I Interview Playwrights Part 993: Bert V. Royal

Bert V. Royal

Hometown: Green Cove Springs, FL

Current Town: Los Angeles, CA

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Mostly floating around the TV space with a few pilots. One is with Legendary Television and the other is with the Mark Gordon Company and they’re both in development. Still trying to get the ‘Dog Sees God’ movie up and running. Theatre-wise, I just started writing a play that I’m really into. I recently watched an old season of ‘Big Brother’ and I became fascinated with Dan Gheesling. The play imagines a fictitious version of him on a fictitious reality show and a very disturbing (fictitious) event happens…

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 in fourth grade, I decided to write a novel. This is really embarrassing. It was called ‘Slipping Into the Subconscious’ and I think it was about a guy who couldn’t tell if he was dreaming or not and someone got murdered and it was really bad and made absolutely no sense and clocked in at a whopping fourteen pages (handwritten). Typed, probably would’ve been six and a half. I was convinced it was going to be published. AS A NOVEL. Truly convinced. I was a very unique type of child. I still to this day and am delusional about certain projects.

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

A:  I think audiences can be insufferably rude. If someone talks in a theater during a live performance, I want them to be decapitated in public. So, to answer your question, I’d be the only person in the audience.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Stephen Sondheim is my everything. I love him more than anyone will ever comprehend. Also, Doug Wright is an absolute genius. The scope of that man’s talents are unfathomable.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I really love musicals - but I tend to gravitate to more intimate ones, i.e. First Lady Suite and First Daughter Suite (perfection!), Floyd Collins, Caroline or Change (does it get any better?). I love plays that tend to border on the absurd. And I’m really getting into the immersive theater thing.

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

A:  It’s so important to hear your stuff out loud. Even unfinished - maybe ESPECIALLY unfinished. Get a group of great friends and read it around your coffee table with wine. It helps you find your rhythm and it’s always good to listen to feedback from people you trust. You shouldn’t always just take everyone’s notes. But it’s a good thing to listen.

Q:  When not writing on a computer, what's your go-to paper and writing utensil? When on computer, what's your font?

A:  I really don’t write on paper anymore, because I’m a loser. I can never find a pen. It’s a comedy when it happens. TRAJAN PRO is the greatest font ever created.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Yeah. I say that all the time. Balding sucks.

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Jack and Jill Plays - Part 29 - Persistence

About Jack and Jill Plays:

This is a new thing I'm doing.  Posting a short play every day as long as I can.  This does not mean that I wrote this play today but I might have.  (My life is not always my own what with work and a 4 year old running around so maybe I wrote it today or maybe it was stockpiled in preparation for the days I can't get in writing.)  My goal is to do at least 100 of these or maybe more but probably 45 or 50 is the length of a full length play so even that would be good.  100 would be better.  300?  amazing.  500?  Does anyone want 500 of these plays?  Anyway, the goal is consecutive days.

The normal things about plays apply-- don't produce or reproduce this play without my permission.  I wrote it so I own it.  Etc.

Persistence
by Adam Szymkowicz

(JACK pushes a lawnmower onstage. He pulls the cord to try and start it. It won't start. He pulls again and again and again and again. It doesn't start. He pulls again and again and again and again. This goes on for a long time. Much more time than is reasonable. JANE enters and watches. She exits. She returns with a lawn chair and popcorn. She eats popcorn, watches. Opens a cooler, drinks a beer. He keeps trying. She exits again, carrying a tiny plastic kiddie pool. She exits again. Enters with a hose. She exits again. We hear the water turn on. She sits again, puts her feet in the pool. Sits back. Eats and drinks. All this time, he has been trying to start the lawnmower. After a while he looks up.)

JANE
Beer?

(JACK gets a beer out of the cooler, takes a long drink.)

JANE
What do you think?

JACK
I'm going to keep trying.

JANE
Mmm.

(JACK goes back to trying to start it. JANE watches.)

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I Interview Playwrights Part 992: Carson Kreitzer

Carson Kreitzer

Hometown:  Hmmm… I guess Highland Falls, New York? That’s mostly were I grew up, though we moved around quite a bit. My parents still live there.

Current Town:  Minneapolis. And New York as much as I can.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  TIMEBOMB, a climate change play, for A.R.T. LEMPICKA, a big epic historical musical with composer Matt Gould and director Rachel Chavkin, inspired by the life of art deco artist Tamara de Lempicka. CAPITAL CRIME!, a Brechtian play with songs about income inequality and the devouring of young girls. And a piece about Marathon Dancing, which is a collaboration with a choreographer for the History Theater in St. Paul.

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

A:  Once, on a cross-country car trip (possibly one of those moves…), we stopped at a rest area with lots of broken up gray landscape rock. I spotted a fossil, a tiny shell, a slightly darker imprint in the sea of gray rock. My mother was delighted. She said, “Good eyes!” That really stuck with me. And even in the moment, it felt like, Yes, that is who I am. That is a useful skill I can bring to the world. I pick up on little details. I see things other people might walk by without noticing. And I think a lot of my work does involve that drive to find the overlooked, often from a feminist perspective. To re-tell history from a different viewpoint, maybe a viewpoint that’s a little closer to the ground. My parents still have that rock somewhere.

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

A:  One thing? Ooof. Can I say Money? That involves the gatekeeping at the production level, and also at the audience level. And of course what artists get paid. I would love more opportunities to see work produced, and learn from that. And I would love to be in a profession where I can afford to keep up with the important work in my chosen profession, i.e., buy tickets to the shows I want to see. The whole thing is so crazy.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  This could get so long… a short list for today: Stephen Sondheim. Caryl Churchill. Suzan-Lori Parks. Paula Vogel. Taylor Mac. In roughly chronological order of influence.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that takes my breath away, at least once in the evening. Something that cracks open what it means to be human. I would rather see a flawed but exciting piece than a well-crafted, ‘safe’ work, that wraps everything up neatly. I like being asked to think, rather than told what to think.

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

A:  See a lot of theater. Find what you love. Try to figure out how they did it. And make sure you’re seeking out the boldly theatrical, which is in shorter and shorter supply these days.

For playwrights starting out now, I’d also say… try TV. There is so much interesting work happening there, and I hear you actually get paid. To work in theater, you really have to be in love with it. There are so many reasons to leave. I’m hooked. It’s too late for me.

Q:  When not writing on a computer, what's your go-to paper and writing utensil? When on computer, what's your font?

A:  I’m pretty obsessed with Muji notebooks. And a nice, flow-y uni-ball pen, medium line. And I’m unnaturally attached to my Helvetica.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Well, if you’re in the Twin Cities, come see DANCE TILL YOU DROP, about the Dance Marathon craze, with choreography by Regina Peluso… that’s at the History Theater in St. Paul in March. And stay tuned for more about LEMPICKA soon...

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Jack and Jill Plays - Part 28 - About The Music

About Jack and Jill Plays:

This is a new thing I'm doing.  Posting a short play every day as long as I can.  This does not mean that I wrote this play today but I might have.  (My life is not always my own what with work and a 4 year old running around so maybe I wrote it today or maybe it was stockpiled in preparation for the days I can't get in writing.)  My goal is to do at least 100 of these or maybe more but probably 45 or 50 is the length of a full length play so even that would be good.  100 would be better.  300?  amazing.  500?  Does anyone want 500 of these plays?  Anyway, the goal is consecutive days.

The normal things about plays apply-- don't produce or reproduce this play without my permission.  I wrote it so I own it.  Etc.


About The Music
by Adam Szymkowicz

(YOUNG JILL and OLDER JILL on opposite sides of the stage.  They both are playing guitars.  YOUNG JILL is learning some chords.  OLDER JILL is repeating the chords but in a virtuosic way.  They play apart and then together and then apart and then together.  It ends up sounding quite good.)

OLDER JILL VOICE OVER
Rocking Rick, I'm honored you're interviewing me for Billboard and Rolling Stone and The New Yorker and The Times and Variety and Vanity Fair and Entertainment Weekly.

RICK VOICEOVER
(this is actually JILL doing a man's voice.  It should be easy to tell this.)
Completely my pleasure, Jill.  So tell me how did your career in the music industry start?

OLDER JILL VOICE OVER
It's over twenty five years ago now and over sixty albums.  I guess I picked up a guitar and I just never put it down.  I would write a song and then another and then another.  Not all of them were exactly what I wanted them to be but I just kept going, you know.

RICK VOICEOVER
And yet you've never played live and never let anyone listen to any of your music.

OLDER JILL VOICE OVER
That's true.  I guess that's true.

RICK VOICEOVER
Why now?

OLDER JILL VOICE OVER
Well, I'm not sure I'm going to release it into the wild as it were.  I'm not sure about this, Rick.  But I think I wrote an album that is a masterpiece and there might be one song there that is a transcendent song and I guess I want to put it out there so that people can tear it apart on the internet.

RICK VOICEOVER
Sure.  Sure.

OLDER JILL VOICE OVER
And also I'm dying.  I'm not sure how much longer I have left.  Could be weeks.  Not long.  And I think, maybe before I go, I should you know, put myself out there.  Or maybe I'll wait, Rick, maybe I'll try to get someone to do it after I die.

RICK VOICEOVER
You mean Jack?

OLDER JILL VOICE OVER
Maybe Jack.  Or maybe Jack can find someone or maybe someone else.  I don't know.  Maybe it isn't even about the audience.  Maybe it's just about making the music you know?  Maybe it doesn't even matter.

RICK VOICEOVER
It matters.  I think it matters.

(JILL AND YOUNG JILL's playing reaches a crescendo and then cuts out abruptly.)


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I Interview Playwrights Part 991: Dustin Chinn

Dustin Chinn

Hometown: Seattle, WA

Current Town: New York, NY in Mahattan’s Chinatown. Where They assigned me.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Three different plays. The latest is a first draft that imagines the life of German boardgame designers in the ‘90s as if they all hung out like the French Impressionists or punks in 1970s NYC. My main inspiration is Klaus Teuber who went on to create the Settlers of Catan while employed as a dental hygienist.

I have a residency this November where I’ll be workshopping SNOWFLAKES, a piece that takes place in the 23rd century where white people are classified as endangered and protected by the federal government. Two of them are brought to the Museum of Natural History in Neuva New York as historical reenactors when all hell breaks loose.

The third play is COLONIALISM IS TERRIBLE, BUT PHO IS DELICIOUS which I wrote during my time at the Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep. It’s a triptych that examines food politics through the lens of Vietnamese noodles in Hanoi in 1890, Ho Chi Minh City in 1999 and present day gentrifying Brooklyn.

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

A:  In 3rd grade my teacher posted a chart on that wall that laid out the rotating schedule of Physical Education (P.E.), Music and Science and asked the class, “Can anyone tell me what P-M-S stands for?”

With a raised hand and yelled “I know! I know! Premenstrual syndrome!” which caused the teacher to double over and the rest of the kids to stare in utter confusion. I must have overheard premenstrual syndrome from a drug commercial but otherwise had no idea what it meant. Or did I have a sense that it was something we kids weren’t supposed to know?

It must have been the talk of the teachers’ lounge, because one of them came up to Mom as she picked me up, cackling “Do you know what your son said?” I don’t remember getting in trouble, probably due to the sheer entertainment value.

I also learned you can bomb horrifyingly in the moment but still have an impact beyond the room. All you need is to reach one person.

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

A:  I’d funnel the resources for revivals of dead artists and plays set in the living rooms of rich people who hate each other to subsidize the production of fresh voices.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Admins, stage managers, sound/lighting/set/costume designers and other production staff who remain the sanest people in the community. As for playwrights:

Katori Hall for OUR LADY OF KIBEHO.

Taylor Mac for the chunk of A 24-DECADE HISTORY OF POPULAR MUSIC I managed to catch.

I once traumatized a dinner table of fellow tourists on an Australian dive boat when I tried to explain Jennifer Haley’s THE NETHER.

Qui Nguyen for managing to transport his geek aesthetic from the sweaty lofts of Brooklyn to uptown Manhattan and fine colleges across the country.

Mac Rogers for his HONEYCOMB TRILOGY, because it disproves so much of what detractors think of genre fiction.

Lloyd Suh for his monologues.

Mfoniso Udofia is in the midst a 9-play cycle about a slice of the Nigerian diaspora in America. In addition to her endurance, she might be the most hilarious writer I’ve ever met who doesn’t tell any jokes.

Peter Schaffer for AMADEUS, because that play had every accolade heaped upon it in London and New York, a culture-changing movie adaptation and homeboy still wasn’t satisfied with it.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Whenever I feel uninspired I head over to the 52nd Street Project. Their introductory Playmaking shows are some of the best in the city, where professional adult actors perform verbatim the scripts of kids around 10 years old. The young playwrights may not know all the rules yet, but they’re aware of everything else, and usually don’t have time for polite stillness. I’ve seen interpretations of sports at the Five Angels Theater (namely table tennis and basketball) that have never been equaled on stage.

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

A:  

1. Immerse yourself in a hobby or side project that isn’t tied directly to theater, and by extension TV and film. Something that won’t break your heart.

2. Criticism and feedback are two different animals. You are free to ignore both, but it’s healthier to recognize and address feedback.

3. If you feel pressured to get a beverage at the bar or restaurant but don’t want to imbibe/spend much, order soda and bitters. It looks like a “real” drink, is genuinely refreshing and shouldn’t cost more than a Coke.

Q:  When not writing on a computer, what's your go-to paper and writing utensil?  When on computer, what's your font?

A:  I carry two MUJI products: a small lined notebook and 0.5mm gel ink ballpoint pen to jot notes, ideas and lines. My font is Times New Roman because I’m a lazy creature of habit who often relies on factory settings.

Q:  Plugs, please: 

A:  Social handles:

@Madletters

You should also follow the exploits of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab, both active and alumni members. A. Rey Pamatmat, Mike Lew (and previously Rehana Lew Mirza) have cultivated a roster that is killing the game right now in terms of artistry and advocacy. They are also brilliant writers in their own right. Guess I better revise my list of theatrical heroes.

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