I Interview Playwrights Part 875: Antoinette Nwandu

photo by John Flak

Antoinette Nwandu

Hometown: Los Angeles, CA

Current Town:  NYC. but really i'm just across the river in Weehawken, NJ. ugh.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I'm writing a new play that centers on a mother-daughter relationship. Right now there are two other characters in it, but it's pretty much about them. It's called TUVALU, or The Saddest Song. It's forcing me to ask all sorts of uncomfortable questions about self-worth, sexual trauma, class and womanhood. About how certain black women learn how to be who they are in the world. It's sad and terrifying and I can't really say much more than that. I'm also in re-writes for my play Pass Over, which has been a true statement for the last two years. And I just joined a fantasy football league with some other theater-makers so, i'm working on making sure my offense is T-I-G-H-T. By which I mean, auto-select.

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

A:  There's a story my mom likes to tell about how I basically had no chill as a child. I tell it now because not that much has changed. It was the summer of 1983 and the Superman with Richard Pryor had just come out. And my mom was on a date with a guy and brought me along because when you're a single mom with not that much money, that's sometimes how you roll.

And the guy paid for the tickets and the pop corn and things were going really well at first. And then at some point Christopher Reeves stops just being a guy in glasses and starts doing his--as my mom would say--his Wonderments, or whatever. His Wonderful Tricks. And even though I was only three years old, I was having none of it. We were sitting very near the front and she says that I stood up and put my hands up in protest and started yelling, is this real? is this really happening? And she and the guy tried to quiet me down and did for a bit, but then Christopher Reeves goes and starts being wonderful again--flying, you know, and I stood up again and was like, no. This can't be real! Men cannot fly! Men do not fly! And I stormed out of the movie theater and my mom kind of looked at the guy and was like, alrighty then. I guess that's goodnight for us.

So yeah, sometimes I can be a little intense. And sometimes things that aren't really real--but maybe might be true--feel so immediate and overwhelming that I have to put my hands up and shout. Or maybe write them down.

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

A:  One thing only? Oy. Ticket prices. Access. Whose stories get told. Community engagement that's grassroots not top down. More poor theater. Less preciousness.

But also--and this is totally out of left field and a little hypocritical given the list I just spouted--I would love it if somebody could add a category at the Tonys for best PlayScript that would be akin to best Screenplay at the Oscars. Because every year they give out the award for best Play and the writer gets swallowed up by a gang of producers, which is fine. I get it. Money runs the world. But I hate how this whole ridiculous night about honoring people in the theater has no moment to focus on the people who get the whole thing going.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Adrienne Kennedy. Caryl Churchill. Martin McDonagh. Suzan Lori Parks. Samuel Beckett. Lynn Nottage. Katori Hall. Harold Pinter. So basically black women and Brits. Oh, and also Stephen Adly Guirgis.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I just saw Chris Chen's play Caught and was pretty excited by that. Also Leah Nanako Winkler's Kentucky last season. And the Ivo van Hove A View From the Bridge. Each of them very different, but all of them used structure and form to help me feel something essentially true about what it means to be alive. So, theater like that, I guess. Theater that's unabashedly theatrical. Where the story's form imbues its narrative with meaning. Theater that doesn't necessarily answer a question, but that does have a strong point of view.

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

A:  Don't quit your day job until you absolutely have to. Write at night and on the weekends. Save money. Or be rich. Yeah, maybe just be rich.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A: On Sept 21st, my play FLAT SAM is having a reading as part of the Parity Play Fest. Danya Taymor, who worked on the play with me at PlayPenn this summer, will be directing it. My Ars Nova Out Loud is coming up on October 28th. It's the 29hr reading that sort of signals the end of my time there. So, sadness. But also excitement because I'll be sharing TUVALU for the first time. And PASS OVER is getting a World Premiere at Steppenwolf in June 2017, which feels like a really long time from now, but isn't.

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Texas here I come

I will be in Texas later this month as part of Dramatists Guild Fund's Traveling Masters Program.

Broadway World article about me and the others also doing this cool thing.


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I Interview Playwrights Part 874: Olivia Lilley

Olivia Lilley

Hometown: Winfield, IL

Current Town: Chicago, IL

Q:  Tell me about your upcoming show.

A:  "Mary Shelley Sees the Future" is a Freaky Friday-esque journey through time and society. Mary Shelley spends the first act wandering around in the skin of a queer creole female identified novelist named Mya. Mya spends act two navigating Mary Shelley's skin just after the death of Percy Shelley, just before the death of Lord Byron and the early Romantics way of life. It is a story about the female condition and how it exists among people from different worlds.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  Earlier this year, I wrote a film script called "You Can't Win Em All". I wrote it for a couple actors in my company and some I've met in the Chicago storefront scene. It follows a group of young people who ran a DIY venue together two years prior to the start of our tale. Their venue was their kingdom and it was burnt to the ground (possibly by the cops or possibly because of a freak accident). It's a thriller. I hope to start developing it this Winter.

I am also stoked at the potential to direct an original rock musical in a festival in the Wintertime. It's by a cool ass writer named Savannah Reich, fresh to Chicago.

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 an only child and I grew up with my grandparents in the Western suburbs of Chicago. Because I had no siblings to bully me, I was prone to crying all the time. The kids at school found this fun, but the kids in my neighborhood found it even more fun. I have one memory in particular. After seeing some of the neighborhood kids playing in their front yard, I walked over. They had a bunch of toy guns. Now, I must have been 8 or 9 at the time. These kids were mostly 11, 12, and 13. They immediately started pointing their toy guns at me and telling me that I'm dead. I think it was in jest, but its really hard to tell. The mind of an 8 year old surely exaggerates, but then I started crying. So they kept shooting at me and telling me I was dead and to go home. So next thing I know Granny shows up and she yells at them. She asks them how they can possibly treat a little kid this way when they are way older and should know better. So I'm standing there crying and the kids are not used to being yelled at by a neighbor or an adult. I think they basically just didn't know what to do. So Granny takes me home. An hour later, there's a knock at the door. Granny answers it and it is the kids' mom. I hide behind the couch. I overhear that she is requesting, in a very lawsuit threatening kind of way, that I am no longer allowed on their property. My granny sort of says fine. She doesn't give the woman trouble. As a writer, I am interested in the underlying politics and secret bureaucracies of why things happen. Every time, I start a new project, I remember this story.

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

A:  Everybody would work together to make sure THEATRE survives. Too many people are working on their own to make sure THEIR theatre survives. The Expressionists NOT The Age of Heroes, people. Do you really want to be Wagner? :p

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Schiller, Goethe, Baz Luhrmann, The Wooster Group, The Rude Mechs, Elevator Repair Service, Annie Baker, Sheila Callaghan, Bekah Brunstetter, Shannon Sindelar

Q:  What kind of theatre excites you?

A:  Theatre that seems extremely difficult to pull off. When I'm trying to decide what to go see, ambition is the number one deciding factor.

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

A:  When you listen to actors read your script out loud, a) do not look at the page b) literally cross out whatever sections bore you.

Q:  You never know what is boring out loud, until you hear it and you have no safety net.

A:  My other piece of advice is think a lot about "What is action". Try defining that term for yourself in your work. Try it. And then do it again, totally differently.

Q: Plugs, please:

A:  The Runaways Presents "Mary Shelley Sees The Future"
October 21st - November 13th @ Outerspace Studios, 1474 n. Milwaukee Ave, Chicago IL
For more info, go to runawayslab.org

I've got a short play going on at Playwrights at The Grand in Brooklyn on September 8th at 7:30pm, for their anniversary show.

I'll be reading from some of my plays with friends at the Wit Rabbit reading series on September 17th @ 5pm @ Quenchers Saloon in Bucktown, Chicago, IL

I'll be reading a short piece at Ghost Planet on October 15th @ Midnight @ Township Bar in Logan Square, Chicago, IL


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I Interview Playwrights Part 873: Nelle Tankus

Nelle Tankus

Hometown:  Seattle.

Current Town:  Seattle.

Q:  Tell me about The Untitled Play About Art School:

A:  First of all, thanks to Copious Love Productions for producing this show. They've been so patient through my many edits, and I'm really excited to work with them. It's a dark comedy about flesh-eating monsters, how capitalism destroys people and art and yet how how the art world and academia is so closely linked to it. Also about how two people try to heal each other from trauma when they're both traumatized. It's half greek tragedy and half dark comedy that collapses on itself halfway through. Here's the summary on the audition (they're happening in a couple weeks, aaaaah): Anarchy! Revenge! Flesh-eating monsters! When Amy's failure to show up for her thesis presentation is blamed on her depression/anxiety, she is threatened with expulsion from Whetmore's College of Performing Arts. Meanwhile, in Ancient Greece, a carnivorous beast has escaped Echo's watchful eye and is hungry for blood. As Echo and Amy's friends continue to betray them and bystanders are devoured, they must decide whether to give up on theater while they still can, or burn everything to the fucking ground and start over. The Untitled Play About Art School is a very harsh comedy following an unbreakable friendship that tries to find a way to heal when all hope seems lost.

I started the play two years ago wanting to make fun of art school... of course that was too easy, but I naively thought it would be interesting. I had just graduated from my alma mater and was frustrated with the administration due to some shit we went through together my senior year, and the general privileged culture of private art school. Of course I was implicated in this but at the time my self-reflection wasn't so great, so every time I put pen to paper nothing came up, and if it did it was so hollow and trite. I put it to bed for about a year, and then picked it up again after taking some personal journeys and reading an article talking about students that were expelled from Ivy League schools because they told the school therapist they were suicidal. This led to a research and writing spiral that turned into what the play is today.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm working on a new play with Parley Productions called Gemini Season. It's about Mia, a transfeminine person who recently changed her name. Her sister Janine organizes a funeral mourning her past identity (even though she's not dead), and then Mia receives a letter from a Britney Spears asking both of them to visit her at a diner in rural Idaho. Meanwhile, her best friend Dream builds a house with a childhood hero.

It's the second in a series of plays I'm writing that feature parallel worlds. I don't know how far it's going, but I want to keep pursuing 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:  Being at the Lambda Literary Emerging Writer's Retreat was pretty significant. I had the privilege of working with Cherrie Moraga and 11 other queer/trans playwrights on plays we were working on/hadn't started but wanted to. I learned so much about simplicity while there, not complicating the work because I think it's cool, instead making it complex. Really challenging me to justify every single thing I was saying. I got my ass kicked because it was the first time I had been in a professional environment where people were creating theater for their lives, or it felt that way, the hunger to always do better, to go deeper and deeper and deeper. It shattered my world. Not that I was a lazy writer before, but I think I let things skate by using the justification of "it felt right" or "I wrote from impulse" instead of knowing the work inside and out, backwards and forwards. I learned to be a student, always. I also made so many friends from that experience... it was a summer camp for weirdo radical queerdo playwrights. I found my community.

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

A:  Accountability. To other artists, to the rehearsal process, to humility, to rage, to the local and global community, to social justice, to practicing what we preach, to failing better, to being more kind, to levering whatever privileges we have, to holding space for people, to supporting queer and trans spaces, especially those for queer and trans people of color.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  My favorite plays are Fefu and Her Friends and Mother Courage. Maria Irene Fornes and Brecht are always always always and forever inspirations. Whenever I feel lost I go to their plays and I'm inspired. Young Jean Lee is a pretty close second, how she breaks her worlds wide open, risks looking stupid in order to create something new. Adrienne Kennedy, Suzan-Lori Parks, Chekhov, Ibsen, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Deborah Stein, Naomi Wallace, Mallery Avidon, Jean Genet, Caridad Svich too. I'm also pretty obsessed with Azure D. Osborne-Lee and MJ Kaufman's work, and Seattle theater-maker Sara Porkalob.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  See two above questions. Also, I read a review of Young Jean Lee's Lear and something the reviewer said struck me. "We don't have a language to describe plays that behave badly." I like those kinds of plays: that behave badly. Even if I don't necessarily like it it excites me. There's a Seattle company called The Satori Group that did a show called ReWilding a few years ago, and though I had no idea what was happening, it was spectacular visually and shrouded in mystery and I was strangely moved, though it didn't really follow the rules of dramatic structure or character. I'm still thinking about it years later, so clearly it did something right. I'm also a sucker for family dramas, like almost camp-level melodrama. If I wasn't broke all the time, I would see August: Osage County and The Seagull ten times in a row. The Seagull is totally camp. Fight me about it.

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

A:  1. Write as much as you can (I try to every day) but seriously if you don't want to, don't. Take distance from it.
2. Read. Everything. Read shitty plays too. Watch shitty plays. If you can afford it, go see plays. If you cant, find ways to get in for free or go see free shit. If you can't, read them. I know the Seattle Central Library has a huge play section, and most Half Price Books have a decent drama section. Pick a random title and take a couple hours and read it.
3. Self-produce if you can. If you don't want to/have capacity to, have reading parties. Buy a twelve pack of PBR and get your friends together to read your play and get feedback from them, even if they don't know anything about theater.
4. Make friends who aren't theater people.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  The Untitled Play About Art School, directed by L. Nicol Cabe

December 1-21st at 12th Avenue Arts


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I Interview Playwrights Part 872: Mary Laws

Mary Laws

Hometown: The Woodlands, TX

Current Town:  Los Angeles, CA

Q: Tell me about Blueberry Toast:

A:  I suck at talking about my plays, so here is the blurb that my collaborators helped write:

It's a Sunday morning, in a sunny, suburban kitchen. Barb is making breakfast for her husband, Walt. Their children, Jack and Jill, are busy writing a play. When Barb and Walt disagree over a seemingly innocuous piece of blueberry toast, the veneer of their polished existence begins to crack and what's underneath might eat them for breakfast.

I wrote this play for Sarah Ruhl’s workshop when I was at Yale after she gave me a copy of Tales From Ovid by Ted Hughes (which changed my life). It is funny. (Hopefully.) And scary. (Hopefully.)

Q: What else are you working on now?

A:  Well, I write for a television show called Preacher right now. It is on AMC and it is based on the Preacher comics by Garth Ennis (that you should definitely read).

I’m also writing a play about clowns which could be really silly or really good or both.

BUT…………… What I really want to do is spend a year travelling with my friend/director/collaborator Margot Bordelon and making interview plays/projects for small towns across the country. If you know anyone who is independently wealthy and would like to fund our little venture, tell them to email me at LawsMC@gmail.com.

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

A:  The subscription system that theaters use to sell tickets. I think it becomes dangerous when an audience is allowed to dictate what kind of theatre they will see. Theatre should challenge the audience and make them uncomfortable! I worry sometimes that the theatre I see produced at companies with subscription based systems is too safe. And I mean, I get it! Lose your subscribers, lose your season. Maybe I think there should be more national funding for theaters. And for the arts in general.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Reading Sarah Ruhl made me want to be a writer. Reading Sarah Kane made me want to be a badassmutherfuckingwriter. And reading Caryl Churchill... Well that bitch exploded my brain. These three women writers are my holy trinity. If ever I am stuck, in doubt, depressed, or lost at lonely-writer-sea, I read The Clean House or Blasted or Far Away and my faith in theatre is restored.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I’m a huge fangirl of plays with innovative or interesting structure!

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

A:  Write a lot. Read a lot. Go have non-theatre-related experiences. Repeat?

I don’t know. I don’t have any advice. I don’t know shit. And honestly, I’m not a naturally gifted writer, either. I’m not, like, some boob who doesn’t know the difference between ‘you’re’ and ‘your’, but I’ve also never lived in a movie montage where I am struck by sudden inspiration and the narrative flows easily from my fingers while I’m, like, smoking cloves and staring pensively out the window and at the end I stand, presenting to the world my magnum opus!!! Does this ever really happen to writers? Or is Hollywood just lying again? It has certainly never happened to me. Writing is really fucking hard. Actually, some days I think I chose to be a writer because I knew it would be hard, and I like doing things that people tell me I can’t do (because I’m a stubborn asshole who doesn’t like the word ‘no’). But I practice a lot. I write every day. And I love it, which helps. I don’t know. Fuck it.

OH -- Ask Paula Vogel! That is my advice. Go take her playwriting bootcamp somewhere!! She is one of the smartest women I’ve ever met, a beautiful writer, and a terrific mentor. When I was just starting out and applying to grad school, Sarah Ruhl gave me this advice: Go somewhere free, and go study with Paula Vogel. So, I’ll just plagiarize her advice and make it mine. Study with Paula Vogel!

Q: Plugs, please:

A:  Blueberry Toast opens Sept. 17. Go to www.echotheatercompany.com for tickets!

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I Interview Playwrights Part 871: Niccolo Aeed

Niccolo Aeed

Hometown: New York City

Current Town: Still New York, I haven't managed to escape yet.

Q:  Tell me about Room 4.

A:  It's a weird one. Basically, four black actors keep auditioning for the same drug dealer role over and over until they realize they're stuck in a time loop. It's unpredictable, strange, and very funny.

Marina initially had the idea of several black actors in a waiting room wondering if a fourth was going to come or if he had booked a part in The Lion King. That those were the two options for these actors -- you were in The Lion King or you were going to try to book this bit crime TV show part. I'm not exactly sure where the time loop idea came from, but lately our writing has been more heightened and absurd. We've been writing more about ghosts and twilight-zone-type twists, and I think we were interested in doing something bizarre. At first maybe the time loop seemed interesting as a metaphor -- there's something about race in America that feels repetitive and cyclical, like we've had these conversations before but still done nothing about them. Then after that I think we were interested in seeing what it would be like to actually live in a time loop.

Marina and I are also generally thinking about what kind of stories we tell. Probably most people in theater or entertainment are, but it often feels like you're telling someone else's story. Maybe this is an inevitable part of writing or acting or directing, but the story you're hired to work on can feel untrue or at worst downright offensive. So we're definitely interested in artists' relationship to the thing they are performing, how it effects them or changes them or messes with their heads.

Q:  Tell me about your 6 month residency at the PIT.

A:  Marina and I started mostly doing sketch comedy. Our sketches were usually pretty short and not necessarily connected to each other. But in the past couple of years we've been interested in creating longer narratives, longer comedic plays. At the same time I think the People's Improv Theater was also having some success with more narrative shows, rather than the usual sketch and improv. So it came together at a great moment. The residency really allowed us to work on longer more complex stories while also applying the quick turn around of comedy. Though we had a little head start on the writing, by midway through the residency we really were writing a play a month. It was exhausting but it was a blast.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  We're very excited to continue to develop a number of the plays that we workshopped during our residency, so over this year and next we'll hopefully bring a few back. In addition, we'll of course be releasing new sketches online and we're developing a web series about an online dating site, and the people who are begging the site's customer service to solve all their relationship problems.

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 can't really think of a specific story. Sometimes when I think of where my humor comes from, I think it lands somewhere between Calvin and Hobbes, the Boondocks and The Far Side. I had all those comic strip collections and I never stopped reading them through middle school. Those three comic strips may have influenced my humor the most.

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

A:  It would pay me more money. I probably should say more diversity, but really I just want that money. Though come to think of it I probably can't get hired till there's more diversity, so maybe it's like a tie, more diversity and theater paying me more money.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  So many! The first theater company I remember loving when I was in high school was The Classical Theater of Harlem. It was the first theater company whose work made me realize what powerful things you could do with live theater. I still watch and love all the plays they make. In college I learned about Pig Iron Theater Company and I think the way they create work physically always seems magical to me. I'm in awe of the actors when I watch them. Once I saw a Shakespeare play they did, and a kid was in the audience -- he must've been younger than 10 years old. During intermission his dad asked him if he wanted to explain the plot to him, and the kid said no he was enjoying it as it is. Which is really incredible. That you can make shakespeare accessible and funny even for young kids who can't understand the language.

Recently as a playwright I've been in love with the plays Dominique Morisseau has been writing and I was blown away by Radha Black's Seed, which was partially written in this hip hop verse and it was so lyrical and flowing and incredible. Both of their work is just so powerful to watch and just makes me want to be a better writer.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I really like immersive theater, I know sometimes people get exhausted by it, but I always love it. Basically I love it when watching a play you feel like you could have only experienced this story in this way, with these actors in this exact moment.

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

A:  First write and find people to write with, I could never have written a word without Marina. Then find a stage that will allow you to put something up. The PIT has really been a blessing for us, it has allowed us to try some really fun things. Find actors who are game to help you develop new work. With the residency and this play we've worked with such talented people and having those actors develop characters with us has been so helpful to our writing.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  If you haven't seen our work before, check out our videos here:

http://www.marinaandnicco.com/ videos/

They're really good. You'll like them a lot!

Or check out our murder mystery radio show we wrote last year

http://www.marinaandnicco.com/ murder/

Or you can find it on iTunes or Stitcher. 


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