I Interview Playwrights Part 950: Jack Gilbert

Jack Gilbert

Hometown: Columbus, Ohio

Current Town: New York City

Q:  Tell me about your upcoming show.

A:  It's called Shelter. The Piece follows Izzy, presumably the last living person on Earth, living in an underground bunker with her robot pal iZak and a disembodied AI system named MOM. To pass the time and keep her sanity she puts on a radio show to no one. It's set on the day she's run out of food as she gears up to give her final broadcast. It's kind of like a dark, apocalyptic Pee-Wee's Playhouse

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I've got a couple things coming up which is great and only mildly overwhelming. feast or famine. I just finished a sister piece to Shelter titled Severance; about six astronauts stranded in space after the world below ends, kind of a sci-fi Lord of the Flies. The Navigator Theater Company, a new group dedicated to producing "Sci-Fi Theater with a feminist edge" is putting that one up as a part of their Dark Matter Reading Series this month. I'm also drafting a musical about the sheep who didn't get to go on Noah's Ark. It's more lighthearted than it sounds.

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 hard question.

I've felt a substantial amount of existential dread from a young age. Writing has been one of the few things that's curbs that feeling. It's also really the only way I've ever been able to get my thoughts in order and make myself feel understood. It's always been easier to put things onto paper.

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

A:  Theater still has a long way to go with equal representation. Promoting things that are more gender, ethnically, sexually diverse is paramount to its future. Accessibility too, finding ways to make theater affordable and community driven. Supporting and cultivating local artists and fostering artists from a young age. Artists being paid a fair, living wage. This is more than one thing.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  New works. I love seeing and supporting new theater and getting to listen to what people are trying to say here and now and watch as things develop. I'm also a sucker for anything that plays with convention or explores the relationship between the audience and the performers. If it has magical elements to it as well then that's pretty much it for me.

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

A:  In so many ways I feel like I'm still starting out myself so I'll just pass along the best advice that was given to me which is: cultivate discipline. Motivation comes and goes and waiting for it to make an appearance leaves you at its mercy. Setting aside a period of time each day, the same time if possible, to just sit down and write - no matter how you're feeling or what's going on - has helped me grow so much. That and setting aside one day a week to focus on submissions. And reading! Read a lot.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  

Shelter - A Play After Our Climate Changes will be running at The American Theater Of Actors in NYC June 15th through the 24th. Tickets are available here!

Severance will be read as part of the Dark Matter Series with the Navigator Theater Company at the Access Theater in NYC on June 12th at 8PM. Tickets are available here!

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I Interview Playwrights Part 949: Julia Specht

Julia Specht

Hometown:  Fitchburg, Massachusetts

Current Town:  Brooklyn, New York

Q:  Tell me about your EST marathon play.

A:  Two sisters are trying to bake a casserole for the funeral of a woman who was sort of a surrogate mother for them when they were growing up, but then their actual mom shows up and kind of barrels over the whole thing. So, it's about moms, and what it means to be a mom, and realizing that your kids lead separate lives from you. Family stuff! It's also about Massachusetts.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I've been super into faith and belief. Blame it on 2016 (blame everything on 2016), but toward the middle of last year I became really interested in the way that ideas become core to who we are, and how we respond when those ideas are threatened. Logic isn't a part of it, it's something deeper and more urgent.

So my next play is about a group of bigfooters (i.e. people who believe in and try to prove the existence of Bigfoot). Trying to track down evidence of sasquatch, and also justify decades of time and energy spent in the woods listening to rustling and looking for scat. It's called Patty.

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 maybe 12, my mom went on a crusade against wind turbines. She had a reason, I think - some neighbor was trying to install a turbine next to our house? It was going to be loud? She told me very solemnly that the birds were going to die. I don't know, my mother is not an eco-terrorist and that is not the point of this story.

She took me to an anti-wind-energy convention, because she is incredibly thorough about everything she undertakes, and it was full of real weirdos. Most of whom had exactly no opinions about wind-energy or turbines or anything of the sort.

There was one guy who looked about 50, and he was dressed in linen pants and a WWE shirt, and I remember he cornered me and talked to me about how turbines would deter UFOs from visiting and that would be a real shame because Fitchburg and Leominster were hot-beds for alien activity, regular alien tourist destinations. He talked for 40 minutes. Girls learn to sit still and be quiet at a young age, and so I sat and I listened to him yell about UFOs and I didn't say a word but I was fascinated by how much he cared. He cared more about the UFOs more than I had, to that point, ever seen a person care about anything.

There is a lot to unpack there.

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

A:  I mean, point A, the obvious answer, is make it less racist. I want more, higher quality jobs in theater for POC. I'm trying to do better with that in my own work, per Dominique Morisseau's recent points about specificity. Race is in everything and it's better to just look it straight in the face. Paul Beatty did an interview with the Paris Review a couple years ago that I use now to think about my work, too.

Point B, I'd make it more accessible. A lot of companies are doing great work with that already. Company One in Boston does incredible community outreach, lobby displays, and immersive dramaturgy. Their work is so strong and it's a shining example of accessible theatre. Gold Dust Orphans (another Boston company) also crushes at this. They pull in people who don't care about theatre at all. (Granted, it's easy for them because they write original drag musicals - who would not be 100% on board for that?)

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  So many people are smart and brave and I admire them immensely. Annie Baker writes plays I love. Lynn Nottage and Paula Vogel have stuck the fuck around through some nonsense and they're both my heroes for that.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Give me a good, satisfying story! That is all I care about.

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

A:

• Write. Write every day. I know, I know! It sucks. Do it anyway. Inspiration is fake. I am also 60% sure that writer's block is fake. You can always force yourself to type into a word doc for 20 minutes. Who knows, something might come of it.

• Submit stuff you're proud of. The popular advice is to submit as often as possible ("accrue 100 rejections a year!", shit like that), and sure, that's great, do that. But don't submit just to submit. Never send in first drafts. Love yourself and your work enough to edit brutally, to do 10 revisions, to make something that you feel is bullet-proof.
   
  • I don't say this because like, "if you edit more you won't be rejected as often" - you'll still get rejections, and a lot of them, and that's fine. Your work won't be for everybody, nor should it be. I say this because like, just imagine getting something that you half-assed accepted into a festival or whatever, and then you have to watch it rumble to life and it's awful and you hate it and you can't believe you let it out of your computer. THAT is the worst consequence of all.
  
  
• There is no such thing as "making it". Even if you win a bunch of prizes - think of the best writing prize in the world, even if you won that one - you will still be hustling to the next thing. It's the nature of the job. I recently bullied a novelist who just published her second book and has won a bunch of prizes into giving me advice, and she told me that "you're never done with beginner shit". There will always be another hurdle, and that's okay! Recognizing that removed a lot of stress for me - it means that you just are where you are, there's no ladder to climb, no one is fancier than you, we are all digging through the same problems every day.

• So, with the above advice in mind - envision what you want your life as a writer to look like on a daily basis. Imagine how you want your daily schedule to be, visualize your routine. And work toward making that happen. That should be the goal.

• Lastly - we're all going to die someday anyway, and people are going to forget our work, and that's pretty great because playwrights exist to be of their time! So like, have fun. Who cares. It's theater. Do stuff you like.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Come see this show! EST Marathon Series B. Not only is my show cool as heck, I'm lucky enough to be in the company of some other really great theater, so you're going to have a good night. It runs to Monday, June 26th
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I Interview Playwrights Part 948: Laura Stratford

Laura Stratford

Hometown: Belmont, Massachusetts (20 minutes west of Boston)

Current Town: Chicago, IL

Q:  Tell me about Number Nerds.

A:  Numbers Nerds is the story of four very different high school girls (and one boy) who love math for reasons as distinct as their personalities, and the challenges of overcoming their differences to succeed as a team. With the help of their under-employed drama-teacher-turned-janitor, they tackle stage fright, stereotypes, cliques, and college pressures as they journey from Waukesha, WI to New York for the National Math Championship. There are songs, for which I can't accept credit, and jokes, for which I can.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm working on a new musical about two sisters and a harp made from the breastbone of a murder victim and strung with her hair who attempt to discover and bring to justice the murderer. Some light musical fare.

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 is video evidence of me as a four-year-old running around my house for over an hour singing one continuous song about the adventures of Wendy and Peter Pan that I made up as I went along. Ever night before I fell asleep, for at least 18 years, I'd tell myself stories, usually based on movies I'd just seen or books I was reading, that would continue the story in what was essentially mental fan fiction. I've always loved telling stories, and incorporating music however possible.

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

A;  Funding for the arts. We have so many talented artists who just want to create new work and it is so challenging to make a living as an artist. Proper funding would also allow for more venues to participate in the development process, which, especially for a musical, is often long and intensive.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I'm an English major and a nerd myself, so Shakespeare has to be on the list. I love thinking about the hustle that the Queen's Men undertook, running their own theater while somehow also producing masterwork after masterwork. More currently, Tom Stoppard, Stephen Sondheim, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori, and future-best-friend Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I'm excited when I see theater that is uniquely theatrical--a piece that needs to be on stage and wouldn't work the same in another medium. I love the emotional intensity and connection that you get when a real human being, experiencing real emotions, is speaking or singing in the same room as you.

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

A:  Get started and give it a shot. Work with your friends. Do readings in your apartment, or in a park, or at a coffee shop with a friendly barista. Don't wait for someone to hand you an opportunity, because while you wait, other people are doing the work and learning and getting better. It's all make-believe, so go ahead and play, and even a little bit a day adds up over time.

Q:  Plugs, please.

A:  I have to shout out to my collaborators, Alex Higgin-Houser (lyrics), David Kornfeld (music), and Dylan MarcAurele (additional music). Numbers Nerds will be performing at the New York Musical Festival at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater from July 19th-23rd, and I'll be the tall brunette biting my fingernails in the back row. Also, anyone in Chicago should check out Underscore Theatre Company and the Chicago Musical Theatre Festival, for which I am Executive Director and Executive Producer, respectively.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 947: Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay

Photo by Nancy Musinguzi

Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay

Hometown:  Saint Paul

Current Town:  Saint Paul

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  For theater, I am further developing the second installment from the Kung Fu Zombieverse anthology of stage works. It's called Kung Fu Zombies vs Shaman Warrior and it examines mental health in a post apocalyptic world from the perspective of an Akha-Laotian woman. Through a Minnesota State Arts Board grant and a commission from the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center last year, I was able to focus on research and collaborate with a visual artist on a short animation for it. Fortunate to have received a Many Voices Fellowship from the Playwrights' Center this year to complete the work.

For my poetry life, I'm working on my Lao Survivors Project. I'll be interviewing ethnic Lao survivors of the Secret War in Laos, the Vietnam War's proxy war that was kept secret from U.S. Congress and the American people. From those interviews, I'll create poems. Then, working with a filmmaker, I'll produce video-poems. This particular project is being supported by a Loft Literary Center Spoken Word Immersion Fellowship and a VERVE Grant for Spoken Word Poets from Intermedia Arts.

Another very important poetry project is the Payne Avenue Poet Project. I will be spending my summer afternoons hanging out along Payne Avenue in Saint Paul to engage passer-by's and customers of our partner local businesses to develop a new body of work that celebrates Payne Avenue's people. The project will culminate in a block party-reception and feature posters of community poets and their poems.

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 had a fulfilled and balanced childhood. I helped my parents picked cucumbers in the few hours after dawn and then would get to explore the science museum with my parents later that day. I loved comic books, Saturday morning cartoons, Disney films, old Hong Kong martial arts films, anime, and Bill Nye the Science Guy. I read Isaac Asimov stories and was told Buddhist origins stories before bed time. I spoke three language growing up - and I'm thankful for that because it's helped me get an edge in poetry. So, I don't really have ONE story to tell to show how my aesthetic as a writer or person has been shaped.

I'm protective of my name, too. When I became naturalized as a U.S. citizen, I was asked if I wanted to change my name - probably to something more "American" - and I told her, "No." I also learned over the years to be patient with people who mispronounce my name and that I should take the few seconds needed to help them pronounce it correctly. My parents took almost two weeks after my birth to find my name. I can take five seconds to help someone pronounce it right.

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

A:  I'm still pretty new to theater. So far I've noticed two things: lack of diversity in acting pool and boring ass plays. I'd like to see more Asian American, specifically Southeast Asian Americans in theater. I would like for there to be a training program to cultivate new talent from those communities that are free of charge. I'd also like to see theaters and larger institutions to practice healthy risk-taking. Commission more new work from new voices. Theater Mu took a chance with me years ago with Kung Fu Zombies vs Cannibals. They invested two years of mentorship and resources to develop me, a newbie playwright with a story about the Lao people's history with war and trauma that was told through a Hip Hop score. As far as I know, I'm the only Lao American playwright in the U.S. (or at least in this region) and that is a huge disconnect, considering that there are approximately 246,000 Laotians in America.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I haven't found one yet.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that explores marginalized voices that are also written by those who are from marginalized communities. I don't believe in cultural or racial ventriloquism.

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

A:  Have a mentor. Take risks. Write the story you want to be told. Don't fear the consequences. Stay on the path. You will be shot down more times than you can spiritually handle but remain vigilant.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I'm the Fan Favorite Guest of Honor at this year's CONvergence. It's a science fiction convention.
http://www.convergence-con.org/guests/saymoukda-vongsay/

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I Interview Playwrights Part 946: Cary Gitter

Cary Gitter

Hometown: Leonia, New Jersey

Current Town: Astoria, New York

Q:  Tell me about your EST marathon play.

A:  My EST Marathon play, How My Grandparents Fell in Love, is about my paternal Jewish grandparents meeting and falling in love in Poland in 1933. My grandfather, Charlie, had immigrated to America in the ’20s, but he returned to the Old Country in search of a wife—and then he met my grandmother, Chava, who was working in a hat store. He ended up bringing her back to America with him, inadvertently saving her from the horrors of Nazi Europe. The play is a kind of immigrant romantic comedy set against a backdrop of oppression and fear. And the characters of my grandparents speak like contemporary American young people, with “likes” and slang and profanity. I was interested in using my grandparents’ story to reflect on the experience and struggles of immigrants in today’s world. The show is directed by the brilliant Colette Robert and features the dazzling duo of Eli Gelb and Lucy DeVito.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  Right now I’m working on a new full-length play, based on my Marathon one-act, called Hoboken 1953. My Marathon play, How My Grandparents Fell in Love, is about my grandparents meeting in Poland in the 1930s, and Hoboken 1953is set in Hoboken, New Jersey, and centers on their son, who’s based on my late father. It’s a romantic comedy-drama about immigrants and their children—and cultural clash—in 1950s America. We just had a reading of the first act at EST on May 30, directed by Colette Robert and featuring the dream cast of Lucy DeVito, Eli Gelb, Lou Liberatore, Shawn Randall, Patricia Randell, Jonathan Randell Silver, and Jennifer Tsay. With this piece, I’m excited by the opportunity to continue tracing my family’s history and using it to explore larger issues of identity and culture and assimilation in America.

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 a kid—4, 5, 6 years old—I had separation anxiety. I didn’t want to go to school and be away from my parents, and I would cry and scream and freak out about this on a regular basis. So my parents took me to see a child psychologist. I don’t remember much about our sessions except that the psychologist and I played games like pick-up sticks, and she would take me out to the backyard to feed her rabbits. Eventually, somehow, my separation anxiety went away, and I was able to go to school without a problem. But I think deep down I’ve still always had this fear of separation, this need for connection, this obsession with people not going away. And in some perverse, ironic act of self-punishment, I chose theater, the most ephemeral of art forms, as my craft. When you write a play, you put it up front of an audience, and then they go away every night. Eternal separation anxiety!

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

A:  I mean, hundreds of playwrights have already given this answer, but I’m going to join them: I would change the economics of theater. Exorbitant ticket prices make theater available only to the privileged few, so we keep seeing the same kinds of plays tailored to those audiences. And on the artistic side, the fact that hardly anyone can make a living solely as a theater artist is another huge problem. I know plenty of very intelligent people are aware of these issues, and I don’t pretend to have any solutions to them, but I’d love to see conversations continuing to happen about how we can change the model. The idea of an affordable, diverse, democratic American theater and a community of artists who can make enough money to live on is so exciting—especially in today’s troubled times, when we need good theater more than ever.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  God, I have many theatrical heroes, but here are a few of them: Annie Baker, Kenneth Lonergan, Stephen Adly Guirgis, August Wilson, Stephen Sondheim, the great Yiddish dramatists of the early 20th century. Also my incredibly talented fellow members of EST’s Youngblood program for emerging playwrights under 30, whose work consistently inspires and challenges me. And the two co-artistic directors of Youngblood, Graeme Gillis and RJ Tolan, are heroes of mine too. They’re wise mentors, wonderful friends, and two of the hardest-working men in show business. Without them I’d be nowhere, and I think a lot of young playwrights who’ve come of age at EST over the years would say the same thing.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  You know, this is kind of a weird answer, but lately I think I’m just most excited by theater that focuses on specific, complex characters who feel like living, breathing human beings. I guess I’m less interested at the moment in work that’s driven by intellectual conceits or theatrical cleverness. Especially in this political climate, which is so full of generalizations about whole groups of people, there seems to be something inherently radical in simply writing about individual humans with thought and care and precision. When I see a good play, I can almost always feel the love of the playwright for their characters. That humanity shines through. It may sound corny, but for me it’s true. Right now that’s the sort of writing that moves me the most: plays that eschew bells and whistles in favor of fashioning flesh-and-blood people.

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

A:

1. Write. Write as much as you can. Finish drafts. Always be on to the next play. 

2. See lots of theater. See stuff by your friends and not by your friends. Know what’s going on and what people are up to. 

3. Find an artistic community. It can be at a theater or in a writers’ group or wherever, but it’s so important to find people you’re simpatico with and know you’re not alone in the struggle.

4. Build relationships with directors. Directors who get your work can help you become a better writer and make your plays come alive. And they can also help you get your foot in the door at theaters.

5. Apply to everything: fellowships, residences, contests, development opportunities. Keep a master list of application deadlines and check them off. You’ll probably get accepted to one percent of the things you apply to, but that one percent could change your life. If you're under 30, apply to EST/Youngblood!

6. Don’t give up. You’re a playwright. The world just might not know it yet. But they will.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  There are three performances left of my play How My Grandparents Fell in Love in Series A of EST’s 36th Marathon of One-Act Plays, through June 5. They’re sold out, but there’s a wait list, and you stand a decent chance of getting in. And then you catch more fantastic one-act plays by writers both established and emerging in Series B and C, which run through June 30. Don’t miss them!

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I Interview Playwrights Part 945: Alex Riad

Alex Riad

Hometown:  Campbell, CA

Current Town:  Washington Heights in New York, NY

Q:  Tell me about The Floor is Lava:

A:  Lava started because I was having a real hard time going home. There's a routine about visiting your hometown, especially when you've moved so far away. For me it's family time during the day and drinking scotch with friends at night. Those two activities are very different, but they have one thing in common: everyone constantly investigating your success and happiness with a simple question: "How are you doing?" In college it was easy; I was a straight A student. My first couple years in New York were simple too; I could successfully pay my rent and I was writing. But after those first few years, life in New York started to feel like walking up a down escalator. I could be honest with my family for the most part, but when I was having scotch with friends at night it was just so much easier to lie because that question became so difficult: "How are you doing?" The Floor is Lava is about being asked that question and feeling completely hollow, while you lie and say amazing. It's about struggling to overcome your own pride and be honest with the people you love. It's about trying to be happy with where you are and what you actually want. Then I mixed social media into this exploration because no other technological invention has had more to do with answering the question: "How are you doing?"

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I’m tackling two writing projects on top this production. One is a first draft of a new play about a former political activist preparing for Armageddon because he believes Donald Trump became president to save America from an asteroid. The second is a Web Series I co-wrote with Molly Collier (one of the actors in Lava) entitled “What Am I Doing Here?”, which focuses on a young woman and all the terrible side jobs she juggles, while trying to make it as an actor in New York. We just finished writing the first season and will be going into pre-production soon.

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

A:  When I was in junior high, I went to some Christian youth group’s rafting retreat because I had a crush on the girl who played the flute at my friend’s church. Being isolated in the woods with a bunch of religious people for a week is enough to brainwash any twelve year old, so I came back home “saved” (I’ve never seen my mother so disappointed). I continued to be saved for another two weeks until I was discussing heaven and hell with this woman who ran the church bible study. She said anyone who hears “the good news,” but doesn’t become a Christian will go straight to hell when they die. I brought up a variety of non-Christian, dead activists like Malcolm X and Gandhi, asking if they were in hell despite all the good they did for the world. She answered with a resounding and heartless “Yes.” I stopped having faith in God from that point on and decided I would just have faith in people, which I think is at the core of everything I write. I don’t believe any one thing can damn or save a person; people aren’t black and white. However, I found out later in life that Gandhi was a terrible human, so maybe she wasn’t totally wrong.

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

A:  Ticket prices. I’m really tired of seeing primarily silver haired, wealthy, white audiences when I go see a play Off or on Broadway. The audiences in New York should be just as diverse as the rest of the city and making tickets accessible to the average person is the first step in making that happen. I am the biggest fan of both Signature and Rattlestick theaters because not only are they producing challenging plays, but they make a point of providing affordable tickets for these productions.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  When I first started writing I would always say Arthur Miller and David Mamet: Miller for structure and Mamet for dialogue. But since moving to New York, I’ve gravitated most to contemporary playwrights that capture real life and people with hyper-accuracy. I look up to Annie Baker the most right now because she specializes in turning the mundane into gut wrenching tragedy by using sincere naturalism. Also, the fact that she has created and continues to create such meaningful work at such a young age really inspires me.

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

A:  Find a community. Actors, directors, technicians, and writers with whom you want to work and hangout. I did Labyrinth Theater Company’s Intensive Ensemble right before I moved to New York. Six years later, I can trace every friend, colleague, and opportunity I’ve had in the city from that artist retreat. In fact, early on in the process of developing Lava, if it weren’t for some actor friends from Lab conducting an impromptu reading of an unfinished draft when we were hanging at a bar one night, I might not have finished the play because I was on the verge of scrapping it. Also, The Farm Theater is producing Lava because Padraic Lillis (the Artistic Director) has been my mentor ever since I finished the Lab Intensive. There are so many ways to find your community. You could volunteer with a theatre company that excites you. You could participate in a playwriting program or group. You could go to an artist retreat out in the woods like me. Once you find your people, nurture those connections and always branch out to make more. You’ll create great art and feel fulfilled while doing it.

Q:  Plugs, please: 

A:  My play The Floor is Lava will be presented at the Planet Connections Theatre Festivity, June 15-July 8. Visit www.thefarmtheater.org for more info!

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