought was…everything I thought about theater was completely wrong. The feeling faded but I am always happy when something breaks the boundaries of ‘traditional’ theater (whatever the hell that means).
I did not grow up in a theater or movie going family so the medium of my lifetime very much is television. I like my entertainment at home so when I do go to see theater I am excited by anything that feels like I couldn’t have gotten the same experience on HBO GO/makes me not angry that I’m not watching HBO GO (for free, I might add).
I do feel the need though to say that that’s complete bullshit because seeing “August: Osage County” on Broadway was unforgettable. I would consider that traditional yet absolutely electrifying (and better than the movie). As much as I would have loved an immersive production of “August”, what they did suited the piece just fine J
So…in conclusion: I’d say anything that feels like I couldn’t have gotten it at home (and alone). Whether that means its immersive/interactive or whether that means the script and acting create an intimacy I can’t achieve with a screen…that’s what excites me.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: I’ve actually been combing your prior interviews for advice since I feel I’m rather new myself but if I could give advice to myself even a year ago I would say:
1. See projects all the way through. Anything that I’ve learned from chronic script-reading and classes pales in comparison to what I’ve learned by getting work up on its feet. Even a public reading goes much further than doing yet another draft by yourself. I very consciously tried to do more this year and practice less in all respects and it has made a world of a difference.
2. Find your people. Other writers, producers, actors, anyone that might read your work and give feedback, act it out, ANYTHING. And then take the time to give back to them. Nothing is more disheartening than a play unread and nothing more inspiring than one person intrigued. Having not gone to college in New York can be rough for the first few years.
3. No more plays about your ex-girlfriend after this one. We get it.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: Less Than Fifty Percentwill be running at
the Kraine Theater (85 E 4th Street) in the New York International
Fringe Festival.
Friday 8/8 @ 7:45pm
Monday 8/11 @ 2:30pm
Friday 8/15 @ 5:30pm
Thursday 8/21 @ 5:00pm
Saturday 8/23 @ 1:00pm
Lastly but most importantly (just as an actor though) I’m in the hilariously twisted clown noir masterpiece, Clown Bar, Written by Adam Szymkowicz and directed by Andrew Neisler.
