Normandy Sherwood
Hometown: Olney, MD
Current Town: Brooklyn, NY.
Q: Tell me about Madame Lynch.
A: Madame Lynch herself was Eliza Lynch, a 19th century woman whose fortunes took her from Irish potato famine refugee, to French courtesan, to becoming the self-proclaimed "Empress of Paraguay” in the 1850s and 60s. In the time that has passed since, she has been both revered in Paraguay for her role as a kind of “cultural founding mother” who introduced customs, music and dances that are still important, and reviled as the femme fatale who urged her lover, the dictator Francisco Solano Lopez, towards waging a war that ended with 90% of the male population of Paraguay killed. I was fascinated by the (probably specious) stories about her that were spread in the Argentine press and figure in to most biographies, that she longed to be powerful and a cultural leader in Paraguay but that she was roundly rejected by the upper class ladies of Asuncion and she exacted her revenge by devising elaborate social humiliations for them. In one case she threw a ball where attendance was compulsory and all attendees had to wear costumes that she chose, with the most humiliating costumes reserved for her chief enemies. Another concerns a pleasure cruise with these same ladies where, where, in response to a slight, she had all of the food thrown off of the boat and anchored the boat in the middle of the river for 10 hours. I was so interested in the extreme cruelty and fragility of this character, and also in the fact that, for someone who seems to have had a rough life in some ways (as a refugee, as a courtesan) she seemed to have no empathy for others.
I wrote the first draft of this play in 2011 I think, and it has been through many iterations. At one point I workshopped it with my old theater company, The National Theater of the United States of America. This final version is a collaboration between myself and my partner Craig Flanagin for our company, The Drunkard’s Wife. It is running at the New Ohio Theatre until June 15, and was developed in the Archive Residency program-- a collaboration between the New Ohio Theatre and IRT. Our show, Madame Lynch, is a spectacle with music. It takes on Lynch’s picaresque story, as well as the larger Paraguayan context. We’ve been developing the show in collaboration with the Paraguayan folkloric dance group Ballet Panambí Vera, to create a multifaceted portrait of Lynch as a way to understand the complex dynamics of cultural imperialism. The show reaches peaks of beauty and horror as it proceeds by way of live music, dance, and real and imagined scenes from her life as an adventuress, cultural doyenne, femme fatale and microfinance pioneer.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: I am working on show that is 45 minutes of curtains opening onto other curtains.
Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: The first play I remember writing was in the second grade on those sheets of paper that had a space for pictures at the top. It was an illustrated play about marionette puppets of cats that were being operated by mice.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: I wish that theater was not so obsessed with the idea of newness. The present always flatters itself that it is improving on the past, creating things completely new. I’ve been making experimental theater in NYC for almost two decades. My work has been in fashion and out of fashion. In 2007 I had a reading of my play Certain Words in French (which I shall not name) at The Flea theater. This was a play about 12-year-old girls experimenting with sex and witchcraft at a summer camp, and bringing down a terrible punishment on their parents at the final talent show. At the time I was told by the artistic director of that theater that the play was interesting but unproducible because no one wanted to see adult actors playing 12-year-old girls. We are now in a cultural moment where people do want this. And that will also pass, probably. My point is that we are obsessed with the idea of an aesthetic of innovation as an absolute value, of pushing boundaries as an end in itself. The culture is always changing in ways that are complex, and ideas emerge-- they come to the fore as a result of larger cultural forces, individual obsessions, accidents… I think it’s more like ideas have hold of you than you have ideas. Newness in the theater is a kind of fantasy.
I have been thinking a lot about Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s “Maintenance Art Manifesto.” In it she opposes her concept of “Development Art” ( aligned with “The Death Instinct” and “Avant Garde par excellence” this kind of art is obsessed with the new and with the ways the new lays waste to the old) and “Maintenance Art” ( which is art that, among other things, tries to figure out what to do with the waste, the cultural detritus).
Development art is focused on revolution. “The sourball of every revolution,” Ukeles writes, “after the revolution, who’s going to take out the garbage on Monday morning?” A student of mine who is Chinese observed that Americans are always excited about the possibility of a revolution because they think it will work out in their favor, that they will benefit from the newness and changes. “In China,” he said, “we know that it is more complicated, that revolution can and will turn out very badly for some and in ways that are unpredictable.”
How do we value maintaining something-- a community bond, a space or using what is left over and disused to make something new? This is my interpretation of what Ukeles is asking for in her manifesto. I’m interested in theater that turns towards maintenance rather than rupture. I think this means creating and maintaining communities, the relationship between the performer and the audience. I think it means both valuing and mocking the old. I’m interested in pastiche, camp, homage and parody, as forms of maintenance. You can see it all in Madame Lynch!
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Two of my great teachers have been Mac Wellman and Erik Ehn.
One great thing Mac once said is that “You have to create the ego that can create.” Which means that sometimes you have to imagine the persona or the entity that can generate, make decisions. Sometimes I imagine specific friends-- my longtime collaborator Jesse Hawley, or my old friend Young Jean Lee.
One great thing Erik once said was “You carry your civilization inside you” -- it’s all in there, in your brain somewhere.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: What I mostly want from the theater is to be surprised. What l love is the feeling of being unable to predict where something is going, the gleeful absurdity of getting lost in a moment.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Do it all yourself. Learn as much as you can about how everything works and even try to do it. When you write a lobster hat into your play, someone will have to make it. Try to learn what it will take for them to make it. When I say this, I don’t mean you should temper your expectations, I mean that you should do this so that you have clearer and more nuanced ideas of what could happen on the stage. Think about the materials things are made of.
Show up. Go to people’s shows, especially small scale shows or works in progress. If you see something you like, find the artist and ask how you can help. This is how you find the people you want to make things with. If you are just starting out, and you have the luxury of time to volunteer and help out, give that time to the work you most want to see, or that is dearest to your artistic heart. If you are just starting out and you don’t have a lot of time to give, think about other ways to be generous. Write an email expressing your appreciation. Tell other people about the work.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: Uncanny Valley is our performance parlor in Williamsburg-- it’s been kind of quiet over the last year or so because we’ve been making Madame Lynch, but we’ll be having a salon or two this summer. www.uncannyvalleynyc.com for info! I am in a band with my partner Craig Flanagin-- God Is My Co-Pilot-- and we will probably be playing some shows soon.
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