I Interview Playwrights Part 627: Evelina Fernandez

Evelina Fernandez

Hometown: East Los Angeles, CA

Current Town: Downtown Los Angeles, CA

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I’m working on a couple of things. I have a completion commission at Center Theater Group (CTG) to further develop my play “Hope: Part II of A Mexican Trilogy.” “A Mexican Trilogy” (LA Drama Critic’s Circle Award 2012) follows the story of a Mexican family in the U.S. over a span of a hundred years and was produced at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in 2011 (Hope: Part I) and 2012 (Faith: Part II and Charity: Part III). I’m also working on a new (ish) play, “Premeditation” for our theater ensemble, the Latino Theater Company, where I’m the resident playwright. “Premeditation” is a one-act I wrote a while back that I’m expanding into a full-length play. But, it’s not as easy as I expected it would be… We need a show for the Spring Season so I worked on it over the summer and I am finishing it up now. I also have a TCG Fox Fellowship to archive and articulate our work (Latino Theater Company) as an ensemble. And I’m preparing “A Mexican Trilogy” and “Dementia” to be published by Samuel French.

Q: Tell me about the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

A: We are the operators of the Los Angeles Theatre Center (LATC). We (Latino Theater Company) have a 20-year lease with the city to operate and provide programming that reflects the rich diversity of Los Angeles. So, we are a theater company and we do produce our own plays. But, we also produce plays by other playwrights and companies. We have two seasons; Fall: Face of the World; and Spring: East of Broadway. We usually produce eight to ten shows a year, mostly new plays by people of color. At the LATC diversity is not the exception, but the rule. The building is an old bank building in the Historic Core of Downtown. It’s an eight-story building with 4 theaters that range from 500 seats down to a 99-seat black box. We also have a dance/performance studio and a gallery space. DTLA is experiencing a renaissance. We have lots of new folks moving into lofts, new restaurants, bars, nightclubs. The historic core is an interesting mix of the new downtowners and the old. We are one block away from skid row. So, you have a master chef restaurant on one block and skid row folks one block away. I suppose there’s a certain amount of gentrification going on, but as someone who lives downtown, it’s an improvement. I know it’s probably not PC to say that, but it’s much better for our theater. Now, if we could only get more white people to come watch stories about people of color, lgbt, etc., it would be even cooler.

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, I was born in East LA but lived the first nine years of my life in Phoenix, Arizona; the youngest of five. My parents had a pretty miserable marriage, which is what happens when you marry at 15 and 18 years old. They are both first generation Mexican-Americans born in Arizona. Raising us they spoke to us in English and to each other in Spanish. I suppose they wanted us to be more American than they are. When my parents divorced, we moved back to East LA to live with my grandparents, who came to the U.S. from Mexico during the revolution of 1910. So, the characters I write are Mexican-Americans and all of my plays take place in the U.S. They are bilingual and bicultural, like me. I was born in East LA, but unlike the way it is portrayed on stage and in film, it is a working class neighborhood with good, hardworking people. There are not drive by shootings everyday and there are not drug dealers on every corner. I look for the beauty in my people and write their stories.

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

A: One thing? Wow, that’s difficult. I’m assuming you mean the American Theater. In that case, I would make it accessible to all people to participate either as artists or as audience members, which is not the case right now. In general, I think our American theater needs an overhaul. Regional theaters are working from a model that is no longer sustainable. The world is changing faster than we ever imagined it could and the American Theater must change to ensure its future. We need more people of color, more women, more anything but white males running our theaters!

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Luis Valdez, the founder of El Teatro Campesino. He began Chicano theater in the fields supporting the United Farmworkers Union and made it all the way to Broadway with “Zoot Suit.” Another hero is Dr. Jorge Huerta who was the first Ph.D. Scholar to document the history of Chicano theater in the U.S. They are both mentors to me. My other heroes are the members of our ensemble, the Latino Theater Company, for their passion and commitment to the theater: Jose Luis Valenzuela (Artistic Director) and Sal Lopez, Lucy Rodriguez, Geoffrey Rivas and the late Lupe Ontiveros. Especially Lupe for her never-ending love of the theater despite all of the obstacles. We’ve been together for 28 years, longer than most marriages…

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Cosmopolitical theater that pushes the boundaries politically and aesthetically. Theater that is forward thinking and not cynical or self-absorbed. Theater that matters.

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

A: If you are just starting out, I would say you should venture outward rather than inward. The more life-experience you have the more complete you become as a human being and a playwright. On the other hand, don’t look so far away that you don’t recognize yourself, your true self, your authentic self in your work any longer. Drama is human nature, plain and simple.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: The LATC Spring Season 2014 and the Latino Theater Encuentro (Encounter) in Fall of 2014. “Premeditation,” Spring of 2014 (the one act I’ve adapted to a full-length) at the LATC.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 626: Peter Papadopoulos

Peter Papadopoulos

Hometown: Newington, CT

Current Town: San Francisco, CA

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m working on a number of different types of things right now including the final play in my Love Gone Wrong at the End of the World Trilogy. I’m also finishing up what I hope will be an innovative online/offline acting book that is specifically about acting in modern, heightened plays. I am first releasing a shorter version online in January and then I will begin to look for a print publisher as well for a more in-depth version that I have been working on. Hopefully my Love Trilogy play will be out in the spring if I like it well enough. I’ve held or killed my last several plays so there is no telling with me. I am not a fast writer anyways even though I am out of that school that produces a lot of content. I typically write several hundred pages that are a sort of a mash of things and then I start prowling around and asking myself, is there an important story in here that is entertaining enough to me that I feel excited to spend another few months with it? If not I just treat it as practice and move on.

Q:  Tell me about Mojo.

A:  Mojo theatre is "magical powers” theatre. What are those powers? Expressionism, symbolism, sound, film, audience interaction, internet, thematic food service, program design, opera, lighting, pre-show acts, costume, cell phones, dance, improv, live music—every art form and every available mode of expression, harnessed in whatever way best tells the story of the piece being undertaken by the company. It is essentially heightened modern theatre grounded in old-school theatre principles, where storytelling takes precedence over any uniformity of style or tone.

And the story of the piece makes up the center. So far we usually use a verbal concept statement to define this story. This statement then becomes the center of gravity that all these magical elements swirl around, and not only the designers, but the actors are expected to fully participate in this. Do you have an idea about how a dramatic entrance through the audience will help tell the central story? Great, let’s see it! And now this new entrance gives the lighting designer a new idea she wants to try with a new lighting special? Great, let’s try it again with the light! And then someone has another idea and off we go, building a multi-ringed universe outward in layer after layer of thematic storytelling.

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, every Christmas someone tells this story about me so “it must mean something.” When I was I was about 9 or 10 years old we were decorating the family Christmas tree on a snowy winter night and I was sort of tossing the tinsel onto the tree in a way that I thought was artful, doing it in a way that it landed kind of randomly and all together created a sort of frozen waterflow look. I was told repeatedly by the adults that I needed to put the tinsel on more neatly like everyone else was doing until finally I got so frustrated by this ongoing “repression” that I stormed off into the basement, dug around until I found a rusty, old hacksaw and made my way out into the snowy woods. After a lot of stumbling around in the dark and an exceptionally long struggle in the bitter cold, I finally returned, triumphant, with a scrawny little Charlie Brown Christmas tree of my own. And I set it up in my bedroom and decorated it with a few ornaments—and of course I put the tinsel on the right way—the artisan way. All the kids gathered around in astonishment and my mother excitedly took pictures. Everyone laughs so hard when they tell this story. I guess it epitomizes me as a person for them, one part gentle artist, one part stubborn old man, one part zealot. That’s probably somewhat accurate.

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

A:  I am going to surprise myself and say that theatre is right where it needs to be. Like the human race I think it is poised at the leading edge of a time of enormous transformation. We just need to stay very aware and tuned in.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Funny you should ask about heroes, the name of the acting book I am finishing right now is “Theatre is for Heroes.” Because theatre is for heroes. Writing, staging, and performing in plays is for people who press on tirelessly and persistently in the face of overwhelming odds—and these plays we stage are about characters who do the same, it is the stuff of theatre. Sometimes to simply complete a difficult play or get that play to its feet against overwhelming and constant setbacks can take a staggering amount of courage and effort and grace. Quite a lot of my teachers from the past are and were these kinds of heroes, both my undergrad teachers at Trinity College and also my grad teachers at Trinity Repertory. I watched them make a life that was based on bravery and persistence, both on off stage.

As for some well-known artistic heroes, Robert Edmond Jones’ The Dramatic Imagination has always been a huge influence on me. I’ve read that book so many times. I find it incredibly moving and inspiring. I am also a big fan of Charles Mee and not only his plays, but the entire imaginative sensibility he brings to the theatre through his writing and his personal presence and attitude. My love trilogy is a response to Mee’s love trilogy—First Love, Big Love, True Love. Jose Rivera has also had a large influence on my sense of theatre, especially from the perspective of playwright--what is possible theatrically when you strike out boldly into new territory as a writer.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theatre that takes you on an epic journey and literally changes your whole being in the process. Changes everyone in the room as they are watching together. And you can feel it happening, feel yourselves changing, all together. The transcendent energy in the room is palpable and you are all traveling together. And to make that possible, to take an audience on that journey requires an intense commitment to both power and skill by the playwright and producing theatre. To enable the level of not only storytelling, but trust, that this audience wants to go on the journey with you.

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

A:  First learn all the playwriting rules—down cold—they matter. Then break all of them. In a series of writing experiments is fun. For example, start by learning standard play format. Then try writing a performance piece in a different format. Standard play format is a clear and strong format for writing western plays. On the other hand, like in all cases there may be some truth to its opposite: “standard play format produces standard plays.” The opposite of every traditional rule can also be a very powerful and magical rule, and sometimes just a very ridiculous one.

Never make the audience sit through a full-length play whose central conflict could be resolved in three therapy sessions or less.

Don’t give up on your own vision for theatre.

Don’t rely on blind submissions to get produced. I used to think of this as the ultimate in validation—somebody I don’t even know wants to produce my play! Now this idea seems funny to me. Find people who understand and are excited by the vision of your plays and stage them together. Or stage them yourself. I have seen a lot of wonderful self-produced works lately, including a number of them hosted at hosted recently at Mojo.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Come check out what we are doing at Mojo Theatre, mojotheatre.com, and a number of my plays and other projects can be found at the new site I am building right now at peterpop.com.

 

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I Interview Playwrights Part 625: Allyson Currin

Allyson Currin

Hometown: I was born in a tee-tiny town called Laurinburg, NC, but I grew up in Chapel Hill and Winston-Salem, NC.

Current Town: Proud resident of Washington, DC for 23 years!

Q:  Tell me about the Welders.

A:  The Welders are, first and foremost, a collective of playwrights, plus one Executive and Creative Director. Over the next three years, we will collaboratively produce world premieres written by each of the founding playwrights. Then, at the end of that time, we will pass the entire organization (from the tax-exempt status to the money in the bank) to another group of five playwrights. It's an elegant mission that directly serves DC talent, and gives playwrights true agency in one of the most challenging professions in the arts. We are providing an alternative, playwright-driven platform for new play development (as opposed to waiting around for the phone to ring) and working WITH and FOR one another.

Q:  Tell me about The Redneck Holy Grail.

A:  THE REDNECK HOLY GRAIL is a play about finding meaning, about the importance of heritage and home and individual voice. But it's also very funny - an Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole journey through a bizarre urban landscape, as the central character Diana tries to figure out the rules of a chaotic and surreal world. It has elements of magical realism, fairy tale characters, Oz, Tim Burton...all mashed up in a hero's journey for a "sacred" grail that Diana doesn't even believe in.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I am working on a lot! Here's the laundry list: a new play commissioned by Cincinnati Playhouse, a new musical (with collaborator Matt Conner) commissioned by Signature Theatre, a comedy called THE RETURN TO LATIN that was commissioned by Theatre J's Locally Grown Initiative that the J is continuing to workshop, and a new play commissioned by GWU. I also am writing a new play called THE SOONER CHILD, which is being developed by 1st Draft at Charter Theatre. Those are the main ones. Plus re-writes of REDNECK!

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

A:  Writing was my first creative expression, and I have literally been writing since I could spell. (But I didn't write a single play until my mid-twenties! I was an actor, and had no interest in anything "behind the scenes") I started writing stories and novels as a child to "fix" sad endings of my favorite books - so that Rhett would end up with Scarlett, for instance.

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

A:  Wow. Hard question. Theatre is the toughest job you'll ever love, as they say... I suppose I should say that opportunities for playwrights are far too rare, but that's why we started The Welders, to combat that issue and to inspire others to do so too! I guess the thing I find the most frustrating about professional theatre is the under-representation of women. But it's more than women not being visible in theatre - it's the frustrating fact that the numbers on this issue haven't really budged over decades. At all. My women friends from the 60's and 70's express how alarmed they are that here we are in the 20-teens still talking about the same lack of opportunity. I wish I knew what to do about that. All you can do is keep making noise, I guess. Keep taking the steering wheel yourself.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I started my fascination with acting via my fascination with old movies. When I was a little girl (like, 6 or 7...) my heroes were classic screen gods and goddesses. I was obsessed with Humphrey Bogart, and remember, as a very young child, having a profound sadness that I would never get to meet him. I adored Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Bette Davis...as I got older I transferred some of that adoration onto theatre geniuses like Shakespeare, Chekhov, Meyerhold, Grotowski, Stoppard... Now, however, my heroes are definitely the amazing theatre people in DC I get to work with. If I started listing names, I'd never stop. But there is a certain brand of actor in DC that is smart, brilliantly talented, plain-speaking, uber-professional, ego-less, inspired and very much about the work. Those are my heroes. You know who you are... (Smile)

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theatre that surprises me. No one in theatre ever sets out to bore anyone, of course, but I do wish theatre people would make sure they know WHY they are telling a story onstage. Not asking that results in theatre that doesn't know how to be surprising.

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

A:  Be sure you want to do it. It's a tough, tough field, and I say that as both an actor and a director as well as a playwright. Playwriting is definitely the toughest of the three. But if you KNOW you must do it, then find your people. Find your community. Surround yourself with people who believe in you, but will tell you the truth (like, "This play isn't good enough to be shared yet.") And be willing to work your butt off. Stir in a little humility and unshakable belief in your work, and you'll make it work!

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Come see THE REDNECK HOLY GRAIL, directed by Sonya Robbins, at The Atlas, March 19-April 5, 2014! And check us out at www.thewelders.org!

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I Interview Playwrights Part 624: Eric Rudnick

Eric Rudnick

Hometown: Born in Washington D.C. Raised in Massapequa, NY.

Current Town: Los Angeles, CA

Q:  Tell me about Day Trader.

A:  Day Trader is a story about how far people will go to get what they think they have coming. The Los Angeles we depict is a shadowy world, the opposite side of glamour. And the morality tale that plays out has the highest stakes of anything I’ve ever written.

The director of the play is Steven Williford, and he has had an unwavering enthusiasm for the play since he read it about two years ago. We’ve been describing the tone of the piece as Comic Noir. There are laugh out loud moments, as well as reveals and twists that we’re working on to have that ripple-through-the-audience affect that can only be achieved in the theatre.

The play was a finalist at HotCity Theatre’s Greenhouse New Play Festival in St. Louis. I will always be indebted to everyone there, because they helped me make a huge leap forward with the play, and with my continuing development as a playwright. Director Carter Lewis and Dramaturg Liz Engelman brought out the goodness and helped me to sharpen every aspect of the script. And getting to know the other finalists, David L. Williams and Gwydion Suilebhan, was a fantastic part of the experience.

The next “big lucky thing” to happen was when I went to see Gary Lennon’s play, A Family Thing, here in town. He asked me what was going on with Day Trader. I said “Nothing!” He suggested two places he thought might be receptive to it. One of those was The Bootleg Theater, and when Alicia Adams and Jessica Hanna said yes, I was completely over the moon. I am co-producing the show, and it’s the best kind of work – being involved in everything from when I first started writing the play to working with the actors and designers, to brainstorming with our PR and Social Media teams. It’s a great space, a sprawling former bra factory that has just the right feel for the play. And The Bootleg has a great reputation for putting on all kinds of amazing shows: Plays, Musicals, Dance, Performance Art, Bands, Comedy, Ladies Arm Wrestling, and the monthly battle between writers called Write Club.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I’m in the middle of a piece about women working in a government-funded lab. Their budget gets cut, and then one of them invents something that could possibly change the world. It addresses the ethical questions about who truly owns an idea. I’m writing the stage play and the screenplay simultaneously. I’ll know in a little while whether or not that’s a good idea.

I also have a few TV pilots that are making the rounds. One of them was a Second Rounder at the Austin Film Festival this year. I went to some great panels and interview sessions there, and most of the TV show runners said that they read plays and look for playwrights when they are hiring. Good to hear, right?

I’m also looking forward to making more episodes of the web series I created, “The Edge Of Allegiance.” We have a few episodes and some teasers on the internet now. It started out as a stage play. It’s a show about Mount Rushmore getting its own TV news show. It could also be called “Four Actors In Old-Timey Makeup Crammed Into A Rock.”

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 in elementary school, we were given an assignment to write the rest of a story, the first sentence of which was assigned by the teacher. Every kid got the same opening sentence, which went something like: “This is your Captain speaking, the ship is going to explode in five minutes…” So I wrote down that sentence and under it I drew a picture of a cruise ship exploding, with little stick figure people flying off in every direction. In the middle of the explosion I wrote, in very colorful magic markers, one word: BOOM! And I thought it was pretty good, because it is definitely one of the most exciting things that I could think of happening after that sentence. But I was also a little worried that the teacher really wanted us to write some kind of essay, and that it would look like I was not following the unspoken rules of the homework. This concern proved to be misplaced, because it turned out to be one of the ten or so assignments that the teacher stapled to the bulletin board. This taught me two valuable lessons: Don’t stop yourself when you’ve got an idea that excites you, and your work can look pretty cool when someone has the courage to put it where other people can see it.

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

A:  I’d love to see more playwrights producing their own work. Unlike so many other types of writing, the theatre is a place where a script is not automatically assumed to need notes, or to need other writers to come in and make it better. So it would be great if writers took the sovereignty that the theatre provides and helped their collaborators to create the type of play that they themselves want to show to the world. It’s very satisfying to have some skin in the game, and to collaborate with other theatre artists in a way that is not just about the text, but how the play is ultimately presented for an audience.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Tom Stoppard, Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Larry Kramer. Mark Rylance. David and Amy Sedaris, as The Talent Family, did some of the funniest, most devastatingly satirical plays in New York in the mid-90s. If a company is looking for a breakout kind of season, I recommend doing all of those Talent Family plays. There are about five or six of them. Defiant Theatre in Chicago blew my head off with “Action Movie: The Play” – a crazily inventive show that I still reference fourteen years later. Then there are people who have made a huge difference for me as an artistic person. I’ve been to the Edinburgh Festival twice, once as an actor in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” I’m in love with everyone who works to put that on every year. When I was living in Manhattan, my mom and I used to meet for Wednesday matinees on Broadway, and we would alternate who got to pick the show each time. So she was a big influence - getting me to see amazing shows, a lot of them musicals that we would talk about afterwards. My dad also took me to see a lot of things when I was growing up – plays, opera, jazz – that were really eye-opening and helped me understand different kinds of creativity. Richard Pinter of The Neighborhood Playhouse taught me how to act, and at the same time really taught me how to write because of the way he teaches an approach to the text. Liz Engelman was the first Dramaturg I ever got to work with, and she inspired me to look at a play as an ever-evolving puzzle, as opposed to a fixed thing that you just add to or take away from. Larry Fineberg and Gary Lennon are friends who I admire - two great writers who have had success in other mediums, but who keep coming back and creating new, interesting work for the theatre. Also Gwydion Suilebhan does a tremendous amount for the community of playwrights across the country. And Roger Guenveur Smith and Anna Deavere Smith, who in my dream production would just take turns reading aloud from the menu at Jerry’s Deli.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  There are so many things I enjoy seeing onstage, and the common thread is that it gets to me on a gut level. I feel it, experience it emotionally, whether it delights me or terrifies me or depresses me. If when the lights come up, I turn to the person next to me and just say “Wow” or sit there in silence, rather than saying, “Where do you want to go eat?” – that means it’s been a good night at the theatre.

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

A:  Go to plays! I know this sounds obvious, but I meet a fair amount of playwrights who don’t go to the theatre on a regular basis. Read plays. Go to museums, ballgames, concerts – take in all kinds of culture, and watch how you and the people around you interact with what’s out there. Be a patron of culture, and support the people and places you appreciate, whether that means following someone on twitter or leaving a thoughtful review on Goldstar. Also, work quickly and efficiently - if you can manage having two projects at the same time, you’ll seldom stop writing, because what’s giving you trouble in one story is probably not an issue, and may even be compelling, in the world of your other story. Pick a few people who you respect as writers or directors and ask them for feedback. Try not to be defensive when they’re kind enough to take the time to give it. Don’t take yourself too seriously, but do take your work to heart. Enjoy the collaboration with everyone you get a chance to work with – they are giving their time, talent, and good will to your imagination.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My play Day Trader opens at The Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles on January 11, 2013 for five weeks. We have an amazing group of people working on this, including a stellar cast featuring Danton Stone, Brighid Fleming, Tim Meinelschmidt, and Sarah Ries. You can see the other project that I collaborated on with director Steven Williford, The Edge Of Allegiance, on FunnyorDie.com.

 

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I Interview Playwrights Part 623: Lauren Ferebee

Lauren Ferebee

Hometown: Dallas, TX

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY (for two more weeks...then Spartanburg, SC until June 30)

Q: Congrats on being A Hub-Bub Artist is Residence. Tell me about that program. What will you work on while you're there?

A: Thanks! The program brings together four artists-in-residence, one filmmaker, two visual artists and one theatre artist, living together in Spartanburg, SC. We live in a building that also houses The Showroom, a performance space/gallery space in downtown Spartanburg, SC. My time will be split between collaborating with fellow residents, working on community-based projects (including site-specific work, I hope), working with the Hub-Bub organization and furthering my own portfolio of writing and theatre work.

Q: What else are you working on?

A: I just finished a commission for Spark and Echo Arts that is a reflection on and response to Psalm 137, a experimental video project that will be displayed on their website soon. I'm currently re-drafting Blood Quantum, a play about Texas and magic, finishing a half-hour original pilot and writing a first draft of an untitled road trip screenplay. I'm also working on two different benefits: one that Winter Miller is helming, on December 17th at the New Ohio, and one that will be part of V-Day's One Billion Rising for Justice in NYC - a fundraiser for the amazing City of Joy that will feature extraordinary new work engaging theatrically with justice. That will be in February.

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 kid, I couldn't stand still. I used to talk to my mom and just jump up and down while I was talking to her; when I got excited about something I would run around the house as an expression of my excitement. I remember really clearly the first time it occurred to me that I could be a writer - for a living - I was composing a poem in purple pen in my Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper. After that I COULD NOT stand still. I was just running up and down the hallways thinking about all the different things I could write.

Shortly thereafter (I was 10), I began my first novel, which was about a girl that used to stare wistfully into a stream that ran through a wheat field. I think the combined facts of that story say pretty much everything about who I am as a writer and a theatre artist. Not much has changed. Less wheat fields, maybe.

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

A: More women playwrights and playwrights of diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds being produced everywhere, all the time. I think we're very slowly moving in that direction, but if I could snap my fingers and have it just be that way, I would do it in a heartbeat.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: In terms of writers, I greatly admire Caryl Churchill, who I hadn't read much of until everyone interacting with my work told me I had to go read her. then I fell in love. Meredith Monk, for being extraordinary and strange. I also idolize Thomas Ostermeier and his aesthetic: I saw his Hedda Gabler at BAM in 2007 and it's stuck with me in great detail since.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I love people that do bold and unusual work that strikes at the heart. Some of the best work I've seen in New York has been with Flux Theatre Ensemble, who I'm lucky enough to work with as an associate artist. When I was just out of school and saw The Lesser Seductions of History, it rocked my world pretty hard. I also pretty much adore everything The Debate Society does and continues to do with their work, and I love the honest process of companies like The Assembly and The TEAM, who work so thoroughly and beautifully creating courageous and innovative work.

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

A: Go where your intuition takes you, write a bunch and then find a teacher that kicks your butt on structure so you learn how to put the plays together beautifully. Then, go make plays however you want.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: My short play Voir Dire goes up on December 17th as part of the Mad and Merry Theatre Company's Fractured Fables series at the Access Yheater'. In February, look out for my teen superhero play Invisibility, or Tiny Rockets, done by Adaptive Arts. Stay tuned for the Night of Joy benefit, also in February. Check out my work on Indie Theater Now! http://indietheaternow.com/Playwright/lauren-ferebee or check out my website www.laurenferebee.com.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 622: Lizzie Olesker

Lizzie Olesker

Hometown: New York City

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about the play you are working on in your Audrey Residency at New Georges.

A:  My play EMBROIDERED PAST is about hoarding and the loss of nature; accumulation and depletion. In part a "family drama", the play also incorporates object and toy theater elements. I wrote a rough, first draft during a week-long silent retreat with playwright Erik Ehn (an amazing, intense experience). What sparked the play was this recurring image of an 80 year old Chinese woman obsessing on her past, listing her few possessions. Also, the image of a middle-aged white woman sitting on a chair outside her house, not wanting to go back in yet unable to leave for good. Her husband, perpetually on the couch, is a serious hoarder who thinks of himself as a collector. Their grown son appears in the middle of the night, with nowhere else to go. Just outside the frame of this small, domestic story is the reality of environmental degradation and climate change, explored in miniature.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I'm also working on DOING THE WASH, a site-specific performance for neighborhood laundromats around NYC . I've written some text and just began working with actors in creating movement sequences around women's personal and historical relationship to the work of doing laundry. I will also be interviewing people currently working in drop-off service laundromats. Experimental filmmaker Lynn Sachs is going to collaborate, creating filmic elements for the performances from the interviews. Wash and Dry Productions, which has been producing literary readings in laundromats for several years, commissioned this new piece.

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

A:  My father died suddenly when I was just 12 years old. This profound loss affected me in many ways, making me tougher and more sensitive at the same time. I was still a girl yet felt like the world had completely shifted. I quickly understood impermanence and the relativity of one's experiences. I become more responsible yet also more rebellious. I suddenly had a stronger sense of injustice in the world.

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

A:  Make it more affordable and accessible to more audiences. It would be great if theater was less stratified and there were more opportunities of bringing new plays into production.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Let's see... Euripides. Bertolt Brecht. Anton Chekhov, Adrienne Kennedy, Maria Irene Fornes, Joe Chaikin, Samuel Beckett, Tony Kushner, Mac Wellman, Caryl Churchill, Will Eno, Annie Baker, Anne Washburn, Suzan-Lori Parks, Enda Walsh, to name a few...

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  When something is transformed. When I feel like my head and heart are literally expanding.When reality shifts through language and image, in time and space. When I'm being made smarter: emotionally and intellectually. And of course, when the familiar is made strange and the strange, familiar.

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

A:  Find and/or make a community of other artists who you like to work with and respect, who you can be in dialogue with. Find a way to direct and put on your own play, in whatever interesting context you want- it doesn't have to be a formal theater. Read a lot of good literature. See a lot of theater. Go to see visual art which relates somehow to whatever it is you're working on. Have faith. Hang in there.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 621: Sarah Shaefer

Sarah Shaefer

Hometown: Baltimore, Maryland

Current Town: New York, New York

Q:  Tell me about The Gin Baby.

A:  The Gin Baby is about a young woman whose life falls apart after getting sober and commits herself to a psych ward.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm currently working on two commissions from Kid Brooklyn Productions and one commission from Rising Phoenix Rep. For Kid Brooklyn, I'm workshopping All's Well That Ends Happy, a play about two ambitious porn actors who go to any lengths to climb up the ladder of sex industry success. It will be produced Fall of 2014 and Evan Caccippoli will direct. The second commission is for La Ronde Project, where Kid Brooklyn has commissioned eight playwrights, including Daniel Talbott, Charlotte Miller, Troy Deutsch, Nic Grelli myself and others, to write pieces inspired by Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde. That will go up at IRT July 3 - 5, 2014. I'm also working on a play for Rising Phoenix Rep's Cino Night series, that will be performed November 26. We start rehearsing on Monday!

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 five years-old, I was cast as a Dove of Peace in my Sunday school's Christmas play. Our costumes were white dresses with nude stockings. I had to get special permission from my mother to wear the nude stockings because she thought they were too provocative. She strictly forbid that I wear them anywhere else but on stage for my church play. That was the first experience where I was allowed to do things on stage that I was forbidden to do in real life. I love the sense of freedom I get on stage. I am allowed to be crass. I don't have to pretend I'm some kind of refined, conservative person who enjoys being polite.

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

A:  I like feeling like my skin just got shredded off with a cheese grater. I like feeling raw, overwhelmed and paralyzed after seeing a show. This doesn't always happen.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Sarah Kane, Jose Rivera, Daniel Talbott, Marcus Gardley, Harold Clurman, Jack Doulin, Edwin Sanchez.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that gives me a spiritual experience excites me; theater that I have a visceral reaction too, much like going to a huge Sunday gospel service. I just wanna raise my hands up and say yeah!!! Like I was blind and now I see. That kind of theater.

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

A:  Write everyday. Focus on the writing. Do what you need to do to keep writing. Being accountable to someone else helps me write. Deadlines keep me disciplined, but before I had the luxury of deadlines, it was just me and my desire to write, so taking a class really helped me get out the pages.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:   I have two productions coming up. The Gin Baby, directed by Daniel Talbott, produced by Mermaid Sand Productions and Kid Brooklyn Productions, running at IRT (154 Christopher Street) January 19, 2014 - February 2, 2014. You can buy tickets at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/476076. All's Well That Ends Happy, directed by Evan Caccioppoli, starring Nic Grelli, James Leighton and Briana Packen, produced by Kid Brooklyn Productions, coming up in Fall 2014. For Summer 2014, Rising Phoenix Rep will also be producing the Beach Plays in San Francisco. For more information on Kid Brooklyn Productions, you can check them out here: http://www.kidbrooklynproductions.org and for Rising Phoenix Rep, you can check them out here: http://www.risingphoenixrep.org.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 620: Sarah Matusek

 

Sarah Matusek

Hometown: Miami then St. Louis.

Current Town: Brooklyn.

Q: Tell me about your production with Everyday Inferno.

A:  The official title is short and sweet: PEOPLE WILL TALK ABOUT YOU SOMETIMES (A love letter to 4.48 Psychosis). Everyday Inferno is generously producing PEOPLE WILL TALK as part of their upcoming evening of one-acts, If on a Winter’s Night. As I reread 4.48 Psychosis last year, I couldn’t get past the heart-breaking line: “What do you offer your friends to make them so supportive?” I was intrigued by how memorialization can serve as the final compassionate act for a loved one, but also how we are memorialized in multiplicity.

Inspired by Sarah Kane’s final work, I have imagined the dynamics of a supportive network of friends affected by a suicide. Director Taylor Reynolds has joined me in exploring a poetic theatrical space composed without stage directions. PEOPLE WILL TALK does not attempt to adapt or explain 4.48 Psychosis—that would be impossible, and probably irreverent. Also, you do not need to have read Kane’s play before experiencing mine.

Austin-based Poison Apple Initiative is currently developing a full-length version of PEOPLE WILL TALK for Austin’s FronteraFest in early 2014. I am experimenting with these two lengths to discover which form best serves the content.

Q: What is Small Claims Court?

A: I started Small Claims Court as a devised performance group with an evolving/revolving team of collaborators. Since our residency at the Creative Arts Studio of Sea Cliff on Long Island this summer, our first full production, FALL OF ROME (an unofficial history), and two other short works-in-progress have been hosted by Title:Point and Fresh Ground Pepper at the Silent Barn. Due to fall/winter projects that have fallen outside of the realm of Small Claims, the group is on a small hiatus, but I’m looking forward to developing a dinosaur-themed dance theatre project with pals this spring.

Small claims court also “permits you to recover, without retaining a lawyer, up to $5,000 from individuals or businesses residing or having a place of business in the city or town in which the court sits.” – Better Business Bureau

Q: What else are you working on now?

A: A current exhibition of clocks and watches at the Frick Collection called “Precision and Splendor” has inspired my latest play, The Little Egyptians. It’s a love story set against the history of horology. It’s a two-person piece that calls for heavy Ancient Egyptian eye makeup.

I am also working on my first short screenplay—a mockumentary.

My mom wants to write something with me, so we will probably do that over Christmas.

Most pressing, however, is coaxing my heater to turn on.

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 grew up wanting to be a dolphin trainer and/or Broadway choreographer. After receiving the sad news that there were no dolphins in Missouri, I turned our unfinished basement into a performance studio. All through elementary school, I asked for CD’s of musicals and ballets as gifts for all major holidays so that I could choreograph each track into a fully realized basement production. I cast my friends from school and even bought them costumes from Goodwill. One major problem persisted: I was usually too shy to ask my friends if they wanted to be in my shows. So for years until adolescence I would rehearse these fully choreographed musical numbers with these ghost casts that I never mustered up enough courage to actually invite over. My productions of Annie and The Nutcracker include some of my best work to date. Some days I was lucky enough to guilt-trip my younger brother into standing in for a sugar plum fairy.

I really don’t know what changed along the way, how I began to open up. Theatre has taught me so much about courage—from presence and preparation to claiming ownership of original thought and action. While I still battle some of that residual shyness, at least now I can hold rehearsals with all members present.

Q: Who are your theatrical heroes?

A: Sherry Kramer, Eugenio Barba and Odin Teatret, Dah Teatar, Howard Barker, Dario Fo, Annie Baker, Mac Wellman, Sibyl Kempson, Jenny Schwartz, Young Jean Lee, Elana Greenfield, Sam Hunter, Anne Carson, and, most recently, writers of the French Oulipo movement.

Also, I just graduated from Bennington College where I was surrounded by theatre geniuses. So look out for my friends.

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

A: Well, I am a playwright/performer/director just starting out. If I knew how to be better, I would be better. I will say, though, that living and making work in a fast-paced city requires daily patience with myself.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Everyday Inferno Theatre Company – If on a Winter’s Night… One-act plays, Dec 5-8 at Access Theatre Gallery

http://www.everydayinferno.com/WintersNight2013/

Stay tuned for Poison Apple Initiative news involving PEOPLE WILL TALK at FronteraFest 2014!

Small Claims Court (reach out at info.smallclaims@gmail.com)

http://smallclaims.biz/who_we_are

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I Interview Playwrights Part 619: Christian Levatino

Christian Levatino

Hometown: West Haven, Ct.

Current Town: Los Angeles, Ca.

Q:  Tell me about Sunny Afternoon.

A:  Sunny Afternoon is my contribution to the Kennedy assassination, an event that has fascinated me since my single digit years. It is a look at the 46 hours that Lee Harvey Oswald was in the custody of Dallas homicide captain Will Fritz. Sunny Afternoon is the first sequence in my playbook G-BOY//THE J. EDGAR HOOVER PENTALOGY - a look at the power and corruption of J. Edgar.
 

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I am currently directing Sunny Afternoon @ The Asylum Theatre in Hollywood, putting the finishing touches on a music video that I directed for Matt Mann and The Shine Runners as well as working on the follow up to Sunny Afternoon a two-act play entitled Black Bag Job (the second sequence in G-BOY).

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'm always looking out for the party. I've never wanted to ruin anyone's enjoyment. At the age of six, I broke my arm at a family picnic. I didn't tell anyone because I knew it would stop the party and I remember everyone was having fun. One of my earliest memories that still has much detail, I believe I was two years old and I attempted to shave with my father's razor. Very bad idea. I cut my lower lip open pretty bad. I was unsure what to do, but I knew this wasn't good. I crept downstairs and saw my folks watching television. They seemed to be enjoying the program and that made me happy, so I went back upstairs, grabbed some tissues and a green bucket. I put the tissues on my lip, the bucket over my head, handle against my neck like a chin strap and went to bed.

I've been looking out for the audience for awhile. ;)

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

A:  I would make the consequences for bad theatre - extremely severe. Perhaps bring tomato throwing back? Or face punches? That'd be cool. Bad actors get jumped when they get off stage.

‘Were theatre a tightrope where no incompetent would dare to tread’
- Goethe

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Orson Welles with The Mercury Theatre Company and Woody Allen. I'll throw Stanley Kubrick in as well even though he directed no theatre, you'd never know that from his films however. All three trust in their writing and let the actors do their thing in a wide shot. I love that. They brought theatre to film for me. Write good dialogue and get great actors to speak it.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Original, passionate, focused, provocative, unapologetic - speed & fucking violence. Let me add comfortable actors, I despise strained, forced or muggy acting. Ensembles that blaze make me smile.

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

A:  WORKSHOP or be BULLSHIT. You must be willing to collaborate and know when another idea is better than your own. Have an ego when your kid's hitting home runs for Varsity not when he's playing tee-ball.

And NEVER be satisfied.

Q:  Plugs, please: 

A:  Come see Sunny Afternoon running unil 12/01. Black Bag Job will be workshopped at The Asylum Lab at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in June of 2014.
LIKE the gangbusters theatre company on Facebook, PLEASE (it helps spread the word).

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I Interview Playwrights Part 618: Lisa Lewis

Lisa Lewis

Hometown: I grew up mainly in Louisville, KY and Naperville, IL.

Current Town: Astoria, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  A half-hour sitcom pilot called THE GAMBLE, based on my play TRIPLE CHERRY.

Q:  Tell me about NY Theatre Mag.

A:  This is a great upstart magazine for the theatre community. Beautiful, glossy, photo and editorial rich, it aims to do in-depth stories on leaders and innovators on the NY theatre scene, predominately Broadway and Off-Broadway institutions. What makes this magazine so exciting is its desire to really illuminate artists’ lives. Very often it has theatre people interviewing theatre people, so there’s a great sense of intimacy and understanding in the writing – you get the best stories that way.

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

A:  My parents met at a singing lesson in New York in the 70s. My dad was living at the Y and doing children's theatre and wanted to be Robert Goulet. My mom was an actress who later started an experimental theatre company in our hometown of Louisville, KY, and resembled in her glamour and chutzpah the great diva of the era, Miss Piggy. They put their only child in their plays at the state fair (I was a flea and a toaster!) and my grandmother would take me to the famed Actors Theatre and the Guffman-esque Derby Dinner Playhouse. In college, when I moved into my first walk-up in New York, my dad carried the boxes up the stairs while reciting the opening to Barefoot in the Park. Theatre was a big part of our lives. And in such a theatrical family, there was a lot of drama, big personalities and emotions. Sometimes as a kid, I’d pretend that I was watching a play and we were all characters and it was absurd, and funny, and sad, and wonderfully melodramatic. I think a lot of kids do that, look at their life - or the difficult parts of it - as a story. This gave me some distance, and when I started actually writing, some control. As a writer, I tend towards funny, poignant, tragicomedies. Though someday I'd like to do a big, crazy, slamming door farce, with music! I try not to write about my actual family, but they do sneak in here and there. They're eccentric, funny people.

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

A:  Oh gosh, I’m in the middle of my first self-production and it’s so expensive! And that expense inevitably shapes the content of shows from Off-Off Broadway to the Belasco. But it also forces us as artists to be creative, to work in unusual places, push theatre beyond the proscenium, and write shows that work in non-traditional venues. Crowdfunding has given opportunities to an incredible array of new voices and become a revolutionary answer to the economic challenges of putting up a show. As artists we’re always reacting, adapting and rebelling to the environment we’re in. So, yes, making theatre is expensive, but we must let it be a force of creative change that gives birth to something new and exciting.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  It started with Tennessee Williams, his lyricism and family dramas, then it was Anna Deavere Smith for telling the stories of everyday people in their own words, then Aaron Sorkin for making politics admirable, and Eric Bogosian for being dirty and brilliant, and Donald Margulies and Christopher Durang and Annie Baker, but always there was Woody Allen. Though technically much of his work is in film - it’s been his humor, his insight, his playful neuroticism, his romanticism, that has pushed me to go deeper, be funnier, embrace the digression, and believe in the eccentricity of my own voice.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I love comedies, and especially ones that are heart wrenching. My favorite plays last year were Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike and Annie Baker’s The Flick. Plays about people suffering hilariously. That to me is the perfect mirror on real life, which is not all sad and not all funny, but some surreal in-between.

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

A:  Writing takes time, so take your time with it. It’s not all about productions, it’s also about process and also different artists work at different paces, so give yourself that. And, jealousy/envy is self-destructive. It comes from the fear that there is only so much success to go around, which I don’t believe. I worked in film for many years, and the amazing thing in film development is that the cream rises, good work gets read. There will always be room for another great voice.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Please look out for my play SCHOOLED coming to New York in August 2014 – and very soon, keep your eyes out for the SCHOOLED Crowdfunding campaign. And check out the future issues of New York Theatre Magazine where I’ll be continuing to contribute: http://nytheatremag.com

You can find me at www.LisaLewisWriting.com

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