Adam Szymkowicz's Blog, page 128

I Interview Playwrights Part 180: Janine Nabers

Janine Nabers

Hometown:  Houston, Texas

Current Town:  New York, NY

Q:  Tell me about Welcome to Jesus.

A:  WELCOME TO JESUS was developed during the 2009/2010 Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab series. I started writing the play in October of last year and finished it this spring. My director was the incomparable Adam Greenfield (Most of you may know him as the literary manager at Playwrights Horizons). Working with him is pretty amazing. He's like a dramaturgical jedi.

The play is a dark and epic stor...

I Interview Playwrights Part 179: Cory Hinkle

Cory Hinkle

Hometown: Bartlesville, Oklahoma

Current Town: Minneapolis, MN

Q:  What are you working on now?


A:  I'm writing a solo piece for a Minneapolis actor, Terry Hempleman. Terry's the kind of actor that can say almost anything onstage and the audience will still like him, which works perfectly for the character I'm creating. He's a disgruntled American loosely inspired by the tea partiers and also a bit by Dostoyevsky's Man from Underground.


I've been fascinated by the tea party move...

I Interview Playwrights Part 178: Stefanie Zadravec

Stefanie Zadravec

Hometown: Chevy Chase, MD

Current Town:Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about The Electric Baby.

A:  The play follows a group of fractured souls who, after a young man is killed in a car accident, are brought together to care for a magical dying baby. It's about the stories we create for our lives in order to find meaning in tragedy. As each character comes in contact with the baby, they begin to recreate themselves. I use traditional African and Romanian folklore, as well as my own in...

I Interview Playwrights Part 177: Michael Mitnick

Michael Mitnick

Hometown: Pittsburgh

Current Town: Brooklyn

Q:  You have a play coming up with Studio 42 in June. Can you tell me about that?

A:  The title is: "SPACEBAR: A BROADWAY PLAY BY KYLE SUGARMAN"

It's about a disgruntled 16-year-old boy named Kyle from Fort Collins who has written a 259-page play set 7,000 years in the future – SPACEBAR (which is not about the space key on the keyboard, but is, instead, about a bar in outer space). He knows in his heart that it is the best play ever wri...

I Interview Playwrights Part 176: Jordan Seavey

Jordan Seavey
Hometown: Brooklyn, NY

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about the play you're doing a reading of at Rattlestick.

A:  My play THE TRUTH WILL OUT is having a reading this Sunday (tomorrow, as of this writing) at Rattlestick. It's a "100% non-fiction anti-fantasia" about a closeted celebrity cable news journalist and an out 15 year old who's the victim of a hate crime (inspired by the murder of Lawrence King in 2008), and how their stories intersect. I think it's sort of gotten...

175 Playwrights

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 B...

I Interview Playwrights Part 175: Andrew Rosendorf

Andrew Rosendorf

Hometown: McLean, VA.

Current Town: West Palm Beach, FL.

Q:  Word on the street is you have a play at Florida Stage in the fall. Tell me about that.

A:  That street is all about getting the word out. I have to be careful what I tell it.

Last May, Florida Stage commissioned me to examine the water shortage in South Florida. I'm not from Florida so I knew very little about its history. Essentially, I had to go from being an ignorant American to someone who understands the complex...

I Interview Playwrights Part 174: Don Nigro

Don Nigro

Q: Hometown, Current Town:

A: I was born in Canton, Ohio (I think where the hospital used to be there's a theatre now) and now live by the woods just outside Malvern, a small town in east Ohio where my father was born. His parents were Italian immigrants. My mother's family were pioneer folk and I think at least one Delaware or Wyandot lady is also in there somewhere. I hope so, anyway.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I've found it's bad luck for me to talk about what I'm writ...

I Interview Playwrights Part 173: Barton Bishop

Barton Bishop

Hometown: Tampa, FL.

Current Town: Astoria, Queens, NY.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I've got a new play going up in the fall here in NYC, via the good and wonderful people at the New York Theatre Experiment. It's called Up Up Down Down. The title's a video game thing, a reference to the Konami cheat code from the original Nintendo days, but it's also a reference to bipolar disorder (well, lookit that, that there works on TWO levels!). It's about geeks and terrorism and vid...

I Interview Playwrights Part 172: Peter Parnell

Peter Parnell

Hometown: Douglaston, Queens, NY

Current Town:  Manhattan

Q:  What are you working on now?


A:  I've been working on two stage musical projects. One is a new book for a musical from the 1960s called "On A Clear Day You Can See Forever", originally written by Alan Jay Lerner, with music and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane. It's a project the director Michael Mayer approached me about doing. The other is a new musical, for which I'm writing the book, with music and lyrics...