Adam Szymkowicz's Blog, page 121
August 23, 2010
I Interview Playwrights Part 243: Johnny Klein
Johnny Klein
Hometown: Roseville, CA
Current Town: Los Angeles
Q: Tell me about your upcoming show in NYC.
A: It's called Auto Graphic Novel and it's part of the Dream Up Festival at Theater for the New City. One friend described it as a William S. Burroughs pop-up book for kids. It's about the visions you get from a child's eye, the soft space behind your skin which is spirit and death and being interested in sex and the girl you like and your best friend and not being able to put it in a...
August 22, 2010
I Interview Playwrights Part 242: Leslie Bramm
Leslie Bramm
Hometown: Mostly San Francisco.
Current Town: Washington Heights, New York City.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: A children's play for adults. "Molly Jones Steals Home". I've been reading a lot of Joseph Campbell lately and wanted to write a hero's journey. I do so in the context of this 9 year old girl, who's terminally sick, and trying to, as the Irish say, "have a good death". She must escape the clutches of the hospital bureaucracy, and her zealous parents and doctors, all ...
August 21, 2010
I Interview Playwrights Part 241: Jennifer Maisel
Jennifer Maisel
Hometown: East Rockaway, N.Y.
Current Town: Los Angeles
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I'm tinkering with OUT OF ORBIT – the play I workshopped at The Sundance Theatre Lab at Mass MoCA this year. It's about a woman who is a scientist at JPL (Jet Propulsion Lab), working on the Mars Rover Expedition. When the rovers first landed on Mars the scientists and engineers lived on Mars Time (a martian day or sol is about 39 minutes longer than an earth day) and I became obsessed ...
August 20, 2010
I Interview Playwrights Part 240: Jon Steinhagen
Jon Steinhagen
Hometown: Chicago
Current Town: Chicago
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I'm spinning a bunch of different plates at present. Currently, my play THE ALTOONA DADA SOCIETY PRESENTS THE VELVET GENTLEMAN is playing at the New York Fringe, produced by the fabulous people at Playlab NYC - performances continue through August 26th. Here in Chicago, I'm deep into rewrites for ACES, a "Las Vegas comedy" that will open in May at Signal Ensemble Theatre. Next week, Raven Theatre is...
August 19, 2010
I Interview Playwrights Part 239: Leslye Headland
Leslye Headland
Current Town - Los Angeles, CA
Q: Tell me about your play that is at Second Stage and just got extended
A; Bachelorette is a play about the in-between space. The place you are when you're reconciling who you thought you were gonna be when you grew up with who you've become. The place when partying starts to look a lot like addiction. The moment you used to pass off as a bad night of drinking, sex and mistakes has suddenly extended into a bad life of drinking, sex and mistake...
August 9, 2010
You will have to wait a week or so
for the next interview. I am going out of town on a silent and unplugged writing retreat so there will be blog silence. 
I Interview Playwrights Part 238: Kate Tarker
Kate Tarker
Hometown:
I am bits and pieces of lots of places – but I lived in a small town in Germany for what really felt like forever. No offense, small town in Germany.
Current Town:
Brooklyntown. Crown Heights edition.
Q: Tell me about The Green.
A: In brief:
Leeann has lucked into her dream job: She's managing a chimpanzee sanctuary in the wilds of Africa. Surrounded by poachers, antagonistic adolescent chimps and an eccentric boss, she finds it difficult to balance caring for people an...
August 8, 2010
I Interview Playwrights Part 237: David Holstein
David Holstein
Hometown: New York
Current Town: Los Angeles
Q; Tell me about your show in Chicago.
A: About a year and half ago Chicago Shakespeare commissioned my good friend (and brilliant composer) Alan Schmuckler and I to write a musical for their summer family series. We decided to take on a readaptation of The Emperor's New Clothes. In the original fable, there's this kid at the end who's the only one who sees the Emperor for who he is (really naked). So we thought it would be sort of fun...
August 7, 2010
I Interview Playwrights Part 236: Trav S.D.
Photo by Joe Silva
Trav S.D.
Hometown: Wakefield, Rhode Island
Current Town: Brooklyn, NY
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am collaborating on an opera with an extremely talented young composer named David Mallamud. It's a cross between Gilbert & Sullivan and Universal horror pictures I call The Curse of the Rat-man.
Q: Tell me about "No Applause--Just Throw Money"
A: It's a very personal history of vaudeville and its legacies within show business and American culture in general. It came ou...
I Interview Playwrights Part 235: Chad Beckim
Chad Beckim
Hometown: Monmouth, Maine
Current Town: Brooklyn
Q: Tell me about Cookie.
A: "Cookie" examines a down-on-his-luck writer (fiction, not playwright!) who enters into a green-card-marriage-for-money via the assistance of his only friend. The piece explores racial and sexual stereotypes, hopefully getting some laughs while challenging audience members to examine their own misconceptions about identity, race and culture.
I wrote half of this play in February over the course of two ...
