I Interview Playwrights Part 504: Dan Caffrey

Dan Caffrey

Hometown: I was born in Camden, New Jersey, moved around a lot until middle school, then pretty much grew up in New Port Richey, Florida before attending college at FSU in Tallahassee.

Current town: Chicago!

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I developed a play over the summer with Red Tape Theatre about the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916, which are the first documented shark attacks in American history. In the script, I try and remain somewhat historically accurate while using the attacks as a springboard to examine how people deal, or don't deal, with their own personal fears. The shark is an actual character, but in a good way. I hope. So yeah, I was really happy with it and am chipping away at a next draft before I send it out.

Q:  How would you characterize the Chicago theatre scene?

A:  Scrappy. Adventurous. Surprising. I'm always amazed at just the sheer volume of good work that's being done here, particularly in the storefront world. It's been said countless times before, but Chicago truly has a balls-to-the-wall sort of attitude when it comes to theater. Also, you'll see actors, designers, and directors work on a show at one of the bigger theaters (Steppenwolf, Goodman, etc.), then do something at one of the fringe companies around town. It happens more than you'd think, and that's always cool to me.

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 a real skinny kid, so when I was 15 or so, I wanted to start lifting weights. My Dad had this workout book that had pictures of people demonstrating how to do each exercise. One of the photos was for a dumbbell rear deltoid row, which you're obviously supposed to do for each arm. But the picture only showed someone exercising their left arm, so that's the only arm I worked out for the next couple months. One day, my Mom got worried because I was standing all crooked. I had scoliosis when I was 6, and she thought it had come back. Upon closer examination, my parents discovered the crookedness was due to my one freakishly large lat muscle. I mean it wasn't really that big relatively speaking, but it was like twice the size of my other lat muscle, which was basically nonexistent. After telling my Dad about it, I learned that you're supposed to work out both lat muscles and not take books too literally. That movie Lady In The Water is really terrible, but Freddy Rodriguez plays a guy who only works out one side of his body, which I think is pretty funny.

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?: Hmmm. That's a good question. I'll probably smack myself later for saying this, but I don't think I'd change anything. I know there's a lot of crappy stuff out there and maybe some bad trends, but there's also, at least to me, never been a shortage of good theater to see. That applies to pop culture in general. People always say this sucks or that sucks, or this is what's wrong with such and such these days. But at the end of the day, I always think it's a good thing when so many people are creating art, and that there's always been a berth of culture to discover. In fact, one of my biggest fears is that I won't discover all the wonderful art that's out there before I die. It's really overwhelming in the best way possible. Sorry, that sort of got away from your original question, but I always hear people bitching about what they think is wrong with the theater scene or movies or the music industry, and to me, that's just silly. Yes, it sucks that what you may view as low-brow or terrible art gets the success and the attention, but it also shouldn't keep you from seeing or doing what you love. And there's been plenty of great things that have achieved mainstream success over the years.

Actually, you know what? Theater should be cheaper. That's the one thing I'd change. I know it's not practical, but in a perfect world, it would never cost more than $20 to see a play.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Oh wow. Ummm....Martin McDonagh, Paula Vogel, Conor McPherson, Christopher Durang, Adam Rapp, Craig Wright, Sarah Kane. I actually really dig Rebecca Gilman. I didn't think she'd be the sort of writer I'd be interested in, but my girlfriend start plowing through a bunch of her plays and recommended them to me. Spinning Into Butter, Boy Gets Girl, The Crowd You're In With, The Glory of Living––those are all great. That last one has an awful title, but I think it's an incredible script. I didn't like Dollhouse very much though. But for the most part, I think Rebecca Gilman tackles social issues in a really complex and interesting way. And I'm not someone who usually digs overtly political theater. I feel like she often gets a bad rap because students overdo her monologues and scenes in college acting classes. But like I said, I was pleasantly floored by her stuff.


Let's see, who else? I've only talked about playwrights so far, which I guess makes sense. I should probably throw some actors or directors in there too. Oh, the Handspring Puppet Company for sure. Jesus, they're good. And Trey Parker and Matt Stone. I've only heard the soundtrack to Book of Mormon and haven't had the pleasure of seeing it yet, but I'm a South Park fanatic, and I love the theatricality and clear obsession with musicals that they've always brought to their work. And while I of course don't know them personally, they seem to just do whatever the hell they want without any consideration of what people will like or get offended by. And I think that's very important.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like all sorts of things, but I always get excited about plays that tackle unrealistic things in a realistic fashion, particularly fantastical and paranormal subject matter. My favorite author is Stephen King. So that should say a lot.

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

A:  It sounds super corny and I'm by no means an expert on playwriting or anything really, but just trust your gut. When starting out as a playwright, it's so easy to get caught up in the technicality of format, stage directions, etc. Just write what comes to you and don't feel hampered down by any sort of rules. The beauty of theater as opposed to other mediums is that it's so flexible, yet challenging. Embrace that.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I'd actually like to plug a show from my theater company, Tympanic. We're currently running a play by Brooke Allen, whom is just a killer, killer playwright. It's called Ruby Wilder, and runs through October 28th at Teatro Luna. It's sort of a revenge tale, but like a really subverted and unique take on the revenge tale. It's spooky, sad, surreal, and many other words that begin with the letter "s." Seriously, it's just great and I'm really proud of all the designers and performers who made it a kickass show. Actually, I should add them to my list of theatrical heroes: Brooke Allen, James D. Palmer, Joshua Ellison, Emett Rensin, Casey Bentley, Dustin Pettegrew, Brian Berman, Maxwell Shults, Charlotte Mae Ellison, Chrissy Weisenburger, Paige Sawin, Christine Vrem-Ydstie, Joshua Davis, Alex Kyger, Sean Thomas, Chris Acevedo. Phew!

But yeah, they all rock and if you're reading this, you should check out that show. More info at the link and below!

Ruby Wilder
Through October 28th at Teatro Luna (3914 N Clark St)
Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m.Tickets available at www.tympanictheatre.org

I Interview Playwrights Part 503: Mark Mason

Mark Mason

Hometown: Joliet, Illinois

Current Town: Chicago

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  In January, InFusion Theatre Company will produce the world premiere of my play Allotment Annie at Strawdog Theatre in Chicago. It’s a twisted dark comedy about sex, money and murder in small-town America during World War II, directed by Bridgette O’Connor-Harney and starring Kate Black-Spence, Beau Forbes, C.J. Langdon, Carl Lindberg, Mallory Nees and Amy Katherine Rapp, and we have a terrific dramaturg named Jamie Bragg helping the play be all that it can be.

There are also several plays I’ve been working on and perfecting, editing, revising, etc. First is Black Ice Coffins, a play I wrote with writer/poet/actress Elizabeth Kay Kron and based on the true story of a young thief in the early 1960s whose exposure of the Summerdale Station burglary ring scandalized the Chicago Police Department: that particular play, taking place around New Year’s Day 1960 in the meanest places of Chicago is probably the most sordid and nightmarish thing I’ve ever done and is told though a lot of Beat-inspired poetry, much of it written by Kay. Also there’s A Perfect Shade of Skyline Gray, a lush Douglas Sirk-inspired melodrama based on the 1957 disappearance of Molly Zelko and a little-known incident in the life of Robert F. Kennedy. That play had a staged reading as a part of New Leaf Theatre’s final Treehouse Reading Series and I’m currently in the early stages of working on a film adaptation with director Malachi Leopold. Along with that is A Family Emergency, a sort-of epic tragedy about a family slowly disintegrating over ten years, starting on September 11th, 2001; Red Thunder & the Vodka Martini Surprise, a phantasmagoric espionage thriller based loosely on the Anna Chapman spy case; Private Family Conduct, a Greek tragedy about two New York investment tycoon heirs whose romantic and business endeavors lead to destruction and death in fall 2008; and finally Junk Girls, a play about three young women of extraordinarily different backgrounds who get stranded in a small Minnesota town by a snowstorm while on a mission to inform a sullen bartender that her husband’s been killed in Iraq. There’s also a piece called Riot Call, a play about Chicago’s 1919 race riots and commissioned by The Inconvenience’s Head of Theatre Programming/actor Walter Briggs, who directed a staged reading of it at The Den. That one I’d especially like to get off the ground due to the elemental power of the bloody and horrific true story that it is.


The only thing I’m currently trying to finish, i.e. get to writing “The End,” etc. is an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ The Chimes, in many ways a quintessential Dickens Christmas story, but I’d like to move the setting to a run-down V.A. hospital on Chicago’s South Side in December 1972. Hopefully I’ll have that done in time for us to do a reading of that in time for Christmas this year. I like doing adaptations because it’s an incredible challenge, to take something that exists in one medium and try and make it successful in a totally different one without diluting its essence but still somehow making it your own work and caring about/loving the characters like you would your own.

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 don’t know if there’s any one story or moment that made me want to be a writer, any kind of James Joyce-style epiphany for me that way, because I think it’s what I always wanted to be, since I was old enough to read I wanted to write, I wanted to act, to tell stories, to draw cartoons, anything that involved creating or fantasizing captivated me. In junior high I would do presentations/book reports as this idiotic character named Roger Rawlings, a pompous twit with a faux-English accent doing a thinly-veiled Masterpiece Theatre rip-off, and I would actually need time to “set up the room,” give direction to the hapless costumed “actors” I pressed into playing parts and play the classical music, etc. There would always be a prelude with Roger cheating in chess and his enraged but debonair opponent knocking him senseless with the book in question. Thinking back on it now, I’m surprised the other students in Mrs. Foskett’s Sixth Grade English class didn’t get together and beat me to death, though I’m sure it was discussed. But I was hooked, I liked writing theatre. My father, a lawyer for thirty years and now a judge, used to tell me tales of the various ne’er-do-wells and lowlifes he had known and sometimes represented, arch-criminals, thieves, rapists, murderers, etc. and I was always fascinated by the luridness of it all: the more sinister and unsettling, the more I loved it, and asked time and time again for the stories of the maniac who sabotaged his cell padlock by using an unmentionable substance, the deranged woman who stood on a Joliet street corner holding a box of Special K to the sky, the murderer sitting on a prison toilet asking if anyone wanted a bite of his sandwich. It’s the sick side of life that fascinates me, which is one of the reasons why Lenny Bruce’s autobiography How to Talk Dirty and Influence People became my artistic and political awakening, a book I read over sixteen times in one lonely week.

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

A:  If you’re a theatre artist, especially a playwright, you need to be a combination smack dealer/Baptist preacher/pimp to make it. Your work has to promise narcotic thrills, spiritual salvation and raw earthy pleasure, and there are so many plays, especially new plays, that don’t pass muster. There’s too much academia in theatre, where new work is constantly being asked if it makes the audience think about Important Issue of the Day or is it liberal enough or the “right time” to produce it or whether it helps Teach A Valuable Lesson instead of the question “is this play fucking awesome?” If it isn’t, why not? There should be a rawness to theatre, a sense of danger and an affirmation that life is worth living and that telling stories is magnificent, and it doesn’t matter if you have a budget of a million dollars or a tarp in a backyard, if the story you’re telling isn’t epic then why are you telling it?

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  First and foremost, Ben Hecht, because he brought real-world journalism into theatre and then wrote or co-wrote some of the greatest screenplays of all time (and read the anthology A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago if you haven’t already, no one else had so much game with printed prose.) William Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Tom Stoppard, David Mamet, August Wilson, Tracy Letts, Martin McDonough, Jules Feiffer, and poetry-wise I need to include Allen Ginsberg and Sylvia Plath. Honestly a lot of the writers I owe the most debt from are from film: in this category I’d put Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges and Ernst Lubitsch as three of my heroes for how beautifully their language flowed from their characters’ lips, and because each man was a superb writer-director.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Raw theatre, violent theatre, sexy, sensual and smart theatre, potent and powerful theatre, the plays that scare you, the plays that make you throw up, the plays that make you angry and the plays that turn you on. August Wilson’s Seven Guitars, the moment when the characters sit around a table and talk and you want to chime in, the theatre where it seems like the world’s richest conversation. Plays like Equus and Credeaux Canvas, plays with hushed intimacy and bold physicality, raw lust and the yearning for more. Plays with true hunger…of the characters and the artists behind them. In a word, the hunger is exciting. Because it’s universal, and it’s real.

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

A:  Write the play you’re dying to write and fill it with your soul and everything you are and work on it until you’re bone-tired and spiritually exhausted and when you go to sleep, you hear your characters speaking. That’s when you know you’re a playwright. And remember, theatre is always “we.” Nobody but nobody creates a play alone. Make friendships with as many talented actors, designers and directors as you can, do readings, submit to anything and everything, read Moss Hart’s Act One, read it again, see as many plays and movies as you can, read the reviews when you can’t afford the shows, get a day job that doesn’t make you want to kill yourself, and hustle your work. I know “pimp out your children” is usually considered bad advice but that’s what playwriting is: you created something, and now you gotta make it work for you.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My play Allotment Annie, an InFusion Theatre production, runs January 3rd through February 3, 2013. Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:00 pm; Sundays at 3:00 pm, at Strawdog Theatre, 3829 N. Broadway, in Chicago.
http://www.infusiontheatre.com/currentseason.htm

I Interview Playwrights Part 502: Martín Zimmerman

Martín Zimmerman

Hometown: Rockville, MD just outside of Washington, DC

Current Town: I'm writing this from the Twin Cities where I'm a Jerome Fellow this year. But my significant other, our cat, and many of my closest collaborators still reside in Chicago. So right now I have the great fortune of having two artistic homes.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I'm currently juggling a number of projects. I just finished the first draft of a brand new play. It's a taut, intimate three-hander which has proved a nice respite from the more epic projects I've been working on recently. I'm also in the midst of revising my play The Solid Sand Below ahead of an upcoming reading at the Goodman as part of New Stages Amplified. That play follows a somewhat reluctant soldier who is sent to Iraq during the surge only to discover what he considers to be his best self in the midst of combat. The play then follows him back to the U.S. after his deployment and examines what it means to feel like you're at your best in moments of violence and chaos once you return to civilian life. I'm also in the midst of re-writes on a project I'm co-writing with Rebecca Stevens about a sixteen year-old who discovers, when her parents are detained by the FBI, that they are not only foreigners, but also Russian Foreign Intelligence Agents. She then has to try the figure out the truth of who she is and why her parents had her while they remain in FBI custody. The "true" answers to her questions prove to be elusive. We created the piece this past May through a month-long workshop as part of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs' Incubator Series, and I'm really excited to dive back into it after working on some other projects. And soon I'm going to start adapting one of my plays into a graphic novel.

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

A:  When I was a child and my family would all gather to watch movies at home on a Friday or Saturday night, I had this habit of gathering a bunch of "props" on a blanket next to the screen and enacting what I saw on screen along with the movie. I would often recite lines and talk back to the movie. As you can imagine, this habit of mine was very controversial among my different family members. My father is known to have frequently told me "They're paid to talk. You're not." when I did this. Though, of course, that is in no way a larger reflection on what kind of a father he was. He was (and is) an excellent father. Although both of my parents to this day are very frank and unsparing in their assessments of my work. But I think that story captures some part of why I gravitated toward the theater. I learn by doing things, by participating in them, so for me writing plays is not just a profession, but has also become a way of trying to better understand and investigate the world. I will often write plays about people or situations far outside my personal experience. And I admit that when I begin these plays I am seized with this terror that someone will read the play and know I'm a complete fraud or fool. But I embrace that terror and use it to keep me honest. I use the process of researching and writing the play to really listen to and learn from the people and worlds I'm writing about.

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

A:  There are so many things I'd like to change, but if I had to choose just one I think it would be the way we allow ourselves and others to talk about our creativity. It may seem like a strange thing to choose to change, but I feel like it's connected to so many of the other challenges we face as a theater community in this country. So many artists and companies (quite understandably) go to great lengths to hide their processes from the public, their colleagues, their audiences, their collaborators, etc. And I want to be clear that I understand why so many artists and theaters do this. They only want to put their very best foot forward in order to protect their reputation, their brand. But what happens when we refuse to lay bare the chaos and sloppiness of our processes to the public is that we create the impression that art is something inaccessible, something you can only partake in if you have been imbued with this unique gift, this unique inspiration. When what we should really be cultivating is the idea that theater (and art in general) is something anyone can partake in and even master if they dedicate the requisite time and energy to doing so. It's a scary thought for any artist to confront because it forces us to acknowledge that we are somewhat less special and unique than we might like to believe. But in an effort to protect ourselves and our artistic reputations, we try to create the impression that we're separate from the public, that there is a gulf between us that the public cannot bridge because they do not possess our special, inaccessible gifts and inspiration. And then we wonder why the public doesn't invest in the theater and come to the theater more. I'm on this kick right now of using sports to look at what we as a theater community can be doing better. And people always complain that theater is too expensive to be accessible because it often is. But attending most college or professional sporting events is more expensive than almost any theater ticket I buy. Even the monthly bill for a cable or satellite TV package that allows you to watch your favorite team is more expensive than almost any theater ticket I buy. And yet people are more than willing to spend money they don't have to attend sporting events or watch sports on TV. And why is that? It's at least partly due to the fact that many fans used to (or still do) play the sport they watch. So while they recognize professionals as having mastered that practice, they also feel the sport is accessible to them because they have personal experience with it. And that personal experience gives them a greater appreciation for the process professional athletes go through because these fans tried to hit a golf ball or make a three point shot, etc and know how challenging a skill it is master. So I think we need to ask ourselves how can we cultivate this investment in theater? A big part of it is by talking more frankly and honestly about our processes, how we struggle to get to that final product. The Rude Mechs in Austin do this very well by making workshops of their unfinished pieces big events that are open to the public. When you attend these workshops they are very frank that what you're see is in process and that the final product may not cohere until a year or 18 months later. But by opening up their process to the public they've cultivated tremendous investment from Austin in their work. People may not necessarily be blown away by the initial workshop, but they go back to the next workshop and the one after that because they want to see how the initial kernel they saw will evolve into something breathtaking.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Eek. To me, the term "hero" is a very vexed and dangerous term. I'm someone who tends not to have any "heroes". But there are a number of writers whose work I deeply admire and whose work has indelibly shaped my own. Tony Kushner, Bertolt Brecht, Griselda Gambaro, Stephen Sondheim, José Rivera, Dael Orlandersmith, Juan Mayorga, Sarah Ruhl, Caryl Churchill among others. I would also add to this list all of my professors and colleagues from graduate school. I would not be the writer I am without exposure to their work and unique points of view.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that marries the intimate and epic. Theater that allows us to see how deeply connect personal choices and relationships are to larger social and sociological forces. Work that sheds the mundane. There is a Van Gogh quote that Steven Dietz often cited when I was studying under him in grad school at UT-Austin... "Exaggerate the essential. Leave the obvious vague." That's a philosophy I deeply admire and try to adhere to in my own art. I also love work that tries to tell huge and impossible stories within very tight constraints, work that embraces the relative poverty of theater as a medium and brushes up against the limited resources of theater as a means for sparking ingenuity.

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

A:  When I was in grad school, Steven Dietz had a framed quote in his office (I'm not sure if it's still there, though I hope it is) by Winton Marsalis. "Praise is the hardest thing to overcome." You never lose anything by being deeply, deeply rigorous with yourself. It may take a long time listening to your work in front of audiences before you develop the finer hearing with which you can instantly tell when your writing has the energy, charge, and momentum that makes an audience lean in. Trust that one day after listening to your work, your actors, and your audiences long enough, it will click and you will suddenly have this sense you never had before. You'll hear every sentence, phrase, or word where your play loses that charge. Once you're able to hear what I'm describing, do not rest until every moment of your play drives us forward, pulses with that charge. No matter how good people tell you it is. You can never go wrong by being your own harshest and most honest critic.

Oh, and, a nice little handy and pragmatic piece of advice... when possible, avoid directly-answered questions in your writing like the plague. Nothing takes the energy out of a scene faster. Let your characters be evasive. Cagey. Things get so much more interesting when you do.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  If you're going to be in Chicago in December, please come check out the reading of my play The Solid Sand Below at the Goodman as part of New Stages Amplified. The festival also features work by Tanya Saracho, Philip Dawkins, and Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, all of whom I know personally and whose work I admire. So please come see everything if you can!

http://www.goodmantheatre.org/season/newstages/

If you're going to be Minneapolis this coming week, come check out PlayLabs at the Playwrights' Center. The festival features work by a number of writers including my friend George Brant.

http://www.pwcenter.org/playlabs.php

And here's the url for my website in case you want to read more about what I'm up to...

www.martingzimmerman.com

I Interview Playwrights Part 501: Christopher Durang

photograph by Susan Johann

Christopher Durang

Hometown: Berkeley Heights, New Jersey

Current Town: Bucks County, PA (previously NYC 1975-1995)

Q:  Tell me about Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.

A:  I wrote this play on a commission from McCarter Theater – it’s my second commission, the first was Miss Witherspoon in 2005. I feel lucky to work with McCarter – writer-director Emily Mann is talented, and a wonderful person. And producing director Mara Isaac is also terrific to work with. And McCarter and I approached Andre Bishop at Lincoln Center Theater to see if he’d be open to co-producing the play – and presenting it at both theaters. Andre said yes, and I feel very lucky indeed. Andre produced three of my plays early in my career at Playwrights Horizons – Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You in 1980 (on a bill with my The Actor’s Nightmare), then Baby with the Bathwater in 1982, then Laughing Wild in 1987.

Anyway, the new play itself came from the fact that I’m older and that my house on a hill in Bucks County made me think of Chekhov. The Sea Gull, Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard all have characters who live at pretty country houses “taking care of them,” while the more exciting relatives are traveling the world or living in the city, and the ones in the country houses are feeling stuck and unfulfilled.

When I first read Chekhov in college, I greatly empathized with the sadness and frustrations of the characters – but as with Vanya, say, I was a younger person empathizing with an older character – I had a young person’s remove from the character’s sadness.

But now I’m Vanya’s age – indeed, I think I’m older than he’s listed in the play. And I view the sadness in Chekhov plays more distinctly now that I have less time ahead of me than I have behind. Now I want to acknowledge I am nowhere as despairing as Vanya in Chekhov’s play – I pursued my theatrical hopes, I have been with my partner John Augustine since 1987. So I am not writing from the same well of disappointment that Vanya (and Konstantin) were experiencing. So my play is more of a “what if?” – what if this “farmhouse” I live in had been the home I was born in, and I never left it, and I lived with my stepsister Sonia, and she and I never made lives for ourselves but took care of ailing parents for 15 years, while our sister Masha was an actress, indeed a movie star. She had a life, and we didn’t.

Now I have written a comedy – their interactions are funny. But there is real emotion in it too. And it is set in the present day – Vanya, Sonia and Masha had professor parents who named them after Chekhov characters. So they are not in Russia, they’re in the present time in Bucks County. They have a pond, as I do; and they keep looking for the blue heron to show up, as I do too.

Vanya is also gay in my version – when I was in college (1967-1971), most people were not open about being gay; and indeed some in my generation kind of obeyed the “rule” of you get married anyway. Looking back, my going into theater certainly made it easier to be gay. But I know people of my age who either repressed it all their lives, or came out only much, much later. So I envisioned my Vanya as someone who either shut down his sexuality or perhaps had brief flings on the side, which he kept secret. I purposely don’t say.

So that’s how the play came about. Though I have added three fun characters to the mix – Cassandra, the cleaning lady who like her namesake keeps seeing the future (I always loved Cassandra in Greek tragedy); Spike, who is Masha’s very sexy 27 or 29 year old boy toy (who keeps stripping to his underwear to go swimming in a pond, which is both thrilling but alarming for poor Vanya); and a lovely aspiring actress named Nina (surprise!) who makes Masha feel insecure, and with whom Vanya finds a friendship.

So… it’s a “what if” play. With all my years and years of life experience tossed in, eh?

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I usually don’t work on more than one project at a time. And I get very involved in the production of a play, at least when it’s a premiere as Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is. So last spring I did lots of rewrites. And I was involved in previews in September at McCarter; and in late October we will have previews at Lincoln Center.

I have another play I started, that’s very political as was my 2009 play Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them at the Public Theater. It’s called Consensus or Should We Just Kill Each Other? I started it quite a while ago, but unfortunately it is not dating with time – I say unfortunately because it’s about polarization in our country, and that topic doesn’t seem likely to go away any time soon, regardless of who becomes president. But I am so depressed about politics – the hatred of Obama over the past 4 years seems both toxic and mentally deranged – that there’s part of me that isn’t sure if I’ll work on this play-in-progress next or not.

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

A:  Well two actually.

Growing up in the 1950s, we didn’t have a TV until 1953 (or so). So I saw I Love Lucy when it was CURRENT. I also watched a lot of 1930s and 1940s movies that were shown on both Million Dollar Movies and The Early Show. (There was also The Late Show with more movies, but indeed I was in bed by either 8 or 9 at the latest.)

But like most of America, I watched The Ed Sullivan Show. He was on at 8 p.m. every Sunday, and he hosted basically a variety show with talent from New York City – opera singers, current Broadway performers. Like most variety shows, some of it was dull-ish, but a lot of it was GREAT. (This program is mentioned significantly in a section of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.)

In any case, my mother loved plays and musicals. And I heard lots of Broadway original cast albums. And some of these people (like Mary Martin, say, or Ethel Merman) would be on the Sullivan Show.

So when I was six, I announced to my mother that I wanted to sing at my Aunt Phyllis’ piano recital. I had seen one or two of the recitals where her pupils, both beginning and more accomplished ones, would play classical pieces. No one ever sang at these recitals – they were about learning the piano. But as a six year old I saw that there was an audience there, and I thought – audience – why don’t I sing for them? For some reason I knew the song I wanted to sing – “Chicago,” which I’m sure I heard on The Ed Sullivan Show.

My mother and my Aunt Phyllis and the rest of the family seemed enchanted by my request. I’ve had so many friends in my life whose parents either criticized them or warned them not to get too a big head or something. But gosh, my family sure encouraged me. Anyway, my mother rented me a white tuxedo (why they had them for six year olds I’m not quite sure), and somewhere toward the end of the piano recital, I was introduced by my aunt and with no stage fright of any kind I strode out in front of the audience and “belted out” “Chicago.” I always spoke in a moderate voice, not too loud, but when I sang I followed the example of many on The Ed Sullivan Show and sang to the back of the house.

Story #2 is was at age eight. I announced to my mother that I was about to write a play. By now, I had seen a lot of the I Love Lucy shows, and I knew my mother loved plays; and I think I had read some. So I wrote my own two page play about Lucy and Ricky and Fred and Ethel.

My mother was always a bit of a press agent for me, so she told my teacher at the Catholic school I attended that I had written this “play.” And the teacher, for some reason, decided to take a couple hours off one afternoon to put on the play. I was allowed to choose who would play the roles (Katy Moran was my choice for Lucy; I have, sadly, forgotten the other names), and I kind of rehearsed them, and then my classmates laughed at a fair amount of it.

I must say I sound like I’m endlessly outgoing and overwhelming – actually for much of my life I have been actually a bit shy. And in college I got really insecure and doubted myself almost 100% - by now I was aware of ways in which my parents and aunts and uncles were troubled, and I literally thought, “well, they think I’m talented, but they’re insane. So I don’t know what I am.”

My parents and relatives were not insane – though there was a lot of alcoholism that somehow could not get solved, so they were troubled.

But whatever sadness was in some of my childhood – wow, the encouragement was generous and complete.

And so I sang at 6, and wrote a play at 8. And I kept writing plays - the next was five pages, the following twelve, etc. etc.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  When I was young, my inspirations were old movies and musicals (especially Rodgers and Hammerstein). And my mother loved Alice in Wonderland, Noel Coward, and James Thurber, and the humor in those authors’s work inspired me for years. (Some of my dialogue has a specific rhythm, and I’m sure I got it from reading Noel Coward.) I also saw and loved the original How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying – which was written as a satiric cartoon. I think my early absurdist work was influenced by this musical which I saw when I was 12 I think.

But in my late high school, my world view started to get darker. My family was unhappy a lot, and I didn’t see much solving of problems. Indeed much later in my life (and after a lot of therapy) I realized I had an unconscious mantra that went “nothing ever works out.” That’s a very bad mantra to have…. And it made for a lot of depression in my 20s.

At the same time, the darker view took me to some interesting plays and movies. I found the works of Joe Orton – very funny farces about dark topics, and he mentioned Catholic stuff very casually. At the same time I saw Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, 8 and a Half, and Nights of Cabiria. I loved those movies, and found them very different than the American movies of the 50s and 60s. And Fellini too brought up his Catholicism a lot, often satirically.

Others who inspired and excited me were Brecht/Weill musicals, all of Stephen Sondheim’s work, Tennessee Williams (love his work), Long Day’s Journey into Night, the movie and book They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? I also read Arthur Kopit’s Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feeling So Sad when I was in late high school, and I found this play very funny and quirky. His play definitely inspired me.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Exciting theater excites me. Ha ha. Sorry, I’ve written such long answers, I’m running out of steam.

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

A:  Oh I wish I had some magical advice that made it all work. I don’t.

Let me say what things I do know, in case any of it helps.

The old maxim “write about what you know” is really true. I used to think it meant don’t write about being a car salesman unless you’ve been one. But that’s too literal.

What it really means is write about stuff you know in your bones – the psychological stuff you lived around as a child, what you’ve found out about life as you’ve struggled with it.

When I wrote my absurdist plays in my early years, I assumed they were all strictly fictional – I didn’t know anyone named Edith Fromage who claimed she had invented cheese. However, as I got older, I started to realize that part of my family journey was dealing with an uncle and grandmother who were VERY FORCEFUL. They were not nice or allowing if you didn’t agree with them. And I suddenly realized that in ALL my absurdist plays I was writing about forceful characters who were bullying more sensitive or insecure ones. Over and over I was writing this.

This is part of my “stuff” – struggling against forceful people. (The dogma of the Catholic Church fits that too.) Then my family, both sides, had a lot of alcoholism – and I saw a lot of problems not getting solved. People kept doing the same thing over and over. Anyway, I draw on that too.

You may not know what your “stuff” is until you get older. But if you feel “heat” about an idea for a play – that’s a good sign. Write a play to communicate.

Don’t decide that a specific play is “going to do it” for you. If the play doesn’t get produced or much embraced, hold on to it, but write other plays. You never know what is going to be successful.

I almost didn’t finish Sister Mary Ignatius… because I could tell the play was wrapping up (intuitively), and it was going to be a long one act. And no one could ever make money with a one act. So I was about to put it aside – but I had had a serious writers block during my mother’s sad two year bout with cancer, and I realized it was very unhealthy not to finish this play – so I did. Never expecting it would be a big hit, and actually change my life. (Both in terms of being known as a writer, and financially as well.) So you never know what might work.

Apply to play contests. Get the Dramatists Sourcebook, and find theaters and playwriting events that accept plays without having an agent. I like to tell people I applied to the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference 4 times before I was accepted the 5th time.

Befriend directors and actors. You can learn from one another. And they can help you organize readings of your new work – I find hearing plays aloud so important when one is rewriting.

Find a theater you feel a kinship with – volunteer there, see who you meet.

In terms of theaters and opportunities, I used to say to myself: look for an open door, or for a door that is ajar. If the door is closed, move on. (Well you can knock, I guess, but if it doesn’t answer, move on…)

Every path seems to be different….

Q:  Plugs please:


A:  Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is just finishing McCarter (closes this Sunday Oct 14; but it's mostly sold out).  Then Lincoln Center (Mitzi Newhouse) starts previews Thurs Oct 25, opens Nov 12, runs until Jan 13.

500 Playwright Interviews (alphabetical)

Sean Abley

Rob Ackerman
Liz Duffy Adams
Johnna Adams
Tony Adams 
David Adjmi
Keith Josef Adkins
Nastaran Ahmadi   
Derek Ahonen
Kathleen Akerley
Daniel Akiyama   
Zakiyyah Alexander
Luis Alfaro
Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro 
Lucy Alibar
Joshua Allen
Norman Allen
Mando Alvarado 
Sofia Alvarez 
Christina Anderson
Eddie Antar
Terence Anthony
David Anzuelo
Rob Askins 
David Auburn 
Micheline Auger  
Alice Austen 
Elaine Avila   
Rachel Axler
Jenny Lyn Bader
Bianca Bagatourian   
Annie Baker
Trista Baldwin
David Bar Katz
Jennifer Barclay 
Courtney Baron
Abi Basch 
Mike Batistick 
Brian Bauman
Neena Beber
Chad Beckim
Nikole Beckwith 
Maria Alexandria Beech
France-Luce Benson
Kari Bentley-Quinn 
Alan Berks
Brooke Berman
Susan Bernfield
Jay Bernzweig 
Hilary Bettis 
Mickey Birnbaum  
Barton Bishop
Martin Blank
Radha Blank
Lee Blessing
Jonathan Blitstein
Adam Bock
Jerrod Bogard
Emily Bohannon
Rachel Bonds
Margot Bordelon
Deron Bos
Hannah Bos
Leslie Bramm
Jami Brandli
George Brant
Tim Braun
Deborah Brevoort  
Delaney Britt Brewer
Jessica Brickman  
Erin Browne
Julia Brownell  
Bekah Brunstetter
Monica Byrne
Renee Calarco
Zack Calhoon 
Sheila Callaghan
Robert Quillen Camp  
Darren Canady
Ruben Carbajal
Ed Cardona, Jr.
Jonathan Caren
Aaron Carter
James Carter
Lonnie Carter
Nat Cassidy 
David Caudle
Laura Maria Censabella 
Emily Chadick Weiss
Eugenie Chan 
Clay McLeod Chapman
Christopher Chen
Kirsten Childs 
Jason Chimonides
Andrea Ciannavei
John Clancy
Eliza Clark
Alexis Clements
Paul Cohen 
Alexandra Collier
James Comtois
Joshua Conkel
Jennie Contuzzi  
Kara Lee Corthron
Kia Corthron  
Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas
Erin Courtney
Cusi Cram
Lisa D'Amour
Gordon Dahlquist 
Wendy Dann  
Heidi Darchuk
Stacy Davidowitz
Adrienne Dawes 
Philip Dawkins
Dylan Dawson
Colby Day  
Gabriel Jason Dean
Vincent Delaney
Emily DeVoti
Kristoffer Diaz
Jessica Dickey
Dan Dietz
Lisa Dillman
Ivan Dimitrov  
Zayd Dohrn
Bathsheba Doran
Anton Dudley
Laura Eason
Fielding Edlow
Reginald Edmund 
Erik Ehn
Yussef El Guindi
Michael Elyanow  
Libby Emmons
Jennie Berman Eng  
Christine Evans 
Jennifer Fawcett 
Joshua Fardon
Halley Feiffer 
Lauren Feldman
Gina Femia  
Catherine Filloux   
Kenny Finkle
Stephanie Fleischmann
Kate Fodor
Sam Forman 
Dana Lynn Formby  
Dorothy Fortenberry 
Darcy Fowler  
Kevin R. Free
Matthew Freeman
Edith Freni
Patrick Gabridge 
Fengar Gael 
Anne Garcia-Romero
Gary Garrison
Melissa Gawlowski 
Philip Gawthorne
Madeleine George
Meg Gibson
Sean Gill
Sigrid Gilmer 
Peter Gil-Sheridan
Gina Gionfriddo
Kelley Girod 
Megan Gogerty 
Michael Golamco
Jessica Goldberg
Daniel Goldfarb
Jacqueline Goldfinger
Jeff Goode
Idris Goodwin
Tasha Gordon-Solmon
Christina Gorman
Craig "muMs" Grant
Katharine Clark Gray
Elana Greenfield   
Kirsten Greenidge
D.W. Gregory 
David Grimm
Rinne Groff 
Jason Grote
Sarah Gubbins
Stephen Adly Guirgis
Lauren Gunderson
Laurel Haines 
Jennifer Haley
Ashlin Halfnight   
Christina Ham
Sarah Hammond
Rob Handel
Trish Harnetiaux 
Jordan Harrison
Megan Hart 
Leslye Headland
Ann Marie Healy
Julie Hebert 
Marielle Heller
Charity Henson-Ballard 
Amy Herzog
Ian W. Hill  
Andrew Hinderaker
Cory Hinkle
Richard Martin Hirsch
Lucas Hnath
David Holstein
J. Holtham
Miranda Huba  
Quiara Alegria Hudes 
Les Hunter
Sam Hunter
Monet Hurst-Mendoza 
Chisa Hutchinson
Arlene Hutton
Lameece Issaq 
Tom Jacobson  
Laura Jacqmin
Joshua James
Julia Jarcho
Kyle Jarrow
Rachel Jendrzejewski   
Karla Jennings
David Johnston
Daniel Alexander Jones  
Marie Jones
Nick Jones
Julia Jordan
Rajiv Joseph
Ken Kaissar 
Aditi Brennan Kapil
Lila Rose Kaplan
Stephen Karam  
Jeremy Kareken 
Lally Katz
Lynne Kaufman
Daniel Keene 
Karinne Keithley 
Greg Keller
Daniel John Kelley 
Sibyl Kempson
Jon Kern 
Anna Kerrigan
Kait Kerrigan
Jeffrey James Keyes  
Boo Killebrew
Callie Kimball
Alessandro King 
Johnny Klein 
Krista Knight
Josh Koenigsberg 
John Kolvenbach
Kristen Kosmas 
Sherry Kramer
Adam Kraar 
Andrea Kuchlewska
Larry Kunofsky
Aaron Landsman 
Eric Lane  
Jennifer Lane
Deborah Zoe Laufer
Jacqueline E. Lawton 
Ginger Lazarus
J. C. Lee
Young Jean Lee
Dan LeFranc
Forrest Leo  
Andrea Lepcio
Victor Lesniewski 
Steven Levenson
Barry Levey
Mark Harvey Levine  
Michael Lew
Alex Lewin  
EM Lewis
Sean Christopher Lewis
Jeff Lewonczyk
Kenneth Lin
Evan Linder 
Ethan Lipton 
Michael Lluberes
David J. Loehr 
Matthew Lopez
Tim J. Lord 
Alex Lubischer 
Stacey Luftig
Kirk Lynn
Taylor Mac  
Mariah MacCarthy
Heather Lynn MacDonald 
Laura Lynn MacDonald
Maya Macdonald
Samantha Macher 
Wendy MacLeod 
Cheri Magid
Jennifer Maisel
Martyna Majok  
Karen Malpede   
Kara Manning
Mona Mansour 
Warren Manzi 
Israela Margalit 
Ellen Margolis
Ruth Margraff
Sam Marks
Katie May
Oliver Mayer
Tarell Alvin McCraney
Mia McCullough  
Daniel McCoy 
Ruth McKee
Gabe McKinley  
Ellen McLaughlin 
James McManus
Charlotte Meehan
Carly Mensch
Molly Smith Metzler
Dennis Miles
Charlotte Miller 
Jane Miller
Susan Miller 
Winter Miller
Lin-Manuel Miranda
Yusef Miller 
Rehana Mirza
Michael Mitnick
Chiori Miyagawa 
Anna Moench
Honor Molloy
Claire Moodey 
Alejandro Morales
Desi Moreno-Penson
Dominique Morisseau 
Susan Mosakowski  
Hannah Moscovitch 
Itamar Moses
Gregory Moss
Megan Mostyn-Brown
Kate Mulley 
Paul Mullin
Carlos Murillo  
Julie Marie Myatt
Janine Nabers
Peter Sinn Nachtrieb
Brett Neveu
Don Nguyen   
Qui Nguyen
Don Nigro
Dan O'Brien
Matthew Paul Olmos 
Dominic Orlando
Rich Orloff
Marisela Treviño Orta
Sylvan Oswald
Jamie Pachino
Kristen Palmer
Marc Palmieri 
Tira Palmquist
A. Rey Pamatmat
Kyoung H. Park
Jerome A. Parker  
Peter Parnell
Caitlin Montanye Parrish
Julia Pascal
Steve Patterson
Greg Paul 
Daniel Pearle 
christopher oscar peña
Anne Phelan 
Greg Pierce  
Greg Pierotti 
Begonya Plaza 
Brian Polak 
Daria Polatin
John Pollono
Larry Pontius
Chana Porter
Max Posner  
Craig Pospisil
Jessica Provenz
Michael Puzzo
Brian Quirk
Marco Ramirez 
Yasmine Beverly Rana
Adam Rapp
David West Read 
Theresa Rebeck
Amber Reed
Daniel Reitz
M.Z. Ribalow
Molly Rice
David Robson  
Mac Rogers
Joe Roland 
Elaine Romero
Lynn Rosen
Andrew Rosendorf
Kim Rosenstock
Ben Rosenthal 
Sharyn Rothstein
David Rush  
Kate E. Ryan
Kate Moira Ryan
Riti Sachdeva 
Trav S.D.
Sarah Sander
Tanya Saracho
Heidi Schreck
August Schulenburg
Sarah Schulman  
Mark Schultz
Jenny Schwartz
Emily Schwend
Jordan Seavey
Adriano Shaplin 
Erika Sheffer
Katharine Sherman
Kendall Sherwood 
Christopher Shinn
Rachel Shukert
Jen Silverman
David Simpatico 
Blair Singer
Crystal Skillman
Mat Smart
Alena Smith
Matthew Stephen Smith  
Tommy Smith
Ben Snyder
Sonya Sobieski  
Lisa Soland
Octavio Solis
E. Hunter Spreen 
Peggy Stafford
Diana Stahl 
Saviana Stanescu
Susan Soon He Stanton  
Nick Starr
Deborah Stein
Jon Steinhagen
Caitlin Saylor Stephens  
Vanessa Claire Stewart 
Victoria Stewart
Andrea Stolowitz
Steven Strafford 
Lydia Stryk
Gwydion Suilebhan  
Gary Sunshine
Caridad Svich
Jeffrey Sweet
Adam Szymkowicz
Daniel Talbott
Jeff Talbott 
Kate Tarker 
Roland Tec 
Lucy Thurber
Paul Thureen
Melisa Tien   
Josh Tobiessen
Joe Tracz
Catherine Trieschmann 
Dan Trujillo
Alice Tuan
Jon Tuttle
Ken Urban
Enrique Urueta
Jean-Claude van Itallie
Karen Smith Vastola 
Francine Volpe
Kathryn Walat
Ian Walker
Michael I. Walker 
Malachy Walsh
Kathleen Warnock
Anne Washburn
Marisa Wegrzyn
Anthony Weigh   
Ken Weitzman
Sharr White
David Wiener  
Claire Willett
Samuel Brett Williams
Beau Willimon
Pia Wilson
Leah Nanako Winkler 
Gary Winter
Bess Wohl
Tom Matthew Wolfe  
Stanton Wood
Craig Wright
Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig
Anu Yadav
Deborah Yarchun
Lauren Yee
Steve Yockey
Kelly Younger
Stefanie Zadravec
David Zellnik  
Anna Ziegler