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.
Hometown: I grew up in and around the Los Angeles area. My family moved a lot, settling in then abruptly leaving about ten different towns. It was a disruptive life. The result is that I’ve always felt rootless. This feeling of rootlessness, I believe, gave me the freedom to wander the world and history searching for stories to write about.
Current Town: New York City.
Q: Tell me about Lancelot.
A: In writing Lancelot I was able to bring together themes that interest me a great deal. Those themes include the role of the artist in society, the Outsider who breaks social and sexual boundaries, and male identity in America. Lancelot is set in the American West. I have set a number of my plays in small rural towns in the Midwest and West. If you’re an Outsider the stakes always seem higher in a small town than in a big city. The Outsider just sticks out more. The things that attract me about the West are its rugged, desolate, and bleak landscapes peopled by tough, gritty, bruised characters.
In Lancelot the protagonist is Ryan, a young man who lives a quiet, ordinary life in a small, ordinary town in Oklahoma. He has a job, a girlfriend, and goes to church. On the surface Ryan represents the ideal young man of the Western heartland. But underneath there lies a very different American male icon – the artist as outlaw and sexual rebel. One day a woman from Ryan’s past arrives. She brings memories of a boy who was wild, wanton, prodigiously artistic, and recklessly in love. Ryan believed he had buried that wild boy years ago. This woman was his middle school art teacher – and lover. Now she’s back and Ryan must make the most difficult choice of his life: What kind of man will he be. Lancelot is about the transgressive power of art and love and the danger of being true to yourself.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: I am working on theatre and film projects.
Q: Tell me a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: My story is during my third year in grade school. It was a year that I enjoyed school and adored my teacher. She encouraged me, recognizing a young creative mind. When I handed my report card to my mother, instead of praising my grades, she zeroed in on the teacher’s “Remarks.” She had written that I was a “sensitive” student. My mother angrily questioned what she meant by “sensitive,” as if I had done something terrible. I had no answer, which only made her angrier. I ran into my bedroom in bitter tears. Thus, I learned quite early in my life that being perceived as sensitive (i.e. artistic or strange) – in other words, different – is dangerous and will mark you as an outsider. The risks of being an outsider would become a theme throughout my work, such as Lancelot.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: I’d change two things: First, our government would be much more supportive of theater, as it is done in Britain, Germany, and other European countries. Wouldn’t it be great if even small theatre companies could pay actors, directors, and playwrights a decent compensation? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if regional theaters could mount ambitious, risky productions without worrying about subscriptions going down? Second, Broadway and Off-Broadway would encourage more young audiences to come to the theatre. Students should get generous discounts. Once a month Broadway theaters would open their houses for free to people eighteen and under.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: I have four heroes: Anton Chekhov, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and Sam Shepard. They taught me about theatricality, form, language, rhythm, and a fearless, uncompromising vision of the world. What I love in their plays is the clashing of the comic with the tragic, ruthlessness with tenderness, and especially with Chekhov, a deep empathy for all his characters.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I am excited by theater that is dangerous, risky, stark, uncomfortably intimate, darkly comical, and truthfully shocking. I want to see something that I won’t see in the movies or on television. I am excited about characters that are complex, damaged, funny, with needs that reach down to their souls, and that challenge actors and audiences. A great example is Mark Rylance’s shattering performance as Johnny “Rooster” Byron in Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: My advice is the same that I received from the late William Packard when I took his HB Studio playwriting workshop as a novice playwright: “Keep writing.”
Q: Plugs, please:
A: Come see 360 repco’s world premiere production of Lancelot that runs August 13-29 at The Gym at Judson, NYC. I am blessed with an extraordinary cast and the expansive vision of director Thom Fogarty. This will be my third collaboration with Thom. For details and tickets go to www.360repco.org.
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A: I am currently working on a play I’m calling White. (At least for the moment) It’s inspired by the Joe Scanlan/Donelle Woolford/Yams controversy over at the Whitney a few months back. It explores who gets to make black art, what is black art, is personality a work of art and all those sort of contemporary art discussions that I love to have with my visual arts friends. I’m playing with some religious art imagery in the play as well as my expected use of magical realism and storying. I’m also doing some research for another play that uses history as a springboard. I want it to be for younger audiences but I’m not quite ready to talk about that yet.
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 recall driving from Bessemer City to Charlotte with my Mother, Father, Grandmother and sisters. (I think those are the players…not totally sure.) It was fall and my father was driving. My father asked me what I wanted to be for Halloween. I must have been pretty young. I imagine I was maybe 7 or 8 but I could have been younger. Well I replied that I wanted to be a Ku Klux Klansman. It seemed reasonable enough to me. It’s basically a ghost costume but, you know, with a hat and stuff. My father firmly let me know what I was saying and explained the history that I was too young to understand. From that moment, I have been obsessed with history, with how history vibrated in the present and how humanity has the capacity for great good and the darkest of atrocity. It also was when I started to engage with imagery in a real way. I remember that moment so vividly because it was the first time I realized that an image, and for that matter, a story, can be multiple things. I thought the Klan costume was innocent, but the story that is attached to the image is not innocent. In my plays, I try to unpack story and imagery separately, while also finding the moments where the familiar image suddenly is telling a very unfamiliar story and vice versa.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: I would make theater more inclusive and by extension less expensive. There are certainly place where these things are happening! The Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia just subsidized their ticket prices for example and I think they are going to draw a much more diverse audience that truly reflects Philadelphia as a whole. Along those same lines in regards to inclusion, I would want to see more stories that reflect the lives that make up all of America and not just a subscriber base, which is demographically a very small lens. I think we can do better with expanding audience and a part of that is grappling with stories that may be uncomfortable or difficult.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: In terms of writing I would say Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Childress, Lucille Clifton, Kevin Young, Lamar Kendrick, James Baldwin, Katori Hall, Derek Walcott, Elizabeth Alexander, Wole Soyinka, Edward Albee, Tony Kushner, Marcus Gardley, Tennessee Willams, and Suzan Lori Parks. These writers, in their various genres have made an indelible print on not only my work but my world view. Also they show me that there is no such thing as “well made.” It’s well made if you made in and it’s what you need and what someone else needs. That’s the point, right? In terms of theatre as a practice I would say George C. Wolfe, Ed Sobel, Kimmika Williams-Witherspoon, Paul Meshejian, Liesl Tommy, Whit McLaughlin, Terry Nolan, Blanka Zizka, Micheal Hollinger, and Ozzie Jones. This is a mix of heroes and actual mentors. People who have had an impact on me directly as an artist. With the exception of Wolfe, all of these people have touched and taught me in a very personal way and continue to.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I love to be moved. Whether it’s moved to tears or laughter or anger. I just want it to affect me, to make me think and long and need. I want to see something sublime and not ordinary. If I wanted to watch my own life I would stay at home. I don’t want to watch someone like me make choices I probably would make. That just doesn’t do it for me. What I love, is when something extraordinary happens to people who are extraordinary, even if they don’t recognize it. I like spectacle and music and big ideas. I don’t like cute and clever. I like my theatre to be epic and euphoric and sexy and smart and sometime difficult to understand. I like those plays that three days later it hits you and you are once again back in that theatre reliving it all over again.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Well I’m very much a playwright starting out, so I have a lot to learn, but I would say, find the people that love the things you love and be around them so they energize you. Your tribe, so to speak. Read all of the plays you can get your hands on, from the classics to the very contemporary. Just cause it’s old don’t make it right for you. Find people you trust and who understand your voice to give you feedback and read your work, not in a teacher/student sort of way but in a collaborative way. When I finish a play I send it to three very distinct people who give me three different kinds of feedback. It’s incredibly helpful. Lastly, know your value and your worth and that you have something to say. Some people will get it, some will not and that is entirely okay. Write for the people you want to reach and you will probably reach everyone. It’s weird the more specific I think a play is, the more universal it is. Oh and one more thing. When people say bad things about you, and let’s face it that will happen sometimes, consider the source and get back to work. Light the negativity on fire and used it for fuel.
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A: It's a project that began in 2010 ... I was living in Honolulu then, and the local burlesque troupe, Cherry Blossom Cabaret, wanted to put on a full theatrical show -- that is to say, one with a plot, recurring characters, and significant dialogue, instead of the variety-style shows that are more common in the genre. They decided they wanted to loosely adapt Alice in Wonderland, but make it about the burgeoning arts scene of Honolulu's Chinatown. I was brought in to work on the script, which I ended up co-writing with a member of the troupe named Mabsy. I've now worked on four shows with them total, either as author or co-author, and this year Mabsy and I wrote a sequel, Alice in Chinatown: Through the Looking Glass.
One of the most eye-opening experiences for me as a playwright has been how great it is to write parts for a specific group of people, instead of writing a play in isolation and sending it off to strangers. Especially this group of people, since they're all amazing and creative and multi-talented. The troupe includes not only amazing striptease artists, but also professional or professional level singers, actors, dancers, choreographers, aerialists, contortionists ... one of the ways I start out each time is by basically asking, OK, anything special you want to do in the show? This year, the answers included two fencers who wanted to have a sword fight, a hand juggler, four singers, an aerialist who wanted to do a lyra piece, and someone who wanted to do a striptease in the dark in a costume made of electroluminescent wire, among other things.
When I first started working with them, I discovered to my surprise that instead of being constraining, trying to fit all of these things into a coherent narrative is remarkably freeing. Instead of being a limit ("you must include this thing in the show") it feels like anything is on the table ("you can even include this thing in the show!") I've never felt like I've had the problem of sacrificing thematic or narrative richness in the service of using someone's talents; instead, I feel like I get to use everyone's talents to add to the themes and narrative. AIC: Through the Looking Glass was primarily about identity, belonging, and finding your place in the world as you find out who you are. And also a love story between Alice and the White Rabbit.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: At the moment, I'm working on a science fiction novel, which Mabsy is actually going to illustrate. In terms of the stage, I've just started the planning stages for a show -- it's so early on that the basic idea for it could still change -- that I'm hoping to have written in time for next year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival. (I've just moved to Edinburgh recently, and I'm looking forward to the Fringe; this year, my goal is not to bankrupt myself at it.)
Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: I was mostly raised and socialized by my family's cats. However, they gave up on me when they realized that no matter how hard they tried, I was never going to hunt mice well. Since the mousing career path was closed to me as a result of my incompetence, I turned to writing instead.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: I'd want theater ticket prices that are comparable to, say, movie ticket prices, and at the same time everyone in the theater paid what their time and effort is worth. (Also world peace and a unicorn ...)
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Tom Stoppard, who used theater and language to examine theater and language, and made it fun and meaningful. Stephen Sondheim, who redefined what a musical could be as an art form. Jeff Daniels, for building the Purple Rose Theater.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: The theatrical piece I've seen that excited me the most during the last few years was Sleep No More. Probably because it was both innovative, entertaining, provocative, and amazingly well done. So, I'd say those are the things that excite me.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: There is no one right way of writing a play. If there's a play at the end of it, you did it right.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: A number of Ry Herman's plays are available from Samuel French (Voices In My Head, The Monster) and United Stages (Man On Dog, in the collection EATfest: Best of Fest). Excerpts from Ry's plays (Vamp, Voices in My Head) are available in the Meriwether collections Scenes and Monologues from the Best New Plays II and Women's Issues Volume II.
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