Hometown: Houston, TX.
Current Town: Houston.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Answering these questions! No, actually I'm working on a couple of short plays to enter into play competitions around the country. I've also started work on another full-length play, but I haven't gotten very far with it. I do know the ending of the play. Now I just have to fill in everything that leads up to it.
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 tough question to answer. I was a relatively quiet child who liked to read (as well as watch TV and go to movies, of course). As an outlet for my imagination, I began to write stories, as I suppose many children do. It's a mystery how our personalities develop, but for whatever reason I was always comfortable being alone. It wasn't that I didn't like people. It was just that I felt no particular need to be around them all the time. So I would create worlds of my own, inspired sometimes by the things I read, or simply situations I imagined. When you invent stories, you are naturally the sole determiner of how the story progresses and what all the characters say. It is a way of creating order in a world we can otherwise not control. I enjoy being able to do that, while all the real world outside goes spinning around in its own bizarre, uncontrollable fashion. Although I've had a few short stories and poems published, and a Western novel (which was fun), I am most of all a playwright because that is where I can see actual live people (otherwise known as actors) populate the worlds I have created. I've always had a greater knack for dialogue than for narrative description, so playwriting has become my greatest means of imaginative expression. And, uh, what was the question again?
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: I hope no one is offended by this, but I would like theater to take itself less seriously, even when it's doing heavy drama. I've never cared for pretentiousness, and there's a great deal of it to be found in the arts. I'd also like a greater realization that just because you can throw together a lot of peculiar behavior and dramatic non-sequiturs on stage, that doesn't mean it deserves to be hailed as anything terrific. But then, I'm the kind of guy who prefers Rembrandt over Picasso.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: I don't much go in for heroes. I suppose I'm primarily a traditionalist in my theatrical preferences, as opposed to things that are excessively avant garde. Arthur Miller was someone I admired. I enjoy Alan Ayckbourne. Most of my plays are comedic, so I have to recognize Neil Simon, but especially the way he mixed dramatic elements with the comedy in his later plays. I'd hate to start naming names. Hey now, how about that Euripides?
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: More than any one category of theater, I have to say I'm excited whenever a play is professionally well-done (even if performed by amateurs). I have no patience with poor pacing or bad direction or clumsy staging or badly delivered (or forgotten) lines. When everything clicks the way it should, that's what excites me.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Join a playwriting group. Read each other's plays. Accept criticism, even if you don't agree with it. Recognize weaknesses in your work. Keep rewriting. When you think your play is finished, arrange a reading of it with actors so you can hear it and better assess it. When you see a first production, look for places that need strengthening - things that don't work the way you intended. And realize that some people will like your stuff, and some people won't. Write short plays first and enter competitions. Think about craft as well as creativity. Be disciplined, not only in sitting down to write, but in what you construct on the page.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: A full-length play of mine called Some Other Verse just won The Stanley Drama Award, sponsored by Wagner College in New York. Now all I have to do is find someone to produce it! Any volunteers?
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