Adam Szymkowicz

May 29, 2019

I Interview Playwrights Part 1041: Bryan Stubbles

Bryan Stubbles

Hometown: Layton, Utah

Current Town: Montgomery, West Virginia

Q: What are you working on now?

A: A one act comedy about West Virginians in LA going through “slaw dog withdrawal.” West Virginians put a form of cole slaw and chili on their hot dogs and call it a slaw dog. It’s delicious but not very common in LA, obviously.

I want to thank Beach Vickers and Tory Casey of the Montgomery Shakespeare Company for inviting me out here for a residency.

And I have to post twice per week on my blog, Unknown Playwrights.

Q: Tell me about Unknown Playwrights.

A: The blog features playwrights not named “Shakespeare.” We try to profile both living and dead playwrights whose work may not be so well-known. Usually I’ll do an analysis of a couple plays and a biographical sketch. For living playwrights, we have an interview much like your blog. I’m big on translation and need to include more of them in the blog. I’ve translated Spanish, Portuguese and Korean-language playwrights and hopefully soon will profile an Indonesian playwright, among others.

Also, every Monday we have “Monologue Monday” where I find videos online of people performing a different monologue. People can see different takes on the piece of writing. In fact we have two of yours up. Sometimes the videos can number into the dozens.

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’m not sure if high school counts as childhood, but this explains a lot: When I was in my first high school play back in Utah, they’d always have their Mormon-style prayer before performances. Not being Mormon and also believing in separation of church and state, I never took part.

After the production, one of the other cast members asked me why I wasn’t at the cast party.

“What party?” I asked.

They’d had a cast party and didn’t even invite me.

A couple of years ago I tried to objectively determine what themes are hardwired into my plays and I noticed that the protagonist is often an outsider and I’m certain that goes back to my formative years in Utah where kids would tell me my family worshipped Satan (we didn’t - maybe we should have?), among other things. People can be very, very, very cruel (also reflected in my plays).

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

A: American theater needs to take more risks, be more inclusive, make itself accessible and not be so self-important. Wait, that’s four things. Sorry. American theater should not be the self-satisfied sedate behemoth it currently is, but should instead be a wonderful, hungry, innovative and dynamic monster.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Angelina Weld Grimké. Kwee Tek Hoay. Matthew Weaver. Alexa Derman. Catherine Weingarten. Ryan Bultrowicz. Yolanda Mendiveles. Georgia Bowen Buchert. Lope de Vega. Dhianita Kusuma Pertiwi.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Horror plays. The world needs way more horror plays. It’s a genre that should inherently fit theatre (as it did with Grand Guignol) but there barely seems to be any horror plays around.

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

A: Not just write every day, but also submit every day or at least on a regular basis. Empathize with and be kind to your fellow playwrights. We’re all in the same boat.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: Blog: Unknown Playwrights

Production: I Was a Teenage Fireworks Smuggler will run in Jackson, WY from June 5-8.

Translation publication: Night Market for Brojo by Dhianita Kusuma Pertiwi

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May 28, 2019

I Interview Playwrights Part 1040: Susan Kim

Susan Kim

Hometown: Midtown Manhattan... as a matter of fact, I was born one block east of EST.

Current Town: 40 blocks south.

Q: Tell me about your play in the EST Marathon.

A: It's a 10-minute play called "Privilege" that that I hope is sharp, funny, and a little bit scary.

Q: What else are you working on now?

A: I write a lot of children's TV and just finished story editing a series for Netflix. I also write books with my husband, Laurence Klavan; and he and I are developing a graphic novel pitch.

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 was at a slumber party when I was 11 when it dawned on me that even though I wasn't especially smart or strong or pretty, I could always draw the entire room when I told ghost stories or jokes.

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

A: I wish there were a hundred more venues and productions of all sizes and budgets -- so getting a new play up wouldn't be such a huge deal.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Wow. Caryl Churchill, obviously... she's a goddess. And when I was a teenager, Edward Albee.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I love the Play Company -- they do really interesting work in translation from around the world.

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

A: Get used to rejection. Be nice to everyone. And make sure you find a group of playwright friends whom you like and whose work you respect.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: Ummm... come see my play, please? It's a killer cast!

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May 25, 2019

I Interview Playwrights Part 1039: Shairi Engle

Shairi Engle

Hometown: Born in Cortland, NY.

However, now that any temperature below 68℉ requires my winter gear, I can safely call San Diego my hometown.

Current Town: San Diego, CA

Q: Congrats on the Bridge Award. Tell me about that play please.

A: Thank you, Adam! I’m so honored to be receiving this award and, to be frank, still processing the fact that Mr. Driver read the title of my play - out loud.

The seeds of this play started while I participated in an intensive PTSD therapy program through the VA. I needed, truly needed, to explore my own strength and power and the idea of being ‘broken’. I have difficulty with the words ‘healing’ or ‘survivor’ because they seem to cut the conversation short. With each iteration of myself, every stretch of growth, there’s a renegotiating of power that takes place between me and my abuser. It’s a relationship that evolves and shifts. I wanted to ask: What does it mean to be a survivor? I wanted to have a conversation about it … outside of my therapist’s office. I also wanted to be able to laugh while doing it.

This play is a story about pain, trauma, rape, breathing, therapy, shame, PTSD, the occasional dead dog, and what it means to survive. All presented in a small little package. The package in this case being a tampon. Oh, and it’s called Tampons, Dead Dogs, & Other Disposable Things. (I know, I know …)

Q: What else are you working on now?

A: AITAF is generously organizing a reading of my play. It’s a difficult story for me to work on, but this recent acknowledgment has emboldened me to dig deeper. It’s always easier to go into dark spaces if you know someone else is there with an extra flashlight. I’m looking forward to workshopping this. I’m really grateful to have this support.

I’m also working on a short story inspired by a summer I spent on my dangerously old and unkept sailboat by the name of La Diabla. No tampons in this one. So far.

Earlier this year, I received my first commission to write a 10-minute site specific play for the Without Walls Festival here in San Diego. I screamed in my car when I got this offer (in the good way). The play is being held this fall in a location very close to the San Diego Airport departure corridor; sound is an interesting challenge. But there’s the story you set out to write and then the story you uncover while writing that original idea. So now I’m getting the bones together for a story inspired by my time in the USAF as an Air Traffic Controller. This will feed into a full length play one day - I’m pretty excited about this one.

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

A: Oh man, you asked me to tell a story - about my childhood. Alarms are going off in my head - which means I’m going to answer your question.

Growing up, I was surrounded by people that made connections with God. God was connected to a sunny day, a blooming flower, the tragic car crash … you get it. God found his way into everything and made sense of it all.

I was taught, in order to maintain this connection to God, you had to swear off homosexuality, premarital sex, and Madonna. Madonna was the Devil’s attempt to lure me away from divine connectivity. I was young, but I knew I was God’s child. I knew this because I loved sunny days and flowers. I didn’t seek out secular music. And I understood that there was a reason for everything. Everything.

But when I was 8, my connection was cut short by a man that showed me almost daily what hypocrisy, pain, and hatred looked like. I was cut loose to float aimlessly around a broken home struggling to convince the world otherwise.

So, I made my own connections. Through anything and everything. I built my own stories to explain the sunny days, the flowers, and eventually, car crashes. These stories connected me to the world. It wasn’t God I subscribed to - it was something else.

Eventually I found Madonna. Then I found my way out of that house. Then I found art. Then writing. Then theatre. Then a group of writing veterans willing to keep me at their table. I found my voice. Then, I found an iteration of myself I could finally stomach. A moment of security in uncertainty. Right now.

I’ll reread this answer in a moment and say, “this doesn’t totally explain me!” But I’ll send it to you anyway. And maybe, somewhere between ‘Oh man’ and ‘uncertainty’, we’ll find the tiniest hint of connection.

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

A: Besides making it free for the public and a decent living for theatre professionals everywhere?

Theatre is pretty much like an intimidatingly beautiful person I admired from afar. It took me a long time to conjure up enough courage to go introduce myself. I’m happy to report, we’ve started getting serious. Really serious. But, we still have a lot to learn about one another. Ask me again when we’ve reached the 7 year itch.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: My favorite moments are when I’m made to question some part of myself. I love moments that really turn me upside down and give me an idea or a question I can’t shake.

But really the truth is, I’m just excited to have a seat. There’s no sign of that changing for me.

Every discounted, full-price, preview, free-only-on-wed-and-thur-afternoon, or standby ticket I get is a permission slip.

Even if a show falls short of expectation or doesn’t fully land with me, I still walk out having seen a group of people examine a question that’s been asked by a writer. I know I’m going to walk out of that theatre with renewed permission to use my own voice, however weird, silly, or painful. Every permission slip I get is another chance to see what’s possible. It excites me to no end.

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

A: I don’t feel qualified to give advice. (Do we ALL say this?)

I’m just starting out, really.

But, I’ll share the things I tell myself in the bathroom mirror:

Write. As honestly as you can until dishonesty turns out to be the more honest angle.

Read other people’s work as often as you can.

See other people’s work as often as you can.

Read your sh*t out loud.

Ask people to read for you. Pay with beer if you must.

That one part that feels icky and cliche? Dig at it like a scab until it bleeds something authentic. Apply Neosporin, a bandaid, and keep working.

That moment when you question yourself as a storyteller, artist, or human? It’s a part of the process. Keep writing. You have work to do.

Oh, P.S. Don’t take advice from strangers. (We all say that too, huh?)

Q: Plugs, please:

A: If you find yourself in San Diego, come see VAMP, a monthly showcase of storytellers put on by a local literary non-profit, So Say We All. This show is one of SD’s best kept secrets held in a dark, cash only bar. VAMP is an at-capacity-listen-in-through-the-windows type of show.

It’s a beautiful, often hilarious, and continuously surprising event that focuses on voices that really need to be heard. Anyone can submit to this and the selected writers are not chosen for their understanding of grammar but for their STORY. This experience has changed many lives, including mine. To learn more go to: sosayweallonline.com

Oh, and if you’re in NYC October 7th, The Public (thank you thank you thank you) is holding a staged reading of TAMPONS, DEAD DOGS, & OTHER DISPOSABLE THINGS.

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May 23, 2019

I Interview Playwrights Part 1038: Daniel Damiano

Daniel Damiano

Hometown: Point Pleasant, NJ

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q: Tell me about your play in the EST Marathon.

A: The Lepers focuses on two recovering alcoholics at a diner in NYC, as they attempt to keep each other's spirits up at the onset of the new year, in January 2017.

Q: What else are you working on now?

A: I just finished a draft of a new full-length play called John Frederick Parker Leaves at Intermission, which centers on the man responsible for guarding President Lincoln the night that he was assassinated. I'm also in preparations for bringing my solo play, American Tranquility, to DC in July as part of the Capital Fringe Festival.

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

A: While I embrace the variety of work being done at all levels of the theatre, when it comes to the more established professional theatre companies, I feel that there should be more focus on quality work by playwrights (of any age and gender) who may not be established names in the professional theatre world. I find that many plays are done for their topicality and not as much for their quality, and also feel that older playwrights (who are not already well-known) deserve to have more opportunities, which I'm not really seeing, especially in New York City.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, John Cassavetes, August Wilson, Henrik Ibsen, Neil Simon, Anne Sexton (she was primarily a poet, of course, but I have found the depth of her work theatrically inspirational.)

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Anything that has some depth, be it dramatic, comedic, surreal, absurd, et al. I love all styles of theatre. I particularly like things that can sustain themselves to the end, and not tread water.

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

A: Know that you cannot make a living writing plays. Know that as good as you may be, you may never win the contests, awards, fellowships or have an agent. Only do it if you are really passionate about storytelling via playwriting, and are not merely looking at it as a gateway to writing for TV. Write with the goal of your work being performed. Lastly, don't be satisfied with just having your work done by anyone; take pride in your work and encourage communication with your director.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: My wife and I's little theatre company, fandango 4 Art House, will be bringing my solo-play, American Tranquility, to Washington, D.C. where it will run for 5 performances in July as part of the Capital Fringe Festival. The play focuses on the human divide in 21st Century America from the perspective of 4 very different Americans and focuses, in a very humorous, unsettling and moving way, on themes ranging from ageism, immigration, political extremism to societal disconnection. Tickets will be available in June at http://www.CapitalFringe.org.

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May 22, 2019

Now Published!!

Kodachrome

Cast 5-16 (min 3F 2M)

Welcome to Colchester, a small town where everybody knows each other and the pace of life allows the pursuit of love to take up as much space as it needs. Our tour guide is Suzanne, the town photographer, who lets us peek into her neighbors’ lives to catch glimpses of romance in all its stages of development. A play about love, nostalgia, the seasons and how we learn to say goodbye.

M ercy

(3M, 1F)

Orville is trying to get on with his life after his wife was killed in a car accident. His father is mostly taking care of his still unnamed infant daughter while his boss at work is aggressively trying to comfort him. Everything changes when he sees the man responsible for his wife's death. Is someone in this much pain capable of forgiveness?

Collect them all

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I Interview Playwrights Part 1037: Bob Clyman

Bob Clyman

Hometown: Bronx, NY

Current Town: North Caldwell, Nj

Q: Tell me about To She Who Waits.

A: It's about a mother-daughter relationship that may or may not have been damaged beyond repair. When the mother, Meg, left her husband, Jack, three years ago, she agreed to leave their 13-year-old daughter, Hannah, to stay with him briefly, while she found a job and a place for them to live. However, during those three years, Jack and their increasingly extreme religious community have kept her from seeing Hannah. Now that Jack has died, after making the church Hannah's legal guardian, Meg finally has a good lawyer, who is dedicated to fighting the church's encroachment on parental rights and convinces the judge to order 12 visits for Meg with Hannah. But to have any shot at getting custody, Meg will have to convince her now 16-year-old, openly hostile daughter, who adamantly believes that Meg abandoned her, to leave the only life she has known, her church family and the place they've been waiting, certain that God will come for them any day, in order to move to a secular world, where the only person she'll know is the mother who left her behind.

Q: What else are you working on now?

A: I've started writing a play about Doomsday Preppers. As with To She Who Waits and just about everything else I write, I get tremendous pleasure from taking on a subculture that baffles and troubles me, in the hope that I'll be able to understand its members better and write a play that even they would consider fair.

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 sort of an answer. Like a lot of kids who either become psychologists or playwrights (I became both), I found myself both deeply disturbed and endlessly fascinated by the impassioned conflicts that would suddenly arise among the people I knew growing up. When I hear people discussing a play, they often seem concerned with whether and how much the characters changed, clearly equating greater change with more successful drama. And I can see why they would think that. But coming from my own early awareness of conflict, I feel particularly interested in characters who do everything possible not to change, even when advantages of change are obvious, even to them.

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

A: A living wage would be nice.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: I've always been drawn to British playwrights. While they obviously don't have a monopoly on this, so many of them seem undaunted by the challenge of dramatizing complex, layered subjects, whether philosophical or political, which they're able to handle with crisp, pointed economy while still managing to be funny as hell. Out of those writers, the few who are also highly theatrical and freakishly inventive, like Caryl Churchill, are the ones I usually go back to, when I need someone more inspiring than me to inspire me.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Plays in which I can't afford to stop paying attention for even a second, because every word counts. The kind of dramatic questions that fascinate me are usually ethical in nature and essentially unanswerable. For instance, what is it about good intentions that the road to hell always seems to be paved with them? If we need to make a decision, and the consequences of making the wrong one could be disastrous, how can we know we're making the right one, when we never have either enough information or time in which to make it. And if we're doomed to always be making our most important under these impossible conditions, how are we supposed to take comfort that we at least made them with a good heart and the best intentions once we've recognized our nearly boundless capacity for self-deception?

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

A: It's very hard to get large cast plays produced these days. If you need to write a large cast play, because that's the only form your dramatic vision can satisfyingly take, then by all means, write large cast plays. But remind yourself from time to time that there are genuine pleasures in the art of compression and make every extra character you add to your new plays defend his or her right to exist.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: To She Who Waits will be performed at Shetler Studios, Theatre 54 at 244 West 54th Street, 12th floor. It will run from Thursday, May 23 through Saturday, June 8. To buy tickets, go to www.brownpapertickets.com or call 800-838-3006.

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Adam Szymkowicz

Featured Post

1100 Playwright Interviews

May 29, 2019

I Interview Playwrights Part 1041: Bryan Stubbles

May 28, 2019

I Interview Playwrights Part 1040: Susan Kim

May 25, 2019

I Interview Playwrights Part 1039: Shairi Engle

May 23, 2019

I Interview Playwrights Part 1038: Daniel Damiano

May 22, 2019

Now Published!!

I Interview Playwrights Part 1037: Bob Clyman

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