I Interview Playwrights Part 931: Joshua Inocencio

Joshua Inocéncio

Hometown: Houston, TX

Current Town:  Houston, TX*

*But lived in Corpus Christi, TX, Tallahassee, FL, and passed many summers and winters in eastern Kentucky.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Currently, I’m entrenched in a trilogy project, entitled Splintered in Three, that explores collisions between ethnicity and sexuality in my three cultural backgrounds. My father’s parents immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico and Austria, and my mother’s family has lived in Appalachia for generations. Right now, I’m in the editing and soon-to-be production phase of the second play, The Little Edelweiss; or, An Immigrant’s Fairytale, which charts my bisexual Great-Uncle Manfred’s journey from war-torn Linz to the United States, amid celebrity affairs and draft dodging and substance abuse, as he chased a white immigrant’s American Dream. In the play, I portray myself as well as my great-uncle in imagined scenarios (we never met in person by the time he died) and pursuits of pleasure. Other characters are portrayed through puppets and voiceovers. The play finished as a semifinalist for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference this year, so my collaborators and I are now in the process of getting the production on its feet. We’re slated for a spring 2018 premiere in Houston.

The first play in the trilogy, Purple Eyes, looks at my Mexican identity and I’m currently touring the piece around Texas to theatres and universities (it’s the only one in the trilogy that’s a solo play). Purple Eyes is going to receive its world premiere at Stages Repertory Theatre next season. The third, Chocolate Gravy & White Jesus, explores my maternal Kentuckian roots. I’m just about finished with the first full draft of that one.

Outside of the trilogy, I just wrapped up work on a new ten-minute play, Ofélio, which is about a sexual assault between a graduate student and an undergrad. And I’m writing what is, as of now, a one-act play about two buddies, a straight guy and gay guy in their 20s, who take a road-trip across the Midwest. The working title is Bromos but we’ll see.

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 think I always had a penchant for storytelling as a kid. I asked a ton of questions (still do) and, tied to that, I was always curious about cultural origins. My Austrian grandma not only read me children’s fairytales from her homeland, but she would often tell me personal yet fantastical stories about growing up in Austria before the war. And my other grandmother, on my mother’s side, stitched me costumes based on movie characters. So between riffing on myths and dressing up (whether it was as Aladdin from the Disney film or Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz), I was constantly creating and telling stories.

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

A:  Hmm. I want to see more localized theatre that cultivates sustainable living opportunities for homegrown playwrights and other theatre artists. Right now, I’m serving as an associate producer for a Latina/o theatre festival that’s happening at Stages Repertory Theatre in February 2018. Our chief goal is to showcase and develop work that is of Texas. I want to see more things like this happening across the country. There’s no reason why Houston and other cities can’t be theatre hubs like NYC or Chicago.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I started writing plays because of John Leguizamo and Virginia Grise. They made me see the value in personal narrative and writing about “home”—whatever that means to us. As I’ve continued writing, some of the playwrights I’ve looked up to most are Mark Ravenhill, Caryl Churchill, Cherríe Moraga, Tarell McCraney, Erik Ehn. All riveting voices in both American and British theatre.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I enjoy theatre that makes me uncomfortable, that disturbs, that disrupts the way I think about the world. I like theatre that gives a voice to forgotten or erased histories.

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

A:  Thrive in the nuances. Keep everything you write. And produce your own work if no one else will.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Purple Eyes website

Personal website

50 Playwrights Project interview

OutSmart Magazine articles

Houston Chronicle on Stages Rep’s “Sin Muros” festival

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I Interview Playwrights Part 930: Meridith Friedman

Meridith Friedman

Hometown:  Honolulu, Hawaii (by way of Madison, Wisconsin)

Current Town:  The East Side of Manhattan

Q:  Tell me about your play going up at Curious Theater.

A:  The Luckiest People is the first play in a trilogy that follows the Hoffman family over the course of about twelve years. The play was commissioned by Curious Theatre Company, with funding from my theatre fairy godmother, the amazing National New Play Network.

The trilogy deals with those middle years of life when obligations to kids, parents, and spouses are competing against each other for your time and attention and sanity. The Luckiest People begins after the death of the family’s matriarch. Her middle-aged son Richard (the protagonist of the trilogy) is blindsided when his elderly father Oscar demands to leave his assisted living facility. With his sister Laura living in Shanghai, and Richard soon to become a first time father with his partner David, he is less than thrilled at the prospect of housing his–to put it mildly–difficult father. Accusations begin to fly and defenses are drawn, spiraling father and son, brother and sister, and spouses into a heated game of finger pointing with unintended consequences.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I am writing the book for a new musical about art theft, an original pilot about the Supreme Court, and the third play of my trilogy (see above).

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 memorized Marisa Tomei’s monologue about deer hunting from the movie My Cousin Vinny at a pretty young age. Like long before it was probably appropriate for me to have seen that (fantastic) movie. And I would recite it for my parent’s friends at dinner parties sometimes. You know like how some parents will ask their kids to play the violin for their friends, or show off their art work? Like that. And their friends would get a hoot out of watching this third-grader say: “Would you give a fuck what kind of pants the son-of-a-bitch who shot you was wearing?”

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like explosive theatre. Theatre that makes me squirm in my seat. Plays that simmer and boil until that inevitable moment when they explode. When someone says or does something they can’t take back. And they have to deal with the aftermath. The consequences. I think we spend so much of our lives (or at least I do) carefully avoiding that moment–maybe that is why I find it simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating when I watch it play out on stage.

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

A:  Figure out, early on, your definition of success. And try not to make that definition contingent on some external milestone that you have no control over.

I remember very clearly the moment I defined success for myself. I was sitting around a table with a group of really lovely, committed artists, and we’re working on a play I wrote, and everyone is breathing life and truth and heart into this blueprint I created, and it is becoming something so much richer and stronger than what I had envisioned, and it suddenly occurred to me: if I can keep hanging out in spaces like this, with artists like these, I’ll be successful. And fulfilled.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  The NNPN Rolling World Premiere of The Luckiest People at Curious Theatre company in Denver, playing May 4th – June 17th.

Demos from a musical I am currently writing with composer/lyricist Madeline Myers and director Emily Maltby about art theft.

Demos from a musical I recently completed with composer/lyricist Ryan Langer, about a couple that embarks on an open marriage after thirty years together.


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I Interview Playwrights Part 929: Tyler Dwiggins

Tyler Dwiggins

Hometown: Middletown, Indiana.

Current Town: New York, NY.

Q:  Tell me about Orange Is the New Glass.

A:  Orange Is the New Glass is a fractured fairy tale that takes place in a kingdom where everybody is obsessed with social media, reality television, and chasing their fifteen minutes of fame. Think of Into the Woods through the lens of The Bachelor and Perez Hilton. The play centers on Cinderella, who bails on the less-than-charming Prince, gets locked in prison with her unlikely girl squad, and creates a political revolution.

Orange came out of my desire to give high school (and middle school) actresses a chance to play someone other than a weak damsel or an evil queen. Cinderella, Goldie Locks, Mother Goose, the Witch, and Rapunzel kick some ass, create cultural change, and support one another. They each have goals and ambitions.

Additionally, the play is about looking up from your cell phone every so often and staying politically informed. Although the play has a very silly, meta sense of humor, I hope the Orange kingdom is an empowering world for young artists to inhabit.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I’m working on a lot right now! I just finished performing in a workshop of my new play, The Binding, which I call my “gay Pixar play.” It’s about a religious, gay teenage boy whose childhood imaginary friend returns on his sixteenth birthday. It’s my favorite play I have written, and I am really looking forward to developing it further. I’m also cheating on Playwriting with (very rough drafts of) two television pilots and a Young Adult manuscript about a teenage pop star.

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

A:  Like most children of the 90s, I spent a lot of time playing with action figures of the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. Unlike other millennials, my Power Ranger action figures spent very little time fighting crime or going on adventures in outer space. Conversely, my Power Rangers spent a lot of time sitting on spools of thread, gossiping about each other, and going on dates. They also had a LOT of affairs with one another. They were like a heterosexual, crime-fighting production of The Boys in the Band.

So when you read my plays and notice ensemble casts, pop culture references, and a responsible amount of silliness, you can thank the daydreaming of a gay preschooler and his company of plastic actors.

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

A:  I wish it was more accessible to young people. In New York there are so many amazing ways for young people to get discount tickets. But that doesn’t really help if plays are still mostly aimed at middle-aged, straight, white people. The vitality of New York theatre is somewhat hampered by how myopic the perspective can be. I think this is getting better, and it’s certainly the topic of conversation, but there is a long way to go.

Also I would like to sit in more comfortable chairs when I see plays, but that’s the impossible dream.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I am inspired by anybody who can write a play that engages my heart and my brain at the same time. There are too many plays and musicals that settle for one or the other, and I just don’t think that’s really enough (most of the time). I’m inspired by Stephen Karam, Diana Son, Dominique Morisseau, Tony Kushner, Joshua Harmon, Samuel D. Hunter, Jordan Harrison, Suzan Lori Parks, Tennessee Williams, Kander and Ebb, Lynn Nottage, Stephen Sondheim, and of course, my pen pal: Philip Dawkins.

(And also, RuPaul. I think it's fair to say RuPaul is theatrical and heroic.)

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I’m excited by theater that is generous to the audience. My golden rule is: don’t write a play you wouldn’t want to sit through. If I’m reading a draft of my work that isn’t exciting to me or feels a bit standard-issue, I try to take it in an unexpected direction. This can mean some visual flight of fancy, it can mean further exploration of a character, it can mean an unexpected plot twist. There's no reason that a play can't be smart and fun to watch.

I'm also very excited by plays that center on characters that would be relegated to the sidekick role in most stories.

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

A:  I’m 26, so it feels a little presumptuous for me to go around giving much advice to people. Instead I will offer the advice I have to give myself daily: nobody is paying as much attention to you as you’re paying to yourself. Don’t be afraid to fall down, get messy, and write something that intimidates you a little. In my (limited) experience, that’s where artistic evolution tends to start: when you think to yourself, “Can this even work?”

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My plays for young actors, Orange Is the New Glass and subText, are available here:
https://www.playscripts.com/playwrights/bios/1640

Drama Book Shop is throwing a release party for Orange, and you can find out about that here:
http://www.dramabookshop.com/event/tyler-dwiggins-orange-new-glass-signing

And my Twitter is here:
https://twitter.com/t_dwiggs?lang=en

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I Interview Playwrights Part 928: Emilio Rodriguez

Emilio Rodriguez

Hometown: Riverside, CA is where I lived the longest, but I moved a lot growing up so really nowhere.

Current Town: Detroit, MI

Q:  What are you working on now? 

A:  I'm currently working on a play inspired by Frida's time in Detroit. I'm not exactly sure how it will turn out yet, but the research has been fascinating and has helped me learn a lot more about where I'm living now. I'm also excited about the possibility of presenting it in Detroit because a lot of people, myself included, haven't really learned about the history of Latinos in Detroit, or even America for that matter. I feel like Latino history in American textbooks starts and ends with Cesar Chavez. I'm excited about going deeper with my own knowledge and seeing how that manifests into a play.

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 think my earliest creative memory was doing one-kid adaptations of the Wizard of Oz in my parents' living room using a funnel, a broom, and a pair of my mama's high heels. I think it's interesting that the idea of "home" is somehow in all of my works so far. It probably is because of the constant moving I did as a child, but maybe it has to do with my early love of the Wizard of Oz.

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

A:  I would want people to be as excited about new plays as they are about new music and new movies. I say "people" because that includes audiences, artistic directors, actors, designers, directors, and even people who don't know they like theatre yet.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes? 

A:  I probably never would've transitioned into theatre if it wasn't for Ntozake Shange, Octavio Solis, John Leguizamo and Culture Clash. Currently, I love the way Daniel Beaty weaves poetry into his work. I admire Katori Hall's creativity and ability to play in structure. I also really dig Matthew Paul Olmos' ability to capture the voices of So Cal Latinos which I love seeing on stage.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you? 

A:  I am excited about anything that is unique. If I feel like I can see it anywhere, I give a side-eye to the producing theatre company. When I walk away feeling emotionally disrupted because I've seen something so original that I'm still trying to understand it, I get really excited. I really appreciate when a theatre takes a risk to do something no one else is doing. I love seeing something and walking away saying, "That character felt like a real person, but not like anyone I know."

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

A:  I feel like I'm just starting out myself, but it's been really helpful for me to do readings with actors who get my voice and rhythm. If actors who understand my flow get a line wrong, I know it's something I messed up on. I know that means I have more work to do. I also find that building that ensemble of actors helps fight writers block, because I ask myself "Who do I wanna work with?" and "What would be the perfect role for them?"

Q:  Plugs, please: 

A:  My play Swimming While Drowning will have an encore at Milagro Theatre June 9th and June 10th for the TCG conference. www.milargo.org has all the details.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 927: Murray Mednick

Murray Mednick

Hometown: Brooklyn NY, and I grew up part time in the Catskills

Current Town: Valley Village, CA

Q: Tell me about The Gary Plays.

A: THE GARY PLAYS are a series of plays I wrote about experiences I had in living my life in Los Angeles. They are mostly based on real events. I was also experimenting with theatrical form, including the modern use of the "chorus” and other technical issues, such as entrances and exits and transitions. Each play is a different theatrical and writing experiment, as well as a recounting of Gary’s events as he mourns for his dead son, Danny, shot and killed by accident in Griffith Park. I wanted to be as lyrical as I naturally am as a playwright and include as much as I could of my own author’s voice, directly to the audience. Begun in the ’90s, it seems to uncannily predict events, political and otherwise, in the present.

Q: What else are you working on now? 

A: I am re-writing an older play of mine as a novel. TRUE CRIME STORY. Very challenging. Just finished three new plays: MAYAKOVSKY AND STALIN, SAYER, and THE WATCHERS.

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

A: Two things: the primacy of text, and the training of actors in the understanding of that premise. Naturally, we also need an audience, and an understanding of theatre as a medium quite different than movies and television or anything else.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes? 

A: My heroes were the Absurdists: Genet, Beckett, O’Neill. Ralph Cook of Theater Genesis in New York was responsible for my learning the art form and encouraging me to stay with it.

Q: What kind of theater excites you? 

A:  Precise, minimal, textual.

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

A: My advice is to hook up with a theater and do plays. Best way to learn. An example of the ideal learning experience for young writers was THE PADUA HILLS PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL that I founded here, which put on new plays, held classes, and could talk intelligently about the art form.

Q: Plugs, please: 

A: Open Fist’s production of THE GARY PLAYS is going to be an epic, mammoth event! Come see it over the course of three evenings — or view all six plays on a single Sunday starting at noon. May 4 thru June 4 only! www.openfist.org.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 926: Carolyn Balducci

Carolyn Balducci (left) with actress Karin de la Penha (right).  Photo by Carlotta Brentan 


Carolyn Balducci

Hometown: Pelham, NY (Westchester)

Current Town: Montauk, NY

Q:  Tell me about Giovanni The Fearless:

A:  Synopsis - Giovanni the Fearless is a family-friendly commedia dell'arte folk opera about actors, young lovers ... and a couple of ghosts. When Giovanni encounters the Bombasto Family commedia troupe, he becomes enchanted with the star of the show, the beautiful Colombina. Tricked by Colombina's overprotective father and siblings into believing that a treasure lies hidden in a haunted castle, Giovanni deals with a fake ghost (the Bombasto's giant puppet) then confronts an actual ghost. In the end, he discovers that the real treasure is his love for Colombina. Projections, clowning, tumbling, puppetry, special effects, and onstage musicians enhance this romantic musical comedy.

Background - The original tale, Giovannin' Senzapaura, is widely dispersed in Italy and I knew about it for many years. The story involves actions that I knew would be more fun to see and hear than to read about. So it began as a play for actors and puppets.

In doing scholarly research, I found that the plot, which involves Giovanni's encounter with a ghost and re-unification of its dismembered body parts, derives from the mythology of Isis and Osiris. The ISIS cult was once a pervasive religious persuasion in Italy especially Magna Greca, eg the liquor Strega named after the wican underground which is what the oppressed Isis cult became. My research and life experience also lead to an understanding of the roots of the Italian commedia dell'arte tradition. In writing the early drafts of Giovanni the Fearless, I realized that there were only three characters and all were male. Since Giovanni is a young man, it seemed logical that there would be a young woman in the story and in the commedia there is always a Pantalone who runs interference with his daughter's love interests. Giovanni is fearless, but in the course of the play, he finds out, as many of us do, that the most profound fear is that harm will befall a loved one. In a twist, when Giovanni thinks he's doomed, it is timid Colombina who rescues him.

The play is set in Italy in the early 20th century - decades when urbanization, natural disasters, mass immigration and inventions like the automobile, cinema and radio were reducing the popularity of commedia troupes. Giovanni (John) or Giovannino (Johnny) is a universal folk 'type' with brethren in all European popular cultures-- John, Ivan, Sean, Ian, Jack even Johnny Appleseed - are all wanderers. So whether or not our title character is heading to an Italian city or planning to sail to North or South America, he's an immigrant on the road to adventure.

Good theater always addresses universal experiences that are relevant to present day issues, At the same time, a play is a combination of fantasy and personal sensibilities and experiences. Beneath the surface, even though Giovanni the Fearless is meant to be entertaining and fun, to quote the lyrics in one of our songs, The Loving Tree, "…its roots go deep, deep down in the earth and under the Seven Seas."

Written in the 1990s, performed at the University of Michigan in 1997 - full cast, student-faculty production. Music was improvised by a young composer to suit the vocal strengths of the cast. (This show was awarded additional funding from Michigan Council for the Arts and UM's Year of the Arts.)

I met Mira J. Spektor, the composer of this show, in 2005 and she set my lyrics to music - 17 songs. In 2010 a cast of opera singers did a concert reading at the Dramatists' Guild. We were limited to one hour, so I adapted the script to include a narrator to convey the action and streamlined the dialogue. We did this version three more times - a directed reading in the Hamptons and at the Havoc Theatre in the Abingdon Theatre Complex in 2011; and a semi-staged directed reading at the Nimoy/Thalia Theatre at Symphony Space in 2012. Some of the songs have been sung in concerts. Last winter, I restored the full-length version which provided more clowning and sight gags, putting back a some of the minor characters and giving a stronger sense of the characters' motivations.

Both the composer and I feel that this work's combination of magical elements with theatrical artifice and improvisational comedy invokes the old-fashioned ideal of romantic love. Thus we believe it is best suited to the operatic form. We also feel that an opera that appeals to family audiences might provide kids with an entertaining introduction to classical opera.

Anyway, one more comment…

We are calling it a 'folk opera' ...but in current terminology it could be considered a cross-over -- au currant.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  FIRESTONE- Maestro Pirandello as recalled by Miss Marta Abba. In the last ten years of Pirandello's life, Abba worked very closely with him. There were readings of the work-in-progress last year in New York. One had a few actors representing different people in the playwright's life; the second was a short version, a solo at Cherry Lane, (performed by Karin de la Penha, who was stupendous and brought down the house!) I would like to keep going with this.

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 went to public and private Catholic schools. I hung out with friends, swam competitively, thought I'd be an artist, was involved with some community theatre. I was always a good reader. Best times were summers reading stacks of library books at the beach. Once I found out that dramas didn't have a lot of tedious narration, I read a lot of plays.

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

A:  The cost of producing a play makes it extremely difficult for anyone with real talent to get their work staged. As a result there's absolute garbage on Broadway. The insane cost of theatre tickets puts it out of the range of middle class audiences.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Off hand, I really don't know...Shakespeare...Chekov...Pirandello...Albee...Sheridan ... Ludlam ..."Anonymous"

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Intelligent comedies... (is that an oxymoron?)

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

A:  Master the English Language! Study grammar! Read a lot of plays! Marry up!

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  GIOVANNI THE FEARLESS, a commedia dell’arte folk opera. Music by Mira J. Spektor; book & lyrics by Carolyn Feleppa Balducci will be performed at the Theater for the New City, May 12-21.

My translation of Dovizi's La Calandra absolutely deserves production - the granddaddy of all screwball comedies - written in 1535. Adapting/producing a musical play by David Garrick is another on my to-do list.

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