cross-posted to Samuel French's Blog
John Minigan
Hometown: Beverly, Mass.
Current Town: Framingham, Mass. Sad that I'm still in Massachusetts? I guess it's sad.
Q: Tell me about your OOB play:
A: I almost never write to prompts, but two summers ago, I saw a call for superhero plays (I had none) and for noir plays (also, none). So I ignored the calls and worked on other projects. And The Maltese Walter popped
suddenly into my head, completely. It's been an adventure. In a little
over 18 months, it's had something like 15 productions on three
continents. I'm super-excited to be in the Sam French Festival--last
time was 29 years ago--and to work with Hey Jonte! Productions, the
group that did a great production of a full-length of mine at the NY
Fringe last summer. They are fabulous. Every playwright should be so
lucky.
Q: What else are you working on now?
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: I'm
a high school theater teacher, so other than devised pieces with my
students, my production schedule only allows time to write in the
summer, two months a year, but I write feverishly then. I have two
full-length projects in various stages this summer: Little Ant Renovation, a
sort of magical-realist-kitchen-sink play about what becomes of the
immigrant families a couple of generations after coming over, and The Queen of Sad Mischance, about a the relationship between a college student and her boss, a Shakespeare scholar losing her memory.
Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
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 one of four kids in my family, much younger than my three older
siblings. One afternoon when I was about 10, I found a letter to my
older brother on the dining room table, written by a woman who visited
often and brought gifts at Christmas. I opened the letter and read that
she was glad my older brother had told her about our other brother's
deployment to Vietnam. "After all," she wrote, "he is my son." It was a
surprising way to learn that your siblings are half-siblings, that your
father had a different life at one point, that you didn't really know
the people in your house, etc. I guess it's where I got the idea that
sometimes the backstory is the important story, and why the forward
action of my plays often reveals the past.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: I
think the biggest change I'd love to see would be in the audience. As a
playwright, director and teacher, I'm saddened that so many only want
to go to the theater to see a story they already know. I'm lucky to live
in the Boston area, where new work is really exploding and building
audiences interested in hearing stories that will take them to
unexpected places
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: I
hate turning into a cheese-ball, but mostly it's my students.
Adolescents can be amazingly open, clear, powerful and honest as actors
and writers. I've also been inspired by almost every actor and director
I've worked with on new pieces. And the folks I studied under at
Shakespeare & Company long ago, particularly Kristin Linklater and
Kevin Coleman.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I
love when I'm enjoying the entertainment value of a piece and then gasp
because I've just felt something I never expected to feel and
understood something I never knew.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Turn
off the editor and just get it on the page. Then hear your friends read
it. Then do the real work of shaping and making sense. And when you
submit, submit a LOT. The more you send, the more chances you give them
to say "Yes."
Q: Plugs, please:
A: I'm excited about two full-lengths on stage this fall: a fifth production of Breaking the Shakespeare Code, outside Chicago, and the premiere of Concordance, a hallucinogenic period piece about the line between faith and insanity, in the Boston area.
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