Adam Szymkowicz's Blog, page 28

August 27, 2017

Jack And Jill Plays - Part 11 - What Were You Gonna Say?






About Jack and Jill Plays:



This is a new thing I'm doing.  Posting a short play every day as long as I can.  This does not mean that I wrote this play today but I might have.  (My life is not always my own what with work and a 4 year old running around so maybe I wrote it today or maybe it was stockpiled in preparation for the days I can't get in writing.)  My goal is to do at least 100 of these or maybe more but probably 45 or 50 is the length of a full length play so even that would be good.  100 would be better.  300?  amazing.  500?  Does anyone want 500 of these plays?  Anyway, the goal is consecutive days.


The normal things about plays apply-- don't produce or reproduce this play without my permission.  I wrote it so I own it.  Etc.










What Were You Gonna Say?

by Adam Szymkowicz



(JACK and JILL.  Maybe they're washing dishes.)



JILL

Do you ever feel like just when you start to get something it changes?



JACK

Like what?



JILL

Or something is just starting to get good and then it's over.





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Published on August 27, 2017 08:00

August 26, 2017

I Interview Playwrights Part 973: Deb Margolin





Deb Margolin

Hometown: Mamaroneck, New York

Current Town: Montvale, New Jersey, don't tell anyone


Q:  What are you working on now?




A:  I'm working with a jazz band; this cool composer Jawanza Kobie got a residency in Phila for his project of bringing kids into the world of jazz the way Peter and the Wolf by Prokofiev does with classical music. So I wrote the story, the piece is called The Bird Stories, and I perform it with this jazz band. I'm also whittling away at a piece for a chamber musical that I was invited to write by a man I'd met only once before the invitation.

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 parents weren't big on taking us to cultural events. In fact, they didn't. Except for once: we were taken, with some friends of my parents and their kids, to see Oklahoma! on Broadway. I was 8 years old. We sat in the very last row of a 1,200 seat theater; the characters onstage, carrying on with their business, looked the way cars look when a plane clears the last cloud cover as it's coming in for landing. These people were singing OK! lahoma where the Bears go Leaping from the Trees! or whatever it is, and don't even TRY to tell me the lyrics, and I realized with stunning clarity in my little 8 year old mind how ridiculous these songs were, and yet how magnificent the opportunity to sing them was! The stage! Such a place! Such a space! And I thought to myself: someday I'll go stand on one of those and I'll say lovely things! Not surrey with the fringe on top! What a sacred space I realized I was beholding! I made a vow to myself then and there. I don't like that musical; please forgive me.

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


A:  That more people, and in particular, women, were given the right to FAIL, and then offered the same stage a year later. We need the right to fail. Not just famous playwrights: ALL playwrights. I would wish for the restoration of inexpensive small clubs and spaces that g/littered New York as I was coming of age as a playwright, actor, performance artist. You could try out anything. It was a glorious freedom!

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?


A:  Dario Fo and Franca Rame. Samuel Beckett, the mother of performance art, and Caryl Churchill, the father of it. Spiderwoman Theater. My colleagues in Split Britches Theater Company. Jim Turner, who is so funny his company is painful.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you? 




A:  I believe that good comedy is all-encompassing. All plays are about love; all plays are about death. Comedy hits all those spots. I love a deep investigation of character. I think we go to the theater to stare at people. I like to look deeply into the architecture of someone's character. When a play/playwright gives me that, they have done an honor to me.

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


A: Figure out, search for within yourself, those things that you can't die without having talked about. Work from your deepest desire for speech; when speaking from that source, you are always original and resonant. If theater is about the revelation of humanity, we all have enough, as we are human. Pay attention to your obsessions; they are clues to parts of you you may not have realized are artistically viable and revelatory of your humanity. Do automatic writing. Write without stopping. This shakes the tree, and the oddest, highest fruits will fall down. Be careful who you talk to about your work. People can't wait to tell you not just what's wrong with your play, but what's wrong with your hair, your telephone manner, your shirt, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your non-binary friend, your jokes, your style of grieving. Write from a place of desire. No critic should be in the room when you write. Never put the critic before the playwright.

Q:  When not writing on a computer, what's your go-to paper and writing utensil? When on computer, what's your font?

A:  I have various journals I write in, and a small notebook I carry with me at all times, in case I think of something, overhear something, or something makes me laugh. Camus said that at any street corner, the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face! On computer, I'm usually in Times Roman out of laziness; having been in the type business to support my theater habit for years in my 20's and 30's, I know and love many typefaces, Perpetua, Garamond, Futura, Gill Sans.


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Published on August 26, 2017 10:00

Jack And Jill Plays - Part 10 - Cupcakes



About Jack and Jill Plays:



This is a new thing I'm doing.  Posting a short play every day as long as I can.  This does not mean that I wrote this play today but I might have.  (My life is not always my own what with work and a 4 year old running around so maybe I wrote it today or maybe it was stockpiled in preparation for the days I can't get in writing.)  My goal is to do at least 100 of these or maybe more but probably 45 or 50 is the length of a full length play so even that would be good.  100 would be better.  300?  amazing.  500?  Does anyone want 500 of these plays?  Anyway, the goal is consecutive days.


The normal things about plays apply-- don't produce or reproduce this play without my permission.  I wrote it so I own it.  Etc.










Cupcakes

by Adam Szymkowicz



(JACK and JILL are eating cupcakes.  They are almost done.)



JACK

How's yours?



JILL

Good.  Yours?



JACK

Good.  What were we upset about?



JILL

I forget.



JACK

Don't think of it.  We'll get upset again.



JILL

I wish my job was just eating cupcakes all day.



JACK

How is that a job?



JILL

I know.  I'm saying I wish it was a job.



JACK

Yeah.  Why can't jobs be things that aren't jobs.



JILL

Yeah.



JACK

I think I need a day job again.



JILL

I know.



JACK

I'll push paper somewhere.  Like a job that isn't busy all day.  Like that kind of job.  Where do you get that?



JILL

I don't know.



JACK

Or maybe I could wait tables like you.



JILL

You can't do that.



JACK

Yeah.  I know.  I would be bad at that.



JILL

Yeah.



JACK

Maybe I'll become a lawyer.



JILL

You can't be a lawyer.



JACK

I know.  We should get a couple more cupcakes.



(They sigh.  Lick their fingers.)



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Published on August 26, 2017 08:00

August 25, 2017

I Interview Playwrights Part 972: Akin Salawu








Akin Salawu

Hometown: Somerset, NJ

Current Town: Bedstuy

Q:  What are you working on now? 



A:  Surreal & absurdist play about a society that murders people for breaking morality laws on the day a revolution begins. It is an all female cast and each woman is of a different ethnicity. There are so many insanely underutilized actresses that I want to create a world that asks these actresses to tackle the kinds of roles that are generally written for dudes.

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




A:  Years ago, I got an email from my preschool teacher who fondly recalls my obsession with getting the other kids to put on the Wiz after I saw it on Broadway. It seems I failed miserably and threw plenty of discouraged temper tantrums. I ran a student theater troupe at Stanford but we never did the Wiz. And I threw no tantrums. If anyone says I did, I'm fairly confident there's no proof.

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




A:  I would make it way cheaper to mount shows and cheaper to attend Theater so the experience of seeing a show could be accessible to the masses. In this Utopian society, I could cry out "lets make something new!" And all the kids who never get called off the bench dive in and after a few months of rehearsal, we open to massive crowds because theater is as accessible as McDonalds...in this Utopian society.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes? 




A:  Honestly they're mostly teachers who were and are deeply invested in sharing their infectious love for the theater: My High School drama teacher, Barbara Herzberg, Stanford's Patricia Ryan & Judith Dolan, USC's Nina Foch, and Darrell Larson & Oscar Machado from my time at Columbia.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you? 




A:  Theater that cracks my mind open and makes my jaw drop with perspectives and ideas that changed the way I saw something - anything. I could count on 2 hands the times that has happened. The most recent was Small Mouth Sounds at Ars Nova.

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




A:  Nobody knows anything, so beware of advice. Mine whatever is inside you and don't worry about commercial viability or pleasing anyone but yourself - that's ultimately what people will be drawn to.

Q:  When not writing on a computer, what's your go-to paper and writing utensil? 




A:  I used to go for simple leather journals & black ball point pens, but lately I'm digging the Pokemon journals. 




Q:  When on computer, what's your font? 




A:  



















Garamond or Caviar Dreams.





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Published on August 25, 2017 10:00

Jack And Jill Plays - Part 9 - Sprite



About Jack and Jill Plays:



This is a new thing I'm doing.  Posting a short play every day as long as I can.  This does not mean that I wrote this play today but I might have.  (My life is not always my own what with work and a 4 year old running around so maybe I wrote it today or maybe it was stockpiled in preparation for the days I can't get in writing.)  My goal is to do at least 100 of these or maybe more but probably 45 or 50 is the length of a full length play so even that would be good.  100 would be better.  300?  amazing.  500?  Does anyone want 500 of these plays?  Anyway, the goal is consecutive days.


The normal things about plays apply-- don't produce or reproduce this play without my permission.  I wrote it so I own it.  Etc.












Sprite

by Adam Szymkowicz



JILL

Hi Jack.



JACK

Hi Jill.



JILL

Seems like we're always running into each other.



JACK

Yup.



JILL

Even after the divorce.



JACK

I think I see you more now.



JILL

Could be.



JACK

I'm like, wait, is that Jill?  Why did I leave my apartment?



JILL

It's not so bad...



JACK

I didn't mean--



JILL

To see me.



JACK

Oh, I know.  There's just, you know.



JILL

Baggage.



JACK

History.



JILL

Okay.



JACK

So, uh . . . how's everything?



JILL

You know, for the first few months it's been quiet, uneventful.  The days were gray and passed without me noticing.  And then a couple days ago, something opened for me.  A buzzing stopped I hadn't noticed until it was over.  I went outside and the sun was out.  I took a book and I could really see the words on the page and I could look up and be present, feel my feet on the ground.  I'm not saying every day will be better now but I think I got past something that was itching under my skin.  You know what I'm saying?



JACK

You miss me.



JILL

I'm saying life after you can be good.



JACK

Yeah.  Yeah.  For me too.  Yeah.



JILL

Well, good to see you.



JACK

I miss you.  I can't sleep.  Nothing tastes good.  Everything hurts.



JILL

Uh.



JACK

Can we get our divorce annulled?



JILL

I don't think that's a thing.



JACK

Remarried, then.



JILL

I don't think that's a good idea.



JACK

Yeah.  Okay.  Yeah.



JILL

We could have dinner though.  Or like a soft drink.



JACK

Okay.  Yeah.  Okay.  I'll buy some Sprite.



JILL

I don't drink that any more.



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Published on August 25, 2017 08:00

August 24, 2017

Jack and Jill Plays - Part 8 - Drive It Home




About Jack and Jill Plays:


I'm going to do something new.  Post a short play every day as long as I can.  This does not mean that I wrote this play today but I might have.  (My life is not always my own what with work and a 4 year old running around so maybe I wrote it today or maybe it was stockpiled in preparation for the days I can't get in writing.)  My goal is to do at least 100 of these or maybe more but probably 45 or 50 is the length of a full length play so even that would be good.  100 would be better.  300?  amazing.  500?  Does anyone want 500 of these plays?  Anyway, the goal is consecutive days.


The normal things about plays apply-- don't produce or reproduce this play without my permission.  I wrote it so I own it.  Etc.







Drive It Home

by Adam Szymkowicz



(JILL at the doctor's office. She is putting her clothes back on.  DOCTOR writes something.)



JILL

But what do I tell people?



DOCTOR

That's up to you.



JILL

Isn't there like a pamphlet or some advice for something like this?



DOCTOR

Not really.



JILL

WELL WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO!



DOCTOR

Take a breath.  You're not dying.  Not yet.  It's just different.  New circumstances to live with and that can be hard and there will be things to think about and treatments to try.  In the meantime just know it's normal.  Our bodies are imperfect.  They let us down.  Things go wrong.  But we have survived a long time as a species.  And we have science.  We will throw everything at it and see what sticks.  Okay?



JILL

Okay, but.  Yeah.  Okay.  Ugh.  I just wanted to be in perfect health for the rest of my life and never worry about anything.  Why can't we have robot bodies?



DOCTOR

We just can't.



JILL

Someday?



DOCTOR

I'd rather not speculate.  I think being human is beautiful and I'd miss it.



JILL

Yeah!  Okay!  I would too!  You're so literal.



DOCTOR

I know.



JILL

Just let me be in denial for a while.



DOCTOR

Okay.  I'll call you in a few days.



JILL

I have to figure out how to live this new way.



DOCTOR

What way?



JILL

Knowing I'll die someday.  I mean I guess I always knew really, but, nothing like this sort of news to really drive it home.



DOCTOR

I'm sorry.



JILL

Not your fault.  Hey, you have stickers or something for kids?  I want a sticker or a lollipop.



DOCTOR

Cardboard chest on your way out.



JILL

Thanks.  You want something?



DOCTOR

Bring me back a sticker?



JILL

Yeah.



(Exit JILL.)





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Published on August 24, 2017 08:00

I Interview Playwrights Part 971: Paula Vogel











Paula Vogel



Hometown: Washington DC.



Current town: Wellfleet, MA



Q: What are you working on now?



A: I am working on my mother play. The playwriting book. And a musical.



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 mom told me early on she named me Paula Anne Vogel so my initials would stand for Piss And Vinegar.



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



A: I would make theatre free. Accessible in every classroom, community center, Y, senior center, reformatory and prison. And oh yeah, affordable for working class folks to see on Broadway.



Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?



A: Theatrical heroines: Irene Fornes, Caryl Churchill, Adrienne Kennedy and a lot of saints, too many to mention.



Q: What kind of theater excites you?



A: Theatre that rips apart my assumptions. Viscerally, emotionally and intellectually tough. And makes me laugh against my will. And haunts me for years.



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



A: This is a thing worth doing. Worth spending your lives for. You will have to take other jobs, and grit your teeth at our cultural complacency, but you are offering gifts that we need.



Q: When not writing on a computer, what's your go-to paper and writing utensil? When on computer, what's your font?



A: My best writing implement is a car and a long country road. I write in my head listening to the soundtrack I've made. I change my font and format on every play, but I am partial to Arial.





Q: Plugs, please.



A: Indecent, PBS, Nov. 17. New production of Indecent, Guthrie, Minneapolis, Feb 17-March 24.












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Published on August 24, 2017 07:00

August 23, 2017

I Interview Playwrights Part 970: Arthur M. Jolly










Arthur M. Jolly

Hometown:  I was born in Lewes, in the United Kingdom (go straight south from London until you hit the coast - can't miss it!) - but New York City is where I really grew up.

Current Town: Houston, Texas

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I always have a half dozen half-finished plays and screenplays, and I'll hammer away sporadically at one or the other until one of them suddenly reveals its intent, whereupon I write furiously on that one until it's finished... but my "official" current project is a new play The Lady Demands Satisfaction - a light hearted farce about a young woman whose estate will be forfeited to anyone who defeats her in a duel. There's a lot of ridiculous sword fights, a serving-girl who poses as a German Fencing master by donning a mustache, the actual Fencing Master who speaks no English and is assumed to be a servant... all the usual trappings. It won the 2017-2018 Joining Sword and Pen Competition, and opens in July of 2018 in Chicago. I've had a table read, and have the draft for an upcoming public staged reading just about ready. It's going through a "development process" - the kind of thing I usually eye dubiously - but this theatre company (Babes With Blades) I trust implicitly and love working with.

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 three years old, I read a book from the shelf in my parent's library - my first "grown-up" book. It had no pictures, so I knew it was for grown-ups. I selected it at random (well, at random from the books on the lowest three shelves, which were the only ones within reach). I remember it - "The Bafut Beagles" by Gerald Durrell, about his experiences catching wildlife in Camaroon... but here's the thing - I had no idea what that book was actually about until I read it again many years later. I sat there, on the library rug, poring over every sentence, every page, reading each word doggedly until I had finished the entire book - but I couldn't tell you what a single bit of it meant. I knew the words, I could technically read, but I was too young to comprehend any of it. I did it as an act of will, as proof that I was now able to read properly.

Today, a few decades later, I sometimes worry that I'm doing the same thing with my writing. I write what occurs to me to write, I string words together and people seem to like my plays, and produce them and publish them, and I get some very lovely compliments from the more discerning critics (anything negative I chalk up to the critic's incompetence, but we all have our defense mechanisms)... but do I actually have any earthly idea what I'm doing at all? What any of it means or is supposed to mean? I doubt it, sometimes.

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

A:  Public funding. There are countries where the government invests serious money into the arts, knowing that every dollar spent on a theatre brings in four to six to the surrounding businesses. Artists are cheap, we'll pour our hearts and soul into creating entertainment for a crust of bread and the promise of soup... and why city governments don't divvy up a few extra crusts for the return they get escapes me. It also keeps us dangerous free-thinkers off the streets and properly ensconced in windowless green rooms and insulated stages, which seems like a win-win for everyone involved.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  So many, but rather than pick one of the playwrights and creators I admire from afar, I want to choose someone that had a much more direct and profound influence, and someone that probably fewer have heard of: Worth Howe - an incredibly talented actor and one of those keep-the-whole-theatre-going AD/manager types. He ran a little community theatre on Roosevelt Island when I was a teenager. I built props and created special effects, ran the light board and sound board - did just about every backstage job throughout my high school years. I think most of us have worked at one of those theatres - everything on a shoestring, whatever works, whatever is needed... for a fifteen year old, it was the perfect amount of freedom and responsibility: "We need this. If you think you can do it, go do it, and make something that you're proud of on opening night." Worth needed every hand he could get to keep the place going, so I was immediately given as much to do as I was willing to take on after school. That was where I started... but what made this mean something was that the shows were good. Cheap, sure - rough around the edges - but there was real theatrical quality as well; and ultimately that inspires.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  There isn't one particular kind of theatre, it's more particular moments - that moment when you are elevated, transported; when the hair on the back of your neck rises. I've felt that watching broad, obvious crowd pleasers (Elpheba flying in Wicked, and the staging of the pond drying up in the opening of the second act of The Lion King on Broadway), and intense, actor tour-de-forces (Vanessa Redgrave in The Year of Magical Thinking, or Patrick Stewart as Prospero declaiming to the heavens during an actual, real live pouring-rain thunderstorm at Shakespeare in the Park that was some pretty amazing production value)... but I've also felt that in tiny black box theatres where the audience and the cast were about evenly numbered.

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

A:  Obviously, buy a complete set of my plays. You don't even need to read them unless you want to, but buy them. On Amazon. Full price, none of this used discount stuff.

Okay, now you've done that, there's probably a few other, better playwrights you should read too... if you can, see what's playing in your area, and read that play, then see it the next day. Start piecing together how the events on stage are set down on paper. How much is spelled out, how much is left for the actors to tease out as they work through their role; what stage directions are explicit, and what moments are discovered or added by the other collaborators in this art form. Read one, see it on stage, then read it again. If you're going to see a play of mine, shoot me an email and I'll send you the script.

Q:  When not writing on a computer, what's your go-to paper and writing utensil? When on computer, what's your font?

A:  I have a leather-bound notebook I keep in my bag for ideas, remembered dreams, fragments of overheard conversations (inveterate eavesdropper), and notes from readings - held shut with a leather thong and a reindeer-horn bead I found in Alaska at a writer's conference. The paper is creamy, smooth, easy to write on. The paper, to me, is critical - if my pen drags and catches, that's one more tiny impediment to keeping up with the flow of words, and in the heat of things, I want nothing to get in the way. I use a Zebra F-309 with blue ink, and buy them by the dozen online as they seem to vanish like soap bubbles.

On the computer, I use Final Draft Courier for screenplays, and Times New Roman for plays - traditional; but, like the paper, I want no micro-impediments to anyone reading my work either. An unusual font is a tiny, tiny distraction when I want to draw focus on the words themselves.

Q:  Plugs, please:


A:  I post all my upcoming productions on my website www.arthurjolly.com each month - and have a whole bunch of monologues that can be downloaded free there, and breakdowns of all of my plays. If you're feeling a little blue, there's also a random compliment generator on the homepage to welcomes you which sometimes comes up with unusual combinations. Check it out!





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Published on August 23, 2017 09:22

Jack and Jill Plays - Part 7 - Time




About Jack and Jill Plays:


I'm going to do something new.  Post a short play every day as long as I can.  This does not mean that I wrote this play today but I might have.  (My life is not always my own what with work and a 4 year old running around so maybe I wrote it today or maybe it was stockpiled in preparation for the days I can't get in writing.)  My goal is to do at least 100 of these or maybe more but probably 45 or 50 is the length of a full length play so even that would be good.  100 would be better.  300?  amazing.  500?  Does anyone want 500 of these plays?  Anyway, the goal is consecutive days.


The normal things about plays apply-- don't produce or reproduce this play without my permission.  I wrote it so I own it.  Etc.









Time

by Adam Szymkowicz



(JILL is gardening.  JACK is chopping wood.)



JILL

I might buy a new watch.



JACK

Yeah?



JILL

Yeah.



JACK

Do you wear a watch?



JILL

I would if I liked it.



JACK

Oh.  Maybe I'll buy a top hat.



JILL

No.



JACK

And a vest.



JILL

Do you wish we were nomads?



JACK

Like living in a van?



JILL

Or something.



JACK

Backpacking across Europe?



JILL

Maybe.



JACK

No.  I don't want to go anywhere or do anything.



JILL

You wish you had more lovers?



JACK

Nah.



JILL

But you are unhappy.



JACK

Well, yeah, I am deeply unhappy.  Aren't you?



JILL

Sometimes I am.



JACK

But that doesn't mean I want to change anything.



JILL

Yeah.



JACK

Even if I do get a hat.



JILL

You'll never wear it.



JACK

I know.



JILL

It's not who you are.



JACK

Well, you're not someone who wears a watch.



JILL

I know.  What time is it?



JACK

I don't know.



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Published on August 23, 2017 08:00

August 22, 2017

I Interview Playwrights Part 969: Samantha Charlip















Samantha Charlip



Hometown: Ft. Lauderdale, Florida



Current Town: Brooklyn, New York



Q:  What are you working on now?





A:  A midwestern ghost story that's both a meditation on relationships and a sort of small town mystery. It's a play that deals with the ghosts of our old loves. The ghosts of our old selves. The ghosts of our choices and the people we once were. It's really warm and fuzzy.



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 a young kid, my mom told me a story about a man she met sitting on a bench. He was dressed in a business suit and he sat down next to her. They got to talking and slowly she began to realize he wasn't making much sense. That's when she looked down and realized he wasn't wearing any shoes. He was homeless.



This isn't some kind of parable with a lesson at the end, but it does have a certain sense of the absurd that I appreciate. And it represents something my mom also taught me about perception and deception: Someone doesn't always reveal their true selves until you sit with them a while, look a little closer. It makes me wonder if all of us aren't just sitting next to each other on benches, trying to impress with our suits, but wearing no shoes.



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




A:  I've never been a big fan of "issue theater." Straight-forward plays about popular news stories or public figures. It makes me feel like I'm watching a book report rather than seeing a mirror held up to life. I know there are good plays of this type out there, but these days it feels like all you need to do to get a production is slap on a recognizable name or subject matter.



Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes? 




A:  Samuel D. Hunter, Lisa D'Amour, Amy Herzog, Anne Washburn, Annie Baker. I love small character-driven plays where the movements are emotional and internal. I think the best plays are those where not a lot happens but inevitably everything changes.



Q:  What kind of theater excites you? 




A:  I'm a pretty excitable person by nature, but the theater that really gets me thinking are these ducks on the water, lots going on under the surface, subtly absurdist plays with unexpected locations and lots of silence. There's so much we say by saying so little.



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




A:  Be observant. Spend a lot of time listening to the way people speak or don't speak. People lie a lot when they talk. They embellish. They play up or down their strengths. They trail off. You could learn so much about a person just by writing down exactly what they say, word for word. Every ellipses. Every hard stop.



Q:  When not writing on a computer, what's your go-to paper and writing

utensil?  When on computer, what's your font? 




A:  Crooked scrawled notes on napkins with a pen from my purse.



Q:  Plugs, please: 

A: Samantha Charlip is award-winning New York based playwright and Writer/Producer for television networks including A&E, Turner and Viacom. She is a two-time O’Neill Finalist and has also been recognized as part of the Source Festival, Susan Glaspell Award, Leah Ryan Fund for Emerging Women Writers, Ingram New Works Lab, Athe Award for Excellence in Playwriting, Shakespeare’s Sister Fellowship, Princess Grace Fellowship, nuVoices Play Festival, Play Penn and The Kennedy Center, among others. Her play, Futurama, made the 2015 Kilroy’s List of best plays by female playwrights.

Samantha’s plays have been read and produced as part of The NewWorks@TheWorks Festival, Glass Eye’s Fresh Produce’d Series, Obligatory Theatre’s New Works Series, Strange Sun Theatre’s Greenhouse Project, AboutFace’s NEWVember New Plays Festival, Centenary Stage Company's Women Playwrights Series and the Great Gay Play Contest.

Samantha is also a television writer whose pilots were selected as second-rounders in the Sundance Episodic Series Lab and the Austin Film Festival and twice as semi-finalists in Storyboard TV’s pilot competition. She is a graduate of NYU's Tisch Dramatic Writing MFA program where she was awarded the Full Tuition Departmental Fellowship.

https://newplayexchange.org/users/2621/samantha-charlip


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Published on August 22, 2017 10:00