First is a reading of my brand new play I'm still revising. Come see it with me in front of an audience for the first time. Cast of thousands! Under 90 minutes!
Violent Bones
directed by Jen Wineman
June 13 at 4:30 pm at Primary Stages
307 W 38th St, NYC
You probably want to watch a video about my reading and the other readings by my incredibly talented writing group:
Current City: Chicago, Illinois Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m about to launch myself into a playwright’s initiative with Sideshow Theatre Company (Chicago.) They’re being gracious enough to provide me with a year of resources to write …whatever it is I want to write.
I just opened my adaptation of A Doll’s House (IBSEN IS DEAD) last week, so I haven’t had the luxury to dissect what this particular project is going to look like exactly…but I know it has something to do with America in the 1960’s…I know it’s going to explore fame, I know it’s going to explore personal exploitation, and I know it’s going to have something to do with addiction…
…beyond that…? I’m not quite sure (giggling while typing).
Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: Umm…there were woods in my backyard growing up.
My brother and I would play there a lot.
We would have to cross a bridge to get into the woods, but the moment we were there...? We could be whatever we wanted.
We created alternate universes in those woods.
We were hunters, gold miners, fur trappers…so yeah, I think it was the nature of that very safe, very small, very sacred wood that made me believe in The Imaginary…or…allowed me to believe that The Imaginary could be a reality.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: BECAUSE YOU ASKED, ADAM SZYMKOWICZ!
It feels like the fire of our artistic ancestors is systematically being put...the fuck…OUT. And it’s really, really disheartening.
I want us to change that.
We seem more concerned with script accessibility and personal gain than actually saying something worthwhile in our craft. I think about storefront theatre, right? I mean, storefront theatre was created to counteract the despondency attached to commercialized theatre. The hope in the storefront legacy was that it would eventually rub off on commercial theatre. But the opposite seems to have happened. Even critics don’t say anything critical anymore, they’re just writing consumer reports. And just to water this down a bit, if we think about A Doll’s House, or The Crucible, or Dutchman… I mean, those works were made to piss people off. And they did! A lot! And we can franchise those works as much as we want and congratulate ourselves (or maybe DELUDE ourselves) into thinking that things have changed since then, but in a lot of ways things are exactly the same. So let’s talk about that. Let’s CREATE about that. Let’s CHALLENGE AUDIENCES about that.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: ANNIE BAKER. Harold Pinter. Amiri Baraka. Sophocles. Spalding Gray. Lorraine Hansberry. Eugene O’Neill. Sarah Kane.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Most days I feel like I’m just starting out too. So I’ll give the advice I give myself:
#1 you don’t have to be poor to be a playwright
#2 you’ll create your best art when you’re taking care of your body and your relationships.
#3 don’t get a credit card
#4 don’t go to law school
#5 “As an artist, you’re constantly in a state of becoming. If you can remain in that state, then you’ll probably be all right.” – Bob Dylan
#6 if you want to be smarter than Steinbeck, Woolf, Lebowitz, Bukowski and Fitzgerald combined: don’t start smoking cigarettes. No matter how cool you think it will make you look, or how provocative you think it is, or how apropos you think it is for a writer to do, just don’t. You’ll never regret not smoking.
#7 if you have parents, be kind to them. Even when you get upset because they don’t seem to understand what you’re doing with your life…because let’s be honest…YOU don’t really know what you’re doing with your life (and I say that with admiration). Tell them you “love” them. Dedicate all your plays to them (at least the good ones). Because they’ve earned it. And without them, you literally wouldn’t be writing plays at all.
#8 Kick back.
#9 listen to Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech/lecture at least once a month. It will be good for you, I promise.
#10 Be you. No one else is going to do it, so you should.
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A: I’m Pretty Fucked Up, which will premiere at Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks in June, is about three best friends who are ditching school to drive up into the mountains of New Mexico. It’s also about the students and staff back on campus who are dealing with an emergency lockdown. So the play is really about danger and freedom and captivity and responsibility.
The play started for me on a writer’s retreat with some Brooklyn College buds. I knew I wanted to write about this invincible, on-top-of-the-world feeling I recalled from sophomore year of high school when I first got my driver’s license. I remember driving around singing along to songs on a mixed tape and seeing the whole horizon in New Mexico stretch out before me and knowing that once my parents gave me the keys to the car, I could go anywhere and no one could stop me. So there is some of that in the play, kids driving around, feeling really free and in charge of their own lives, for the first time maybe ever. There is also a security guard back at school who is grappling with his role as protector during a big emergency.
The play, I think, also celebrates what can happen when nothing at all is happening, when we’re waiting for something to happen like when we’re driving, or flying, or waiting in elevators, or going out for recess. The play hangs out in those in-between moments, moments when we either choose to or are forced to relinquish control over what we’re doing, where we’re going, and why.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: I’m writing a monologue-diagram about Crown Heights with Mabou Mines, which I’ll be performing at the end of May. I haven’t appeared in my own stuff before and I never write one-person monologue plays. I read it to a few people last week and realized that reading it aloud helped me to touch base with what a story is, how simple it can be, and what it feels like to tell one. I’m also working on a full-length about seven 24 year-old women living in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: Theater should be more affordable. What can we do? We keep saying this. How do we solve this problem?
I would also like theater to find a way to help audiences approach new work, to help audiences approach plays with non-linear narratives, plays where time and space misbehave and misunderstand one another, plays that depict the shortcomings or the collapse or rebuilding of our communication structures. Plays that put us in precarious positions where we feel something that we are not accustomed to feeling. I don’t want plays to confuse people just for the heck of it. I am interested in theater that does not resolve the quagmire of our existence but rather carves out space to stew in it. I’d like theater to find a way to help cultivate audiences who can feel comfortable walking into these new narrative structures and sensations, and by comfortable I mean that they should feel proud and capable of sitting there and getting a little stirred up. I don’t want audiences to feel completely alienated or locked out of the art form. I don’t mean that we all need to speak like academics. I mean that we need to be able to circulate some tools to help audiences feel empowered to come try out new plays and new forms. I don’t quite know what those tools are. But I want theater to start thinking about it.
I know I know, I gave you two things but they both have to do with making theater more accessible, I think.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Let’s see, BECKETT. Chekhov, Buchner, Ibsen, Aeschylus, Pina Bausch.
Living heroes: MAC WELLMAN, WILL ENO, Erin Courtney, Robert Wilson, Richard Maxwell, Julia Jarcho, Edgar Oliver, Clubbed Thumb, Jeff Jones, Joanne Akalaitis, New Georges, the Bushwick Starr, and of course Little Theatre.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I just saw An Octoroon last night by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. An Octoroon does not resolve anything about racism and/or the history of slavery but rather it situates everyone inside of the building in a space where we must consider, confuse, misunderstand, regret, hate, reject, laugh, accept, weep, get defensive, get repentant, get confused, again, get guilty, laugh more, become ill, become whole, become fractured, and then steep in a disease we either don’t know how to or perhaps refuse to ameliorate or both or something else. The play does not solve any problems for anyone in the house. It immerses us in the mess we are in. And it makes us all feel. And it is completely surprising. It keeps shifting under us.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Put up your own work on your fire escape and invite some friends who you trust to come see. And invite friends who you trust to be in it. And be kind to yourself. As Mac Wellman says, when you sit down to write, “put on your genius hat”. Also I think it’s important to start out messy. Make strange shapes.
A: HAPPILY EVER is a dark fairy tale based, in a somewhat tangential way, on Shakespeare's play TWO NOBLE KINSMEN. It's a meditation on romantic love. I think romantic love is something that all of us, particularly women, want, but the play is really about how damaging our ideas about love can be to our self-esteem, and how destructive these idealized notions can sometimes be for real-life relationships.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: In my Bookshop Workshop writing group, I'm working on a play about a Jamaican dancehall queen competition that takes place in Pittsburgh - there will be a reading in June so I suppose I should finish my first draft. I'm excited about it because it's the first time I've ever included elements of my Jamaican-American identity in my work as a playwright... I'm just about finished with a first draft of a play about a homeless man and the ghost of a murdered prostitute. I began writing it thinking it would be the libretto to an opera, but now I think it may just be a play with a lot of poems. We shall see. The Salt Makers is a fun experiment with Noh drama that I've been working on with several very talented folks and we'll present what we've got so far at the Little Theater series at Dixon Place on May 12th. I'm also working on a modern re-telling of Cinderella. Also, I'm researching for projects I have on the back burner. I like to stay busy.
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 10 and in the 5th grade I had a best friend who had a huge crush on a boy at our school. This boy had a girlfriend, but I took it upon myself to manufacture a romance between the boy and my friend, writing long letters to my friend presumably from the boy, giving her little presents and telling her that he'd given them to me to give to her, making up lengthy conversations that I had presumably had with the boy about how much he wanted to break up with his girlfriend and be with her. It made her so happy and after a certain point I didn't know how to tell her the truth because this fiction I had created made her so happy! At 10, I felt that telling this lie was for the 'greater good' in some way. Since then I have continued to write fictions that I hope make people happy - or, at the very least, make people feel SOMETHING.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: More inclusion. A greater diversity of people being a part of the theater experience would be amazing.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Eek - this is such a hard question! I'll give you who first pops into mind because there are so many. William Shakespeare. Henrik Ibsen. Frantz Kreutz. Bertolt Brecht. Adrienne Kennedy. Lorraine Hansberry. Edward Albee. Eugene Ionesco. Suzan-Lori Parks. Mac Wellman. MAC WELLMAN. Erin Courtney. Ethan Lipton. Young Jean Lee. Jackie Sibblies Drury. Sibyl Kempson. Marc Bamuthi Joseph. And that's just playwrights. There are many other theater makers - directors, actors, ensemble groups, producers, theater companies - that are creating culturally relevant, lovely work that interests me such as Universes, Rady&Bloom Collective Playmaking, Rehabilitation through the Arts, Marc Bamuthi Joseph and The Living Word Project, The Civilians, Pearl d'Amour, New York City Players, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Morgan Gould and Friends, everything that is Clubbed Thumb...to name a few. I am also very inspired by a lot of visual artists who have a certain amount of theatricality or drama in their work.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I don't like smug theater, so any theater that isn't SMUG in this pretentious "aren't we so smart, we totally GET it" kind of way is something that excites me. I'm excited by theater that makes me feel included. I'm excited by honesty, earnestness, bravery, experiments with form that are rigorous and mindful - theater that poses challenging questions rather than providing easy answers. I love to laugh, and cry and feel all the feelings, so theater that makes me feel is very exciting also.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Read books. Experience culture - literature, art, music, theater, dance, tv. I rather enjoy going to museums. Be aware of what's going on in the world, and not just the theater world. Write as much as you think you can, and then write MORE. Work hard at it. Surround yourself with people who delight you and also challenge you. Also, find a way to make money other than writing plays - playwrights don't make money writing plays.
Hometown: Born in New York City but grew up all over the world as Dad was a diplomat
Current Town: Brooklyn, NY
Q: Tell me about When January Feels Like Summer.
A: I have had a few regional productions, but this is my first New York City one. I am so excited for my friends and family to see this. It was at the 2008 Sundance Theatre Lab and had it's World Premiere in March 2010 at City Theatre Co. in Pittsburgh, directed by Chuck Patterson who sadly suddenly passed away in December. He was very instrumental in my evolution as a playwright, and I miss him very much. He did know this production was happening and in a funny way pointed me towards my current director who I am so thrilled to be working with, Daniella Topol. The cast is phenomenal: Debargo Sanyal who originated his role in the Pittsburgh production and Mahira Kakkar, Maurice Williams, J. Mallory McCree and Dion Graham. These actors in these roles are like a theater wet dream. Also, it thrills me that my two artistic homes, EST and Page 73 are co-producing. As a final irony, the first performance is the day before my birthday. I'm getting a really really special birthday gift this year! You probably want me to tell you about the play. I'm not going to. I think it's a play best enjoyed if you don't know what to expect. For those who are prudish, there is some strong language in there.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: The 2nd play in my Liberia play trilogy PA'S HAT which had it's World Premiere in May 2010 at Pillsbury House Theatre in Minneapolis. The last 2 plays in this trilogy are co-commissioned by Pillsbury House and EST. I also have a NYSCA play commission through Page 73 that is also set in Liberia. As someone of Liberian Heritage, it is important to me that Liberia as a subject and theme get some attention.
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 wanted to be a singer when I was younger. The fact I cannot really sing is irrelevant. When I was 12 I saw a high school production of The Glass Menagerie and I fell in love with the theater which was good for people's ears out there. The fact this production was in Switzerland, most probably performed by people who did not speak English fluently, and despite the fact it was a school production I was still moved beyond belief by the story of Laura Wingfield. I wanted to someday be able to move people the way I had been that day. I think I have a tendency to take a sort of "normal" subject and then infuse it with some odd twist usually multi culturally inspired. I felt odd as a kid. I was biracial. My parents were from different cultures and did not even speak the same language. I identified with Laura and seeing someone who was as odd as I felt on that stage made me not feel so odd. I think I try to do that with my plays. I put unusual people in regular circumstances and hope the audience identies with them.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: Ticket prices.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Tennessee Williams, Athol Fugard, August Wilson, Lorraine Hansberry, Bobby Lewis, Uta Hagen, Chuck Patterson.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: The kind of theater that makes me lean forward holding my breath as I wait to see what's going to happen praying someone's cell phone doesn't go off and ruin the magic.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Write. Write. Write. Get live people to read your play out loud, preferably actors, then rewrite. Then repeat that process. Send your work out. See as much theater as you can. Read as many plays as you can. Don't give up.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: WHEN JANUARY FEELS LIKE SUMMER Produced by EST and Page 73, directed by Daniella Topol. Discounted tickets if you buy before the first preview on May 28 . www.ensemblestudiotheatre.org
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Hometown: I grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, home to the Amish. The fields next to my house were plowed by mules and I was sent often to he neighbor’s farm house for fresh eggs and milk. It was a little bit like growing up in 1880 and when I moved to New York City the contrast between that rural background and Guiliani’s New York City was immense.
A: I wrote a partial first draft of Fable when I started Rattlestick in the mid 90’s. Because I couldn’t solve the ending, I put it aside. It wasn’t until three years ago that I suddenly realized how to end the play and what the missing pieces were – so I went back to it and wrote the version that is being produced by Piece by Piece and Rising Phoenix Rep. When I began writing the play I had been reading and translating Brecht plays (strictly for myself!) and so a kind of Brechtian structure became a starting point for FABLE. But when an angel and devil sort of appeared in the first scene, it became a “fable” that mixed a bunch of genres together in, hopefully, a fun sort of way.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: I am presently at work on two plays that (at least in my mind) for a kind of trilogy with FABLE, each of which tries to engage with the world that we are making. There is also a play which is almost finished about a mother returning home after a career spent working for an NGO in a third world country and how she needs to make peace with her family.
Q: Tell me about Rattlestick.
A: I started Rattlestick with Gary Bonasorte in the mid-nineties when Circle Rep had just closed its doors and we both felt there were simply too few outlets for new plays. Like me, Gary was a playwright, and at first we were just a group of seven playwrights producing each other’s work. Then we decided to enlarge that to focus on becoming a place where many new playwrights could get their work produced. Gary died in 2000, a victim to the AIDS plague. His death was pretty devastating. Gary was full of the kind of life-affirming joy that one finds rarely on this earth, a joy which I try my best to bring to the theater each day.
Six months after Gary died, the attack on the Twin Towers occurred and we had to cancel the plays we had scheduled for that season. There were two bleak years when I really wondered whether it was meant to be, but I felt I had made promises to playwrights to produce their work, which I felt I needed to somehow honor. There was a year or two when I literally raised the money, production-managed the shows, built the sets and ran the payroll. Then Sandra Coudert came on as Managing Director and we were able to put the theater back on its feet. When Sandra left to start a family, Brian Long became the new managing director and we took another big step forward. Big enough, in fact, that I was finally able to start thinking about writing again.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: Back in 30s we had a program, the WPA, that included a national theater that was incredibly successful. It was run by Hallie Flanagan, and it provided a way for Americans all over the country to have access to live theater. That program got shut down by right-wing congressmen, but I would so like to create that possibility again – access to live actors performing on stage – and make theater-going a regular part of life.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Eugene O’Neill, Hallie Flanagan, Ellen Stewart, Terrence McNally
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: I wish I had some sort of intelligent advice, but playwriting is so singular and everyone’s journey is so unique there is really no useful advice that I can think of. Maybe, simply, persevere and don’t compare your journey to that of another. To use an example from a different field, the composer Elliott Carter didn’t write his first masterpiece, or, for that matter, find his individual voice, until he was 50 some years old. Playwriting is one of those most difficult forms of art to create – that is why if you look back through history the number of major playwrights is far smaller than the number of poets or novelists. But it is a beautiful and life enhancing experience and one I hope in my small way to keep alive.
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ROMEO CHANG (It’s my eye doctor’s name, and I love it) It’s about a pregnant woman with a terminal illness who needs to stay alive long enough to have her baby. She turns to an ancient Chinese healer, but he’s got problems of his own. So it’s a little dicey how the whole thing’s gonna turn out. Plus her husband is not on board with this Eastern medicine stuff AT ALL.
And FEATHERWEIGHT, I put it in a drawer after a workshop at New Georges a few years ago. I just couldn’t figure out what to do with it .But time is such a gift, and now I’m back at it. It’s about a woman with cancer who assumes a literal notion of “battling” her illness. She enlists a professional fighter to help her stay strong and beat her disease. But then her estranged husband shows up and she’s forced to decide if she’s a lover or a fighter. Her very survival is at stake. (By the way, all my plays aren’t about terminally ill women).
Q: Tell me about Boston Public Works.
A: I’m so excited about Boston Public Works. We’re nine Boston-based playwrights who’ve formed a producing collective modeled after the wonderful folks at 13P. I’m P8.Our mission is simple: Produce one play by each member playwright, and then we implode. (The Welders in D.C. are doing the same thing.) We launched in January, and the theatre community’s response has been overwhelming. We kind of short sightedly planned our kickoff party on Super Bowl Sunday. Plus it was bitter cold. But an overflow crowd of artists and patrons came out, and for the first time, I felt like part of a larger creative community. It was awesome and completely energized my writing process and work.
Boston is really blowing the roof off new theatre. Polly Carl and David Dower are here now. And established theatres like the Huntington and New Rep have playwriting fellows programs. It seems like just about all the big and small established Boston theatres include one local writer in their seasons. And smaller, fringe theatres are popping up all over the place. I’m part of a playwrights workshop called Interim Writers, which does cutting edge readings in Harvard Square every month. The city’s really en fuego with new work, and Boston Public Works is just an exciting outgrowth of all this activity. It’s pretty cool.
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 came from a very quiet household. Both my parents grew up in turbulent families. So they kind of reflexively set up this tranquil environment. It wasn’t like living in a library but pretty close. I think I turned my imagination inward, and now all those crazy pent up thoughts are coming out in my plays.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: Ummm…. There’s lots of stuff I could say. But really, it is what it is. Nobody’s holding a gun to my head and telling me to write. Nobody’s forcing me to play by their rules. So really, I have full artistic freedom. And through Boston Public Works and other artistic collaborations, I’m finding my way. The avenues are out there to self produce: Kick Starter and Indigogo and basements of bars. I’ve seen some of the best theatre downstairs at Jimmy’s in the East Village. Thank you Rising Phoenix Rep.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: The established guys like Chekhov, Beckett, Fugard, Paula Vogel, Caryl Churchill. And the recent guys like Deb Margolin, Naomi Wallace, Adam Bock, Jessica Dickey, Daniel Talbott, on and on.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I just saw THE SHAPE SHE MAKES at A.R.T. and can’t get it out of my head. Likewise for moments of BILLY ELLIOT (and I don’t really like musicals), and Deb Margolin’s THREE SECONDS IN THE KEY which I saw years and years ago. There’s been lots of stuff in between that just kind of sticks to my ribs -- plays that create parallel worlds that help me make sense of mine; work that couldn’t happen anywhere but the theatre; shows that make me lose track of time, make me forget my own physical body, and transport me emotionally into the story unfolding on stage. I’m getting all sparky just thinking about it.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Rewrite. Even when you think you’re done, rewrite. Even when you think you’re done for real, rewrite some more. And rewrite some more after that. Find artists you trust to give you smart feedback that you can listen to without being defensive. Not as easy as it sounds.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: THE FAINT TASTE OF CAT FOOD AND SOUR MILK, playing this month in Colorado Springs’ Six Women Playwrights Festival.
ROMEO CHANG in May in the Boston Theatre Marathon Warm-Up Laps.
A: THRILLSVILLE - a comedy about a difficult but lovable, developmentally disabled woman from an upper middle class family whose brother moves her into a Medicaid-run residence after it’s revealed the trust fund meant to pay for her lavish apartment was drained by their parents before their death. And I write for a few TV shows on PBS Kids (including ARTHUR and WONDER RANGERS.) My 4-character comedy THE GLINT (about two aging voice-over actors and the women who love them) is also headed for Broadway in 2015, produced by Nelle Nugent and directed by Michael Wilson.
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 fought like cats and dogs… except Monday nights at 9pm. That’s when M*A*S*H came on. I’d hide on the staircase and listen to them laughing together. I’m a big believer in the power of laughter to disarm and connect. And I love to write about savage people. And I like to write plays and TV shows that have helpful and hopeful messages for kids on staircases listening to their parents laugh at the TV.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: I studied playwriting at Brown and acting at the University of California, San Diego- two programs hot for experimental theatre. It was fun, but I hit my breaking point when - playing one of only two human beings in a 3-hour puppet rock musical about William Blake - I requested a handkerchief to wipe away the tears of my wife in a tender scene - and was handed a 3” x 5” piece of lucite. Years later, I came up with the idea for a class on solo performance that focused on the simple, human connection of autobiographical storytelling. I have since taught the 7-week class about 70 times and I've helped shape hundreds of solo shows - many of them winning awards and rave reviews, and all of them coming from a simple, human, authentic place. I don’t want to change or get rid of abstract or experimental theatre, but I am starting to train teachers in my method, and I would like the kind of direct, heart-to-heart work that I encourage in my classes to survive me.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Oh geez, I love the lunacy of Charles Busch and Julie Halston, the big-hearted irreverence of Randy Newman (he was working on FAUST at the La Jolla Playhouse when I was at UCSD), David Lindsay-Abaire (I saw a production of FUDDY MEERS at Oregon Shakespeare that changed my life), Spalding Gray, Horton Foote and the farceurs: Alan Ayckbourn, Feydeau, Moliere, Ben Travers, Ray Cooney, Michael Frayn etc... and my students!
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: Plays that are human and real, but which also have a level of comic proficiency. Comic size that is also attached to something real, or at least joyful, recently: ONE MAN,TWO GUV’NORS; LEND ME A TENOR, Matthew Warchus’ BOEING BOEING and THE NORMAN CONQUESTS. TRIBES.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Live. And write about what you, and only you, know. Write it in your special way, no matter what other people seem to be liking right now. Look for the moments in your work when you feel, “That’s it! That’s my voice!” Next time, write more like that. Self-produce. Fail and learn from your failures. Be very, very encouraging of yourself. Pass through cynicism, but don’t stop there. Write for your grandbabies, as if you were comfortable with them knowing the dirty bits about you. Write for the ages, for the kids on the stairs, hungry for your hard-won wisdom. You don’t have to impress us. Just remind us of what it means to be alive.
Q: Plugs, please:
A: As mentioned, my play THE GLINT is scheduled to be produced on b’way by Nelle Nugent in 2015, directed by Michael Wilson. So keep your eyes peeled. For other current stuff: MattHoverman.com And for more about my classes: createyourownsoloshow.com
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Current Town: New York, NY. Hudson Heights. I can see the GW Bridge from my bedroom.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m writing this from the control booth during a session for the world premiere recording of my musical Tamar of the River. So that’s exciting. I always have several projects going simultaneously. Currently, I’m doing a down-to-the-studs gut renovation of my play Sam I Am, in response to some great feedback I got following a reading in December; writing a new opening number for my musical Ordinary Island, a show I’m eager to see move forward; and a new score, my first rock musical, Burned, updating A.A. Milne’s play The Lucky One to the 2007-08 financial crisis.
Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: As a kid, I always found theater more interesting than real life. Which I suppose explains a lot, but doesn’t make for a decent origin myth.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: Tom Stoppard, for the way he hides fragile and broken hearts behind promiscuous and robust intellect. Arthur Miller, for the urgency with which he personalized the political. Songwriters like Michael John La Chiusa, Jeanine Tesori, Flaherty & Ahrens, expanding the kinds of stories that can be told in song and how they can be told. And of course, John Eisner: every play development program I’ve encountered seems to be following in the footsteps of what he started at the Lark.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I’m fascinated by how fiction shapes fact, how the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves become truth. Performance as the quintessentially creative act – especially in the political sphere. Come at reality sideways, and I’ll follow you. Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Be nice to everybody. I sent out hundreds of submissions every year, but both full productions I had last year came out of friendships I’d cultivated for years. Plugs, please: The Tamar of the River world premiere recording will be released this summer from Yellow Sound Label, featuring most of the original cast, including Margo Seibert (Adrian in Rocky) as Tamar. Check www.JoshuaHCohen.com and www.TamarOfTheRiver.com for details.
A: Just over a decade ago, I read a news story about two men who met online. One wanted to eat another man, and another responded that he wanted to be eaten. At the time, I was writing only feature films, and Taste just poured out of me, as a real-time, single-location screenplay.
I’d never written anything as easily or as quickly before, nor have I since. I was drinking a lot of gunpowder tea at the time, but I don’t think that explains it.
For the next five years or so, I worked with a wonderful film producer, and we kept ALMOST getting the film made. There was a lot of excitement and a lot of heartache. Last year, my manager Adam Goldworm encouraged me to adapt it to a stage play, which was a pretty modest endeavor. There were some close-ups in the screenplay that required a line of dialogue here and there, but not much else. Perhaps I had written a stage play in the first place.
Stuart Gordon — who has a background in theater and film —got involved as the director, and Sacred Fools came along. Suddenly, I’m a first-time playwright.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: I’m writing a miniseries for NBC about Eliot Ness’s time in Cleveland in the 1930s. In my spare time, I'm writing a kids “chapter book” about a boy, his crazy uncle, and the hunt for a lost treasure.
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 second grade, in public school, we studied ancient Egypt, and I was obsessed with the glory of the pyramids. At the same time, in Hebrew school, around Passover, we talked about the enslavement of the Jews in Mitzrayim. Sometime in third grade, I was shocked to discover that Egypt and Mitzrayim were actually the same place.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: My artistic heroes — theatrical and otherwise — include Patricia Highsmith, Wallace Shawn, Mark E. Smith, Daniel Pinkwater, and Amos Vogel.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: Anything that makes me a little uncomfortable in my seat (aside from the seat itself).
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A: It's about a husband and wife who get a knock on their door one night and their lives are forever changed.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: A novel...it's been a long time since I worked on one of those. It's fun and naughty.
Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.
A: Oh boy. Me in a nutshell?! As a kid, I used to insist that before we started a Barbie doll playing session, we had an outlined premise, conflict and conclusion. And God help the poor friend who deviated from it.
Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?
A: There need to be more and better parts for women. Period.
Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?
A: If Sam Shepard knocked on my door tonight, I'd runaway with him. My husband would understand.
Q: What kind of theater excites you?
A: I love simple stories with great dialogue. Sets, costume, funky gels - I don't need all of that. The barebones of theater turns me on.
Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?
A: Write your hearts out. And don't stop.
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