Adam Szymkowicz's Blog, page 113

I Interview Playwrights Part 305: Honor Molloy

Honor Molloy



Hometown: Dublin, Ireland



Current Town: Brooklyn



Q:  What are you working on now?



A:  Promotion. Creating scripts for performances of pieces from Smarty Girl--an autobiographical novel about my Dublin childhood. I spent the past six years fully focused on completing this manuscript so at this point, I can't even spell the word theatre. (Is it theater, or theatre, darling?) In the old days, I attended about five theatrical events a week. These days? Three in a month is a monster month.



Now that I'm done with the first stage of the book, I plan on posting several performance pieces from it on UTube. The idea is to do spoken word on radio as well as live performance as often as possible.



Perhaps in February I will have some time to return to playwriting. I aim to do a final revision on autodelete--a play about September 11th that I started in March 2002. The new version is called 10 Years and will reflect my vision of the play rather than producers and / or literary managers who were not interested in producing my play but felt compelled to tell me what was wrong with it.



I attended NYU Graduate Acting Program way back in the early 1980s. They have a wonderful monthly workshop for Graduate Acting Alumni who are developing writing projects. I will develop the new script in this safe environment with some mighty fine actors.



Q:  How does writing fiction compare to writing plays?



A:  When writing plays, the last piece of the puzzle for me is the structure. It has always been the beast of burden as well as the gift of each play. I find I write autobiographically even when composing a play about 18th Century England so there's that initial difficulty in figuring out what is going on under the under of the subject matter. This can lead to delays. A divorce in a play has precipitated a divorce in real life.



I work with characters drawn from history, ie: the Grimke Sisters, Queen Victoria, corsets, Brandon Teena - Teena Brandon (the gender outlaw murdered in Nebraska during the final hours of 1992), Lord Horatio Nelson - Vice Admiral of the Blue. And I revel in research. My plays often take a while to complete on the page. The actual structure of the play usually reflects the theatrical and / cultural constructs of the era in which its set. For example: Madame Killer is set in Manhattan during 1878. It's a shameless and flagrant melodrama with such added flourishes as a live pianist and female pugilists. I started Madame Killer in 1990 and didn't complete the script until Clubbed Thumb produced it in 2005. The plays are not done until they are produced. Unfortunately, I have a pile of unfinished plays.



That sort of frustration drove me to fiction where I thought I'd be in control. And that things would go more quickly. A laugh. It took twelve years altogether. Three huge drafts. And like the plays, structure came last. I don't know why I obsess about the time it took to write the book, but it was so much more intensive. The equivalent of writing thirty plays. Many of the stories can stand alone. I suppose that's why they can be performed. I suppose that because they can be performed, they have their own structural integrity—just like a play.



I stole from my playwriting all the way through. Playwriting made the dialogue easy. Made this a lean, muscular book with a driving action that pulls a reader straight through to the end.



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 first full-length starts with a woman arriving at a maternity hospital with a dead fetus inside her. She's been badly beaten by her husband. Many of my plays repeat some version of this scene. It is the climax of my book. When I was a child my father beat my mother. I have no recollection of this. I write to regain my memory. I write to understand. War begins in living rooms. Stop the war.



Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?



A:  Caryl Churchill, Eva Le Gallienne, Samuel Beckett,



Q:  What kind of theater excites you?



A:  Physical theatre first. Big-fat-theatrical, savage and raucous theatre that takes up space. A woman with a microphone and a spotlight—a button accordion heaving beside her. She is just riffing with lingo. Then the song starts. A standard. It is magic. I love down-and-dirty vulgar comedy. Wordplay. Love wordplay.



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



A:  Read, read, read. Go to plays at all stages of production, take acting classes--they are the best playwriting courses, intern with a theatre company, learn what it takes to produce a play, produce your friends' plays, produce yourself, make mayhem.



Q:  Plugs, please:



A:  Smarty Girl UTubes: Sixpence the Stars and Up Went Nelson. I'll be performing at the 45th Commemoration of the Destruction of Nelson's Pillar at the Dublin City Archive on March 7th.

I Interview Playwrights Part 304: Anna Moench

Anna Moench



Hometown:

Baltimore, MD. The Greatest City In America.



Current Town:

New York. A place that would look like a douchebag for claiming to be the greatest city in America on every public bench.



Q:  Tell me about your upcoming show at EST.



A:  It's called In Quietness, and it's about a former CEO who has left her job to follow her recently born-again husband to a Southern Baptist seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. She's the type of person who doesn't know how to fold a sheet, so she enrolls in the seminary's Homemaking B.A. program. The play explores the difficulties of fitting oneself into a box, whether that box be gender, religion, profession, or social expectations, and why, given how difficult it is, we all try so hard to do it. The production is a part of Youngblood's Unfiltered series, which is an annual assortment of studio productions of full lengths by Youngblood writers.



Q:  What else are you working on?



A:  I'm also a member of the 2010 Emerging Writers Group at The Public, where I'm working on a play called Hunger. The play takes place in rural China, and it explores what the landscape of life is like out there right now, and how that is as much shaped by the country's tremendous upheaval during the past century as it is by its hopes for the next one. The plot revolves around minghun, a traditional burial practice in which bereaved parents will buy the corpse of a girl to bury with their dead son in a joint wedding/funeral ceremony to ensure that he is not lonely in the afterlife. The living are played by puppets, and their puppeteers become their souls in the afterlife once they die. I've been working on this piece, the research or writing false starts, for over two years now. It has been an exercise in perseverance. But the writing is finally moving now, which feels great.



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



A:  Once as a kid I came downstairs for breakfast and found my mom cutting my dad's hand open with a razor blade over some paper towels on the kitchen table. Apparently some lead shot that had been lodged in there for years after an old hunting accident. That morning it had been bothering him, so he asked her to cut him open and get it out. Doctors, man. In retrospect it seems strange that an 8 year old would be not at all disturbed by this. I think I had cereal and watched. As a writer I think that interest carries over...I like the visceral clockwork that keeps us breathing and swallowing and shitting so that we can think our lofty or stupid thoughts. One of my plays, GORMANZEE, stages the strangulation and evisceration of a shaved gorilla (puppet) and a nearly naked human (actor) while a chimpanzee (actor) fear grins and runs around screaming, fruitlessly searching for escape. My company produced it at The Flea last summer and I assumed it would be a real thigh slapper. But judging from the appalled silence on a few nights, some audiences were traumatized. Especially the little kids who came thinking it would be a puppet show. Yikes. I do feel a little bad about that. But I still think it's the funniest thing I've ever written.



Q:  What kind of theater excites you?



A:  Theater is like a drug, isn't it? The more I consume, the more I need from it. Story used to be what moved me, and I still love (and to some extent need) a good story, but now I'm hooked on visuals, particularly the use of puppets and objects. Force me to see life in a dead thing, force me to love that dead thing, force me to mourn the death of a thing that never lived, and you are forcing me to be conscious of the act of being human. Also, I like solving puzzles. I like ambiguity without vagueness. I really like laughing, I like hilarious characters that show me a good time. I like elegant transitions and messy interactions. I like shocking shifts in visual perspective. I like seeing something that expands how I see everything.



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



A:  1. If you live in a place that has a theater scene, then it is my opinion that you should see plays and read other stuff. Scripts are blueprints for plays, and although I know I'm supposed to like reading them, I just don't. Maybe that's bad advice, but so far I don't think I've been screwed by it. I think my time is better spent reading outdated manuals on how to be a secretary in 1963, advice columns, fundamentalist blogs, recipes for fertilizers, the Wikipedia pages for massacres I never knew happened, poetry, the Bible, the dictionary, obituaries, the epic origin stories written on organic food packaging, and the sentence on the side of the Domino's sugar box (seriously, check it out, it's weird). Get a news site to email you all the articles about some random country every day for a year. Become an armchair expert on something. It will probably start to show in your writing. Or even better, you may end up at some horrible party where some insufferable person is talking out of their ass about North Korea or whatever and you can be like "SHAZAM! I know everything there is to know about North Korea, fool!" That has never happened to me, but I haven't given up hope.



2. Try to get enough fresh air.



3. Read all the other advice from the other playwright interviews on Adam's blog. They have all already said all the stuff that first came to mind when I started answering this question.



4. Read Anne Lamott's "Bird By Bird." It will make you laugh and feel better about everything.



Q:  Plugs, please:



A:  The other shows in Unfiltered are fantastic!

-Sweet Forgotten Flavor by Patrick Link (running now, don't miss it!) is set in this beautifully timeless, placeless, sideways fairy tale-ish world that quietly and brilliantly elevates the conflicts at work among its characters. Really wonderful.



-The Sluts of Sutton Drive by Joshua Conkel is yet another winner from an incredibly talented writer. It's dark, twisted, and hilarious. Jaded suburban moms drink cleaning products to deal with the bleakness of their existence.



The first Sunday of every month is Youngblood's Brunch series, which is brunch+new short plays around a theme+drinking. Don't miss it!

Upcoming

Production of Nerve in Anaheim, CA  Jan 28-Feb 27 

(9th production of the play, 10th-12th coming soon)



http://www.chancetheater.com/





Production of Deflowering Waldo in Rochester, NY Feb 4-13 

(5th production of the play)



http://www.staszpruitt.com/





Reading of Save as part of How Soon Is Now with Packawallop in NYC  Jan 31



Benefiting the Trevor Project



http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=53914824269&ref=ts#!/event.php?eid=185706811459427



Reading of Elsewhere in West Virginia Feb 9



http://www.gvtheatre.org/



Reading of Temporary Everything, Croton On Hudson, NY  Feb 11



http://www.hudsonstage.com/



Reading of Hearts Like Fists, Boston, MA Feb (TBA)



http://www.hollandproductions.org/

I Interview Playwrights Part 303: Martin Blank

Martin Blank



Hometown: Bethesda, Maryland



Current Town: Bethesda, Maryland



Q:  Tell me about Avenue of The Americas.



A:  I find as a playwright that A always leads to C. Avenue of the Americas was the first play I ever wrote. It is a story about a woman who escapes a mental institution to write television advertisements that become dangerously successful. Avenue of the Americas has been produced, but not in New York City. One of my other plays, The Law of Return, had a reading at ArtEffects Theatre Company in New York City. They told me the night before the reading they had extra time in the space and asked, "Is there anything else you want to hear too?" God love them. They did readings of both plays back to back. Kristin Cantwell, an amazing actress, who gave my work to ArtEffects in the first place, and Phil Newsom, a brilliant producer and director at ArtEffects, loved Avenue of the Americas. Kristin and Phil are producing it on their own Off Broadway at The Tank Theater. For me, as always, A leads to C. 



Q:  What else are you working on?



A:  A new comedy, No Rest for the Wicked. It's a dark, comic spin on Rip van Winkle. It's getting a reading at the Kennedy Center in September.



Q:  How would you characterize the DC theater scene?



A:  Exciting. Very. A vibrant Fringe festival giving birth to lots of young companies doing great work, including many new plays. Plenty of "old school" shops putting on new plays too: Woolly Mammoth, Arena Stage, and so on. An awful lot of seasoned as well as talented new theater people. The theater scene in DC has never been better.  



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



A:  Like a lot of us, when I was four I put on shows in my living room. They were magic shows. I wrote and produced them. I got all the neighborhood kids to perform them. Siblings and parents would come. We charged one dollar for admission. Even at age four, I knew to pay artists.



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



A:  You can fill a library with what I don't know about theater. Or life. I do know that a lot of folks in our business are in hard times now. Still, anyone reading this is a creative person. My wish is that people in our business think creatively about how to put on theater in a sustainable way. The tide that goes out comes back. I want American theater to be bullish again.



Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?



A:  Actors. Brave, gifted, folks.   



Q:  What kind of theater excites you?



A:  Anytime I see a play, no matter the style, budget, whatever, where an audience has been moved in some way and, based on that experience, will likely go see more theater.



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



A:  Take one good acting class. Read all the time-plays, anything and everything. Take the two plays you love most and physically type them. It will save you years. (Paddy Chayefsky did this, it worked out okay for him.) See as many plays as you can. Every day, whatever happens, try to see the glass as half full. And the last thing should be obvious.



Q:  Plugs, please:



A:  Production of Avenue of the Americas January 21 to February 6 at The Tank Theater in New York City. Reading in Washington, D.C., of No Rest for the Wicked at the Kennedy Center in early September. And Adam,  you're a terrific and busy playwright. Thanks for doing these!

I Interview Playwrights Part 302: Paul Thureen

Paul Thureen



Hometown: Grew up on a farm 10 miles north of East Grand Forks, MN



Current Town: Greenpoint, Brooklyn



Q:  Tell me about your upcoming remount of Buddy Cop 2.



A:  Buddy Cop 2 is our play about Cops, Christmas and Racquetball that we premiered in May at the Ontological-Hysteric Incubator. We're bringing it back for a quick run for PS122's COIL festival. We'll be at the Atlantic Theater Stage 2. It's a super fun, dark, sad, strange play.



Q:  What else are you working on?



A:  Well, we have the very beginnings of three new plays so after Buddy Cop 2 we'll hop back into development mode.



Also, Buddy Cop 2 is coming out from Samuel French in just a few weeks and we're happy to report that Manbites Dog Theater in Durham, NC will be doing the first licensed production in June. It's the first time someone ELSE has done one of our shows . . . which is totally exciting and bizarre because we've always written for ourselves as performers.



Q:  How do you and Hannah write together? What's your process?



A:  Once we've found the little thing that's our main core starting point, we spend a period of time collecting things; research, images, objects (very important), songs . . . and that transitions into generating a big mass of text sort of riffing on these early ideas and inspirations. At this point Oliver (our director and the other third of The Debate Society) and Hannah and I are really focused on creating the world of the play which is sort of the most important thing to us; the flavor and feel of the place and its mythology.



From our feeling of what that world is and the writing we've done, we start to shape the story and characters. We'll do in-rehearsal work with Oliver, then Hannah and I write and bring stuff back in, repeat repeat repeat. Hannah and I will give each other little writting assignments and when we read, we've usually ended up magically filling in the gaps of what was missing in the other's writing.



It definitely starts out as a very intuitive process. As we get closer to production, then we look back at what we have, how it's (hopefully) kind of instinctively lined up and then at that point do a little bit more shaping and building from a more intellectual/dramaturgical perspective.



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



A:  Well I guess this is more of an origin story than a single event, but my mom was a Norwegian professor and writer and my dad a farmer and I think it kind of makes sense that that made me. My mom was always SUPER creative and viewed that world with very childlike eyes for an adult . . . she still does actually. So dragons would be leaping out at us from the ditch when we'd be riding in the car and things like that. She also read to me and my sister a lot and had us do "hot pen" writing exercises from a young age. And then my dad was more quiet, super hard working, but also with a sort of dry, pragmatic Midwestern sense of humor. On the farm you just have a lot of time alone, inventing things, climbing on (dangerous) farm machinery, creating your own little word outside. I just reread your interview you did with Hannah . . . and she talked about setting up little dioramas in her mom's antique shop window . . . so it strikes me we grew up in very similar ways in very different places. And I think that sense of play still really flavors our work . . . even when we're making something very adult or sad or dark.



Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?



A:  I studied for 3 months in Moscow and those guys are just such committed artists; doing what they do even in the worst of times and working so hard with much fewer resources . . . and still there's this super commitment to playfulness and excessive creativity. There's always a point where Oliver's staging, and we've written something crazy and impossible that has to happen on stage and we can't figure out how to make it happen and we joke, "Um, we'll just use real magic". And I think the Russians believe in that. So . . . "Russians" is the answer I guess.



Q:  What kind of theater excites you?



A:  Sometimes I see plays and think, "That was good . . . but would have been better as an episode of This American Life (or Law and Order. Or a book. Or a tone poem.) and there's nothing really wrong with that . . . but I get so excited when I see something stunning or delicate or that really rocks me that could only happen in theater.



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



A:  "Turn on your nerves" as they'd tell us in Russia so you're absorbing things that are interesting or make you feel a certain way in the world. Be open to finding inspiration in anything. Look places no one else looks. And be super honest and critical with yourself: Is this REALLY what I want to make, or is this something just in the style of what I think I SHOULD make. Work hard. And then . . . try to get out of the way of yourself and trust your intuition.



Q:  Plugs, please:



A:  Buddy Cop 2 at Atlantic Stage 2, January 8th-13th (go to thedebatesociety.org for the details)!

I Interview Playwrights Part 301: Yusef Miller

Yusef Miller



Hometown: Houston, Texas



Current Town: New York, NY



Q: 

What are you working on now?



A: 1) Writing a new play.



2) This week, I begin rehearsals for my ten-minute dark comedy, called Breakfast. Synopsis: ..eggs and muthufuckin' bacon will not be the start of glen's morning. his wife, harriet, has pop tarts on the menu, the shit they've overlooked for 19 years...



Q: How can we support your work?



A: By attending my ten-minute dark comedy, called Breakfast. Building on a sold-out inaugural year in 2010, The Fire This Time Festival continues its mission of supporting playwrights of African-descent and exploring challenging new directions for 21st century theater.

All Season Two festival events will be held at Horse Trade Theater Group's Red Room (85 East 4th Street between 2nd Ave and Bowery).

Join us for an evening of ten-minute plays:

• The Scorpion and the Fox by Jesse Cameron Alick

• The Eternal Return by Christine Jean Chambers

• Exodus by Camille Darby

• The Bitter Seraph of Sugar Hill by Marcus Gardley

• Breakfast by Yusef Miller

• Third Grade by Dominique Morisseau

Showtimes

• Thu - 01/20   7:00 PM

• Fri - 01/21     7:00 PM

• Sat - 01/22     7:00 PM

• Sun - 01/23   2:00 PM

• Thu - 01 27    7:00 PM

• Fri -  01/28    7:00 PM

• Sat - 01/29     7:00 PM

• Sun – 01/30   2:00 PM

Tickets ($15) are available by calling Smarttix at 212-868-4444 or online at www.horseTRADE.info (on "The Fire This Time Festival Panel on the left)




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 Artist-born child who retained narratives of the unrequited dreams of a family, a community, a race. Initially, it was important for me to run for my own story, or at the least, to wait out the storm. Poetry became my first expression of my existence. It validated my purpose in the storm; and in articulating it, validated the people and the stories. I write plays from within the storm. I'm still validating. I'm experimenting with different styles and forms of validating.



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



A: I wouldn't touch the mainstream theatre community. I wouldn't know where to begin, other than total reformation. What I would do is slip a pill into the drinks of every Black Playwright, Black Producer, and Black Audience Member. This pill would have several effects. 1) it would identify our "oneness with each other." 2) it would identify our "oneness with God." 3) it would create within us courage and wisdom, unprecedented. 4) it would recreate in us a LIFE OR DEATH resolve. 5) it would advance how we contract our creativity. 




Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?



A: I endeavor to be my own hero. I owe it to me and my experience.





Q: What kind of theater excites you?



A: Allegories. 





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



A: The origins of your art is YOU. Be courageous, for all of us.

300 Playwright Interviews (alphabetically)

Rob Ackerman

Liz Duffy Adams

Johnna Adams

Tony Adams 

David Adjmi

Derek Ahonen

Zakiyyah Alexander

Luis Alfaro

Lucy Alibar

Joshua Allen

Mando Alvarado 

Sofia Alvarez

Terence Anthony

Alice Austen

Rachel Axler

Annie Baker

Trista Baldwin

Jennifer Barclay 

Courtney Baron

Mike Batistick 

Brian Bauman

Chad Beckim

Nikole Beckwith 

Maria Alexandria Beech 

Alan Berks

Brooke Berman

Susan Bernfield

Jay Bernzweig

Barton Bishop

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

Erin Browne

Bekah Brunstetter

Sheila Callaghan

Darren Canady

Ruben Carbajal

Ed Cardona, Jr.

Jonathan Caren

Aaron Carter

David Caudle

Clay McLeod Chapman

Christopher Chen

Jason Chimonides  

Andrea Ciannavei

Eliza Clark

Alexis Clements  

Alexandra Collier

James Comtois

Joshua Conkel

Kara Lee 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

Kate Fodor 

Sam Forman

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

Christina Gorman

Craig "muMs" Grant

Katharine Clark Gray

Kirsten Greenidge

Jason Grote

Sarah Gubbins

Stephen Adly Guirgis

Lauren Gunderson 

Jennifer Haley

Christina Ham

Sarah Hammond

Rob Handel

Jordan Harrison

Leslye Headland

Ann Marie Healy

Julie Hebert 

Marielle Heller

Amy Herzog

Andrew Hinderaker

Cory Hinkle

Richard Martin Hirsch

Lucas Hnath

David Holstein

J. Holtham

Les Hunter

Sam Hunter

Chisa Hutchinson

Arlene Hutton

Laura Jacqmin

Joshua James

Julia Jarcho

Kyle Jarrow

Karla Jennings

David Johnston

Nick Jones

Julia Jordan

Rajiv Joseph

Aditi Brennan Kapil

Lila Rose Kaplan  

Jeremy Kareken 

Lally Katz

Lynne Kaufman

Karinne Keithley 

Greg Keller

Sibyl Kempson 

Anna Kerrigan

Boo Killebrew

Callie Kimball

Johnny Klein 

Krista Knight

Andrea Kuchlewska

Larry Kunofsky

Deborah Zoe Laufer 

J. C. Lee

Young Jean Lee

Dan LeFranc

Andrea Lepcio

Steven Levenson

Barry Levey

Mark Harvey Levine  

Michael Lew

EM Lewis

Sean Christopher Lewis

Jeff Lewonczyk

Kenneth Lin

David J. Loehr 

Matthew Lopez

Stacey Luftig

Kirk Lynn

Mariah MacCarthy

Laura Lynn MacDonald

Maya Macdonald

Cheri Magid

Jennifer Maisel

Martyna Majok 

Kara Manning

Ellen Margolis

Ruth Margraff

Sam Marks

Tarell Alvin McCraney

Daniel McCoy 

Ruth McKee

James McManus

Carly Mensch

Molly Smith Metzler

Charlotte Miller

Winter Miller

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Rehana Mirza

Michael Mitnick

Alejandro Morales

Desi Moreno-Penson

Dominique Morisseau

Itamar Moses

Gregory Moss

Megan Mostyn-Brown

Paul Mullin

Julie Marie Myatt

Janine Nabers

Peter Sinn Nachtrieb

Brett Neveu

Qui Nguyen

Don Nigro

Dan O'Brien

Dominic Orlando

Rich Orloff 

Jamie Pachino

Kristen Palmer

Tira Palmquist

A. Rey Pamatmat 

Peter Parnell

Julia Pascal

Steve Patterson

christopher oscar peña

Brian Polak 

Daria Polatin 

Craig Pospisil

Jessica Provenz

Michael Puzzo

Adam Rapp  

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

Lisa Soland

Peggy Stafford 

Saviana Stanescu

Nick Starr

Deborah Stein

Jon Steinhagen

Victoria Stewart

Andrea Stolowitz

Gary Sunshine

Caridad Svich

Jeffrey Sweet

Adam Szymkowicz

Daniel Talbott

Kate Tarker 

Lucy Thurber

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

Stanton Wood

Craig Wright

Deborah Yarchun

Lauren Yee

Steve Yockey

Kelly Younger

Stefanie Zadravec

Anna Ziegler

300 Playwright Interviews

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 300: Lauren Gunderson

Lauren Gunderson



Hometown: Decatur, GA (just outside Atlanta)



Current Town: San Francisco, CA



Q: What are you working on now?



A: I enjoy a little too much going on. I also love lists. So:



1) A new "revenge comedy" called EXIT, PURSUED BY A BEAR starting its rolling premiere with Synchronicity Theatre in Atlanta March 4, rolling to San Francisco's Crowded Fire Theatre in August, then to Seattle's ArtsWest in October.



2) My second commission for South Coast Rep (a true story period science lady play with a math-music obsession) called SILENT SKY directed by Anne D'Zmura - running April 1-May 1



3) My first commission from the Kennedy Center Theatre for Young Audiences (a mystery science musical with a talking dog - yeyah) called THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF DR WONDERFUL AND HER DOG directed by the awesome Sean Daniels with music by Brian Lowdermilk



4) My first commission from SF Playhouse currently called BRIGHT WHITE LIFE - a true story of non-objective artist Rudolf Bauer.



5) FIRE WORK is finalist for the Global Age Project at Aurora this winter.



6) EMILIE is opening at ArtsWest Jan 24th in Seattle



7) A super cute family Christmas musical with music/lyrics by Harry Connick Jr.



8) Other plays in their annoying infancy (one with Just Theatre that's kind of about Macbeth)



9) And the requisite TV pilot ideas, HuffPo essays, plays I should not let myself write until I finish the aforementioned ones, etc...



Q: Tell me about writing for the Huffington Post.



A: I got involved because I knew the new Arts Editor (who is an incredible painter) and she suggested I write about theatre as a member of the emergent creative community in the performing arts. So we found a complementarity - I get to write about theatre from a playwrights perspective and they get a more diverse readership.



I'm treating this blog as a markedly optimistic assignment - I want to inject more of the good news into our field, but not shy away from the tougher realities either. I'm not interested in reviewing but I am interested in connecting with the reasons we make new plays - the goals of various productions, the individual standards of the artists.



I start with more positivity, more delight, more of the reason we all started in this ridiculous field. I want to share some of that with new-to-theatre folks.



I mean I get anxious like everybody. But I fundamentally believe that there is joy and urgency in this work. So I write from that. Plus, if we don't have some cheering, it all looks completely bipolar. We go from raves to blasts; from "theatre changes the world!" to "lovely but irrelevant" to "it all sucks and we suck and everyone sucks". Theatre is better than that.



Q:  Tell me about SILENT SKY.



A:  It's a true story of this amazing (but dusted over by history) woman living at the turn of the last century when women couldn't vote, couldn't attend the best institutions, couldn't do much professionally besides teach high school. Henrietta Leavitt took a rather boring job at Harvard Observatory calculating star magnitudes and ended up culling out incredible patterns in Cepheid stars. Her work led major later astronomers (namely Edwin Hubble) to understand and unlock the universe on the grandest scale yet known.



I have a science fixation, always have. I found about about Henrietta when I was living in NYC and killing time in the basement of The Strand bookstore (where the Science sections are tucked away). I picked up George Johnsons's lovely little book called Miss Leavitt's Stars. I thought, as I often do, "A female astronomer about whom I don't know? Investigate and dramatize".



I was looking for a subject for my next South Coast Rep commission and this fit perfectly for them and for me. This is a play that combines so much of what I love and find magnetic on stage: women risking it all, the gorgeous kinds of science, catalytic moments in history, discovery, complex family, love stories.



In fact I told Mr. Johnson just a week ago that I wrote a play based in part on his book. But I added the suffragette movement and some kissing. Luckily he said that he loved the idea of Henrietta in love. So we're cool. It's going to be a beautiful production.



Q:  What about EXIT, PURSUED BY A BEAR?



A:  This is a very new kind of play for me (and VERY different from SILENT SKY) - a wild comedy that combines my Southern roots, my deep heart for women's empowerment and preventing domestic abuse, my great debt to Shakespeare, and my love of obsessive people, Jimmy Carter, best friends, and nature documentaries. And karaoke. It's a funny play about serious things. The characters in it would say its a very serious drama - but to the audiences its funny. Because its true. And ridiculous.



BEAR came about because of a lot of support and trust from some key folks - namely Amy Mueller at The Playwrights Foundation and Rachel May at Synchronicity Theatre in Atlanta. When I moved to SF Amy kick started the play - encouraging me to finish writing it, and giving me a reading. Then Rachel picked it right up and was bold enough to say "hell, let's just produce this thing". From there we got the idea to do a rolling premiere which now has 3 cities.



Q:  How did you become first Playwright in Residence at the Kavli

Institute of Theoretical Physics?



A:  I mentioned my science thing. It's been there for a while. So I worked with the folks at Kavli some years ago as most of my plays are about science, science-history, women in science, etc. I have a bunch of friends in the physics community who have done their Journalist-In-Residence program. So I thought - "heck, we need some dramatists there!". So I approached them about adding a playwriting residency. Then my life got way complicated with a ton of projects that meant that I couldn't be in Santa Barbara right away. But I knew this wonderful playwright Lila Rose Kaplan was there so I hooked them up. I'm so excited that Lila is there and that Kavli is committing to the arts. Great for theatre and science.



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 story my dad would tell you is the time I played Baby Bear in my Kindergarten production of Goldilocks... which they made us do in Spanish... before any of us knew Spanish... so we clenched our scripts like a Metro map having no clue what we were doing or saying. My mom made my little bear costume, of which I was torridly proud, and it got to my big scene with the porridge... and with one wisp of a spotlight I promptly overacted with a grand theatrical gesture and sent my script flying off the stage. Parents gasped, cast mates snorted, and I (without ever having actually attempted to do the part well or memorized) spat out the perfectly accented grammatically correct Spanish line "Someone's been eating my porridge and they ate it all up!" That's when my dad says he knew that words and theatre were my natural habitat. And that my priorities were definitely akimbo to modern America.



I also remember the moment that i realized that people still wrote plays - like new plays - like that was a thing people did with their time and - gasp - careers.



And in high school I remember when I was trying to finish my first play - PARTS THEY CALL DEEP (which I realize sounds like a porn video now, but back then... y'know...). I was at the dinner table and I was pondering how the hell do you END a PLAY? It doesn't really end unless I kill everybody, right? I don't want to kill people. Maybe one person. No wait... maybe I could... oohh! And I ran upstairs and wrote a scene that was emotionally true but realistically not - people changed and grew but not in real time or real space. It freed me to use theatre for what it was - made up. It's fiction, its magic, we're all playing along. I can do ANYTHING. And that's opened up my taste for theatre that really surprises my senses but maintains humanity.



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



A:  I will admit that I'm anxious about critics. I think a lot of us are. And not in a healthy way. In a very sad way that more often cripples new ideas than carbonates them. So I would change the relationship of playwrights/theatre artists to critics. Paula Vogel reminds us of a time when Eugene O'Neill and the major critic of the day (can't remember his name) were friends, they had dinners together, they discussed and argued and activated their ideas. The critic gave O'Neill a trunk. I saw it. It's in his house in CT. A trunk.



I would take time but I would have the kind of community wherein critics and creators can actually communicate - to talk about taste and "Theatre" and art and audience and the point of all this. It wouldn't feel so much like a gladiatorial thumbs up/down arrangement. It could help the creatives understand reviewing and reviews; and help reviewers more intimately understand the choices, competencies, and process of the particular artists. I know reviewing is NOT an easy job. But I'll go ahead and wager that writing a play, navigating the theatrical landscape to get a production, collaborating constantly on that production, and working to the very last second before opening, then releasing your idea into the world is the harder, riskier, and more time-consuming activity.



I've learned a lot from reading reviews and theatre essays - these are smart folks talking about what I love the most. One of my great friends is the theatre and culture critic Mark Blankenship - who I think re-imagines and energizes criticism. And I agree with the critics as often as I don't. So I don't want criticism to go away. I just wish it didn't feel so charged, but felt more symbiotic - we all want theatre to be its best, right?



Or maybe I'd just make all theatre shows $10, and all theatre become heavily endowed, and all theaters have playwrights in residence that are also heavily endowed (with so much health insurance that its fun to get sick), and have everyone see each others work, and everyone will be happy and supported and singing in the streets. That'd be nice.



Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?



A:  Tennessee Williams - southern, poetic, dreamy, brilliant, broken and edgy. Bless his mess.



Paula Vogel - Her inventive and ambitious play structures, her wicked humor, her bravery in emotionally tough subjects



Tom Stoppard - his wacked out science/philosophical/historical/literary masterpieces are like Guinness - thick, rich, and filling (which I realize also sounds like a porn... oy...)



Q:  What kind of theater excites you?



A:  Big ideas, true stories, true meanings, complete fiction, beautiful theatre, muscly acting, cheap magic, expensive magic, characters risking for truth, funny funny stuff, characters that are supremely human, love stories, LOVE stories, active theatricality, activist theatre, issue plays about big issues, Holy Sh*t Theatre. You can't fake making your audience feel. That excites me.



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



A:  See a lot. Read a lot. Write a lot. I think its so silly when people who want to be in theatre DON'T go see theatre. You have to go. That's the whole point. Find your family in theatre - some crazy aesthetic relatives you never knew you had, and see their work, talk about it, reach out to the writer, actors, director. Also don't only do theatre. Certainly find and grow to love the people that tell you the truth about your work - that know most of your work (your tendencies, your quirks), that tell you to stop doing what you always do, that tell you "goddamn this is your best yet," that gently say "um... this is... not great...", that are there for you.  Shout out to Steve Yockey who is this incredible writer/dramaturg/friend/teacher/genius for me. And Lucy Alibar who is my cheerleader and co-dreamer. And Suehyla El-Attar who is my curious realist, connective thinker, and constant conversationalist.



But my actual motto is: Be Nice. Do great work. Find your family. Surprise yourself.

my 2010 in review

In 2010, I had a bunch of readings at places like Working Theater, Studio 42, Flux Theater Ensemble, The Off Theater, LAByrinth, The New Group, MCC Theater, Primary Stages, Southern Rep, Chicago Dramatists, and The William Inge Center For The Arts.



I took trips to Philly, San Francisco, London, Kansas, New Orleans, rural Pennsylvania, Upstate NY, Chicago, St. Louis, and Orange County, CA.



When I wasn't traveling, I spent the year living in CT about 3 hours outside NYC in a cottage on a lake.



I did a silent retreat with Erik Ehn, a non-silent retreat with Flux, taught playwriting in Kansas and helped re-side a house.



I wrote 4 plays, 1 screenplay and a web series and started working on a musical with a composer and a lyricist.



I had 4 productions of full lengths in 2010, one of which was professional. I know of 12 planned productions for 2011 so far. And the web series will be filmed next year too.



I did mini-interviews of 199 playwrights bringing the total up to 299.



So yeah, it looks like this year was a busy one for me.  Looks like I did more than I thought.



Happy New Year!