Adam Szymkowicz's Blog, page 104

I Interview Playwrights Part 378: Karen Smith Vastola

Karen Smith Vastola



Hometown: A small town in upstate New York



Current Town: New York, NY



Q:  Tell me about Buried Words.



A:  I began work on the play while in Columbia MFA program. It had a reading at Rattlestick Playwright's Theatre. More revisions. There was more developmental work done (revisions) at the terraNOVA Collective playwrights group. Accepted by 2011 Fringe Festival. Rehearsed for three weeks under the direction of Johanna Gruenhut. More revisions and new scenes added. It started as an imagined conversation between two grown women remembering childhood events with a mother who evoked a mixture of fascination, fear and anger. These three emotions fuel their imaginations. Ultimately it became about these same two women as children reconsidering the violence of both parents towards themselves and each other through the acting out of past events.



Q:  What else are you working on?



A:  Most recently, I began work on a play set in a long distance train ride across the US. Time, home, references...are suspended for its travelers. Within a small, crowded space travelers are forced to deal with issues of class, race, and each other's very different needs. Conflicts, outright clashes, possibly understanding may develop. I am also revising two plays for younger actors. The first called Useless Inc. includes Coco Chanel, Ayn Rand and a time-traveling mannequin set in the old Hollywood and Paris in the early 1900's. The second is a very loose adaptation of the Pinocchio story set in World War I.



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



A:  A hardscrabble life where one of the options was voluntarily asking for safe haven in an orphanage three blocks from my house. A strict Catholic education that put the both the fear of the retributions of sin and the belief in miracles which kept me on the straight and narrow until I could leave town. A sister who held an imagination and sense of adventure that symbiotically entered my being.



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



A:  A national theatre system that is subsidized by the government, similar to the one in Great Britain, so that all classes of people could afford to buy a ticket and artists who wanted to make theatre could have a place to practice, It happened once in this country as part of WPA in the 1930's. It put a lot of people back to work, and more Americans across the country, in every region, saw more theatre, then they had ever seen before. Also, an end to all bias- gender, race, sexual orientation, religion and age. It's written into the laws for government funding, but a lot of folks ignore it and few challenge those who control the choices. Sorry that's two things. Writers can't count.



Q:  
Who are or were your theatrical heroes?



A:  Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Behn, Calderon, Everyman, Schiller, Durrenmatt, Beckett, Genet, Pirandello, Wilder, Williams, O'Neill, Wilson, Pinter, Kane, Bond. Still with us heroes: Albee, Churchill, Kennedy, Guare, Ruhl, Parks, Fornes, Kushner, Adams, Hare, Eno, Gibson, Moses, Machado, Stuart, Koteles, Szymkowicz, Walker, Walsh, Lawson, Cohen, Vourakis, Swedeen, Empfield, Wallace and Wertenbaker.



Q:  

What kind of theater excites you?



A:  Committed. Intense. Truthful. Highly theatrical. Highly Imaginative. Ideas that abound. Anything directed by the Peruvian director, Gisela Cardenas, the French director, Mnouchkine or the American director Johanna Gruenhut. Theatre Complicite, Elevator Repair Service. Abbey Theater, The Civilians, Performance Lab 115, Flux Theatre and watching plays written by all of the previously mentioned theatrical heroes.





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



A:  Write. Write alone and with a weekly group of writers whose opinions you value. Attend Grad school if you can afford it, become homeless, but gifted, and then apply to grad school for scholarships. Send your plays out. Befriend members of your own tribe- actors, directors, stage mangers, etc. If theatre companies don't want to do your plays, produce them yourselves – on the street, in churches, your studio apartment. Never give up - life for most is long. Believe in your work and keep people close who love you and also believe in your work. Any art is a difficult choice. Persevere and Revise!





Q:  Plugs, please:



A:  Go see my play Buried Words at the Kraine Theatre, 85 East 4th Street- August 15, 20, 24, 27 & 28. It's part of the International New York Fringe Festival.

I Interview Playwrights Part 377: David Grimm

David Grimm



Hometown: Born in Oberlin, Ohio



Current Town: Brooklyn, NY



Q:  What are you working on now?



A:  Trying to start a new play. Just got back in town from workshopping two new plays: one at Portland Center Stage's JAW Festival, with director David Esbjornson. It's called TALES FROM RED VIENNA. The other at the Huntington Theatre in Boston, with director Peter Dubois. That one is about the Hays Production Code in Hollywood in 1934 and its called THEY DON'T MAKE 'EM LIKE THAT NO MORE. I've also been working on my first musical for the past two years with Harry Connick Jr writing the music and George C Wolfe attached to direct. Trying to develop a couple other musical projects. Oh and adapting an old pre-code movie for the stage for drag queen, Varla Jean Merman.



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



A:  For six formative years of my upbringing, I lived in Israel. When I was in the third grade, I developed a crush on Karen, one of the popular girls. I desperately wanted to be her friend. To be accepted. To be one of the cool kids. I was terrified of approaching her, for fear of being rejected.



Somehow, I got it into my head that the ideal way to share my feelings with Karen would be through writing her a note, rather than in person. I'm not sure why but I blame my education in classical literature.



Anyway -- I wrote the note and, during recess, slipped it onto her desk. Immediately I ran outside and did my best to act nonchalant and casual. However, I soon became aware that the popular girls had gathered like swarm of buzzing bees, whispering together heatedly and pointing in my direction. Had they all read my note? My face flushed with shame but I kept up the act.



Back in class, Karen had vanished and no one seemed to know where. When the teacher (a particularly sadistic young woman in a mini-skirt, platform shoes, and a beehive) inquired as to Karen's whereabouts, one of the nastier girls chimed in with sing-song cruelty: "David left a note on her desk and she went home crying."



Crying? How could that be? Had my words of affection and adulation been so traumatic to her as to bring her to tears? Was the prospect of my friendship so horrible to contemplate? What had I done?



Cruella (I don't remember the teacher's name) sent me out to find Karen and bring her back.



Standing at a dusty crossroads in the middle of nowhere (the town was still being built and carved out of the dry desert land), I had no idea in which direction Karen had gone. I returned to the classroom a failure. A shamed failure, at that. But Cruella wasn't done with me. Having failed to bring Karen back, I was to stand before the whole class (40-45 students) and tell everyone what horrible thing I'd written to her to cause her such distress. I stood there, but wouldn't speak.



That was the first time I realized the power of the written word. It was also the first time something I'd written got me in trouble. I've been doing some version of that ever since.



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



A:  Only ONE? Well then, I'd change the ticket prices to make it affordable. I hate that theatre in America is the privilege of the upper classes, as opposed to the art of the masses. I hate that it speaks to one socio-economic bracket and ends up saying the same thing over and over to them, preaching to the choir.



Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?



A:  Marlowe for putting free verse on the stage; Shakespeare for eclipsing him; Moliere for poking at hypocrisy; Wycherley for doing it in English; Wilde for his wit; Orton for his naughtiness; John Guare for making it American.



Q:  What kind of theater excites you?



A:  Theatre of language and ideas. Theatre of scope and ambition. The collective theatrical imagination gets smaller as the filmic imagination expands. Why is this? Of course, there's the economic considerations, but is that the complete answer? Have we put a price tag on our imagination? What a shameful turn of events if that is so.



I love theatre that dares. I love theatre that has epic size and consequences and good stories. A feast for the ears as well as the minds and the eyes.



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



A:  Read plays.



For quite a few years now, I've been teaching playwriting. Yale School of Drama, Brown University, Columbia University, and now at the Dramatic Writing Program at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. It continues to amaze me how poorly read so many graduate playwriting students are. This past year, I had a student who had never read a play before being accepted into the program.



Art doesn't exist in a vacuum. Writing a play is not only a communication between artist and audience, but between the writer and his/her fellow writers. It is a response to what has come before. The more you read, the more you understand what others have tried, and the more there is to respond to. Read plays, dammit.

I Interview Playwrights Part 376: Claire Moodey

Claire Moodey



Hometown: Erie, PA



Current Town: Brooklyn



Q: Tell me about < the invisible draft >



A: < the invisible draft > is a play I describe as a radio play silent movie. There are two characters: Our Man of the World, a silent movie, and the Girl with a Backpack, a radio play, who interact in a space between reality and its representation. Their scenes blossom into stop-motion animations inspired by Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. So what that boils down to is a non-narrative multi-media exploration of human experience, specifically the necessity of translating that experience in order to communicate. How's that for a mouthful?



I first started daydreaming about doing a project based on Calvino's book almost four years ago. When I first thought about the piece, I believed it was an art installation with some meandering actors or puppeteers of installation pieces not unlike Punchdrunk's Tunnel 228 which was in an old Tube station in London a couple years ago. About a year and half ago, I started writing and suddenly a lot of text started to congeal around the same set of ideas and then move further away from Calvino's book. Voice & Vision Theater, headed by Jean Wagner, has been incredibly supportive as I've developed this, my first play. Jean suggested I take a class with playwright Lisa d'Amour and then set me up with Saviana Stanescu through V&V's new mentorship program. These are both artists whom I admire and respect tremendously whose input on the show has been invaluable.



Q:  What else are you working on?



A:  This show has been pretty much consuming my time in the last couple weeks, but I have a some other ideas which are itching to get out. One of them has to do with color theory and Schubert, which is all I want to say about it just yet! I'll be headed up to Vermont for the last week of performance at Bread and Puppet Theater this summer after closes, which I am looking forward to, and I hope to do some more performing and lighting work this fall.



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 first got into theater when I was about nine and my brother Sam, who is now puppeteering in my show, was an Oompa Loompa in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" at the Erie Playhouse. I went to see the show and spent the time really jealous that I wasn't onstage and humming along with Willy Wonka's song "A Touch of Magic". I had a huge crush on Willy Wonka and then auditioned with my brother for "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" a couple months later and have been hooked ever since. I'm not sure what that story says about me, but I think it is funny!



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



A:  I would make it less expensive-I think as humans we need art, we need forms of expression and play which theater makes available in a unique way. When this medium is inaccessible due to cost, I think audiences disengage, the work suffers, and we all miss out on an opportunity to come together as a community and participate in a ritual of culture, which helps us to digest our world and lives on several levels.



Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?



A:  Samuel Beckett, JoAnne Akalaitis, Mabou Mines, Dario Fo, Dimiter Gotscheff, Christoff Marthaler, the woman who played Emilia Galotti in Thalmeier's production, the list goes on...



Q:  What kind of theater excites you?



A:  I am most excited by watching theater in languages I don't entirely understand. Or understand near fluently, but not quite. It opens you up to rhythms and the musicality of the stage, the imagery in a different way; I think differently when not using English and that has the possibility of making me more acutely aware of some visceral responses which sometimes I ignore. This is also part of my interest in highly physical clown and puppet theater. I like the experience to be immersive in some way, whether or not that means you walk around and interact with the players is irrelevant.



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



A:  Write a lot, dream a lot, and don't be afraid to ask questions of just about anyone. Both seek things out and let them come to you. That's what I tell myself anyway! Any advice for me?



Q:  Plugs, please:



A: < the invisible draft > opens tomorrow at Theater for the New City's Dream Up Festival and plays through next Saturday, the 20th! My stellar team of collaborators and the staff at TNC have been working tirelessly on what I believe is a beautiful production. Jonah Rosenberg has been working on the project with me for about nine months, brainstorming and engineering the sonic world of the Girl with a Backpack, played by Briana Pozner. Lotte Marie Allen, a print-maker and animator, joined the project this past spring before the workshop at Theater for the New City's Scratch Night and her vision has been invaluable to the development of the visual world of the play. Both of them are outstanding artists, as is Matteo Paoloni, the Roman actor playing Our Man of the World who has helped generate a lot of ideas in rehearsal. And this summer, Milo Cramer, Harriett Meyer, and my brother Samuel joined as puppeteers. They have been crucial as we've constructed and learned to operate the set, which is made of old moving maps.

375 Playwright Interviews (alphabetical)

Rob Ackerman

Liz Duffy Adams

Johnna Adams

Tony Adams 

David Adjmi

Keith Josef Adkins   

Derek Ahonen

Kathleen Akerley    

Zakiyyah Alexander

Luis Alfaro

Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro 

Lucy Alibar

Joshua Allen

Mando Alvarado 

Sofia Alvarez 

Christina Anderson  

Terence Anthony

Alice Austen 

Elaine Avila   

Rachel Axler

Jenny Lyn Bader

Bianca Bagatourian   

Annie Baker

Trista Baldwin

Jennifer Barclay 

Courtney Baron

Abi Basch 

Mike Batistick 

Brian Bauman

Chad Beckim

Nikole Beckwith 

Maria Alexandria Beech

Kari Bentley-Quinn 

Alan Berks

Brooke Berman

Susan Bernfield

Jay Bernzweig

Barton Bishop

Martin Blank  

Lee Blessing

Jonathan Blitstein

Adam Bock

Jerrod Bogard

Emily Bohannon

Rachel Bonds

Margot Bordelon

Deron Bos

Hannah Bos

Leslie Bramm

Jami Brandli

George Brant

Tim Braun

Delaney Britt Brewer

Jessica Brickman  

Erin Browne

Bekah Brunstetter

Monica Byrne

Renee Calarco   

Sheila Callaghan

Darren Canady

Ruben Carbajal

Ed Cardona, Jr.

Jonathan Caren

Aaron Carter

James Carter 

David Caudle

Eugenie Chan 

Clay McLeod Chapman

Christopher Chen

Jason Chimonides  

Andrea Ciannavei

Eliza Clark

Alexis Clements  

Alexandra Collier

James Comtois

Joshua Conkel

Kara Lee Corthron

Kia Corthron  

Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas

Erin Courtney

Cusi Cram

Lisa D'Amour

Heidi Darchuk

Stacy Davidowitz

Philip Dawkins

Dylan Dawson

Gabriel Jason Dean

Vincent Delaney

Emily DeVoti

Kristoffer Diaz

Jessica Dickey

Dan Dietz

Lisa Dillman

Zayd Dohrn

Bathsheba Doran

Anton Dudley

Laura Eason

Fielding Edlow

Erik Ehn

Yussef El Guindi

Libby Emmons

Christine Evans 

Jennifer Fawcett 

Joshua Fardon

Catherine Filloux   

Kenny Finkle

Stephanie Fleischmann

Kate Fodor

Sam Forman 

Dana Lynn Formby 

Darcy Fowler  

Kevin R. Free

Matthew Freeman

Edith Freni

Patrick Gabridge 

Anne Garcia-Romero

Gary Garrison 

Madeleine George

Meg Gibson

Sigrid Gilmer 

Peter Gil-Sheridan

Gina Gionfriddo

Michael Golamco

Jessica Goldberg

Daniel Goldfarb

Jacqueline Goldfinger

Jeff Goode

Christina Gorman

Craig "muMs" Grant

Katharine Clark Gray

Elana Greenfield   

Kirsten Greenidge

Jason Grote

Sarah Gubbins

Stephen Adly Guirgis

Lauren Gunderson

Laurel Haines 

Jennifer Haley

Ashlin Halfnight   

Christina Ham

Sarah Hammond

Rob Handel

Jordan Harrison

Leslye Headland

Ann Marie Healy

Julie Hebert 

Marielle Heller

Amy Herzog

Ian W. Hill  

Andrew Hinderaker

Cory Hinkle

Richard Martin Hirsch

Lucas Hnath

David Holstein

J. Holtham

Miranda Huba  

Quiara Alegria Hudes 

Les Hunter

Sam Hunter

Chisa Hutchinson

Arlene Hutton

Tom Jacobson  

Laura Jacqmin

Joshua James

Julia Jarcho

Kyle Jarrow

Rachel Jendrzejewski   

Karla Jennings

David Johnston

Nick Jones

Julia Jordan

Rajiv Joseph

Aditi Brennan Kapil

Lila Rose Kaplan  

Jeremy Kareken 

Lally Katz

Lynne Kaufman

Daniel Keene 

Karinne Keithley 

Greg Keller

Sibyl Kempson 

Anna Kerrigan

Kait Kerrigan

Boo Killebrew

Callie Kimball

Alessandro King 

Johnny Klein 

Krista Knight

John Kolvenbach 

Andrea Kuchlewska

Larry Kunofsky

Eric Lane 

Deborah Zoe Laufer 

J. C. Lee

Young Jean Lee

Dan LeFranc

Andrea Lepcio

Victor Lesniewski 

Steven Levenson

Barry Levey

Mark Harvey Levine  

Michael Lew

Alex Lewin  

EM Lewis

Sean Christopher Lewis

Jeff Lewonczyk

Kenneth Lin

Michael Lluberes

David J. Loehr 

Matthew Lopez

Stacey Luftig

Kirk Lynn

Mariah MacCarthy

Heather Lynn MacDonald 

Laura Lynn MacDonald

Maya Macdonald

Wendy MacLeod 

Cheri Magid

Jennifer Maisel

Martyna Majok  

Karen Malpede   

Kara Manning

Mona Mansour 

Warren Manzi 

Israela Margalit 

Ellen Margolis

Ruth Margraff

Sam Marks

Katie May

Oliver Mayer

Tarell Alvin McCraney

Mia McCullough  

Daniel McCoy 

Ruth McKee

Gabe McKinley  

Ellen McLaughlin 

James McManus

Charlotte Meehan

Carly Mensch

Molly Smith Metzler

Dennis Miles

Charlotte Miller 

Jane Miller  

Winter Miller

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Yusef Miller 

Rehana Mirza

Michael Mitnick

Anna Moench

Honor Molloy  

Alejandro Morales

Desi Moreno-Penson

Dominique Morisseau 

Hannah Moscovitch 

Itamar Moses

Gregory Moss

Megan Mostyn-Brown

Kate Mulley 

Paul Mullin

Julie Marie Myatt

Janine Nabers

Peter Sinn Nachtrieb

Brett Neveu

Don Nguyen   

Qui Nguyen

Don Nigro

Dan O'Brien

Matthew Paul Olmos 

Dominic Orlando

Rich Orloff

Marisela Treviño Orta

Jamie Pachino

Kristen Palmer

Tira Palmquist

A. Rey Pamatmat

Kyoung H. Park

Peter Parnell

Julia Pascal

Steve Patterson

Daniel Pearle 

christopher oscar peña

Brian Polak 

Daria Polatin

John Pollono 

Chana Porter

Craig Pospisil

Jessica Provenz

Michael Puzzo

Brian Quirk  

Marco Ramirez

Adam Rapp

David West Read 

Theresa Rebeck

Amber Reed

Daniel Reitz

Molly Rice

Mac Rogers

Elaine Romero

Lynn Rosen

Andrew Rosendorf

Kim Rosenstock

Kate E. Ryan

Kate Moira Ryan

Trav S.D.

Sarah Sander

Tanya Saracho

Heidi Schreck

August Schulenburg

Mark Schultz

Jenny Schwartz

Emily Schwend

Jordan Seavey

Christopher Shinn

Rachel Shukert

Jen Silverman

David Simpatico 

Blair Singer

Crystal Skillman

Mat Smart

Alena Smith

Tommy Smith

Ben Snyder

Sonya Sobieski  

Lisa Soland

Octavio Solis

E. Hunter Spreen 

Peggy Stafford 

Saviana Stanescu

Nick Starr

Deborah Stein

Jon Steinhagen

Victoria Stewart

Andrea Stolowitz

Lydia Stryk

Gwydion Suilebhan  

Gary Sunshine

Caridad Svich

Jeffrey Sweet

Adam Szymkowicz

Daniel Talbott

Kate Tarker 

Roland Tec 

Lucy Thurber

Paul Thureen

Josh Tobiessen

Catherine Trieschmann 

Dan Trujillo

Alice Tuan

Jon Tuttle

Ken Urban

Enrique Urueta

Francine Volpe

Kathryn Walat

Michael I. Walker 

Malachy Walsh

Kathleen Warnock

Anne Washburn

Marisa Wegrzyn

Anthony Weigh   

Ken Weitzman

Sharr White

Claire Willett

Samuel Brett Williams

Beau Willimon

Pia Wilson

Gary Winter

Bess Wohl   

Stanton Wood

Craig Wright

Deborah Yarchun

Lauren Yee

Steve Yockey

Kelly Younger

Stefanie Zadravec

Anna Ziegler

375 Playwright Interviews

Bess Wohl 

Wendy MacLeod 

Kate Mulley

Octavio Solis

Ian W. Hill

Monica Byrne

Don Nguyen 

Dana Lynn Formby

Dennis Miles

Marco Ramirez

Warren Manzi 

Mia McCullough 

Ellen McLaughlin

Tom Jacobson

Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro

Hannah Moscovitch

Alessandro King

Alex Lewin

Laurel Haines

Renee Calarco

E. Hunter Spreen 

Michael Lluberes

Kathleen Akerley  

Sonya Sobieski 

Gwydion Suilebhan 

Jane Miller

Eric Lane

David West Read

Katie May

John Pollono

Mona Mansour

Miranda Huba 

Lydia Stryk

Rachel Jendrzejewski 

Karen Malpede 

Darcy Fowler

Daniel Pearle

Heather Lynn MacDonald 

Gabe McKinley

Keith Josef Adkins 

Brian Quirk

Israela Margalit

Kia Corthron

Christina Anderson

Jenny Lyn Bader

Catherine Trieschmann

Oliver Mayer

Jessica Brickman

Kari Bentley-Quinn

John Kolvenbach

Daniel Keene

James Carter

Josh Tobiessen

Victor Lesniewski

Abi Basch

Matthew Paul Olmos

Stephanie Fleischmann

Chana Porter

Elana Greenfield 

Eugenie Chan

Roland Tec 

Jeff Goode

Elaine Avila 

Ashlin Halfnight 

Charlotte Meehan 

Marisela Treviño Orta

Quiara Alegria Hudes

Kait Kerrigan

Bianca Bagatourian 

Kyoung H. Park

Honor Molloy

Anna Moench 

Martin Blank

Paul Thureen

Yusef Miller

Lauren Gunderson

Jennifer Fawcett

Andrea Kuchlewska

A. Rey Pamatmat

Sean Christopher Lewis

Rachel Bonds

Lynn Rosen

Jennifer Barclay

Peggy Stafford

James McManus

Philip Dawkins

Jen Silverman

Lally Katz

Anne Garcia-Romero

Tony Adams

christopher oscar peña

Lynne Kaufman

David J. Loehr

Julie Hebert

Aditi Brennan Kapil

Elaine Romero

Alexis Clements

Lila Rose Kaplan

Barry Levey

Michael I. Walker

Maya Macdonald

Mando Alvarado

Adam Rapp

Eliza Clark

Margot Bordelon

Ben Snyder

Emily Bohannon

Cheri Magid

Jason Chimonides 

Karinne Keithley

Rich Orloff

David Simpatico

Deborah Zoe Laufer

Brian Polak

Kate Fodor

Sibyl Kempson

Gary Garrison

Saviana Stanescu

Brian Bauman

Mark Harvey Levine

Lisa Soland

Sigrid Gilmer

Anthony Weigh 

Maria Alexandria Beech

Catherine Filloux 

Jordan Harrison

Alexandra Collier

Jessica Goldberg

Nick Starr

Young Jean Lee

Christina Gorman

Ruth McKee

Johnny Klein

Leslie Bramm

Jennifer Maisel

Jon Steinhagen

Leslye Headland

Kate Tarker

David Holstein

Trav S.D.

Chad Beckim

Ruben Carbajal

Martyna Majok

Sam Marks

Stacy Davidowitz 

Molly Rice

Julia Pascal

Yussef El Guindi

Meg Gibson

Daniel McCoy

Amber Reed

Joshua Fardon

Dan O'Brien

Jonathan Blitstein

Dominique Morisseau

Fielding Edlow

Joshua Allen

Peter Gil-Sheridan

Tira Palmquist

Sarah Hammond

Charlotte Miller

Deborah Yarchun

Anna Kerrigan

Luis Alfaro

Jonathan Caren

Jennifer Haley

Sofia Alvarez

Kevin R. Free

Ken Weitzman

Michael Golamco

J. C. Lee

Ruth Margraff

Kirk Lynn

Tanya Saracho

Daria Polatin 

Delaney Britt Brewer

Alice Tuan

Alice Austen

Jeffrey Sweet

Dan LeFranc

Andrew Hinderaker

Brett Neveu

Christine Evans

Jon Tuttle

Nikole Beckwith

Andrea Lepcio

Gregory Moss

Hannah Bos

Steven Levenson

Molly Smith Metzler

Matthew Lopez

Lee Blessing

Joshua James

Chisa Hutchinson

Rob Ackerman

Janine Nabers

Cory Hinkle

Stefanie Zadravec

Michael Mitnick

Jordan Seavey

Andrew Rosendorf

Don Nigro

Barton Bishop

Peter Parnell

Gary Sunshine

Emily DeVoti

Kenny Finkle

Kate Moira Ryan

Sam Hunter

Johnna Adams

Katharine Clark Gray

Laura Eason

David Caudle

Jacqueline Goldfinger

Christopher Chen

Craig Pospisil

Jessica Provenz

Deron Bos

Sarah Sander

Zakiyyah Alexander

Kate E. Ryan

Susan Bernfield

Karla Jennings

Jami Brandli

Kenneth Lin

Heidi Darchuk

Kathleen Warnock

Beau Willimon

Greg Keller

Les Hunter

Anton Dudley

Aaron Carter

Jerrod Bogard

Emily Schwend

Courtney Baron

Craig "muMs" Grant

Amy Herzog

Stacey Luftig

Vincent Delaney

Kathryn Walat

Paul Mullin

Kirsten Greenidge

Derek Ahonen

Francine Volpe

Julie Marie Myatt

Lauren Yee

Richard Martin Hirsch

Ed Cardona, Jr.

Terence Anthony

Alena Smith

Gabriel Jason Dean

Sharr White

Michael Lew

Craig Wright

Laura Jacqmin

Stanton Wood

Jamie Pachino

Boo Killebrew

Daniel Reitz

Alan Berks

Erik Ehn

Krista Knight

Steve Yockey

Desi Moreno-Penson

Andrea Stolowitz

Clay McLeod Chapman

Kelly Younger

Lisa Dillman

Ellen Margolis

Claire Willett

Lucy Alibar

Nick Jones

Dylan Dawson

Pia Wilson

Theresa Rebeck

Me

Arlene Hutton

Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas

Lucas Hnath

Enrique Urueta

Tarell Alvin McCraney

Anne Washburn

Julia Jarcho

Lisa D'Amour

Rajiv Joseph

Carly Mensch

Marielle Heller

Larry Kunofsky

Edith Freni

Tommy Smith

Jeremy Kareken

Rob Handel

Stephen Adly Guirgis

Kara Manning

Libby Emmons

Adam Bock

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Liz Duffy Adams

Winter Miller

Jenny Schwartz

Kristen Palmer

Patrick Gabridge

Mike Batistick

Mariah MacCarthy

Jay Bernzweig

Gina Gionfriddo

Darren Canady

Alejandro Morales

Ann Marie Healy

Christopher Shinn

Sam Forman

Erin Courtney

Gary Winter

J. Holtham

Caridad Svich

Samuel Brett Williams

Trista Baldwin

Mat Smart

Bathsheba Doran

August Schulenburg

Jeff Lewonczyk

Rehana Mirza

Peter Sinn Nachtrieb

David Johnston

Dan Dietz

Mark Schultz

Lucy Thurber

George Brant

Brooke Berman

Julia Jordan

Joshua Conkel

Kyle Jarrow

Christina Ham

Rachel Axler

Laura Lynn MacDonald

Steve Patterson

Erin Browne

Annie Baker

Crystal Skillman

Blair Singer

Daniel Goldfarb

Heidi Schreck

Itamar Moses

EM Lewis

Bekah Brunstetter

Mac Rogers

Cusi Cram

Michael Puzzo

Megan Mostyn-Brown

Andrea Ciannavei

Sarah Gubbins

Kim Rosenstock

Tim Braun

Rachel Shukert

Kristoffer Diaz

Jason Grote

Dan Trujillo

Marisa Wegrzyn

Ken Urban

Callie Kimball

Deborah Stein

Qui Nguyen

Victoria Stewart

Malachy Walsh

Jessica Dickey

Kara Lee Corthron

Zayd Dohrn

Madeleine George

Sheila Callaghan

Daniel Talbott

David Adjmi

Dominic Orlando

Matthew Freeman

Anna Ziegler

James Comtois

I Interview Playwrights Part 375: Bess Wohl

Bess Wohl



Hometown:  Brooklyn, NY



Current town:  Right now I'm in Williamstown, MA, but I'm based in NYC, with frequent trips to LA.



Q:  What are you working on now? 



A:  In the past few weeks, I've been in rehearsals for my play, TOUCH(ED) at the Williamstown Theater Festival, rewriting and tweaking a lot.  I'm also currently writing the book for PRETTY FILTHY, a new musical, with the composer/lyricist Michael Friedman about the adult entertainment industry.  It's a commission from Center Theater Group and The Civilians.  Finally, because even playwrights need to make a living, I'm writing a feature for Paramount Pictures based on the bestselling book series, THE LUXE, and will be developing TV  for CBS this fall.



Q:  How does your acting inform your playwriting and vice versa?



A:  I actually first started playwriting while I was getting my MFA in acting.  There was a little student-run space called The Cabaret, and I began writing plays for my actor classmates and producing them in the theater there.  (The Cabaret also served booze, which probably helped those first plays go down easier...)  Wanting to create great parts for actors was the initial spark that made me start writing. Nothing pleases me more than seeing an actor find a way to be great, with the help of words I've written. 



On a deeper level, what draws me to writing is the same thing that drew me to acting-- it's all about character.  In both art forms, I hope to get inside characters and create living, breathing people.  I try to write parts that actors will want to play, and lines that I think would be fun to say.  What I've had to subsequently learn, as a writer, is how to be in charge, critical and decisive.  As an actor, you're trained to be continually open and pliable, to "always say yes."  As a playwright, you have to be able to articulate a clear vision and must stay in control of the story that is being told.  You have to be willing-- and able-- to say no. 



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



A:  This is really the defining story of my life, and it's a simple one:  When I was about four or five years old, I went to a summer camp with swimming classes.  There was an Olympic sized pool, with a very high diving board-- it seemed like it was ten miles up in the air.  The swimming teacher marched all the campers up the diving board ladder and stood us on the platform, asking who wanted to jump first.  Nobody ever had before.  It was absolutely terrifying.  We all stood there shivering in our swimsuits, as one boy after another walked to the edge, then balked and turned around.  Suddenly-- I still don't know exactly why-- I stepped forward.  This was completely out of character for me,  a shy, chubby, awkward bookworm, always picked last for every team.  But somehow, in that moment, I realized that all I needed to do was step off the edge, and gravity would do the rest.  I also knew I had to do it or I would regret it forever.  And so, I walked to the edge, and jumped.  It was probably the bravest moment of my life-- which I guess is a bit sad, really!--  but I still think about it every time I do a play.



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



A:  I wish it were less expensive, of course.  I also usually wish it were less stuffy.  I wish that it were more relevant to a wider array of people, which would probably come with it being less expensive and stuffy. 



Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes: 



A:  Well, I have to go for the obvious-- Shakespeare.  I took a class Freshman year in college with the amazing Shakespeare scholar, Marjorie Garber.  We read all the plays and the experience pretty much changed my life in every way.  It was like a religious conversion-- I still look to Shakespeare for lessons in drama and in life.  The moment at the end of Twelfth Night when Viola, in the hope of finding her lost brother,  exclaims, "Prove true, imagination, O, prove true!" for me speaks to what we're always trying to accomplish in theater:  to take something imagined and make it feel true.  I think about that line all the time, as a silent prayer.  And his characters-- Lady M, Caliban, Brutus, Hermione, Mercutio, I could go on forever-- they are the bravest, most complicated and heartbreaking and sexy and fascinating group of people I could possibly imagine.



Of course, in terms of modern playwrights-- there are so many I adore.  Tony Kushner.  Stephen Adly Guirgis.  Paula Vogel.  And actors like Janet McTeer, whose Nora in A Doll's House is etched in my mind.  Simon Russel Beale whose Iago I'll never forget.  Mark Rylance who blows me to bits every time I see him on stage.  I'm also lucky enough to have some amazing writer, director and actor friends who have mentored me, reading drafts after draft of my work and giving advice:  Keith Bunin, Itamar Moses, Trip Cullman, Chuck Morey, Susan Pourfar.  I learned from them that writing doesn't have to be lonely and solitary-- it takes a lot of support.  I could never write without their help. 



Q:  What kind of theater excites you: 



A:  I'm attracted to theater that's language driven-- theater that feels excessive and messy and generous, where words flow freely.  I love the musicality of language, and I love people and characters who can't shut up. I get an almost physical thrill from hearing talking-- language that hits me hard, in the gut, and feels visceral and chewy and delicious.  I love sloppy words.  I myself can't shut up about them right now... But okay, okay, I will.  I'm done.  Really.  Okay.  Now.  Done.



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



A:  Find actors you love and bribe them with snacks or beer to read your work out loud.  There is no substitute for hearing your work, even if it's just in your own living room.  Chose subject matter that feels important to you, and stick with it even when it feels crappy.  I heard the amazing Ira Glass speak once about how there's this gap, when you're first starting out, between what you would LIKE to have made, and what you actually did make.  His advice?  To make a ton of work, and eventually your product will catch up with your taste, and the gap between what you are making and what you want to make will close.



Finally, I'd say you have to find a way to enjoy the process as much as the result, because you never know what the result will be.  A playwright friend once told me that you have to look at each step in the process-- from the first draft on-- as if it's the last one, and derive full satisfaction from it.    Because if you're waiting for some magical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow... Well, you miss the rainbow, which is the best part.



Q:  Plugs please: 



A:  TOUCH(ED) at Williamstown Theater Festival runs thru this weekend!  Come check it out!! 

I Interview Playwrights Part 374: Wendy MacLeod

Wendy MacLeod



Hometown: Arlington, Virginia



Current Town: South Conway, New Hampshire



Q:  What are you working on now?



A:  I'm working on a play that asks the question: What if the second coming of Christ happened in contemporary suburbia?



I'm also working on a screenplay for a thriller, and I have some ideas for future essays…I've started to write about books.



Q:  What could a student in your playwriting class expect?



A:  Students can expect to read great stuff. I don't teach a play unless I love it, or feel very strongly that it has something to teach them. They can expect a heavy emphasis on solving the structure of a given play. They will be pushed to write something interesting in a voice that is distinctly their own. Comedy will never be dismissed as lacking in ambition because it's a comedy.



They will receive an intelligent, thoughtful critique from their classmates. I think the tone of a writing workshop comes from the teacher so I don't allow the students to merely like it or not like it—they must articulate what they're responding to. And if they're going to be allusive I insist on their using a theatrical frame of reference. How are they going to learn how to write plays if all they're seeing and talking about is Will Ferrell movies?



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 first grade, a classmate was cast as Wendy in Peter Pan. This struck me as a grave injustice given that Wendy was my name. So I offered her a ring in exchange for the role. I can still see it; it was a silver ring, from India, with little bells on it. She made the trade. I hope this speaks to my determination and not my lack of a moral center.



A few years earlier, I worked steadily on a flattened refrigerator box in the garage, drawing on the steering controls for what, in my head, was going to serve as a magic carpet. That combination of the imaginative and the practical was good preparation for being a playwright.



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



A:  I wish that people could afford to take their families so that children could discover the theater, real theater. My sons saw the entire Shakespeare history cycle, all eight plays, at the RSC, complete with bloody decapitated heads and battles with bows and arrows and Frenchmen descending to the stage on trapeze horses. They know that Shakespeare isn't boring.



Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?



A:  I can tell you which canonical writers I admire—Chekhov, Pinter, and Caryl Churchill.



But the heroes these days are the writers, directors and actors who continue to work in the theater when it sometimes seems irrelevant to the culture.



Q:  What kind of theater excites you?



A:  I often see things that feel made-up and I leave the theater feeling unmoved because I didn't believe a word of it. If I believe the play has articulated some truth about the human condition, however big or small, that excites me, whether the vehicle is straight-up realism or a more formally inventive play. I want to hear an original voice and enter a world that I might not otherwise have access to.



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



A:  If they're just learning to write plays, I would have them eschew most how-to playwriting books and go straight to Aristotle's POETICS. (although Julie Jensen, Jeffrey Sweet, and Jeffrey Hatcher do have helpful guides). I would tell them that acting is great training for playwriting. I would tell them that plays are not just a series of conversations. Something has to happen.



I would tell them to read plays and go see plays, even the plays they think they know. I remember rolling my eyes at the thought of going to see that old chestnut OUR TOWN, and then spending the entire third act in a puddle of tears. I dismissed Alan Aykbourn until I went to see THE NORMAN CONQUESTS at Manhattan Theater Club and then I wanted to watch the plays again and again. I always tell my students not to say they don't like a play until they've seen at least two productions of it.



Young playwrights should also know that they are not just playwrights, they are writers, and should be reading all kinds of great literature.



As for career tips, I would tell young playwrights not to send their plays out too soon, because most theaters will only consider a play once, even if you go on to write a brilliant new draft. I would tell them to proofread their work. And I would have to tell them that they will be taken more seriously as a playwright if they have film and television credits too. People always want to hop on the train.



Q:  Plugs, please:



A:  My new play FIND AND SIGN opens January 13 at the Pioneer Theater in Salt Lake City.

I Interview Playwrights Part 373: Kate Mulley

Kate Mulley



Hometown: Newton, MA. When I was a kid I heard somewhere that Newton was home to 5% of the nation's psychiatrists, I don't know if that was true, but it was a fun fact at the time.



Current Town: New York, NY. New York is probably home to more than 5% of the nation's psychiatrists.



Q:  What are you working on now?



A:  A few things. I'm in the last week of preparing for my play The Tutor, which is about an SAT tutor who sells her used underwear online. It'll be performed in the New York Fringe Festival between August 12th and 20th. The NyLon Fusion Writers Collective, my writers group, is collaborating with a group of actors on a piece that has taken many forms. At one point it was about American expats living in London, now we're taking a more abstract approach and working on the idea of "home." That will be performed in November at the Gene Frankel. And I'm working on a play about a British doctor named J Alison Glover, who was an unsung public health hero in the early 20th century. It's about his work, how it relates to us today, the role of doctors and patients in medical decision making. But it's also a bit of a war epic. Like War Horse meets Wit.



Q:  How does English theater compare to American theater?



A:  Oh, this is a tricky one. Theatre is part of the general culture of England in a way that it isn't really in America (I think Jez Butterworth's play Jerusalem captures that very well). It's also part of their tourism in a way that it isn't here. People go to London to see plays, they don't do that in New York quite the same way. English theatre is also heavily subsidized (though some of that is changing), so there are more opportunities to take risks. Even commercial theater over there tends to be riskier, less family friendly. They had to change the whole arc of Priscilla Queen of the Desert to make it more "family friendly" on Broadway. Plays also don't get as bogged down in development hell the way they do here. If you have a show at an Off-West End or fringe theatre in London you can get 4 or 5 different reviews of it in national newspapers, that doesn't happen anywhere in America. I think institutions like the National Theatre and the Royal Court are absolutely integral to the success of English theatre (and American theatre if you look at how many of their shows eventually transfer) and those theaters have more than one show going on all year round. Rocco Landesman said recently that there was more supply than demand in American theater and a lot of us took offense to that. They don't seem to care about that in London. When I started my MA at Goldsmiths College, we read an article by Mark Ravenhill that said that American playwrights know that no one cares about them, but that English playwrights are deluded to think that people still do. I think embracing that delusion is key for survival. And somehow demanding to be relevant.



Q:  How does your dramaturgy affect your playwriting and vice-versa.



A:  I think I see dramaturgy and playwriting as one and the same. I love the research element of writing plays, it's how I satisfy my latent history nerd. I also love really taking apart plays and thinking about how they work structurally. My Goldsmiths classmates and I would sit around in the pub after class talking about how to fix our plays. Even three pints in sometimes, we would still be dramaturging one another's plays. I think it's a really important skill for playwrights to have. I also think that the definition of dramaturg can be be as narrow or as broad as you want it to be.



Q:  How did you end up writing headlines for the Onion?



A:  I was an Editorial and Sports Intern there my first year out of college. I got the job because I knew a lot about the Dartmouth hockey team and the guy interviewing me had grown up in Hanover (where Dartmouth is). We agreed that one player was totally overrated and a guy I was friends with was underrated (for the record, we were right, my friend's still playing in the NHL and the other guy ended up being a bit of a bust). After a month or so of sitting in on writers meetings I was allowed to pitch some sports headlines. One of them, about the Duke lacrosse team scandal, was totally unintentionally disgusting. And they just ran with it. I was also featured in a photograph as a girl who ate too much Valentine's day candy and was dumped by her boyfriend as a result.



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



A:  Music was really important in the Newton Public School system. In 3rd grade, we played the recorder, in 4th grade we got to pick our own instrument to play. I had already been playing the piano, but decided for my "4th grade instrument" I wanted to play either the oboe or the French horn, knowing that these were historically the hardest instruments to learn how to play. I ended up playing the oboe for about 4 years before giving it up to spend more time doing theater and playing sports. Now I look back at that and laugh at this innate desire to challenge myself. It's why I stuck it out on the crew team for four years in college and it's why I'm a playwright. And it certainly informs the type of work that I aim to create.



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



A:  I would love it if there were a way for ticket prices to be lower so that more theatre could be accessible to a wider range of people. Anything to get people off of their laptops and into a space with living breathing people!



Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?



A:  I feel incredibly indebted to Caryl Churchill. I find her work incredibly inspiring and beautiful. Tom Stoppard is another, so much so that when I met him in an airport in Spain I sent him a thank you note for being nice to me. I'm in awe of Sarah Ruhl's industriousness and brilliance. I like JT Rogers' dedication to epic theatre about ideas that are as gripping as Bond movies. I love Tarell Alvin McCraney use of language, there's a moment in The Brothers Size that gives me chills just thinking about it. I'm so glad Taylor Mac's work is getting a larger audience, he breaks my heart and entertains me at the same time. Nick Hern is a theatrical hero for publishing some amazing plays that would otherwise never be in print and for giving me the opportunity to stay in London for an extra 2 years when I otherwise would have been lost. The people at the New York Theatre Workshop for their dedication to taking theatrical risks. Oh and Mark Rylance, except I wish he weren't an anti-Stratfordian, that bothers me.



Q:  What kind of theater excites you?



A:  Theatre that consciously breaks rules and entertains me at the same time. A great production of a play I've read but never seen. I love any play with drag queens (and have a kernel of an idea for a drag musical of my own, stay tuned). And most importantly, theatre that surprises me. One of the burdens of being a playwright/dramaturg is being able to predict the ending of a play. I love being pleasantly surprised at the end of a play.



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



A:  See everything you can. Read everything you can. Write as often as you can, but don't beat yourself up about it. Intern with companies you respect, usher at theatres, Make friends with people who share your aesthetic and create plays with them. Maintain friends who don't do theatre. Join a writers group. Don't worry about readjusting your definition of success as time goes on. Learn how to badger and hustle. Bask in the wonderful absurdity of your decision to be a playwright.



Q:  Plugs, please:



A:  The Tutor is at the Living Theater in the New York Fringe, August 12-20th (http://www.fringenyc.org/basic_page.php?ltr=T#TheTut) The NyLon piece in November at the Gene Frankel is tentatively titled Spoken For, but may change, keep a look out for that. Come say hi at the Drama Book Shop but if you would prefer to follow my occasional musings online, you can check out my website katemulley.com.

I Interview Playwrights Part 372: Octavio Solis

Octavio Solis



Hometown: El Paso.



Current Town: San Francisco.



Q:  What are you working on now?



A:  Several commissions. One for the Denver Center, one for South Coast Rep, two for Yale Rep, and one brand new one for the Magic Theatre in San Francisco.



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 about 12, I was bicycling with my friend along the levee of the Rio Grande right by my house. We were performing stunts on the gradient of the ditch and drinking cokes and throwing stones into the sludgy brown water of the river. A US Border Patrol cruiser drove up and asked us what we were doing. We told him we were just having around. Then he gave us a hard steely look asked us for our identification. I told I was an American citizen and a kid besides, and that I didn't need identification. He leaned down to me and took off his sunglasses and told me I would never be an American, no matter how hard I tried. In his eyes, and in the eyes of the world, I was and would forever be a Mexican. He almost cuffed me and took me in, but he laughed and drove off.



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



A:  America's infatuation with British drama. Having once been an Anglophile, I can understand the preoccupation with English plays, but as the American theatre movement persists in ignoring the diverse voices on its own shores, it's starting to feel a little classist.



Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?



A:  Maria Irene Fornes and Shakespeare are my foremost influences. They changed the way I wrote. Sam Shepard also. But I think it is literature which has influenced me the most. I read a lot. Poetry, fiction, etc.



Q:  What kind of theater excites you?



A:  The kind that rattles me to the core. That scares the fuck out of me. The kind of theatre that keeps me up at night and possesses me during the day.



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



A:  Don't wait for to be discovered. Don't wait for some champion to come along and produce your work. Do it yourself. Make it happen. Define your terms and go. That way, you own your art and make your own mistakes and learn all the facets of theatre-making. From the ticket booth to cleaning the toilets to working with the actors: apply yourself to it. You'll either trust yourself in this or you won't.



Q:  Plugs, please:



A:  I have a new musical, Cloudlands with music by Adam Gwon (Lyrics by both of us) opening at South Coast Repertory Theatre in April, 2012.

I Interview Playwrights Part 371: Ian W. Hill

Ian W. Hill



Hometown:  Cos Cob, CT



Current Town:  Gravesend, Brooklyn, NY



Q:  Tell me about Gone.



A:  Gone is really the first serious play I ever started writing, post school-juvenilia level. I began it in 1990, so it's had a long, long road to the stage from when I first imagined it – of course I finished it in 2005, so it hasn't been all that long since then . . .



Gone came about when I was acting in a play by Thalia Field, The Celibate, and I was taken with her use of . . . what shall I call it? "Non-standard English" in a dramatic context. The most frequent adjective that is used is "Joycean" which, I suppose, is fine as an easy descriptor, but is also teeth grindingly inaccurate. I had been writing prose in a bizarre, portmantoid style for years, but it wasn't until I acted in Thalia's play that I saw the possibilities of using this style in a theatrical context. I had this image of two old women sitting at a café table and discussing their lives (one of my two beloved great-grandmothers had recently died, and I was thinking of her and the other one) and what came out was this torrent of abstracted memories.



I wrote the first 5 pages of the play – it's 11 pages long and runs 42 minutes – in a massive creative burst that first year, then couldn't find it again except it bits and pieces for the next 13 years, over which I only wrote another 2 or so pages, line by sluggish line. Eventually, while I was a bored extra sitting around on the set of the horrible remake of The Stepford Wives for 4 months, I got the groove back and plowed through nearly to the end before getting stuck again. Then, finally, in 2005, I looked at it, saw how little there was left to do to finish it, buckled down and did it. In the meantime, of course, I've written a number of plays – wholly original and more often collage works – that have been produced, so it's a strange feeling to suddenly see this play, which feels both like an "early work" and a brand-new one, coming to life in rehearsal, especially since I've always wondered if it could actually be performed by human beings! Realizing that something you've written requires tour de force performances by your cast to merely work at all is a bit daunting, but luckily I have been blessed with Alyssa Simon and Ivanna Cullinan, who have gone above and beyond in pulling it off.



It's exactly the play I intended it to be 21 years ago when it came into my head, but it only just occurred to me in rehearsal recently that while the structure and feeling of the discussion and argument between these two women has been the same in all the time I've been writing it, I've changed so much in my life that I've gone from agreeing with the point of view of one of them to the other – which is probably good, as I always planned to give that one the final, convincing argument of the play, and it was easier to write when I agreed with her.



Gone is running on a double bill with another one-act play of mine, Antrobus, and that bill runs in rep with a new two-act play I'm writing, ObJects. Antrobus took a little less time to write than Gone – I conceived and started it in 1999, and am just finishing it now as we rehearse it – all my old computer files of previous versions vanished in a hard drive crash, so I've had to rewrite it from scratch. This has turned out to be a very good thing – it was originally written to replace a production of Sam Shepard's Action when I couldn't afford the rights to that, so it was a little too indebted to the set, props, and character breakdown of that play at first. It's a little piece about a "family" attempting to survive in a future Ice Age, with cabin fever becoming the biggest problem they have to face.



ObJects is still being written around the actors as we rehearse (in fact, I'm avoiding some difficult writing right now in responding to this question), and is a science-fiction satire about class and ethics in the USA about 50 years from now. Dense and hard-to-describe, though I hope it's fleet-of-foot and funny for the audiences. Somewhere between Shaw and Henry Adams and Network and Brazil, I hope.



Q:  What else are you working on now?



A:  Besides the three original plays opening in August, my longer-term plans for next August are for the third installment in my dance-theatre series Invisible Republic. The previous parts were That's What We're Here For in 2006 (mostly theatre, some dance), Everything Must Go in 2008 (about even dance/theatre) and this new untitled one for next year (more dance, less theatre). This is a series about how certain behind-the-scenes forces work in the USA (thus far, Propaganda, Advertising, and next, Branding) told through vigorous physicality and stream-of-consciousness monologues. I will also probably write another original play to accompany this, but I won't know until early next year what that will be. I usually go away to visit family at the start of each year and decompress, and look at the world and think about, "What shows does THIS year seem to require?" until it comes to me, so I have no idea what 2012 will bring until I get there.



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 actually remember coming in to Kindergarten the day after seeing Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and forcing all the other kids, whether they had seen in or not, to reenact the film with me – with me in the role of Willy Wonka, of course (as well as "directing"). It was only last year, as I was creating my wedding as a piece of theatre at The Brick, that it struck me that I've been trying to become Willy Wonka ever since, but with my plays as my treats instead of chocolate.



Of course, after I mentioned this in the wedding-play, my friend Tim Cusack – a great actor/director – corrected me, saying I wasn't trying to give everyone delicious new chocolates with my work, but odd new combinations of strange extant flavors that make people go "Ewww" when they see them, but then they try them, and they love them. Yeah, that sounds more accurate.



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



A:  Less fear. The atmosphere of terror sometimes amazes me. On a grand scale, the constant debate and concern over Theatre's "place" in the country, or world, or in the Arts, or in Society, or what have you, is tiresome, pointless, self-indulgent, and makes us all look like scared rabbits. But in general, every action by so many people in the Theatre seems to be dictated by fear – fear of "failure" (whatever that is; your definition may vary) paralyzes so many people in our community from taking true steps forward and big risks all the damned time, that what the Work needs – the most important thing – seems to get lost in the shuffle of what everyone else is thinking that everything else "needs."



Of course, I'm rather a lucky person in a kind of ivory tower situation, so it's very very easy for me to talk about not having fear – failure in my work will not remove a roof from my head nor food from my table. Still, I feel so much of the community constantly looking at everything around the Work we should be doing more than the actual Work, as if it were merely an adjunct to a life-supporting system we all need rather than the cause for that system to exist in the first place.



Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?



A:  Richard Foreman and Robert Wilson are at the top, no doubt, in terms of artists whose work I've been able to see and enjoy for years as it happens. From the past, Shakespeare and Beckett are my favorites and no one else comes near. At one time, now that I think of it, Peter Barnes was very important to me, and while his work doesn't touch me the way it once did, I can still access those feelings easily with great pleasure (and I feel like I see his influence showing up more and more). At one time, when I despaired of finding any new playwriting interesting, finding Mac Wellman and Len Jenkin and Jeffrey M. Jones did a lot to excite me again. And Sarah Kane, though not as strong on many re-readings, gave me a serious kick in the pants when I finally read her collected work.



Spending most of my life wanting to make movies means that most of my creative heroes have been filmmakers, so I should mention Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick, Jean-Luc Godard, David Lynch, Nicolas Roeg, Peter Greenaway, Ken Russell, and Powell & Pressburger, whose filmic styles have made me search for theatrical equivalents. And from literature, yes, Joyce, Nabokov, Hammett, Sontag, John Berger, William S. Burroughs, and a slew of others (currently, the spirit of the very-much-alive Samuel R. Delany is hanging around over my shoulder as I write the new plays . . .).



My real theatrical heroes, however, are the people who have been working in the Indie Theatre community of NYC with great devotion for years and years. We all know where the real work is happening.



Q:  What kind of theater excites you?



A:  Something I haven't seen before that could only possibly work as a piece of theatre – moving it into any other art form, or even just trying to describe it, would be so reductive of the work as to be completely ridiculous. And seeing someone pull off the seemingly impossible in casually miraculous manner is an especial joy when it happens



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



A:  Learn everything you can about all aspects of the form – but this is what I say to anyone interested in anything to do with Theatre. Learn all you can about acting, directing, all forms of design – all of it will make you a better writer within the form. And learn all the supposed rules but don't allow yourself to be hampered by them, especially if it means losing any part of your own distinctive voice. And see lots and lots of theatre, with kindly eyes. Even in the horrifying, look for what works. You'll have a use for it.



Q:  Plugs, please:



A:  THE COLLISIONWORKS 2011: At The Ends (3 Terminal Plays/3 Ultimate Plays), which consists of the two-act play ObJects running in rep with the double-bill of one-acts Antrobus & Gone, will be opening on August 11 at The Brick and running through August 28. Information on the shows and tickets is available at The Brick's website, www.bricktheater.com, and also on the Facebook pages for each show:



ObJects: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=230287530325852

Antrobus: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=247747448569676

Gone: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=203131493070208