Ming Peiffer
Hometown: Columbus, Ohio
Current Town: New York City
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Currently in previews of my play USUAL GIRLS at Roundabout Underground. Also writing a play about Toxic Masculinity and the black market organ trade, and a musical about Charles Darwin and women's role in science. Additionally, in TV/Film I am creating an original series at F/X inspired by my play USUAL GIRLS, adapting the graphic novel The Divine into a series for AMC, and adapting the book Chemistry by Weike Wang into a film for Amazon.
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 my 3rd grade English class at my public school in Ohio we learned how to do Descriptive Writing. We learned to use adjectives and had an assignment to write a descriptive story that we then read aloud to the parents who were all invited on the last day of class. All my classmates wrote about rainbows and puppies and I wrote a detailed account, moment by moment, of the day my Dad left us. I wrote about the way his back looked disappearing into the rain. The time that was flashing red on the alarm clock. My mom kicking down the door of the bathroom my Dad had locked himself in, screaming at him to "get out!". The way the cab pulled away into the sheets of rain. As I read it aloud all the parents began to cry. They all came up to hug me afterwards and neither of my parents were even there.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: More diversity. In every sense of the word. Not just racial diversity, or gender diversity, et cetera, but diversity in form and content. I want messier plays. I want more daring plays. I'm sick of the easy "issue plays" that don't actually challenge the status quo and create the false belief that we are educating ourselves when we are actually deluding ourselves. I want to see more plays coming from the demographic they are portraying. Why are we programming plays about women by men when we haven't even had the opportunity to hear women describe their experiences of being female? Same goes for race, sexuality, disability, et cetera. What stories are we championing and from what perspective? I want authenticity.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Sarah Kane.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: From the above answer you can probably surmise that I like In-Yer-Face theatre. And you'd be correct. I wish we had more plays going up like the ones I saw at Ontological Hysteric (R.I.P.) or PS 122 (R.I.P.) when I first moved to New York. I remember being at a play where a guy handed out vials of his own semen, or a play where the first row was showered in fake blood. And I don't think things like that are happening anymore in the theatre. Or if they are? Please tell me where and I'll be there in the front row getting soaked in blood.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Try writing a play on your own before taking a class. I'm an autodidact and I think trying to create for myself before following a rubric was essential to cultivating a singular voice.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: My play USUAL GIRLS is currently in previews at Roundabout Underground and opens November 5! Come see it!
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