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1100 Playwright Interviews

1100 Playwright Interviews A Sean Abley Rob Ackerman E.E. Adams Johnna Adams Liz Duffy Adams Tony Adams David Adjmi Keith Josef Adkins Nicc...

Feb 7, 2019

Stockholm Syndrome

Some Pull Quotes! Closes Feb 9.

"an outrageous farce of violence and lasciviousness"! --The New Orleans Advocate






“Stockholm Syndrome is a hilarious and captivating show, in the best way possible.” --Gambit Weekly



"In all its absurdity, the troupe has come up with an entirely new genre of theater - the interactive terrorist musical comedy. ...you'll get a hearty kick out of "Stockholm Syndrome." --Nola.com, The Times-Picayune



"But for all the talk about immersion, maybe the most important piece for an audience member to feel immersed in is thematic. And that’s what I enjoyed most about the show.

At the heart of Stockholm Syndrome is a group of characters who look at their lives at some point in the show and realize they’re not totally happy with how things are going. Worse yet, they don’t even understand how their lives got to this level of disappointment.

A server who sings about the dissatisfaction of every day being exactly the same as the last. A diner who doesn’t have her needs fulfilled by her husband. A manager whose dedication and loyalty frequently lead to letdowns and heartbreak. A woman who wants a man with more ambition. And a man who just wants a woman to go home and hold hands with.

This story is full of realizations of life-gone-astray, and that’s a realization most of us can relate to at at least one point or another." --Very Local



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Feb 6, 2019

I Interview Playwrights Part 1024: Jordan Jaffe






Jordan Jaffe

Hometown: Houston, Texas.

Current Town: New York, NY

Q:  Tell me about Whirlwind.

A:  I would describe Whirlwind as an romantic comedy set against the backdrop of the inherent conflict that sometimes emerges between efforts to fight global warming and the need to protect wildlife. The humor of the play comes from awkward nature of the main characters and their difficulties interacting with each other as well as the precarious compromises they need to make in regard to our energy choices. And if you like bird puns, this is the show for you!

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I think Whirlwind would make a great movie. Just putting that out there into the universe. In addition to working on further plays in my energy series I'm also making a jump into the foreign policy arena with a play about royalty relations in the Middle East.

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 favorite place to play as a child was the long hallways of my mom's office at the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. It's funny looking back as an adult what a shaping experience it was for me as a child to literally grow up around a think-tank. I'm not saying you can learn about energy policy through osmosis or running around the square corridor on the third floor there, but being around that space, walking past pictures of Secretary Baker with Presidents and the world leaders who would visit the institute, and passing the piece of the Berlin Wall that stands in front of the building every day imbued me with a tremendous respect for our policymakers and the people who populate their inner circles and advise them.

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

A:  The theater community needs to think more seriously about the environment and sustainability.

On all of the productions I have produced (12 total, 10 in Texas, 2 in New York) each one obviously had a different set, different props, and we would buy things for each production, build the set, usually out of lumber, but then of course after the show we discard much of what cannot be used again. However, through all of this a terrible thought has seeped into my head as I was working on Whirlwind: Am I part of the problem? Deforestation is such a massive issue for birds and all sorts of creatures, so then exactly how many birds died so that I could have big fancy wooden sets for all my productions? I know this is an extreme line of thought, but somehow I can’t shake a feeling that all these years I’ve been destroying natural wildlife habitats for the sake of art.

As a theater artists I feel we have a growing responsibility to be a part of the solution when it comes to environmental issues, but in order to inspire change on greater level there are changes to our industry that should be considered. Our art needs to reflect changing attitudes toward environmental issues. To truly live green as an artist we need to create green. We need to think about our materials and off setting our usage of depleting resources just as much as a large corporation thinks about its C02 emissions. When that happens, perhaps real change can happen.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  David Mamet, Theresa Rebeck, Martin McDonagh, Leslye Headland, Beau Willimon, David Henry Hwang, Halley Feiffer, Paul Downs Colaizzo...I really could go on all day though!

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like plays that shine a light on the general absurdity of our existence. As humans we have a really high level of pretension when it comes to whatever culture or train of thought we subscribe to, and I love work that shreds the completely arbitrary nature of our self-beliefs and shows just how ridiculous we really all are.

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

A:  Write the plays you want to write. Fuck everything else.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Whirlwind is running at the Wild Project in the East Village through Sunday February 10th!


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Feb 5, 2019

I Interview Playwrights Part 1023: Sanaz Toossi




Sanaz Toossi

Hometown: Irvine, California

Current Town: NYC & Southern California

Q:  Congrats on P73! What do you plan on working on during your fellowship?

A:  Thank you! I’m planning on finishing my commissions with the help of the wonderful people at P73.

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, I was completely enchanted with our Lysol air freshener. It was my favorite toy. It was this beautiful teal with little illustrations of gardenias on the can and it smelled so, so good. So one day, I sprayed it directly into my mouth.

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

A:  Okay, so this isn’t theater’s most pressing issue but it’s something I think about often so I’ll pretend your question was “if you could change something about theater": I wish we would expand the way we think about intelligence. Kindness is intelligence. Emotional honesty is intelligence. Intelligence is not only knowing the canon and knowing Aristotle. Intelligence is also knowing when there’s lying on the page.

Quiara Alegría Hudes’ piece in American Theatre Magazine a few months ago encapsulated this perfectly: "Remember how glorious that was—immersion in an experience you didn’t necessarily understand? Why do grownups cling to “getting it”? What a small, unadventurous parameter for experiencing art."

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Heidi Schreck (for teaching me a lot about what honesty looks like in a play)
Mona Mansour (for her intelligence; for writing a Middle Eastern play and defining her own parameters of what that is supposed to look like)
Leila Buck (for being a badass)
Heather Raffo (for infusing immigrant stories with poetry and beauty)

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I know this sounds weird but I’m really interested in theater that leaves you shaking in your seat. And not because you’re hungry or terrified. I went to a reading of FALLING DOWN THE STAIRS by Mona Mansour and Tala Manassah at the Atlantic last summer and something about it left me shaking. More of that.

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

A:  I am pretty fresh-on-the-scene so take this with a grain of salt, but I think you should put all your eggs in one basket: give your whole heart to one play. Be with that play for a long time. Make that play as close to yourself as you can, and make it really good so you can blast it out and feel okay about rejections. Don’t build a portfolio just yet. You have a whole career to build a body of work.

Plugs, please: I would really like to plug MAIA. Not only are they a great resource for MENASA artists, but they’re a fantastic resource for institutions that might want to engage with MENASA work but maybe don’t know how. Don’t be scared of Middle Eastern work!

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Feb 4, 2019

I Interview Playwrights Part 1022: Justin Maxwell



Justin Maxwell

Hometown: Niagara Falls

Current Town: New Orleans

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Right now I’m working on two scripts and a bunch of small non-fiction projects.

Swandive Theatre in Minneapolis is set to stage my new show: THE CANOPIC JAR OF MY SINS: A MEDIEVAL MORALITY PLAY FOR LATTER DAY POSTMODERNISTS. I’m a little breathless about what they’re planning to do with it. I put the last few changes in and am just letting it cool off a bit before sending to the producer and director. The show follows the scientist Ralph Wiley (the inventor of plastic) who is forced to undergo a Stalinist show trial held on the vast island of plastic garbage in the Pacific Ocean. The trial is adjudicated by an angel, a dead bird, and Rodger Waters. Things get strange from there….

I’m mid-way through another full length play PALIMPSESTS OF AGRIPPINA MINOR. Agrippina was a Roman empress and directly related to the really gross emperors. She’s Caligula’s sister and Nero’s mom. I became fascinated with her, because her enemies wrote the history books, and I wanted to know who she really was. A palimpsest is a text that is bleached off the page and then written over. It’s a good metaphor for her life. She’s a lost classic. The play lets me explore what she must have been like. She must have been smart, brutal, lonely, charming, and terrified. She navigated the treacherous seas of imperial power, as her family members murdered, exiled, and intermarried one another. Simply surviving as long as she did merits acclaim, but she clearly rose to power and was de factor emperor for about six years—not coincidentally, the most stable years for her entire dynasty.

When I need a break from all the drama, I usually turn to prose. I’m an artist who works in language, so when I need an escape from scripts, I turn to other modes of writing, instead of acting or directing. In between drafts of scripts, I’m always working on a few short, non-fiction essays. The one currently on the top of the pile is about finding and following an abandoned road in rural Arkansas and the 70’s-era surrealist poet from the Ozarks, Frank Stanford.

Q:  Tell me about the program at the University of New Orleans. What can playwriting MFA students there expect?

A:  They should expect one hell of an adventure! The Creative Writing Workshop (CWW) is very rigorous with high academic and creative standards. It’s also very flexible; students can work across genres, and across campus. My playwriting students often enroll in a host of theatre courses and creative writing courses, but occasionally sneak into other disciplines. I can think of students who’ve done some coursework in history, music, and arts administration. I’m always amazed at the supportive and collegial culture we’ve built at UNO. It’s a culture that respects both individuals and aesthetics, which lets us all be sincere allies. There’s a great genialness in our MFA. We foster talent by building our students up instead of having two-bit infighting. Consequently, our students leave sounding more like themselves than like each other or like me.

I’m a big believer in writers getting a lot of cross-training and working in different genres, after all genre is really just another tool for crafting art. At the end of the day, the CWW makes good writers. It’s easy to brag about the place that pays me to talk about stuff I love, but the evidence is in the outcomes. Our students publish and produce at a high rate, and our grad students have outcomes that compare with much more prestigious programs. Plus, this is New Orleans, so when one needs a break from the solitude and labor of writing, there’s always a party to go to. Often six.

Q:  Tell me about the New Orleans theater scene.

A:  The New Orleans theater scene is very open and welcoming. When I moved here in 2012, I knew almost no one. I emailed every artistic director I could find with a Google search and introduced myself. I heard back from most of them in 48 hours. All of them in a week. By the end of the month, I met each of them, and Aimee Hayes at Southern Rep offered me a reading. The theatre scene, just like the city, will embrace you if you’re open to it. But there are struggles here. Mardi Gras provides a layer of joviality and performance that can spiritually nurture lots of theatre makers; however, it is also a vacuum that sucks up the community resources that would normally go to support the arts in most other cities. Of course, since Louisiana is a deep red state, the economy never quite works; there’s a lot of poverty, and almost no public funding for the arts. There’s nowhere else like New Orleans, but because the city is inside Louisiana, we often operate like the best beach on Lord of the Flies Island. That’s a shame because Louisiana is lush with resources and could have the highest quality of life in the country with a thorough legislative overhaul. For ambitious theatre makers with a strong DIY methodology, New Orleans can be a very fulfilling place. For people looking for conventional models and conventional funding, it can be very frustrating.

Politics aside, I’ve seen plenty of excellent theatre in New Orleans. One of the first shows I saw here, when I knew very little about the scene, was Goat in the Road’s Instant Misunderstanding. While applauding at the end of their show, I thought: I’ve seen worse things than this win an Obie! My concerns about moving here were assuaged. Years later, I had the good fortune to see Grounded at The Public and here at Southern Rep, and I found the local production far more visceral and evocative than the one in NYC. I had a similar experience with Airline Highway. In fact, I’ve only openly wept during three or four shows and probably stood up to applauded less than a dozen times in my entire life. The only show that ever made do both was Alleged Lesbian Activities, which originated here but has (I hope) quite the future ahead of it.

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 someone who started exploring memoir a few years ago, I’ll fight the impulse to give you a full-on essay here. However, there was an important moment that seems relevant. I was a senior in college, walking across campus and thinking about what to do after I graduated. I was a double major in English and philosophy. Writing was my passion, but I knew poetry wasn’t going to pay the bills. I thought about all kinds of careers to pursue. I thought about archeology since I liked discovery and exploration. I thought about law because I liked thinking and arguing. I thought about publishing since I was deeply into books. While weighing the pros and cons of every option I could think of, I realized I kept coming back to the same question: How much time will this profession give me to write? That question pointed me to grad school for creative writing and a path I’ve been on ever since. Sometime not long after that epiphany, I started asking myself another fundamental question: Will X make me a better or more successful writer? When I answer “yes,” I try and take action X. When I answer “no,” I try to avoid X. While such a question is a far-from-perfect system, it generally provides a good light to steer by.

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

A:  If I had a magic wand to weave, I’d change American theatre into a place that embraces risk and pushes aesthetic boundaries. Simultaneously, I’d make patrons and donors similarly engaged, motivated to see things that they have truly never seen before. In other words, I guess I would remove our cultural fear of the profound and let that societal change ripple through our artists and institutions.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I suppose Ionesco and Mac Wellman really pulled me into theatre from the world of poetry, where I started. And since then I’ve been sustained by scions like Adrienne Kennedy and contemporaries like Sibyl Kempson.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  My favorite moment is walking out of the venue asking: What the hell was that? If I can put a show in an aesthetic box, I’m disinterested. My mind lights up when I have to process the unknown; encountering the unknown leads to something nearly divine. If one’s so inclined, almost any line from Martin Buber could probably go here as a witty little bon mot.

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

A:  Write for the love of writing. That love is all that can really sustain you on the road ahead. Then, don’t stop. Obviously, one should do all the basic professional things to get their work in front of an audience, but at the end of the day, if you don’t love the time at the desk, this path will never lead to deep joy. When I first got to grad school, the director of the program said something along the lines of: Thank you for dedicating your life to writing like a monk dedicates their life to religion. That comparison stuck with me. When I’m lost or unsure in life, I can look at what a monk would do, and if they’re doing something monk-ish, I should probable be doing something writerly.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Gestalt Theater is producing AN OUTOPIA FOR PIGEONS in Riverside, CA. It opens on March 29th at The Box. http://www.gestalttheatreproject.com/current-production.html

Swandive Theatre is producing the world premiere of THE CANOPIC JAR OF MY SINS: A MEDIEVAL MORALITY PLAY FOR LATTER DAY POSTMODERNISTS in Minneapolis, MN. It opens in early October at The Crane Theatre. http://www.swandivetheatre.net/

The Tank and Clever Girl Productions are producing AN OUTOPIA FOR PIGEONS in NYC. It opens in October at The Tank Theatre.

One can buy a collection of my wild short plays here: https://www.amazon.com/Blinded-Horse-Dreams-Hippocampi-Other



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Jan 24, 2019

PRODUCTIONS OF MY PLAYS

PRODUCTIONS

WORLD PREMIERE

Stockholm Syndrome
or Remember That Time Jimmy's All American Beefsteak Place Was Taken Over By That Group Of Radicals?

Production #1 of Stockholm Syndrome
The NOLA Project
New Orleans, LA
Opens January 16, 2019.



The Wooden Heart
Production #1 of The Wooden Heart
Acadiana Repertory Theater
Lafayette, LA
Opens September 6, 2019.

MORE SHOWS

KODACHROME
Production #8 of Kodachrome
Our Town Theatre Group
North Creek, NY
Opens March 8, 2019.

Production #9 of Kodachrome
Actors Bridge Ensemble
Nashville, TN
Opens July 12, 2019.

Marian or The True Tale of Robin Hood

Production #16 of Marian
Theatre Conspiracy
Fort Myers, FL
Opens February 7, 2019.

Production #17 of Marian
University of North Carolina
Wilmington, NC
Opens February 21, 2019.

Production #18 of Marian
Shakespeare Performance Troupe
Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr, PA.
Opens March 28, 2019.

Production #19 of Marian
Regis College
Weston, MA
Opens April 11, 2019.

Incendiary

Production #3 of Incendiary
Farmington Valley Stage Company
Collinsville, CT
Opens January 25, 2019.

Production #41 of HLF
Martin High School
Loredo, TX
Opens March 20, 2019

Production #42 of HLF
Cyrano's Theatre Company
Anchorage, AK
Opens Sept 19, 2019

Production #43 of HLF
Christopher Newport University
Newport News, VA.
Opens April 3, 2020.

Pretty Theft
Production #14 of Pretty Theft
Houston ISD UIL Dept.
Houston, TX
Opens March 23, 2019.

Rare Birds
Production #4 of Rare Birds
Dewitt High School
Dewitt, MI
Opens Feb 14, 2019

Production #5 of Rare Birds
University of Indianapolis
Indianapolis, IN
Opens April 12, 2019

Nerve
Production #21 of Nerve
IKAG productions
The Elephant British Pub
Adelaide, Australia
Opens June 5, 2019

7 Ways To Say I Love You
a night of short plays

Production #26 of 7 Ways
American School of Doha
Doha, Qatar
Opens January 30, 2019.

Production #27 of 7 Ways
Pope John XXIII High School
Katy, TX
Opens February 14, 2019.

Production #28 of 7 Ways
Northern Illinois University School Of Theatre And Dance
Dekalb, IL
Opens March 20, 2019.

Production #29 of 7 Ways
Ursula Franklin Academy
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Opens April 20, 2019.

Production #30 of 7 Ways
Auburn Community Players
Fiskdale, MA
Opens July 12, 2019.

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Jan 11, 2019

I Interview Playwrights Part 1021: Dean O'Carroll






Dean O'Carroll

Hometown: Amherst, MA. I went to the same high school as Madeline George and Annie Baker. In 2014, Annie won the Pulitzer for Drama (for THE FLICK) and other finalists were Madeline (for THE (CURIOUS CASE OF THE) WATSON INTELLIGENCE) and Madeline's wife, Lisa Kron (for FUN HOME). So it was a very Amhersty year for the Pulitzers. I'm thrilled for them, though it's a little weird to be a relatively successful playwright and still be only be a distant third among playwrights who graduated from Amherst Regional High School in the 1990s.

Current Town: Philadelphia, PA

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  My new parody, MARVELOUS SQUAD: A SUPER-HEROIC TALE WITH AVENGEANCE, premieres this weekend. It's in Reno, being produced by my friends at Kidscape Productions as a Winter Break camp, so I'm not a hands-on part of staging it, though I'm trying to keep updated. I hope to get that one published soon. It's a parody of the Avengers movies, of course and I'm very excited about it. I think it's a lot of fun. After that, I have a few ideas. I want to do an alternate version of my play, BACK TO THE 80s: A RISKY, GOONIE, BREAKFASTY TALE OF TOTALLY TUBULAR TIME TRAVEL, where the main character travels to the 90s instead of the 80s, though I need to find a younger collaborator to help me with the 90s nostalgia. Then I'm not so sure. I may want to venture beyond the conventional kinds of parodies I've been doing. I've had an idea for something with princesses for a while and maybe something about Disneyland or a Pixar mashup.

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

A:  Here are a few snapshots:

When I was about three my mother took me to a play for the first time. I didn't know what live theatre was and afterwards I loved it so much that I almost resented my mother for not telling me earlier that this existed.

When I was five or six and my friends suggested we play "Fatman and Stupidman" I thought it was the greatest idea in history.

My father acted in a local production of THE IMAGINARY INVALID when I was six and I attended so many rehearsals I could rattle off long stretches of Moliere dialogue from memory.

In Elementary School, we put together a team-written play about Shay's Rebellion, a bit of local history that was celebrating its bicentennial. I kept trying to insert comedy into it, like wacky chases and Daniel Shays giving a long-winded speech that put his troops to sleep. By the time they cut out all of my contributions from the script, all that was left was just one line -- "Let's go!"

In third or fourth grade I set out to write a series of parodies of fairy tales. The only one I remember was "Rufflestiltskin," which was about a mysterious little man who could magically make potato chips.

In eighth grade music class, we were assigned to write about a popular singer or musical act and I chose "Weird Al" Yankovic

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

A:  Accessibility, both in terms of price and just how common it is. Seeing a play should be as easy and affordable as going to the movies, ideally even more so. Oh, and every theatre should have free babysitting, so parents can leave their kids with a sitter while they watch the play. This will all be paid for by ... I don't know, the magical golden eggs all the flying pigs are dropping everywhere?

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I suppose Shakespeare goes without saying. Oscar Wilde, George S. Kaufman, Moss Hart, Neil Simon, Stephen Sondheim ... I like dramatic playwrights and playwrights who aren't all white men, too, I promise!

People I actually know in real life, I learned a great deal from Tom McCabe and Jack Neary. And I want to be Don Zolidis when I grow up ... he's like a year older than I am.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Anything that takes you on a journey. You can wind up back in the same place you started, but a play works if it picks you up and brings you into a world, and takes you through a unique way of looking at things. Plays fail when they head off on a journey by themselves and don't take the audience along.

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

A:  Read and watch. Work in theatre ... whether you're an actor, a carpenter, a stagehand, an assistant stage manager, or whatever. Be a part of the process of putting on a play from start to finish. See what works. Learn the rules and play by them for a little while before you try to break them.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  You can find my plays at https://www.playscripts.com/playwrights/bios/912 and my Facebook page for my plays is https://www.facebook.com/sallycotterandthecensoredstone

I'm on Twitter https://twitter.com/deanocarroll and I've been on a bunch of podcasts if you'd like to hear my voice ... that might be searchable.

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