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1100 Playwright Interviews

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May 6, 2016

I Interview Playwrights Part 833: Jessica Huang


Jessica Huang

Hometown/Current Town: Minneapolis, MN

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  A couple commissions - a ghost story about a Chinese immigrant during the Exclusion era and an mixed-race epic about the eco-crisis, as well as curating/producing/weaving together an experimental adaptation of Lorca's Blood Wedding called the Palabras Project. I'm super excited about this, as it's the first piece of a new production company - Other Tiger Productions - that I co-founded with my husband Ricardo Vazquez. We've commissioned new work from six local Latino celebrities and will partner with a local theater - Park Square - to put this extravaganza up in July of this year.

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

A:  This is a tough one so I outsourced it to my younger brother; he reminded me of this story, which sort of (?) answers the question. When we were kids we had chores that we had to do every Sunday - clean our rooms, clean the bathroom, take out the trash, etc. To make it fun, I used to pretend that I was called away to a fairy kingdom and the fairies sent someone back who looked just like me to take my place and do the chores. I would tell my brother these elaborate stories every Sunday about what "Jessica" was doing in the fairy kingdom, as well as the life story of this fairy replacement, who of course was different every week - sometimes a servant, sometimes a pilot, sometimes a warrior. One Sunday, the fairy kingdom was under some kind of threat, so "Jessica," of course, had to run off and help, but the situation was so serious that they sent the daughter of the fairy king himself to take her place. At one point things got so bad that I had to report to my brother that "Jessica" had perished, and this fairy princess would be his sister now. And somehow - probably because he was 5 years old - he believed me and started hysterically crying. So... I try to reveal the beauty in the mundane, and make real life fun through the fantastic, but it still gets really serious sometimes...?

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

A:  I wish more people were able to have the powerful experience of recognizing themselves onstage - which of course means that I wish there were more authentic and virtuosic stories onstage about people of color, women, people with disabilities, people who identify outside gender binaries, immigrants, queer people, indigenous people, trans people, mixed-race people, etc. etc. etc. And I wish these stories were told in exciting, innovative, dangerous ways. This sounds like two answers, but I really think it's one - I'm pretty sure that in order to tell these stories authentically, we need to break open the form itself and let in other ways of telling, of thinking, of expressing.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Usually my collaborators - so right now Mei Ann Teo, Jeremy Tiang, Joel Sass, Wu Chen Khoo, Katherine Horowitz, Trever Bowen, Abbee Warmboe, Megan Kreidler, Song Kim, Audrey Park, Taous Khazem, Eric Sharp, and of course, always, Ricardo Vazquez.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I love theatrical experiences that harness imagination to provoke mass empathy and incite riots.

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

A:  Be rigorous and settle for nothing less than the truth of each moment. And listen, listen so carefully to your characters and to your community.

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May 5, 2016

I Interview Playwrights Part 832: Paz Pardo


Paz Pardo

Hometown:  Palo Alto, CA

Current Town: Austin, TX

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  A Christmas comedy where everyone dies called Pioneers of the Future. We'll see how that goes...My partner and I are also starting a translation project called Grande/Bravo, which aims to put US plays into dialogue with plays from Latin America. We're translating Kirk Lynn's Fixing King John into Spanish and organizing a reading of it as part of the Brujula al sur international festival in Cali, Colombia in October. We're also translating Mosca by Fabio Rubiano and Otelo sobre la mesa by Jaime Chabaud into English and setting up readings of them here in Austin in the spring of 2017. All three plays are irreverent adaptations of Shakespeare, and we're working on getting a round table together with all three playwrights.

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

A:  For my 11th birthday, I decided to make a movie. So all my friends—all girls—came over for a slumber party, and everybody said what they wanted to be and we came up with a plot and set to work. The cast list featured a philandering wife, an assassin, a witch, and I think a cat? Nobody wanted to play the husband—the movie was called "Femme Fatale Forever." It had no problem passing the Bechdel test. We put my little sister in the oven for one of the scenes. My mother was not happy when she saw the video.

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

A:  I would get more funding more equitably distributed across the country. I'd also love to see American Theater be more in dialogue with theater from around the world–not just the theater that tours the international festival circuit—theater all over talking to theater from all over. That would be fun.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I'm eclectically excitable. A lot of what grabs me is in dance—Faye Driscoll comes to mind, as well as a dance-theater ensemble called Grupo Krapp from Argentina. The way that choreographers create structure without relying on narrative fascinates me. One of the most important things for me is seeing performers have fun on stage. There's something about the energy of someone loving what they're doing or cracking themselves up that I find endlessly exciting. I recently saw the Rude Mech's Field Guide out here in Austin, and the utter delight of the performers in certain moments made the experience transcendent for me. And then there are plays that can grab me even from the page (which is rare, I'm a terrible play-reader)—Steven Dietz's Lonely Planet and Enrique Lozano's Los difusos finales de las cosas come to mind.

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

A:  My mother is a playwright, and she met Tony Kushner in like 1990 and asked him what advice he had for budding playwrights. He said "Self produce." He seems like a good person to listen to. The way that your writing changes after having to listen to your words over and over and over again is great training. Also, my path into playwriting was to not know I was a playwright, and I think it's served me well. My early-career training was as a director and an actor—and boy, have those things influenced how I'm able to write. As an actor, there are things that get so embedded in you through performance that you're able to intuit the internal logic of a scene. That's deeply helpful when you're writing. And the practice of thinking beyond the text that comes with directing is very helpful if you want to move into realms of more expansive theatricality.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My play RubberMatch is running in NYC, May 5-21. More info at http://www.redcaravanco.com/ If you come, say hi!

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May 2, 2016

I Interview Playwrights Part 831: Katie Bender

Katie Bender

Hometown:  I was born in Houston Texas and moved around a lot growing up. New York, Texas and California feel like home.

Current Town: Austin, Texas

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Right now I’m working on a two-hander for a magician and his assistant titled One Night Only. Based on the life of Harry Houdini, this play has lot’s of space for me to play with magic and theatricality while exploring questions of ambition and escapism.

With Underbelly I co-create immersive journey plays that invite audiences into the unperformed spaces in the theatre. With a commission from ZACH theater and a residency with The New Victory Playlabs we’ve created an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland that has been running at ZACH for the last three months. We are currently re-imagining the play for a workshop with New Victory in New York. www.underbellytheatre.com.

Starting in July I’ll be in Minneapolis as a Jerome Fellow at The Playwright’s Center. This last year I’ve been jumping non-stop from one project to the next. I am so excited to spend the summer in Minneapolis reading and dreaming and finding new inspiration and in the fall diving into a big old historical play about Susanna Dickinson, Santa Anna and The Alamo.

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

A:  A few memories here:

When I was little we lived in Seattle in a neighborhood filled with huge trees and eccentric victorian houses. If I could climb a tree and get on one roof I could sneak from roof to roof looking in at other people’s lives. I loved the physical rigor of balancing in the trees, I loved the danger of getting caught, most of all I loved looking in on other people from an unexpected angle.

Driving back from a camping trip with my dad and sisters in a tense car with my dad’s desire to make a great vacation as palpable as his knowledge that we couldn’t afford the great vacation, I started puppeting my sister’s hair clip. I created for the hair clip a persona that was foul and gruff and could get everyone in the car laughing. I played that hair clip character so much it started to feel like a trance I could drop into, where all the tense weird gross shit I wouldn’t usually say could come out. Mostly, I was just trying to keep everyone laughing.

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

A:  I wish there was greater gender parity in all areas of the theatre. I wish more theatres produced more new plays, and more kinds of plays by more kinds of people.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Oh man, so many. Naomi Wallace, Pina Bausch, Sam Shepard, Kazuo Ohno, Paula Vogel, Lisa D’Amour, Ivan Van Hove, The Rude Mechs, My teachers, Kirk Lynn, Steven Dietz, Suzan Zeder and Liz Engelman. My incredible collaborators Gabrielle Reisman, Abe Koogler, Stephanie Busing, Mercedes O’bannion, Kristian Piña, Kelsey Oliver and Peter Stopschinski.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I love theatre that is consciously crafted to lead the audience into an experience of the unknown.

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

A:  For me, writing is a physical act, often I need to write several drafts before I know what the play is about. So I would say write as a muscle you are building that leads you to your own voice and then listen, listen to the play, listen to your collaborators, listen for outside inspiration...the play lies at the intersection between the act of doing and the ability to sit back and listen.

Find your people and make your own shit.

Don’t get caught up in the idea of gatekeepers; write the plays that excite you, see if some other people are excited by them and get them up.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  If you’re in Texas come see our production of Alice in Wonderland at ZACH Theatre.
http://www.zachtheatre.org/content/2015-16-family-shows

Also Liz Doss’s Poor Herman with Paper Chairs
http://paperchairs.com/upcoming-events/

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I Interview Playwrights Part 830: Benjamin Benne



Benjamin Benne

Hometown: Hacienda Heights, CA. It's part of the seemingly endless sprawl of Los Angeles County.

Current Town: Seattle, WA. But soon to be Minneapolis, MN.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  At this moment, my focus is on a brand new play that I wrote in the span of a month. I got that challenge from your blog actually! Previously, the fastest I've completed a first draft was three months; so your recommendation that the first draft of a play should take 3-4 weeks to write was an intriguing notion. The play I ended up writing was fueled by my overwhelming anger surrounding how certain individuals running for political office are portraying immigrants. Out of this rage was born a play with the working title TRUMP'D. Actually, my very first play CAPTIVITY was also about immigration and fueled by a similar feeling of rage. I guess it's just a subject that gets me fired up! TRUMP'D is being developed for a workshop production with Parley, a Seattle-based playwright group.

I've also got my very first mainstage production of a play called TERRA INCOGNITA coming up at Annex Theatre this summer. Annex is a well-known theater on the Seattle fringe circuit that places emphasis on producing new work by local artists. Since moving to Seattle, I've been wanting to work with them because they value risk and experimentation over a polished, commercial product. My dear friend and collaborator Pilar O'Connell is directing. We're about to head into workshop mode now; the show has been cast and I can't wait to hear my brand new draft with the actual actors who will be playing these roles!

I also recently completed the first draft of a play called LAS MARIPOSAS Y LOS MUERTOS. This play is my first commission and the first play that I'm writing that will feature musical numbers. I'm preparing to dive into a revision of the play and begin collaborating with the musicians who will be writing the original music.

Finally, I have a play called AT THE VERY BOTTOM OF A BODY OF WATER that's been in development with Umbrella Project, a Seattle-based new work advocacy group, for about 6 months now. It's gotten a series of readings and tireless dramaturgical support from the wonderful Gavin Reub. It's finally ready to have a showcase reading and I'm pumped about getting to share this beautiful baby with an audience!

So all that is happening before I leave Seattle to begin my year-long residency at The Playwrights' Center as a Many Voices Fellow.

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 6, my father bought me multiple volumes of National Geographic on VHS. I would watch them obsessively. I recall the thrill of watching a cheetah chase a gazelle across the African savanna. That was drama. If the cheetah caught the gazelle that was satisfying but tragic. If the gazelle escaped the cheetah's grasp, it was satisfying and a relief...but still tragic.

Around that same time, we had a little dog named Blanca. One day, a couple of my uncles were doing some work in our backyard and left the gate open. A couple of neighborhood dogs, who were on the loose, got into our backyard and attacked Blanca. My final image of that little dog was my uncle removing her from under a bush where she was hiding. Her white fur was stained with bright red blood. Even now that I'm an adult, my uncle still apologizes almost every time I see him for the incident.

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

A:  The majority of productions would be new plays that are accessible and appealing to a more varied audience. I would like to see theater audiences that are truly reflective of the range of demographics that make up our community. I'm tired of being so aware of the fact that I am in the minority (in age, economically, and racially) when I look at the other patrons attending the theater.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  My mentors are my heroes. Seriously, I am so grateful for every teacher who has invested their time, experience, and knowledge in me.
Rod Menzies.
Patrick Pearson.
Caridad Svich.
Elizabeth Heffron.
My current playwriting mentor Rebecca Tourino Collinsworth is a paragon of grace and tenacity. She is the busiest person I know and yet she always finds time for me. She creates a safe environment that promotes risk-taking and ensures that each piece is deeply personal. I've written seven full-length plays with her mentorship over the last three years.

And then, of course, my first playwriting teacher, Susan Merson is one of my greatest theatrical heroes. I wouldn't be writing plays if it weren't for her. She encouraged me to apply to New York Theatre Intensives for their six-week summer conservatory in 2011; I was awarded a full scholarship for tuition and housing. While in New York doing the program, one night we got to have dinner with friends featuring Donald Margulies. Susan calls him "Donny." There was a small group of us sitting around him in Susan's apartment. There were two things in particular that he said that have stayed with me to this day. First, he said NOT to obsessively rewrite your plays on your own; either someone will respond to the bones of your play and want to develop it with you or it's time for you to write the next play. Second, he said that even after DINNER WITH FRIENDS won the Pulitzer, that there are adjustments he would want to make to the play now.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that reflects what is happening right now.
Theater that offer a new lens to view the world through.
Theater that engages me emotionally and/or spiritually.
Theater that pushes the limits of what humans are capable of. (I love watching the work of choreographer Crystal Pite for that reason. Human bodies take forms that are organic but that still look unnatural. It's awe-inspiring stuff.)
Theater that is elegant and poetic but also jarring and dares to get ugly.
Theater like Sarah Ruhl's THE CLEAN HOUSE and PASSION PLAY.
Theater like Sarah Kane's CLEANSED.
Theater like Maria Irene Fornes' MUD.

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

A:  Well, I can tell you what I've done as a young playwright:
1) I carry my Moleskine with me everywhere. When inspiration comes, I scribble it down. It might be an image, a character, a line of dialogue. I have to get that stuff down right away or risk having it just float away.
2) I prioritize writing the story I NEED to tell rather than something I just WANT to tell.
3) I've consistently taken playwriting classes with different instructors. The more perspectives and tools that I'm exposed to, the more exciting my writing process becomes and the more surprising the resulting work is.
4) I seek opportunities to collaborate with other artists that feel an affinity with the type of art I want to create (and vise versa). These collaborators are a community of playwrights, actors, dramaturgs, and directors who inspire and support my vision -- and, hopefully, they'd say that I do the same for them.
5) I read plays then go see them in action.
6) I read Jose Rivera's 36 ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT WRITING PLAYS over and over again.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Parley is presenting the workshop production of my newest play TRUMP'D at West of Lenin on May 17th:  http://www.parleyproductions.com/

The world premiere of TERRA INCOGNITA will run from July 29-Aug 20 at Annex Theatre:
http://www.annextheatre.org/2016-season/main-stage/terra-incognita/

Forward Flux Productions will present a staged reading of LAS MARIPOSAS Y LOS MUERTOS on October 25th: http://www.forwardflux.com/

Finally, AT THE VERY BOTTOM OF A BODY OF WATER is in development with Umbrella Project:http://www.umbrellaprojectnw.org/

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May 1, 2016

I Interview Playwrights Part 829: Anthony P. Pennino



Anthony P. Pennino

Hometown:  Princeton, NJ

Current Town:  Princeton, NJ (I have circled back here after living in NYC, London, and — for a brief stint — Istanbul.)

Q:  Tell me about your upcoming shows.

A:  First up is Iron Tongue of Midnight, which will have its opening night at The Neighborhood Playhouse on May 6. The work is being performed by approximately a third of the graduating class (the other two-thirds are split performing in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead or Stephen Adly Guirgis’s The Last Days of Judas Iscariot). The play is about a theatre company in Moscow in 1939 trying to mount a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Company members keeping getting purged, so they plug in actual workers to play the Rude Mechanicals. Second up is Drones, which will have its premiere at The 2016 Planet Connections Festivity on June 18. This piece is a very loose adaptation of an incident in The Iliad. The work concerns our seeming inability not to be at war and posits a world where The Trojan War essentially never ended (complete with modern military technology). Third up is a revival of my long one-act Misty Phantoms, which enters into a conversation with William Faulkner over genocide of Native Americans. This work will be a part of the Thespis Theatre Festival in July. Finally, my play Chokehold will be returning on September 15 at the 14th Street Y. This is its second run. It originally premiered in the 2015 Planet Connections Festivity. This piece addresses police violence in African-American communities and concerns five friends who make a very radical choice to call attention to the problem.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I am part of a theatre company — Core Creative Productions — and we are planning on developing a piece about Nelson Mandela’s time on Robben Island. He and the prisoners there had access to the complete works of William Shakespeare, and it served as a lifeline for them.

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

A:  Not quite from childhood, but when I was in college, James Shapiro (The Year of Lear, Shakespeare and the Jews) was my Shakespeare professor. Rather than placing The Bard up on a pedestal, Shapiro dived into the world of Shakespeare’s London, what a production in The Rose or The Globe would have been like, how the plays would have been received and what meaning they would have for the audience. His approach was to strip away the myth, but it made the plays and the man behind them so much more alive and vital. I wanted to be a part of something that entered into the bloodstream of a national culture conversation, reported on but also defined what in a sense was a city that was reconceiving itself in a global context. I wanted to be a part of an art form that could do all of that.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  John Patrick Shanley — I am in awe of his ability to delve into the realm of belief and moral conscience. I still have a clear vision of Cherry Jones at the end of Doubt wracked with doubt. Suzan-Lori Parks — I thought her Father Comes Home from the Wars was audacious and brilliant, truly an American Homeric epic. Tony Kushner — the clarity and urgency of his voice with Angels in America is inspiring. Stephen Adly Guirgis — for his unerring ability to marry dialogue to character. And, of course, August Wilson — he did what Shakespeare did: made theatre national history.  I am still trying to wrap my head around the enormity of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s contribution. Among actors: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jeffrey Wright, Cherry Jones, Mark Rylance, Audra McDonald, and Ben Whislaw.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  You know, I really do just love the theater, and I am pretty much prepared to see anything as long as it gets the juices flowing. I love new work and reinterpretations of the classics. I really want to hear the writer’s voice, but also that of the actors and director. For my day job, I am a literature professor, and I frequently teach Shakespeare. What I do not like is someone who presents a “museum” production of Shakespeare (or Moliere or Ibsen or Chekhov or whatever). I want the director, the actors, the designers to engage with the text, wrestle it the ground, and find a way to elide their voices with the original. I hate to see productions that play it safe — what Peter Brook described as deadly theatre.

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

A:  The first audience you have to please is yourself.

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Apr 30, 2016

I Interview Playwrights Part 828: Justin Kuritzkes


Justin Kuritzkes

Hometown: Los Angeles, CA

Current Town: New York, NY

Q:  Tell me about The Sensuality Party.

A:  The Sensuality Party is about six college students -- three women and three men -- who decide to have a group sex experience together during their first semester. The night eventually goes horribly wrong, and they have to deal with the consequences. It's also about war and terror and violence and how we're all perpetually embedded in a network of violence, both physical and systemic, even when our immediate surroundings appear to be peaceful, safe, and benign. I wrote the first draft of the play a little over four years ago while I was an undergrad at Brown, and I performed it then in dorm buildings and people's apartments. Now The New Group is doing the play in college common rooms around the five boroughs of New York City. The show is directed by Danya Taymor, and it stars Catherine Combs, Jeff Cuttler, Katherine Folk-Sullivan, Jake Horowitz, Layla Khoshnoudi, and Rowan Vickers. More info and tickets here: http://www.thenewgroup.org/the-sensuality-party.html

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I just finished the first draft of a screenplay about Ronald Reagan, and I've been recording a pop album called Songs About My Wife. I also recently finished a play called Bro Lyfe, which is about various kinds of "bros" trying to grow up and find their way in society. Other recent plays include: Asshole, a monologue about a doctor who works for the government and likes the smell of his own shit, and Das Naz, a play about two members of the SS who one day realize the immorality of their entire enterprise after killing a Jew Baby. Mostly, I'd really love to get a TV job.

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 really little -- maybe 5 or 6 -- my parents sent me to a sports day camp. One day after swimming, I got completely naked in the boys' locker room and ran around calling myself the "naked mascot." I would run up to people and wave my penis around at them and scream things in weird accents. I thought it was all cool and everyone was having a good time, but apparently one of the boys complained to a counselor and so when my mom came to pick me up, one of the counselors came to talk to her in the car. I immediately understood that I was in trouble, and I ran out of the car and started crying and screaming in the grass. On the drive home, my mom said: "We won't tell dad."

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

A:  Theaters tend to make choices about what to produce based on a calculation about what "their audiences" will like. I think it would be great if the big theaters had the courage to say: "Fuck 'our' audience. We don't own them and they don't own us. We'll put on whatever we want," and then start doing more of the crazy, actually interesting stuff that some of the smaller theaters are already doing. Part of the reason why so much theater in the city right now is so bland and careful and tasteful is that playwrights and directors are told -- either explicitly or implicitly -- that "the audience" has real limits to what they can handle, and so if you want to make any money as a playwright or get anywhere in your career, you'd better play by the rules. As a result, the plays stay mostly the same and so does "the audience." There's a reason why most otherwise intelligent and engaged and open-minded people my age don't go to the theater, and it's because they've accurately sniffed out that most of it just isn't being made for them -- it's being made for some condescending idea of what their parents' most boring friends might like.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Wallace Shawn, Caryl Churchill, Sarah Kane, Maria Irene Fornes, Edward Albee, Brecht, Beckett, Martin Crimp, Mark Ravenhill, Erik Ehn, and Les Waters. In college, I was lucky enough to study with Gregory Moss and Lisa D'Amour. In high school, I was lucky enough to have mentors and friends like Michele Spears, Ted Walch, and Christopher Moore. They've all made me the writer that I am. I also think Scott Elliot and Ian Morgan are heroes for taking a chance on my play.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Anything that's honest and not boring.

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

A:  Try writing other things too -- you'll most likely need to, and it's better to get good at that sooner rather than later. Don't try to write something that's "producible" because no one gets produced anyway, and when you do, it's a miracle and a fluke. Find directors and actors you love and hold them close. Read the news, and watch TV, and watch movies, and play video games. Mostly, I would say: try to think of yourself as a citizen and as an artist rather than as a "playwright," since almost no one gets to be a "playwright." When you're at your day job, you are no less an artist than when you're at your opening night.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  The Sensuality Party runs through May 13. Info and tickets: http://www.thenewgroup.org/the-sensuality-party.html

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Apr 29, 2016

I Interview Playwrights Part 827: Kristin Idaszak



Kristin Idaszak

Hometown: Western Springs, IL

Current Town: Minneapolis, MN

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m working on a new play called Lovelier Lovelies, in which a woman tries to adapt a novel about Polish slaughterhouse workers for the stage. (The novel is loosely inspired by Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.) She fails, and the play gets cancelled. The writer’s forced to present a makeshift slideshow about the Chicago stockyards. What we learn is that in trying to explore her Polish identity, and her great-grandfather’s death on the slaughterhouse floor, she’s actually written a play about a traumatic event in her own past. It’s written half as the presentation and half as rehearsals from the play within the play. The play explores the way narratives get co-opted, and how sediment of identity accrues over the course of generations. And it also asks about staging things that are intrinsically impossible to stage—whether that’s a cattle stampede or an act of sexual violence.

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

A:  What comes to mind is more a kaleidoscope of images than a single story: I remember building sets with my dad for the local community theatre. I was the only girl in the scene shop. I remember going to class with my mom when I was off from school but she wasn’t. She was a chemical engineer when I was a little kid, but she went back to school to become a pharmacist. I realize now how brave that was. I remember, for my birthday (maybe my sixth or seventh) I got a detective kit. You could break codes or detect invisible ink. I carried it around everywhere, looking for mysteries to solve.

These fragments explain some of my obsessions, at least, and perhaps circle around who I am as a writer and a person.

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

A:  I’d like to see gender parity across the board—writers, directors, designers, actors, technicians, everybody. But there’s so much work to be done, not only in terms of gender, but also in terms of race, ability, and economic inclusivity. There’s a long road ahead of us.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  First and foremost, my teachers—Naomi Iizuka, Deborah Stein, Adele Shank, Carlos Murillo, Dean Corrin, Coya Paz. These are artists in their own right who have guided me in finding and strengthening my own voice. They’ve helped me understand that teaching is also an artistic practice. Other artists I find heroic are Taylor Mac, Caryl Churchill, and Maria Irene Fornés, to name a few.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I love spectacle. I love simplicity. I love plays that go by in a heartbeat and plays that last eight hours. I respond to ambitious, unapologetic, impossible theatre—work that is formally inventive and questioning itself. I love when I see something that challenges what theatre can be or do. These days, I’m most excited when I see something that engages with me as an audience member—it needs an audience to be complete. Sometimes that’s immersive or site-responsive work, sometimes it’s in the style or the presentation of the story.

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

A:  Find what nourishes you and cultivate that. The body and the mind are inextricable, so take good care of your physical self. I also think that the greater stability you can create—the quiet spaces, a sanctuary within your own life—can allow you to do the deep tissue work of writing.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  You can see my play Second Skin on the beach in Santa Monica until May 15. http://www.theflagshipensemble.com/

The Last Tiger in Haiti by Jeff Augustin at La Jolla Playhouse http://www.lajollaplayhouse.org/tiger-haiti

King of the Yees by Lauren Yee at The Goodman Theatre
https://www.goodmantheatre.org/press-room/2016-2017/King-of-the-Yees/
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Apr 28, 2016

I Interview Playwrights Part 826: Emily Feldman






Emily Feldman

Hometown: Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia

Current Town: San Diego, CA (for a couple more months)

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m in rehearsal at UC San Diego for a play called GO. PLEASE. GO. It takes place in an empty, beige, shag-carpeted box. It follows two young lovers over 70 years and has a repetitive form that’s inspired by Beckett and Thornton Wilder. It has a few dance numbers and a tap break— which you can’t hear because of all the carpet.

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 92 year-old grandma died at my Bat Mitzvah. I was reading from the Torah and she put her head on my sister’s shoulder and didn’t wake up. I couldn’t believe that something so sad could happen on a day that I had looked forward to for so long. It must have been most difficult for my Dad, who lost his mom while his friends were doing the electric slide.

My best friend wore the same purple dress that I wore and I wish I could say that at that point— it really didn’t matter who wore what dress— but I was twelve.

Something about this family heartbreak on a day that was supposed to be filled with joy has infiltrated my writing and my sense of humor. I’m sure that if I ever get married it will rain on my wedding day.

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

A:  I’d like there to be more places for longer forms of theater criticism. Writing that isn’t a thumbs-up or thumbs-down kind of review—but an inquiry into the intentions of the artists and the style of the performance. I think this is happening in a couple of places, but I’d love for more playwrights to write publicly and in-depth about the plays they see— the way that novelists review or blurb each other’s work.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Reading Beckett, Ionesco, and Chris Durang when I was in college got me excited about writing plays. Karen Hartman was a great mentor to me when I was living in New York and trying to balance work and playwriting. My heroic playwriting teachers/women who give me excellent advice are Naomi Iizuka and Deborah Stein. I think Adam Greenfield is also a theatrical superhero.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I get excited by plays that move like dances—that are beautiful and that make inventive use of space and bodies. I love when design and text and performance play like instruments in a symphony and when making theatre looks like painting on a canvas— every element placed in a specific relationship to everything else. David Greenspan’s Go Back To Where You Are at Playwrights Horizons was one of those experiences for me. I saw it four times.

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

A:  Naomi Iizuka always reminds me to be kind to everyone I meet working in the theater. Everyone is there for the love of the game and today’s intern could be tomorrow’s artistic director. And you never know who will end up being a great ally or whose couch you might need to spend a night on. I’m haunted by that thing George Saunders said at a commencement in 2013: “What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness."

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  If you’re in Southern California in May, come see the Wagner Festival of New Plays at UC San Diego! http://theatre.ucsd.edu/season/WNPF2016/index.htm

And my love Jeff Augustin’s beautiful play The Last Tiger in Haiti at La Jolla Playhouse, directed by my BFF Josh Brody! http://www.lajollaplayhouse.org/tiger-haiti


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Apr 20, 2016

UPCOMING THINGS I CAN TALK ABOUT PUBLICLY



Hearts Like Fists

Production #30 of Hearts Like Fists
Shadow Horse Theater
Minneapolis, MN
Opens May 27, 2016

Clown Bar

Production #16 of Clown Bar
Springs Ensemble Theatre
Colorado Springs, CO
Opens May 13, 2016




Production #11 of Pretty Theft
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, VA
Opens April 26, 2016

Rare Birds (workshop production)

The Chance Theater
Anaheim, CA
August 4, 6, 7, 2016.


7 Ways to Say I Love You 
(a night of short plays)

Production #4 of 7 Ways to Say I Love You
Natomas Pacific Pathways Prep HS
Sacramento, CA
Opens May 11, 2016

Production #5 of 7 Ways to Say I Love You
Portland High School
Portland, ME
Opens May 12, 2016


PUBLISHED PLAYS

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