I Interview Playwrights Part 550: Donnetta Grays

Donnetta Grays

Hometown: Columbia, South Carolina

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I am working on two plays of my own ‘The Review or How to Eat Your Opposition’ which is currently being developed as part of terraNova Collective’s Groundbreakers Playwrights Group and ‘Sam’ a play about an 11-year old girl (Sam) who is unexpectedly transplanted from her home in Georgia to NYC. It’s a coming of age story with several emotional stumbling blocks for this kid placed there by her very young and ill-equipped parents. I am also collaborating with some tremendously talented friends on a few of their own personal projects. I won’t go into detail but the work they are doing is gorgeous and I can’t wait for people to hear what’s being created in living rooms all over the city!

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 an extremely shy kid. Hardly spoke. Got picked on a good bit in middle school. In fact I call middle school “three years of my life I can’t get back.” Anyway my mother - always ready for a good story - would, everyday after school, ask her three kids about our day. Both my sisters were extremely articulate and damn near loquacious going into elaborate details about who did what to whom, at what time AND what they were wearing. I, on the other hand, would shrug and usually answer, “It was okay.” My mom would see through this though. She read my frown and furrowed brow and could tell something else was going on with me. So, one day she did this sort of miraculous thing where she wrote me a letter and left it on my bed for me to find. It read something like, “I know you are sad.  I don't know why you are sad but I think it might be hard for you to talk about. I want you to know that I am here if you ever do feel like talking about it. And, you know, sometimes it’s easier to write your feelings down than to say them out loud. ” Etcetera etcetera tears tears tears... ANYway, it was this truly wonderful thing that I totally took advantage of and she and I started writing these little letters to each other where I would open up about all this kid angst and she would advise and console me. It was our little secret exchange and it cracked my heart wide open. And so, I guess I am still putting some form of kid angst on paper and trying to express those very complicated emotions that most of us would rather hold on to in private.

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

A:  If a theater artist can’t afford to see a show then the ticket is too damn high.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Allison McNeely and Joy Vandervort-Cobb. My high school drama teacher and college mentor respectively. Allison taught me what theater was, how to love it and how to create it. Joy made me believe that I could actually do this for a living and nurtured that hunger in me from the moment we met. They were and still are gorgeous actors, directors and teachers. And I am not sure if they know this, but for as much as they taught me about my craft I spent just as much time watching them lead. Turning students into actors and crumpled scripts into productions. They knew how to take command in this way that elevated the work of those around them so I always has this sense that theater wasn't something that was created while I just sat back and watched. It was something that I could actually take the lead in creating.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  A variety of things. Really it’s too much of a variety to go into but I will say if there is a foul-mouthed sexually confident but emotionally delicate woman of color involved I’ll probably be there watching that.

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

A:  Please, I am still in the asking for advice stage. No comment...yet.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  'The Review or How to Eat Your Opposition' will have a workshop presentation this spring along with plays by Lynn Rosen, Andrew Rosendorf, Jen Silverman, Susan Soon He Stanton & Anna Ziegler in terraNova Collective's Groundworks New Play Series. Check the website for details: www.terranovacollective.org/

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Video: Interview with Nastaran Ahmadi

http://youtu.be/6aKiOW1d8ek

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Interview with Nastaran Ahmadi about playwriting, her lesbian theater company,  and her upcoming show at the Cherry Lane. http://www.cherrylanetheatre.org/programs/mentor_project/

Previous playwright interview with Nastaran:  http://aszym.blogspot.com/2012/06/i-interview-playwrights-part-462.html

Nastaran Ahmadi's plays include Molly's 25th (art.party.theater.company, 2012), Exile (Finalist, 2012 O'Neill Fest; Honorable Mention 2012 Jane Chambers Award), The Bet (Workshop in Oregon Shakespeare Festival's 2012 Black Swan Lab), Doctoring (Finalist, 2010 O'Neill Fest; Honorable Mention 2010 Jane Chambers Award), The War Is Over (Yale Cabaret, 2006), Strangers (The Ontological-Hysteric Theater 2009 "Incubator" Series), and Layla and Majnun (Carlotta Festival, 2006).  Nastaran attended The Exchange's Orchard Project in June 2012 to develop her new play with original music, Rocket Song. Nastaran was a 2011-2012 Writing Fellow at The Playwrights Realm in NYC and a 2011-2012 Writer-in-Residence in Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Workspace program. She received an Honorable Mention in 2010 for the Middle East America Distinguished Playwright Award. Nastaran is delighted to have been invited to serve on The Lark Play Development Center's Artistic Advisory Board for the 2012-2013 Season. Member Playwright: Lark Play Development Center (Monthly Meeting of the Minds, 2012/13). MFA: Yale School of Drama, Playwriting (ASCAP Cole Porter Prize). www.nastaranahmadi.com

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listen to me talk for an hour

A podcast I did today at Off and On, A New York Theater podcast with Bernardo Cubria http://andscenepod.libsyn.com/rss

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I Interview Playwrights Part 549: Anupama Chandrasekhar

Anupama Chandrasekhar

Hometown: Chennai, India

Current Town: Chennai, India

Q:  Tell me about Disconnect.

A:  It’s about a bunch of young call center workers who work nights, sleep days, put on different personas and accents in order to collect debts of credit card holders in recessionary America. It’s about identity in a new India, globalization and our interconnected lives and economies. It’s about Indians in India who have stars and stripes in their eyes.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  A new play called “Bay-Sea-Ocean”. Set in the southern-most tip of the country, where a bay, a sea and an ocean meet, it deals with the abandonment of the elderly. The question I’m trying to ask is this: What happens when a culture that has historically elevated the status of parents to higher than that of god is fast-tracked into a consumerist economy and the old family system crumbles? Whose responsibility is the care of the elderly then?

Q:  What is the theater scene in India like?

A:  Our early theater was primarily dance, music and mythological drama that successfully segued into the cinema in the last century. When cinema picked up, theater started to lose its luster. By the ‘90s, theater – especially urban theater - was struggling to be relevant.

Now, in Chennai, English language theater is mostly amateur. We don’t have state funding for it. Like small, fringe groups across the world, we have to scout for sponsors (who more often than not prefer comedies to issue-based plays). We rehearse on someone’s terrace weeknights or weekends depending on how lenient the actors’ employers are. We hire a theater for two days - if we have the money -- or for a day. The first day is tech, dress, preview and opening. Sometimes, the press covers the shows. In two days, the show is over. If we are lucky and have made some money, we can travel to another city with the show.

We Chennai-ites are envious of Mumbai and its theatrical spaces. A subsidized theater like Prithvi Theater in Mumbai ensures that small groups can put up their plays at regular intervals at a small cost. But if you ask a citizen of Mumbai, they’d look towards Marathi language theater (particularly of Pune) for their role model. Marathi theater is possibly the most vibrant and alive of all Indian regional theaters. They’ve a culture of grooming new writers and directors from the college level and there’s a large and supportive audience for it.

But things are definitely changing across the nation. There is a growing number of youngsters who are trying to make theater their full-time profession and who are trying to bring immediacy and relevance back to theater.

Q:  What has it been like having your plays done in London and America?

A:  I love it that my plays have life beyond the two shows that’s possible in Chennai. Entire runs, revivals, remounts – these are stuff that I’d never even dreamed of. Also, I come from a country where there’s no formal training available to playwrights. So, working professionally with cutting-edge theater practitioners has been a cherished, valuable masterclass in theater-making.

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 with my grandparents in Chennai (because I could not get admitted into a school in Mumbai where my father was working). Now, my great-grandparents lived with my grandparents. Whenever the various aunts, great aunts and cousins would visit us, it was a raucous little house filled with family stories. I was fascinated by these women and their gossip. At night, the living room would be cleared to accommodate many mats and mattresses and pillows and all the women would sleep there. I’d pretend to be asleep while avidly listening to them. These nights were amateur psychology sessions: why did Person A say that? Why did Person B do that? I’d learnt to keep my mouth shut about it and for years no one knew I was happily eavesdropping.

My mother discovered it by accident when I knew something about someone I oughtn’t to. She was naturally appalled that my grands were allowing this sort of behavior in a young person. But the damage was done. I was hooked to other people’s stories.

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

A:  At least in the Indian context, I wish there is funding for serious theater that deals with regional or national concerns and more awards and opportunities for playwrights.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Indian playwright Mahesh Dattani – for first introducing me to theater and making me pay attention to the rhythms of Indian English.

British playwright Carl Miller and Royal Court Theater’s Elyse Dodgson and dramaturge Ruth Little for opening my mind to new forms and influences.

Indhu Rubasingham, now Artistic Director of Tricycle, who directed my plays “Free Outgoing” and “Disconnect” for the Royal Court – for making me look inward and tap the voice that was small, but all mine.

Playwright Caryl Churchil is forever experimenting with form and content. She is a writer who is eternally young and exciting.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Plays with social relevance, physical theater, children’s theater, plays that surprise me, plays that make me think for days together, plays that take me by the scruff of my neck and shake me up.

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

A:  Read, watch, write, rewrite. There is no other way. And keep at it.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Disconnect at Victory Gardens directed by Ann Filmer from Jan 25th to Feb 24th

Disconnect at San Jose Rep directed by Rick Lombardo from March 21st to April 14th

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I Interview Playwrights Part 548: Matt Pelfrey

Matt Pelfrey

Hometown:
 Los Osos, California.


Current Town:  Pasadena, California.


Q:  Tell me about The Pilo Family Circus now playing at the New Ohio. How did you come to adapt it and what was the process like?

A:  I read the Pilo Family Circus novel and immediately thought of Joe and Godlight. The novel was such an imaginative blast and everything I like in stories: scary, funny, and full of unexpected twists and turns. While the novel has some big moments that had to be re-imagined to work as a play, we've kept the heart and soul of the book intact.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  Next up with Joe and Godlight is an adaption of DELIVERANCE.

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 young, I was at my grandmother's house which was on a big plot of land. My dad wanted me to go up the hill to the front gate and get the newspaper. I told him I didn't want to because I was afraid of snakes. He yelled at me and made me go anyway. At the top of the hill, coiled up, was a rattle snake. I ran back down the hill screaming about what I'd just seen. Nobody believed me. I finally made a big enough deal that my dad, pissed, stormed up the hill. Thank god the rattle snake was still there. Weird shit happens.



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

A:  More funding for small theaters that do visceral work.



Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?


A:  Besides Jose Rivera? Eric Bogosian.


Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The kind that makes me think: "there's no way they'll go there." Then they do.



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

A:  Write five rough pages every day, and read as much as you can. The rest will work itself out one way or the other.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 547: Caroline V. McGraw

Caroline V. McGraw
 
Hometown: Cleveland, Ohio

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Congrats on being the new P73 Fellow. What do you plan to work on with them in your fellowship year?

A:  Thanks very much! I'm working on two plays with the support of Page 73. One is currently untitled; it's about a group of writers at a women's magazine, one of whom has just learned she only has a few months left to live. It's about how the things that are supposed to be important in a bright young women's life--sex, good looks, romance, wit, small adventures--can melt when you shine a bright light on them.

The other play is called Believeland, and it's a big melting pot about my complicated relationship with my hometown. The play is organized, if you can say that right now, around the poetry of d.a. levy, an artist who wrote about Cleveland from a place of deep love and brutal honesty. I can only hope to do the same.

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

A:  The summer between fifth and sixth grade, I decided I wanted to start reading Stephen King, so I picked up IT at the library before my family's annual trip to our cabin in upstate New York. I figured it was a good one to start with, since the jacket said it was about 11-year-olds. I plowed through the book, reading it at night when my parents were out canoeing and I was all alone in a creaky old dark house. And at the same time, I wasn't quite done being a little girl...my mother and I were still reading aloud to each other most nights, we would have been deep into the L.M. Montgomery oeuvre. I started living in a world where being a girl who thought her stuffed animals had feelings and wanted to be Emily of New Moon could exist alongside this growing knowledge of some of the darker, grimier, ookier, scarier stuff that life has to offer.

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

A:  Can I change two? I'm gonna go ahead and change two. First, more women writers produced in the "big" spaces--Broadway, the big deal subscriber off-Broadway houses, big regional theaters. I want it to not be news that a woman has a play on Broadway, or that a theater's season is half (or more!) written by women.

I also want theater to be part of the, for want of a better term, pop culture conversation. Suzan Eraslan wrote this open letter to the New York culture press that is well worth a read (http://suzaneraslan.tumblr.com/post/38323214719/an-open-letter-nyc-culture-press-what-are-we-doing), and it articulates beautifully what I've been feeling for awhile. There is so much gorgeous, weird, fucked up theater happening at all hours of any day, and it isn't a part of my generation's lives and consciousness the way music, film, and comedy are. I think it's a change that's going to have to happen in an evangelical way; theater makers have to keep making noise about our work and what we have to offer audiences.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Paula Vogel, Ken Prestininzi, Deb Margolin, and Frank Pugliese are writers I've been lucky enough to have as teachers and mentors, who I am constantly checking in with, either on the page or inbox. My first playwriting teacher was a wonderful writer named Sarah Morton, she taught Saturday playwriting classes for high school students at the Cleveland Playhouse and she made me want to be a playwright. Young Playwrights Inc. produced my first play ten years ago, thus effectively ruining me for all other professions, and the way Sheri Goldhirsch and the rest of the staff nurture young writers is extraordinary and necessary.

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

A:  Live in a city where there's a lot of theater, and go see as much as you possibly can of as many different types as you can. Musicals, downtown, big, small, solo, classics, college productions, readings. It's expensive, especially in New York, but it's the best education you can get. The more plays you get in front of your eyes and in your ears, the more you start to realize what your obsessions are. You realize the places that feel like home, and they may be surprising. You want to warm up the space that's left cold by an unsatisfying evening of theater, or you want to start a conversation with a writer who seems to understand you from miles or years away.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  As you'll see from my previous answer, I have pretty broad theatrical tastes, I'll see anything and everything if I think it will delight me. I think what I'm responding to right now is theater where I feel taken care of. Not comfortable, necessarily, but where I feel like I'm experiencing something that has been made by a group of collaborators in order to have a conversation with the audience. Sam Hunter's The Whale and the recent Art Party show How the Salts Got Down, directed by Mary Birnbaum, both shook me in big ways. They could not be more different, but they were both shows that made new worlds for the audience, with a love of connection and theatricality that I found incredibly satisfying. Oh, and the Art Party show had dancing. I like having the opportunity to dance and sing along with pop music.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  A reading of my play The Bachelors is happening February 11th at NJ Rep. I'll be performing/making people think differently about Katy Perry at the New Georges Trunk Show on February 22nd. And, if you're in Seattle in the Spring, you can see the premiere of my play Tall Skinny Cruel Cruel Boys at Washington Ensemble Theatre (www.washingtonensemble.org.)

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Video Interview With Devan Sipher

This is the first in what I hope will be a series.  I talked a bit with my friend, Devan Sipher, playwright, journalist and novelist.  http://www.devansipher.com/


http://youtu.be/B0zyZ-PnESo

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I Interview Playwrights Part 546: Kiran Rikhye

Kiran Rikhye

Hometown: I'm from New York City.

Current Town: Still here in New York!

Q:  Tell me about The Man Who Laughs.


A:  The Man Who Laughs is a "live silent film for the stage"--the whole show is designed to look and sound like a silent film of the 1920s, right down to black-and-white makeup, costumes, and sets, title cards projected onto a screen, and live piano accompaniment. There will even be popcorn at the show to complete the movie experience! The play is (loosely) based on the Victor Hugo novel of the same name, and tells the story of Gwynplaine, an orphan whose face has been surgically carved into a permanent smile. Gwynplaine gains fame and a modest fortune by performing as a clown/freak alongside his adoptive sister, Dea, and adoptive father, Ursus, a surly ventriloquist. They're quite a happy, quirky little family...until a debauched duchess becomes fascinated by Gwynplaine's face and seduces him away from his family, with disastrous results. There's a little melodrama, a little romance, a little slapstick comedy...a little of everything!

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm very excited to be working on Stolen Chair's upcoming (currently untitled) show which will debut in the spring at the Cibar martini lounge on Irving Place in Manhattan. It's in the very early stages of development, and I'd be hard-pressed to tell you what the heck it's about or who the characters are...but that's part of what's exciting about it. I've been given the task of writing a play for this unusual performance space, and now I get to concoct a whole plot and cast of characters specifically to fit that space. The constraints are both challenging and freeing, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what the piece ends up being...I'm thinking it'll have something to do with the art of the martini, perhaps.

Q:  Tell me about Stolen Chair.

A:  I founded Stolen Chair ten years ago with my Co-Artistic Director (and Stolen Chair's resident director), Jon Stancato, and we've been creating and producing original works of theatre ever since. We strive to make work that's playfully intellectual, exuberantly athletic, aesthetically promiscuous, and wickedly irreverent, and that challenges and delights audiences in inventive and constantly evolving ways. I think our company is unusual in that we have both a playwright's and director's vision at our core: sometimes we're playwright-centered, sometimes director-centered, sometimes we're a strange hybrid of both. In addition to that, each new production begins with a collaborative retreat in which actors and designers bring their own creative ideas to the table, so we get quite a potent mix of influences going in to every show. Though I'm sure our process wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, I find it to be incredibly gratifying (and I'd like to think it yields interesting work, too!).

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

A:  Hmmm...Well, when I was about five, my parents took me to see a production of The Mikado, and I was thrilled...until Koko the Lord High Executioner came out wielding an enormous axe. I *knew* that it was just a play, and I *knew* that the axe was real, and yet there was a part of me that wondered "What if...? What if it *is* real? What if that character is going to walk through the aisles and decapitate audience members as part of the show?" I think by the middle of the first act I had convinced my father to leave our seats and stand in the back, just in case things turned ugly.

I'd say this explains a lot about me, including that:
1. I had an overactive imagination and a bit of a morbid streak.
2. I probably take theatre a little too seriously
3. I really love the way theatre can still us pull us into that peculiar "it's real but it isn't but it sort of is..."
4. I really, really hate audience participation and try to avoid it in my own work.

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

A:  I'd love to erase the divide between traditional and "edgy"/experimental. I'd love it if telling a "traditional story" didn't automatically imply that the style was going to be naturalistic, and if using non-naturalistic techniques (mask, dance, what have you), didn't automatically imply that the play was not plot and character driven. There's actually a lot of work that crosses those lines, yet somehow, I think a lot of people still have the idea that good old fashioned stories have to be told through good old fashioned realism. I wish it would stop seeming so groundbreaking to tell good old fashioned stories through experimental means and vice versa.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Charles Ludlam and the Ridiculous Theatrical Company are biggies. Though I never saw their work live, seeing videos of the work and reading Ludlam's scripts, I'm inspired by the ways he tried to make his audience laugh and feel at the same time, and by the ways in which his work is earnest and ironic, irreverent and intelligent and silly and highfalutin all at once.

Moliere is another hero--for some of the same reasons. (I'm sure it's no coincidence that both Ludlam and Moliere were playwrights at the center of companies. I've been very inspired by the company model, by playwrights who form long-term artistic relationships with actors and directors and who are accountable to a team of mutually supportive artists.)

Then there are the individual writers whose work never ceases to delight and fascinate me, and those range from Oscar Wilde to Amy Freed to David Henry Hwang.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I've found myself truly inspired by everything ranging from kitchen-sink realism to grand opera, but, if I had to choose a single kind of theatre that excites me, I'd say it's theatre that wears its theatre-ness on its sleeve. I love that theatre actually cannot mimic reality as well as film can. So I love stage illusion that asks the audience to suspend disbelief very actively, to believe in a world that very obviously isn't real. Looking at shows that recently came to New York, I think War Horse is a good example of this. You know that horse is a puppet, but that doesn't make you care about it less. It might even make you care about it more, even though it's "fake"...

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

A:  Everyone's path is so different that it's hard to think of one piece of advice that really applies across the board (how’s that for a copout answer?). That said...if I had one piece of advice, I think it would be to get your work up in front of an audience as often as possible, even if it's just a group of friends gathering in someone's living room to hear a reading. For one thing, having to present your work forces you to dot your i's, cross your t's, put a period at the end of the last line, and call the darn play finished. Taking your time and slowly revising are important, but having to consider a script "finished," at least temporarily, is important, too. For another thing, I think putting your work in the hands of actors and, if possible, a director, tells you so much about what you're writing. It's so important to see what happens to your work when other people bring their perspectives to it--after all, at the end of the day, you're only one part of the theatre-making process. What happens when an actor takes an approach to a character that you never could have imagined? Or when a director simply doesn't understand the natural rhythms that you thought were so obviously written in to the piece? Sometimes those encounters make you realize there are things you want to revise, other times they make you see your own work in a new light, and, yes, sometimes they just make you feel that your work is being misinterpreted. But whatever happens, I think it helps you grow. Lastly, practice makes perfect, so the more we write, the better I think we get at it, and creating opportunities for your work to be seen is a good way to keep yourself writing.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  The Man Who Laughs opens on January 31 at Urban Stages in New York! For more information or to buy tickets, visit www.stolenchair.org or call SmartTix at (212) 868-4444.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 545: David Koteles

David Koteles

Hometown: Chatsworth, California

Current Town: I’m about to move to Hell’s Kitchen, New York City

Q:  Tell me about the show you're working on with Jason Jacobs.

A:  It’s called “My First Lady,” and it’s a subversive little comedy about our country’s Founding Mothers. To be honest, I didn’t take on this project because I had a burning desire to write about Abigail Adams. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that’s just not what I typically write about. I decided to write this because I wanted to work with Jason again and he had this great opportunity. We’ve collaborated several times now because it’s always a good experience, but this play has honestly been one of the happiest, I have to say. I love going to rehearsals for this piece. As a collaborator, Jason often pushes me out of my comfort zone to surprising results. So I wrote this play for the Metropolitan Playhouse Founders’ Festival, about the first four First Ladies having tea. And THEN Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson’s slave/mistress, decides she wants a place at the table—literally and figuratively. It raises a lot of questions. However, it's not exactly a jingoistic, rah-rah-rah America play. It's a social satire and a critical look at some of the hypocrisies of our Founding Fathers through the eyes of the women who loved them. And it’s a saucy comedy. We have a brilliant cast. I have never seen any of these actresses before, but they are hilarious and quite remarkable. It should be fun and interesting evening.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I have several irons in the fire right now, which is a very exciting place to be. But of course, you never know in this business…

However, I have a strong affinity for a play I recently wrote in response to Ionesco’s The Chairs and the death of my best friend of 27 years. It’s not a translation of The Chairs, but it does pay homage to it.  If you want to call my play Bald Diva! a gay version of The Bald Soprano, I guess you can call After the Chairs a gay version of The Chairs. But please don’t, I don’t want an angry letter from the attorneys of the Ionesco Estate. And I know writing this show puts me in danger of being thought of as the guy who writes gay versions of Ionesco plays, but this piece needed to be written. And now that it has been, I do want to see it performed.

I just returned from a six-year sojourn in Los Angeles, so I’m excited to get my career up and running again. My comedy The Cook’s Tour is still floating around. It’s the play everybody loves but nobody produces. I have high hopes that this might be its year.

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

A:  One of my earliest memories as a small child is my favorite uncle wrapping red towels around my waist and head and sending me down the stairs of my grandparents’ house singing along to a record of Hello, Dolly! I was probably all of five, but I knew at that moment I wanted to be in theatre. In some insane way, I think I’m still searching for that approval from people in my life. I mostly write comedies, so for me it’s that risk and thrill of the first read-thru. When I hear something I thought was amusing getting a laugh from the cast and creative team, that is what makes this bullshit I put myself through totally worthwhile. There is little that is as exciting and satisfying as people you respect thinking you’ve written something funny and meaningful.

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

A:  Ticket prices. without a doubt. I can’t afford to see anything! Also, I think it’s the root of everything not working in today’s theatre. Whether you hate inexperienced TV stars and American Idol runner-ups starring on Broadway or theatre companies not producing new plays by emerging writers, it all goes back to ticket prices. If the theatres were filled and profitable, producers would unquestionably take more chances. But it’s a vicious cycle, because it’s so expensive to buy a ticket, people see painfully little theatre since they’re afraid to waste money on something that might not give them a return on their ticket investment. Who can blame them for thinking, Hey, the play might be forgettable, but at least I’ll get to see Nicole Richie as Rizzo or something? So to sell seats, producers hire from whichever (cess) pool of celebrities they can afford. We need a new business model, but I’m unclear how that could ever manifest. I wasn’t blessed with a business mind. I owned a small theatre on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles many years ago and lost my shirt. I probably should have cast more TV stars.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I was a classical actor for a few years right out of high school, before I turned to writing. So my heroes are playwrights who write plays actors like to be in. Chekhov, Shakespeare, Shaw, Williams, Sondheim, the Greeks. The rich language and the complexity of the relationships on stage are so delicious for actors to play with, and I guess writing is my way of acting without having to put a foot on stage. I know many directors tend to be drawn to more visual plays, but my work tends to be about the language, and is hopefully character-driven. However, I’m also intensely drawn to Eugene Ionesco, who was an absurdist whose plays are all about language and the failure of language.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  It’s not so much a style as it is quality. If it’s good—if it’s something that moves me or makes me wish I wrote it—I will ball like a baby in my theatre seat. Even if it’s a comedy, if it’s really, really good, I weep. If you ever see me at a production of “Noises Off,” I’ll be the guy crying. Theatre is, or can be, such a visceral experience. When I was younger, I was drawn to musicals. I think that’s because I was able to take the experience home with me. You buy the cast album, sing the songs, and that show lives on. And man-o-man, you put an orphan on stage—like in Annie or Oliver—and I will sob like an old woman.

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

A:  I’m the worst person to ask this. I would encourage them to follow their dreams when I should probably give them an intervention and an application to a good business school.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  The World Premiere of “My First Lady,” directed by Jason Jacobs, opens in the Metropolitan Playhouse Founders' Festival (running January 14-27). The Playhouse is located at 220 East 4th Street, NYC. Tickets can be purchased by visiting metropolitanplayhouse.org. In “My First Lady,” a friendly gathering for a cup of tea with the First Ladies takes a funny and unexpected turn towards a battle of race, class, and gender in the new American Republic.

Please join Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, and Thomas Jefferson's daughters for tea and pleasantries at the President's House. …All slaves must be left at the door!

Oh, also my stage adaptation of the Annabelle Gurwitch and Jeff Kahn book, “You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up!” is still on national tour. It’s been running since October of 2011 and is on its third cast. I think it’s in Pittsburgh now. It’s directed by the wonderful Darren Katz and produced by Orin Wolf, who also produced “Once” on Broadway.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 544: Lyle Kessler

Photo by Russ Rowland

Lyle Kessler

Hometown:  Philadelphia, Pa

Current Town:  New York City. Greenwich Village

Q:  Tell me about Collision.

A:  An Allegory, a Morality Tale taking place in a College Dormitory between three students, a Professor and a Stranger. It is a drama about the violence sweeping America today. It is told with great humor and intense emotions.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  Of course “Orphans” will have a Broadway revival this Spring. I am developing a play called “The Great Divide” at the Labyrinth Theater Company. Also another play called “Godforsaken” and also a play called “The Gospel as told by Rosie Olds.” There is another play of mine being read at the New York Theater Workshop called “First Born” directed by Dan Sullivan with Billy Crudup and Bobby Cannavale.

Q:  What was it like studying with Lee Strasberg?

A:  Lee touched my creative spirit and inspired by his classes and being accepted into the Directors Unit of the Actors Studio wrote my first play “The Viewing” which I directed in the Unit many years ago. The Actors Studio was my artistic home at that time, a decade after Brando and Dean were involved there. A very exciting time and place.

Q:  Tell me about the Imagination Workshop.

A:  A Program my wife Margaret Ladd began at Mount Sinai Hospital bringing theater professionals in to work with hospitalized patients in psychiatric units. We developed the Program together as it expanded to many New York Hospitals and then to hospitals in L.A. In the guise of the characters the patients play in structured improvisations they are able to develop relationships and take risks and chances they are unable to take as themselves. The Hospital Staff is able to see the healthy adaptive potential of these patients, rather than the more regressive selves they experience on the Ward.

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

A:  That is a tough one. I was a Magician and Escape Artist when I was eleven and twelve. I have been escaping ever since. I have escaped Philadelphia, L.A. and I am now finally where I want to be in the Village.

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

A:  More Theater Homes like the Amoralists for actors, writers and directors to collaborate and develop work without an overriding commercial pressure. The joy of acting, directing and writing for a vibrant theater group.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Kazan, Brando, Al Jolson and Harry Houdini.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Anything that involves me and doesn’t put me to sleep.

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

A:  As Winston Churchill said: “Never give up! Never give up! Never give up!”

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  I’m not sure what this means. Plug who? Plug what? Plug `em with what. I was better at plugging when I was younger. Happy to be working with the Amoralist Company. Great group of actors and people.

I Interview Playwrights Part 543: Jaclyn Backhaus

Jaclyn Backhaus

Hometown: Phoenix, AZ

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about SET IN THE LIVING ROOM OF A SMALL TOWN AMERICAN PLAY.

A:  I am a member of Theater Reconstruction Ensemble, a company devoted to the revitalization and re-examination of classic theatrical works and styles. Last year (I can officially say that because it’s 2013 now, WHAT), I wrote my first play for TRE, a Chekhovian mash-up called THE THREE SEAGULLS, OR MASHAMASHAMASHA! In the midst of searching through the American Realism canon for our next play, John Kurzynowski (TRE’s Artistic Director) turned to me and said, “or, you could just write it.”

SET IN THE LIVING ROOM… pays homage to the stylistic tropes and character relationships found in American Realism of the 1930s-1950s. Before I sat down to work on it, I read a lot of Odets and Inge and Williams and Miller. It tells the story of the Lorimer family of Southern Illinois—what breaks them apart, what seals them together. There’s a lot of whiskey and a lot of familial swearing. Punches are thrown! Hams are roasted! The production at Walker Space in February will serve as a springboard for us to play with the performative ideas of the Golden Olden Days. Method Acting, The Group Theatre, object exercises. Cherry Pie. Americana! A bunch of actors from THREE SEAGULLS are returning for this show, and I am so excited to write for them again.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I am the busiest I’ve ever been, it seems! I am developing a musical with Andrew Neisler and Mike Brun called FOLK WANDERING, which performed at Ars Nova’s ANT Fest last summer. It follows three interwoven storylines that span from Tenement-Era Manhattan to Depression-Era Utah to rural 1950s Indiana.

I spent the latter part of 2012 developing a piece called HEARTPRINTS with Preston Martin as a part of Fresh Ground Pepper’s Play Ground Play Group. In it, we play two people who are writing a theatrical adaptation of a movie Preston watched on Netflix. We rattle off the names of a bunch of crushes we had in 2006, so if you guys are curious about that, you will have a great time.

I just finished a fever dream of a play about Coney Island and its history called SHOOT THE FREAK.

And I’ve been perpetually revising my first feature-length screenplay, PHILLIP AND FALLING ASLEEP, which is about Sedona, the Crystal Vortex, sibling rivalry, displaced IT Technicians, and loads of complicated dream theory. Tomorrow, it may be about something different.

Q: Tell me about Fresh Ground Pepper.

A: Fresh Ground Pepper is a development series devoted to showcasing emerging artists and new work. We do several free events every year, and they range from a curated circus for children to a musician/choreographer clash to gallery-style media showings. Last year we did an event devoted to the Future AND we curated someone’s actual wedding. We’ve performed on rooftops in Queens and in a few renovated churches and in theaters all across Manhattan and Brooklyn.

At the end of every year, we do a festival of new play readings called FGP PlayGround. This year, we formed the FGP PlayGround PlayGroup (FGPPGPG) and we were able to develop 7 playwrights’ pieces with each other over a lengthier period of time. The FGP PlayGround Festival this past December, held at the New Ohio, was incredibly exciting. Applications for this year’s PlayGround PlayGroup are available now (if anyone is interested, they should email playground@fgpnyc.com).


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 4th grade, a letter was sent home with me to my parents that told them that I was “messy”—I would doodle and scribble and draw all over every square inch of every worksheet, every scrap of notebook paper. It was very nonsensical and it probably looked like the journals of the dude in SE7EN so I understand why my teacher was perturbed. Also it was all in no. 2 pencil, so my homework probably smudged onto everyone else’s. I tried to clean up my act and get wise with my doodles. But honestly, I still do it. I carry journals around with me so I can scribble-note every silly thing someone says, every weird phrase that pops into my head, every strange and singular word-shape or idea. I consciously use maybe 3% of it in my writing. But it’s a fun 3%.

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

A:  This whole notion of theater as “a dying art form.” Or people bemoaning the fates of the big production houses or the decaying future prospects of American Drama. Anyone who says that just has to try on a new perspective. Shift their eyes downtown a little bit. Of course, there will always be the money stuff, which is... something to change about a lot of things in this country and around the world. For now, I will say: to those that say we are dying, we are very much alive!

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  The Wooster Group and ERS, Adrienne Kennedy, Maria Irene Fornes, Edward Albee, Cliffy Odets, Martin McDonagh, Sarah Ruhl, Tennessee Williams. The work I see at Fresh Ground Pepper never ceases to inspire me.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Things that are funny that turn sad—I have big feelings and I ride every wave if it’s honest and true. I am a big fan of sincerity. I like when characters fall in love (especially when they a) sing about it or b) keep quiet about it in a way that breaks everyone’s heart).

I love zany things. Things where people eat and drink a lot. Collage pieces that only make sense once it’s all over. Plays in which objects are characters, work with a touch/heaping spoonful of magical realism. And I love communally-built ensemble pieces.

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

A:  Find people you trust to collaborate with. Be open to sharing your work with others in order to better it with their input and insight. You never have to stop creating just because you don’t have production lined up. Go to readings of plays by your friends and strangers. See as many shows as you can. If you are inspired by someone’s work, let them know—maybe one day you will work together. And submit to programs you would like to be a part of.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  A busy winter!

FOLK WANDERING IN CONCERT is gonna hit Joe’s Pub on January 9th!

The first Fresh Ground Pepper event of the year, FGP Birthday, will be at the Culture Project on January 25th!

TRE is throwing a benefit gala honoring Tina Shepard at Dixon Place on January 27th!

SET IN THE LIVING ROOM OF A SMALL TOWN AMERICAN PLAY runs from Feb 21-Mar 9 at Walker Space!

And I am very jazzed about Pipeline Theatre's production of CLOWN BAR by Adam Szymkowicz!

My 2012 In Review

I had 11 productions of my plays this year, including Hearts Like Fists in LA and NYC which were both without a doubt the best received productions I've had.  Most recently I had 2 plays in NYC at the same time which was exhausting but good.  Four of my plays premiered this year and each of my published plays had at least one production.  At the moment, there are 5, maybe 6 productions scheduled for 2013, including Clown Bar with Pipeline in March and perhaps two plays in Lima, Peru, both in Spanish.

This year I wrote a screenplay in the spring and a play in the fall.

I'm sad to say my web series Compulsive Love isn't out yet but I think it will be out soon.  I can't wait for you to see it.  I started writing a new web series I'll be excited to tell you about soon.

One ongoing project is making My Base and Scurvy Heart into a musical with Dan Moses Schreier and Matt Sherwin.  As part of my 2 month residency at the Inge Center this fall, we did a workshop and we were able to try some stuff out.  Cady Huffman, Nellie McKay and Sean McDermott came to Kansas to help us out with it along with some other cool people.

I taught playwriting to freshmen high school students in a tiny town in Kansas for two months and wrote a new play while I was there.

Also spent the year writing an animated pilot and bible with Ruben Carbajal and Larry Kunofsky, a half hour comedy called supersomethings about a group of D-list superheroes living in a city overrun with superheroes.  We'll start pitching that soon.

I was fortunate to go to the Orchard Project where I did some revisions of existing plays and plotted another with Bradford Louryk.

What else?  The playwright interviews continue.  There were 126 new interviews this year bringing the total up to 542.

Kristen and I took a mini vacation last winter in Cap Cod.  That was nice.  Were able to spend a little time in CT in summer on a lake.  Was at Little Pond with Flux at their annual retreat.  I started consulting for Broadway producers and took on a volunteer lit mgr position.  Also read a bunch of scripts for various things for money.  Probably read 140 scripts or so.  Went to Roanoke VA to see student readings at Hollins.  Was in LA for a bit.  Christmas in St. Louis and Charlottesville. 

Whew.  Looks like it was actually a busy year for me.  Wonder what the next will hold.  Glad the world didn't end.

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Press quotes from LA and NYC productions of Hearts Like Fists

 Critic’s Pick; “Parody and punches fly in Adam Szymkowicz’s “Hearts Like Fists,” the Flux Theater Ensemble’s comic hybrid at the Secret Theater in Long Island City, Queens. The combination is madcap. Pretty hysterical too… Hurting for a laugh? These Crimefighters should save the day.”  --New York Times

“Hearts Like Fists . . . is a silly, over-the-top, and adventurous comic book-style play that offers a fun, twisted exploration of what it means when someone Hulk-smashes your heart on the ground into a million pieces… Fists argues that the most important moments in life are the ones directly in front of us, and that we shouldn't let being hurt in the past affect our decisions moving forward. It's goofy. It's absurd. But it hits hard where it counts—right in the ticker.” –Village Voice

Critic’s Choice; “A trio of buxom superhero babes is taking names and kicking butt in “Hearts Like Fists,” Adam Szymkowicz’s graphic novel come to irresistible life at Theatre of NOTE… Staged for what is surely less than Christopher Nolan’s weekly tea budget, Hearts Like Fists is the perfect summer date show: exhilarating, nerdy-sexy, and silly-smart. Try finding that on Fandango.”  --LA Times

Pick Of The Week; “Fun well done neatly sums up this brazenly silly and irresistibly funny show… Love unrequited is the recurring motif in this gender-bent spoof; it fuels the dastardly doctor's crime spree; inspires Peter, a dedicated physician with a damaged heart, to design an artificial one; and plagues the peace of mind of all and sundry, even the staunch and sturdy Amazonian crusaders and the hitherto dazzlingly invulnerable Lisa.”  --LA Weekly

“In Hearts Like Fists, Szymkowicz has written a play that is both campy and clever, but also full of heart and hope, another notch on the prolific young playwright’s belt . . . one of this summer’s most exciting thrill ride-like treats.” --Stage Scene LA

“…Szymkowicz is a wistful wit with a broken-romantic’s ear for the big Urban Lonesome.”—NY Magazine

“It's hard to imagine a better night at the theater… Like the best comic books, the story has a bright, action-packed surface with deeper complexities at work beneath. "Hearts Like Fists" delivers an enviable double blow: humorous and profound at once, it demonstrates that the boundaries of what can be done with speculative storytelling onstage are limitless, and always have the capacity to astonish.”  --io9

“… Adam Szymkowicz, one of the leading theatrical voices of his generation, intertwines themes both humorous and mature together… Szymkowicz provides plenty of sugar to make his complicated medicine about crooked hearts go down smoothly. His dialogue comes riddled with memorably arch lines … that aren’t just hysterical, they’re psychologically accurate. He has created a fun show that refuses to be dumbed down.”—NY Press

“Hearts Like Fists is a charming, light-hearted comedy about love, gallantry, and the endless human propensity to fall for the wrong person. Adam Szymkowicz’s script is a comic book hero inspired romp from lights up to lights down. He goes to great lengths to twist and torture the heart — the metaphor of the heart I mean — contorting it between mechanical tool and symbol of the pulse that through the green fuse drives the flower. The result is a gently absurdist send up of the romantic calculus that informs most of the present day mythology of love and dating… An accomplished playwright, Mr. Szymkowicz’s play has no rough edges and no obtuse angles.” –Cultural Capitol

“Although Adam Szymkowicz’s hilarious new play Hearts Like Fists is ostensibly a play about comic book-style Superheros and Supervillains, deep down it’s an utterly charming and goofy romantic comedy. Which is not to say it’s not a hilarious sendup of superhero tropes, because it is that as well. The comedy fires on all cylinders from the beginning and almost never lets up.” –Broadway World

“Playwright Adam Szymkowicz has constructed this story like a sandwich: knife-fulls of surprise and suspense are smeared across meaty gymnastic fight sequences, with all of it packed between the twin slices of our desire for connection and our fear of what that connection might do to us.  It’s a tasty concoction.”—New York Theater Review

“…the play, written by Adam Szymkowicz … is, in all probability, unlike anything most theatergoers have ever seen. Running some 90 intermissionless minutes, it flies by, scarcely leaving time for the actors or the audience to catch their breath. The innovative play, which questions the purposes and passions each individual has in life, has come up with situations and lines that are at once ludicrous and hilarious.”  --Queens Chronicle

“Right now, it feels as if Adam Szymkowicz has cornered the market on shows that feature figuratively and literally broken hearts…”  --That Sounds Cool

“If you have one aorta of desire to know what love is, you will enjoy Flux Theatre Ensemble's production of Hearts Like Fists by Adam Szymkowicz.” –nytheater.com

“Author Adam Szymkowicz has written an extremely funny script that alternates long lyrical monologues with staccato noir-ish one-liners. It's both poignant and hysterical… All in all Hearts Like Fists is fabulous and smart fun.” –Show Showdown

“A chop-socky cartoon on stage, Hearts Like Fists, written by Adam Szymkowicz, is an action-packed adventure romance set in the surreal world of female crime-fighting superheroes. Nurses by day, skilled warriors by night, a band of ferocious and feisty femmes battle the dastardly and elusive Dr. X and his deadly war against romance … Don’t miss this show!”  --Arts Beat LA

“Hearts Like Fists by Adam Szymkowicz is an homage to Film Noir and Marvel Comics and when blended together produces a hilarious theatrical experience! You won't want to miss this truly fun production!” --Hettie Lynn Hurtes of NPR Station KPCC

“Pow! Hearts Like Fists connects. Adam Szymkowicz's crowd-pleaser is a smashingly funny mash-up of action comics and rom-coms.”  --CurtainUp

6 StageSceneLA Scenie Awards including one of the “Best World Premiere Plays of 2012”