Adam Szymkowicz's Blog, page 39

I Interview Playwrights Part 893: Beth Hyland

Beth Hyland

Hometown:  Rochester, NY

Current Town:  Chicago, IL

Q:  Tell me about For Annie.

A:  For Annie is about female friendship, survivor's guilt, small colleges, and how we try to craft the stories we tell about the people we love. But it's really fun, too, and there's a ton of pop music! It came out of a feeling that even the most mundane aspects of a life can be profound, particularly in hindsight, and that the mundane parts of women's lives are just as worthy of examination as men's.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm working on a play based loosely around the Lululemon Murder, and an adaptation of Three Sisters set in a Chicago theater company. What I'm working hardest on right now is how to write plays that will be both necessary and useful in the next four years and beyond.

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

A:  In fifth grade I got really into figuring out how to play songs I liked on the bassoon, which I was learning to play essentially because I was tall. I was an obsessive Beatles fan, so I taught my best friend and fellow bassoonist how to play Twist and Shout. We proudly played it for our music teacher, who made us play it for everyone in the main office. I really didn't understand why everyone was doubled over with laughter, but I did love the attention. My best friend from childhood is now a professional bassoonist, though!

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

A:  Ticket prices. And I'd put a 10-year moratorium on any play that could accurately be titled "Screaming In The Living Room." And I would change the past several hundred years of history so that theatre could be a popular form of entertainment again instead of a marker of class status.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Annie Baker, Anne Washburn, Jeanine Tesori, Anton Chekov, Stephen Sondheim, Kneehigh, and my professors at Kenyon College and at the National Theatre Institute.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  In Chicago, I'm so excited and inspired by my friends and peers who are making cool, weird, exciting, deeply felt work all over the city. I also particularly love The Hypocrites, The Neo-Futurists, Theatre Oobleck, Jackalope, and Steep.

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

A:  Make someone schedule a reading and invite people to read your play before you've finished it (so that you actually finish it). Be gentle with yourself. Everyone works and writes differently and at a different pace. Channel feelings of jealousy or inadequacy into productivity.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  For Annie is going to be produced by The Hearth; it runs December 9th-January 15th; get tickets here: https://www.artful.ly/store/events/10629
My website is bethhyland.com.



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I Interview Playwrights Part 892: Stephen Gregg

Stephen Gregg



Hometown:  Albuquerque, New Mexico



Current Town:  Venice, California



Q:  What are you working on now?



A:  It's a play called Trap. Like most of the plays I write, it's designed to be performed by high school students. Trap is fake documentary theatre, and it's horror. I'm trying to write the theatre equivalent of The Blair Witch Project.



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 had essentially perfect parents who encouraged my writing from the earliest age I can remember. When I was twelve, I wrote something that they found amusing, and they actually took me to the main branch of the Albuquerque library so that we could research the best places to submit it.



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



A:  It's so earnest. So much of theatre is lacking any sense of fun or, as it were, play.



Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?



A:  A month after his death it's hard not to think about Edward Albee. He took the forms that other people were working with and stretched them and he did so in the face of vicious criticism that was often explicitly aimed at his being gay.



Q:  What kind of theater excites you?



A:  I love immersive theatre. As long as we're going to use live actors, why not let the audience actually walk into the story?



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



A:  I'd say write two-character plays. They're good starters because they teach you basic dramatic structure. A character wants something, increasingly big obstacles get in their way.



Q:  Plugs, please:



A:  Hmm. I've got three.



My new play, Crush, was on the cover of Dramatics magazine in May and on the main stage of the International Thespian Festival in June. It's just now available from Dramatic Publishing.



I tweet—exclusively about playwriting— @playwrigntnow. I try to use twitter to teach myself to write plays. Feel free to listen in or join in.

And, I'm part of LabTwenty6, a writing group that I love. It's playwrights, screenwriters, TV and fiction writers. It's surprising how often a perspective from another discipline is helpful to your own. If you're in Los Angeles, come check us out!



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I Interview Playwrights Part 891: Kev Berry

Kev Berry


Hometown:  Rockville Centre, New York

Current Town: I sleep in Rockville Centre, but do everything else in New York, New York.

Q:  Tell me about Nora Goes 2 Space, Motherfuck*r!:


A:  Nora Goes 2 Space, Motherfuck*r! is a 1950s-set solo drag adaptation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House that uses text from The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir and The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan to provide a contemporary queer critique of the housewife and her role in the home yesterday and tomorrow. We’re also using a lot of late 20th Century lady rock music, and these creepy housewife etiquette videos from the ‘50s to enhance the world of the play.

It’s a badass little play that I’ve been working on for almost a year. I’m on staff at 3-Legged Dog Media + Theater Group//3LD Art + Technology Center, and had the chance to workshop the play there with my director Patrice Miller, in June and July as we prepared for a two-night presentation of the piece at The Tank, as a part of their PrideFest this past July. Then, I was offered the opportunity to present the play in a bare-bones production for 2 weeks at 3LD. We’re going to do 13 performances for a VERY intimate house, including a midnight extravaganza performance.

I’ve never had the opportunity to present my work on this scale, so I’m teetering back and forth between crippling fear and overwhelming elation. I’ve also only recently come back in to performing my own work, so this rehearsal process has really been a crash course in learning how to be onstage again. It’s been really great, and I’m learning so much about the way I relate to an audience and about how the work itself relates to an audience.

Q:  What else are you working on now?


A:  Too much.

I just finished the first act of my next solo drag play, called Babytalk, the first act of which is a verbatim transcription of this notebook my mother kept when my sister and I were children. It tracks the funny and profound things we said as we discovered language and the world around us. The notebook also traces her breast cancer diagnosis, chemotherapy, and ultimately, decline towards death, and the funny and profound things my sister and I had to say about that. The second act of the play is going to “fill in” the rest of the notebook through an original song cycle I’m creating. The songs will deal with memory, grief, death, and the profound and funny things I’ve noticed about the world as I’ve grown up and become my own person. I’ll be performing the show in an elaborate gown made of VHS cassettes and a wig made of the tape from the insides of those cassettes.

Also working on Fabulous Creatures, a comprehensive theatricalized history of the gay rights movements that will eventually be 10.5 hours long; continuing to tweak my play (i heard) ANNA KARENINA (wanks w/ a toothbrush); writing a very fucked-up adaptation of the world of the Peanuts called You’re an Existentialist, Charlie Brecht! {thank you thank you robert wilson thank you thank you}; and developing my next cabaret called Kev Berry Presents Frances McDormand at the 2011 Tony Awards, which should be going up next spring.

I am always tired, and I don’t sleep enough, so I am working on ways to find more time to sleep.
I also walk everywhere in this goddamn city, so I am working on ways to stretch out my legs at night before bed.

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 raised pretty Catholic. Church every Sunday, Confirmation in seventh grade, altar boy, all of that. Then I went off to college and became liberal scum, and stopped going to church. Anyway, for my First Holy Communion in second grade, I asked a family member to buy me this little toy theatre from the Lillian Vernon catalog. It came with a wooden stage, a double-sided backdrop printed on glossy oaktag, and 20 figurines: three knights, a king, a queen, a jester, a prince and princess, a wizard, a witch, and all of the other denizens of the fairy tale world. Maybe a milkmaid? None of them had eyes. I started creating these little shows for them, written in soft-cover composition notebooks. I had full scripts, with light and sound cues, and little songs, and usually a big finale number. I’d stage them on this weird toy stage, and sometimes film them on this little handheld camera I had. The first one that comes to mind was called Rutabaga LIVE! and I’m not sure why LIVE was a part of the title because it’s not like there was something else it was based on. I think it was essentially the story of Phantom of the Opera if it were set on a cruise ship and also written by a child. These little plays I’d make in my bedroom, along with theater classes I was taking at our local rec center, are the foundation of my love for theatre, even if I’ve grown way bigger than the two.

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


A:  Money. I wish artists making theatre were paid more, I wish artists making theatre had to pay less, I wish the bigger theaters in the city were willing to take risks on playwrights and directors they’ve never heard of but who make damn good work, I wish playwrights weren’t required to have an MFA to get the right people’s attention, I wish tickets were cheaper, I wish tickets were free for playwrights if they show up right before curtain and there’s an open seat. I wish it were viable to make a living as an artist in New York. I think that’s kind of how a lot of people my age are feeling.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?


A:  Taylor Mac.
Everyone at The Tank.
Sean Graney and The Hypocrites. Felix Barrett, Maxine Doyle, and everyone at Punchdrunk. Lucas Hnath. Ann Liv Young.
Stephen Sondheim.
Tony Kushner. Michael Bennett. Stephen Karam.
Dave Malloy. Bob Fosse. Pasek and Paul.
Everyone at The Bushwick Starr. John Cameron Mitchell.
Everyone at Ars Nova. The Frantic Assembly.
Justin Vivian Bond. Nico Muhly. The Brooklyn Gypsies.
The cast of Shuffle Along. The entire cast of Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812.
Bart Sher. Sam Hunter. Rachel Chavkin. Ivo van Hove.

And my teachers at Skidmore College: Eunice Ferreira, Will Bond, Carolyn Anderson, Ari Osterweis.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?


A:  Theatre that’s unbelievably big.
Taylor Mac’s a 24-Decade History of Popular Music, the marathon, changed my life and completely altered the way I see theatre.
Sean Graney and the Hypocrites’ All Our Tragic, a 12-hour adaptation of all 32 Greek tragedies into a single narrative, is my favorite play ever. So beautiful, hilarious, heartbreaking.
Punchdrunk’s The Drowned Man, back in 2013-2014. I saw it in 10 times while I was on my semester abroad in London, and still wasn’t done with it. I saw it on my first night abroad, and my last. Their Sleep No More also excites me, but something about The Drowned Man and its 1960s Hollywood sex appeal really grabbed me.

Theatre that’s verbally gymnastic.
Lucas Hnath’s A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney.
Anything by Sondheim.
So much of Target Margin’s work.

Theatre that grabs you and doesn’t let go.
Theatre that pushes you away with its relentless grotesqueness, but your eyes are glued.
Theatre that makes you stop breathing.
Theatre that makes you second-guess everything you thought you knew.

Theatre that’s effervescently and relentlessly fabulous.

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


A:  What advice do they have for me?! I feel like I’m just starting out. Probably because I am!

I guess three things have kept me going:

1. Fight like hell for your work. You’re your work’s greatest advocate.

2. Keep writing. I quit for a LONG time after one of my mentors gave me the single note “This is a bad play.” Fuck that. Keep writing until someone sees what you’re doing and fucking gets it, man.

3. ALWAYS BE GRATEFUL. THERE IS NOTHING MORE IMPORTANT THAN BEING GRACIOUS TO THOSE WHO ARE HELPING YOU IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM. BE KIND TO EVERYONE.

Q:  Plugs, please:


A:  Come see Nora/Motherfuck*r! Tickets available here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2666889

Donate to Nora, motherfucker. We need your help! IndieGogo here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/nora-goes-2-space-motherfuck-r-christmas-feminism/x/15142082#/

Support everything The Tank does: http://thetanknyc.org. They’re my artistic home and have welcomed me into their family. Send them love, see their shows.

And, if you’re reading this on, or before November 17 at 8pm, I’m doing a monologue as a part of a Rapid Response evening at The Tank. Do it up. Join us. Make change.





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I Interview Playwrights Part 890: Steven McCasland

Steven McCasland 

 

Hometown: Dix Hills, New York



Current Town: Astoria, New York



Q:  What are you working on now?



A:  I'm currently in the very early stages on a new musical with composer Keith Herrmann (Romance, Romance) and lyricist James Horan. My play Memorare, about a New York City convent during the 1964 Harlem race riots, is in development for a production here in New York early next year.



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



A:  As a kid, I battled a lot of health problems and had to have multiple reconstructive sinus surgeries. I'm more than fine now, but I spent a lot of time in bed and in the hospital during the third and fourth grades. I became rather addicted to You've Got Mail, watching it on a near-constant loop. My love affair with Nora Ephron was just beginning. A few years later, I asked my parents to take me to see her play Imaginary Friends. I was only a teenager and had never heard of Mary McCarthy, let alone Dick Cavett. I only knew who Lillian Hellman was because we had to read The Children's Hour for an English class. But once again, Nora Ephron wormed her way into my brain. Nearly 15 years later, my play, loosely inspired by the famous feud she wrote about in Imaginary Friends. It hadn't occurred to me that the plays were related until a few months after Ephron passed. A woman at the theatre asked me, "Did you ever see that play about Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy Nora Ephron wrote?" Needless to say, I felt a little heartburn in that moment... But the good kind.



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



A:  I'd like to see more diversity in characters, not just playwrights and cast. For example, we rarely see stories about transgendered characters. Though we've recently seen Taylor Mac's Hir and the musical Southern Comfort, or Robert Callely's On A Stool At The End of The Bar, they are late arrivals in a conversation we should be having. Additionally, I hope that artists are able to use their frustration with this long election cycle to create important and challenging art.



Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?



A:  Nora Ephron, Lanford Wilson, Tennessee Williams, August Wilson, George C. Wolfe and most especially Edward Albee - the artists who helped me find my own voice.



Q:  What kind of theater excites you?



A:  The kind that makes me ask questions. Most recently, I was mystified by Simon McBurney's The Encounter. Half-mesmerized by its originality and audacity, half-stupefied by the way it made me re-examine my own life, I traveled home in a daze. I'm looking forward to seeing Lynn Nottage's Sweat in a few weeks, which seems to be raising a lot of interesting and deeply probing questions.



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



A:  As an employee at The Drama Book Shop, I'm often asked if I can recommend books on playwriting. But I can't. I've never really been good at giving out advice either. One day, I wanted to write a play. It wasn't very good. And neither was the one after that. But the more I wrote and the further I explored, eventually, the plays got better. For me, the greatest education was reading and seeing as many plays as possible. Long before I started working at the book shop, I was a regular customer, buying 4 plays a week, and devouring them all before returning a week later and buying another 4 more. READ! SEE THEATRE! Make it your breakfast, lunch and dinner. ...And keep writing. No matter what, keep writing.



Q:  Plugs, please:



A:  Several of my plays have recently been published and are available on Amazon.com and at www.dramabookshop.com (please shop small!). Little Wars will see two productions in 2017: one in Minneapolis with PRIME Productions, and one at The Little Theatre Group of Costa Rica. My blog, The Bone Orchard Monologues, is a collection of original monologues inspired by famous figures from history. www.http://boneorchardmonologues.wordpress.com.




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I Interview Playwrights Part 889: Courtney Meaker

Courtney Meaker


Hometown: Franklin, TN

Current Town: Iowa City, IA

Q:  Tell me about The Lost Girls.


A:  The Lost Girls focuses on a group of young, queer women who just graduated college and have taken a $2000 stipend to be counselors at an all girls summer camp. It's 2008. Obama is running for president, but the election is a while away. The women are already in debt but haven't fully let that reality sink in. They have six months before Sallie Mae comes a callin' for their souls. None of them have started looking for a job, and again, it's 2008, so the jobs that they are likely going to get don't look promising. So naturally, it's a horror. And a comedy. No. Really. It's funny. The teenagers at the camp start dying under mysterious circumstances but the counselors are focused on getting wasted and hooking up with one another, and maybe eventually they'll get around to defeating the thing killing the teenagers. It now feels much darker with America electing Satan on Tuesday. 2008 may have been a terrible year for recent grads, but hope was around the corner; we just didn't know it.

Q:  What else are you working on now?


A:  I'm currently at University of Iowa Playwrights Workshop and the script I'm working on for New Play Festival is about body/size politics focusing on a queer, fat woman who vomits out another being. But since Tuesday, like many artists, I'm thinking about what other stories we need right now. Like, I don't know, an exploration of what Mike Pence wants to do to women and queer people acted out in excruciating detail. But I feel like I'm still throwing spaghetti at a wall right now, cause of the rage. Soon something good will solidify and stick.

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 got in trouble for masturbating at nap time as a child. The teacher took me outside of the classroom, looked me straight in the eye and told me that "what I was doing" doesn't feel good so I should never do it again. She made me promise I wouldn't. I promised. And broke the promise that night. I think that's when I realized everyone lies and is pretty much the foundation of who I am now.

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


A:  I feel like a lot of theatre doesn't go far enough in exploring stories that are outside straight, white, and male sensibilities. As someone who likes to write female and queer focused stories that are normally structured outside of reality, I find it hard to sit through yet another play about a white dude struggling with cheating on his partner, or trying to woo an unwooable woman, or going through any emotional crisis revolving around being misunderstood. I'm over it and find it more than a little disturbing that those stories still dominate our stages. So if I could change one thing it would be that for one year theaters would commit to producing only queer, non-white, and/or non-cismale focused shows written by anyone but straight, white, cismales. (You can forward the hate mail to me.)
(But like seriously don't write me hate mail. It's not an unreasonable request given that we've lived in a world that has been dominated by those narratives and those storytellers for centuries. Just like it's not unreasonable to say we should have nine female justices on the Supreme Court. Or, a female president.)

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?


A: 

Young Jean Lee
Erin Courtney
Maria Irene Fornes
Sarah Kane
Naomi Iizuka
Lynne Nottage
Caryl Churchill, obviously

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


A:  As someone who feels unqualified to give advice, I'll say don't be afraid to fail. Find your playground and go mess up, fall down, get bruises. Then regroup and do it better with harder falls and bigger bruises. Bruises are pretty.

Q:  Plugs, please:



A:  The Lost Girls runs for one more weekend in Seattle's Annex Theatre through Nov 19 (http://www.annextheatre.org/2016-season/main-stage/the-lost-girls/). And Iowa Playwrights New Play Festival happens the first week of May at the University of Iowa. Come down, over, or up and see ten new plays for free. Also my play Chaos Theory - a play seeking order came out in September from Original Works Publishing (https://www.originalworksonline.com/ChaosTheory).



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I Interview Playwrights Part 888: Scott Stephen Kegler

Scott Stephen Kegler

Hometown: Mansfield, CT

Current Town: Willimantic, CT

Q:  Tell me about your play Chestnut Street Playhouse is planning to present.

A:  A full-length comedic play, "Whacked" follows the life of Jack Murphy, whose wife walks in on a private moment and makes an embarrassing discovery the night before Thanksgiving. The next day, all the in-laws come to celebrate and promptly notice something is not quite right in the Murphy's little love nest, so they decide to play the parental guessing game.

Q:  What else are you working on now? 



A:  Right now I have two shows in the stage reading step in their development. But I try to keep busy with one act festivals, and my commedia dell arte troupe.

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 have always been a story teller (aka liar), but I was in high school when I realized my favorite way to spin a narrative was through dialogue for the stage or screen. I remember my first attempt was a screenplay when I was seventeen. I was sitting alone in a computer lab, and the lights were all off. I was swooping through the story, and flushing out all this banter. I was convinced I was writing the great American story! Regardless, of how bad it was...it solidified my medium.

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




A:  I would seriously change how this country funds theater. We are so far back in the line compared to other nations, that it is simply tragic.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes? 




A:  The artist who had the greatest influence on me, with whom I had the honor of working, was Larry Hunt. I already had a strong passion for commedia when I met him, but he really taught me the "religion" of farce, mask world, character archetypes and most importantly how to laugh.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you? 




A:  New and original work. I get bored with seeing rehashed classics. I mean, I really think you need to spend time with these works as you study. But at a certain point you need to commit yourself to creating something new. I think it is so much more empowering for a director or actor to be the first to make a mark on a piece.

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




A:  Never assume you are done with anything, and don't be fooled into thinking you have found perfection. I always find myself in shock when reading a piece of mine from 10 years ago.

Q:  Plugs, please: 




A:  Please check out a copy of my play WHACKED on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/WHACKED-Scott-Stephen-Kegler/dp/1605132519 , or find my commedia group, Commedia Mania, on facebook!

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I Interview Playwrights Part 887: Atar Hadari

Atar Hadari

Hometown: Jerusalem

Current Town: Hebden Bridge

Q: Tell me about Merciful Father.

A: Not since Marlowe has the stage seen such Chutzpah.

Q: What else are you working on now?

A: A full length play about Amazon.

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

A: As my teacher Geoffrey Hill once said, in all fairness to you and to me, I must ask you to limit the scope of your question.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Shakespeare, Morecambe, and Wise.

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

A: Learn to act and try acting some of your own speeches. Consider writing plays for other people.

Q:  Plugs please.

A:  Merciful Father produced by UP Theater runs until November 12th. www.uptheater.org

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I Interview Playwrights Part 886: Elise Marenson

Elise Marenson

Hometown: New York, NY

Current Town: New York, NY

Q:  Tell me about your upcoming show.

A:  I wrote Wide Blossoms spontaneously, from anger and frustration having watched people left to die after Hurricane Katrina just because they were poor and black.

Wide Blossoms takes place one evening at a Baton Rouge bar, shortly after Hurricane Katrina. James, a young lawyer drinking perhaps to numb a guilty conscience, is from a biracial family but passes for white. He is about to leave when a mysterious young African American woman appears, disheveled and disoriented. She drops phrases and poems that haunt him. James, why didn’t you bring the boat? Mari asks. He insists that he doesn’t know her. But Mari persists. The storm left her with nothing but the poems of her grandpa who drowned in the flooding waters. As the bar nears closing time, James learns that the grandfather he never knew perished in the storm, because he did nothing to rescue him. Mari forces him to come out of denial, face the past, and take a first step at looking after someone other than himself. This night, James gets a second chance at redemption.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I wrote a prequel to Wide Blossoms, a full length play called American Flamingos, that takes place that same night in the bar with the young lawyer and the bartender and other characters who come and go. It is about the state of America in the 2000s and deals with other issues. I want to see American Flamingos through to production. I also recently wrote a full length play, a family drama called Comfort Zones, that I hope will take the steps towards a production. I’ve written several screenplays that I am pitching. I sold a script last year to a producer who is working on getting the financing. And I wrote a pilot for a TV crime series that is in development.

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 lived in Paris and Geneva in my teens and twenties, what I call my formative years because it influenced my thinking. Being bilingual with French, having international friends, traveling extensively as a child opened the world to me. French films influenced the way I write my character driven screenplays, the ones dearest to me. And going to London every year when I was a kid, seeing theater there with the great actors of the time made me want to be an actor.

I was an actor first. I’d never thought of myself as a writer, never dreamed of doing anything but acting. One day, a postcard addressed to someone else was delivered by mistake to my mailbox. I think it was from the IFP. It advertised a screenwriting workshop. It hit me like a mysterious message from a Higher Power. I didn’t take the course, but I wrote a screenplay and realized that writing was my true calling.

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

A:  I’d want to see real, lifelike behavior onstage, pardon the expression but acting like in a film, a return to the level of Brando and his generation. It’s unfair to lay this on contemporary American theater as a whole because I’ve seen some wonderful productions in the past few years. But there is also a lot of sitcom acting on stage, cue to cue, without actors listening and reacting to each other truthfully.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  My favorite American playwright is Tennessee Williams. British playwrights: John Osborne, Tom Stoppard, Peter Nichols. There’s that British influence again.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that moves me because the characters, no matter the setting and circumstances of the play, experience life just like you and me. I think there is also a need for American contemporary theater to tackle cultural/social/political issues because there is no other popular art forum that has the freedom to be courageous.

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

A:  Write from your heart, write about what interests and moves you. Write from your gut. Don’t try to fit into what you think is trendy or commercial.



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I Interview Playwrights Part 885: Bernardo Cubría

Bernardo Cubría



Hometown: Mexico City/Houston



Current Town: Los Angeles



Q:  Tell me about your upcoming show.



A:  The Judgment of Fools is by far the "craziest" piece I've written. It comes from the Commedia training I did in Italy, and my obsession with clowning and with the interaction Shakespeare's clowns had with the Groundlings. I wrote the first draft drunk after seeing The Freak Show in Coney Island about three years ago. I was in awe of that show. I had never sat in a theatre where it was so clear how much disdain the performers had for the audience. They kept openly mocking us. They were clearly saying, "sure I shove a fucking sword down my throat but look at you in your "I Heart NY" shirt you fat loser". I mean, not exactly like that but...basically.



So I went home and started thinking about how much disdain I felt for New York Theatre Audiences. It felt so elitists, so classist. The crossed armed, finger on the temple, refusing to laugh at a fart joke even though fart jokes are as funny as any obscure political reference that you pretend to chuckle at will ever be! Yeah...I was frustrated. And I hate the lack of diversity in the seats of New York. And in that beautiful writing moment where you are drunk enough and inspired enough to truly believe that the play you are about to write will single handedly change the make up of Theatre Audiences around the world, in that AWESOME moment, I wrote the first draft.



So that was the starting point. The first draft was an angry, crazy, and experimental clown show.

Since then and through the help of many amazing artists it has changed drastically.



I had a workshop in New York through Inviolet Theatre, than a co-production with Inviolet and INTAR. Then a full production in Los Angeles with Ammunition Theatre Company and now another full production in Houston with Horse Head Theatre Company. Since the show is interactive, it has also grown thanks to the audiences. It's cool to see how different audiences are in New York versus Los Angeles and I'm excited to see what Houston will be like.



Now I hope the play is less angry and more in the vein of Augusto Boal's Theatre of The Oppressed. The play is about how silly it is that we judge other people for the things they do. An example: there is a scene where you watch two lovers at a doorway and as the scene progresses our main "Fool" gives you more background on the two lovers. The audience is asked to begin booing once they find what the lovers are doing not to be, "up to the standards of human decency that they have created in their own heads". On its best nights, the play feels like a bonding exercise between audience members and performers where the conversation follows them to a nearby bar. On its worst nights, people don't like interactive shows and make "ew" faces.



Q:  What else are you working on now?



A:  My newest play is Neighbors. And if I can say this, I love this play. This began with me writing a play with a character called Mexico and one called USA. They were neighbors and their lands were split up by a creek. Since then, and again thanks to so many artists, the play has grown.



Now the play is a Satire about US and Mexico. It uses stereotypes to get to the heart of what I believe to be the reason for all of the turmoil along the border. Pinche Capitalism. It ruins everything. So now we have Jose and Joe sharing land. And I hope they are two real three dimensional beings just trying to survive in a world where industry is given priority over human connection. I have another week long workshop in L.A. this November at The Blank Theatre. And my dream is that this play gets a big production. And that Donald Trump sits in the front row and as the play progresses he realizes all he's done and starts crying. And then he gets up, calls a press conference and apologizes to Mexico. Finally he turns to me, I reach out my arms to hug him and as he approaches, while whispering, "lo siento Berni", at the last second I "pants" him. So Oskar Eustis...should I email you the play directly or just slide into your DMs on Twitter?



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's father was great man. Octaviano Cabrera. He came from extreme poverty. His father committed suicide when he was very young and yet he somehow managed to become a doctor in Mexico and raise a wonderful family. He was an example of what a single human can achieve in one lifetime. And I have all these wonderful memories of spending summers in Mexico with him. We would sit around the dinner table talking for hours. And when we were all eating desert he would tell jokes. He had an infinite knowledge of jokes. They were so funny. And he seemed so magical to me. How he could just make everyone laugh over and over again. I miss the hell out of him. He taught me that funny was better than bitter. And in my worst moments, I try and remember that lesson.



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



A:  The Audience. I hate the make-up of theatre audiences in this country. We HAVE to change it.



A quick story: So my play Neighbors, which I hope someone will produce (wink wink), had a workshop at the wonderful Two River Theatre in RedBank, New Jersey. The superb team at Two River commissioned me to translate the play into Spanish. They did two readings of my play. One in in English and one in Spanish.



Red Bank is a town in Jersey that has a very large immigrant population. And most of these people have never been to a theatre. The day before my reading, my younger brother and I went door to door and asked people to come. I told them why I wrote the play, why it was in Spanish and why it was free of charge. I had no idea if these people would come to a big building that seems like a place only "others" go to. But they did. And, if I may say, they loved the play. I sat in that theatre so fucking happy that finally I got to do my play in my home stadium. Because, in my opinion, any writer who doesn't come from a "classic American" background is always playing an away game in American theatre. And yes, a great team wins on the road, but at some point wouldn't it be nice to play for a home crowd? So for that night, in my stadium. I felt so fucking happy.



Let's get those people in the building.



Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?



A:  A bunch. Sorry but here we go:



Mando Alavardo, Jerry Ruiz, Stephanie Ybarra, Lou Moreno, Jorge Cordova, JJ Perez, Ed Cardona, John Concado, Juan Villa, Gerry Rodriguez, Michael Escamilla, Kristoffer Diaz, Sean Daniels, Felix Solis, Liza Fernandez, Fernanda Coppel, Tanya Saracho, Caridad Svich, Alex Beech, everyone in Inviolet Theater, everyone in Ammunition Theatre, Lucas Caleb Rooney, Mark Cirnigliaro, Bixby Elliot, Megan Hart, Zabryna Guevara, Migdalia Cruz, Matt Olmos, Maggie Boffil, Florencia Lozano, Raul Castillo, Emma Ramos, Audrey Esparza, Matt Citron, David Ryan Smith, Flor De Liz Perez, and so many more!



Q:  What kind of theater excites you?



A:  I love all theatre. So this will sound weird. I know the future is bright because of theatre twitter. There are so many smart, passionate people out there fighting the good fight for our art form. Example: follow Kristoffer Diaz on Twitter and tell me you don't have hope for this art form.

#tryingtosoundyoungandhip



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



A:  Hang out with people you love making shit with. And get in a room, any room and create. Your community is everything in this art form. Just say yes, make and repeat.



Q:  Plugs, please:



A:  Houston! Come see The Judgment of Fools



link for tickets here: THE JUDGMENT OF FOOLS



Los Angeles come and see the workshop of Neighbors at The Blank Theater!Living Room Series



Last I do a theatre podcast and I just had Stephen Adly Guirgis on and even Adam Szymkowicz!:

Off and On: A New York Theatre podcast by Unknown on iTunes



oh and I'm on Twitter. Mostly making fun of Trump Supporters@bernardocubria



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I Interview Playwrights Part 884: Jim Knable

Jim Knable


Hometown: Sacramento, CA

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I just finished a first draft of a play about Thornton Wilder’s writing of his first novel when he was nearly 30 and “stuck in the quicksand of teaching.” It shows how he discovered his voice as an artist and is also a sort of adaptation of the novel itself with characters in his life morphing into characters in the book’s episodic chapters. Meanwhile, I’m diving back into a slightly older play called The Reverend’s Daughter, about Civil War era college roommates from the North and South, based on a true story about a group of Southern students at Yale who raised a flag of secession on the college chapel spire. I’ve also got a TV pilot that I’m working on inspired by actress Amanda Quaid’s day job of teaching immigrants how to lose their accents. I continually return to other plays that I’ve written in the last ten years that haven’t received productions and/or been published yet.

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 7 and my second grade teacher called my name for roll the first day, I answered her by saying, “I prefer to be called Jim.” Jim wasn’t my given name, or even a legitimate nickname variation on James (no variation of “James” is in my legal name). Weirdly, Mrs. Yee, every subsequent teacher, my parents, my grandparents, all the rest of my relatives, my friends, and then, loosely speaking, the world agreed to call me Jim. I’ve heard 7 is a typical age for such attempts at name changes. Mine stuck. It was my first act of friendly defiance that explains not only why I still go by Jim to everyone except for the government, but also why I became a writer. I wrote “Jim” into my identity.

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

A:  It would be spelled “theatre” consistently. I’m not an Anglophile, but there’s something nice about how the word looks when it’s spelled that way and, in this country, it distinguishes it from the movie theater. Also, I want all my plays to be produced and to be suddenly understood by all critics.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  When I was about 5, my mom brought me along to a city college acting class she was taking. Students were taking turns standing in front of the class and “making themselves vulnerable.” One man very calmly stripped off all of his clothes. I still remember the joy with which he pulled off his socks to fling them into the audience and the applause he received for it. He has been heroic to me ever since, even though I now think that getting naked in acting class is a little obvious. As for playwrights who influence me, Sam Shepard always has and always will. I emulate him in the way his characters’ speak in constant spirals towards a painfully indefinite center. When I was much younger, I imitated Mamet’s economy, too, though I have mixed feelings about him personally. I studied Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill, and Tennessee Williams, and felt their structural influence though none of them ever read one of my plays and Edward Albee did. He even wrote me a nice letter about it, which I photocopied and used to get into college. I like Edward Albee’s plays. I think Three Tall Women is the best Beckett play Albee wrote—which I mean as a sincere compliment to both writers. I also like Maria Irene Fornes, Caryl Churchill, and Suzanne Lori-Parks a lot and think of them as heroes because they manage to be precise yet lyrical with their power and style, and they take exciting risks that often pay off. I think of Tony Kushner as a hero, not just for Angels in America, but because he’s a great teacher of Brecht and an astute political speaker. I love Wallace Shawn. I got to sit next to him completely by accident, watching Mandy Patinkin in Rinne Groff’s play Compulsion at the Public. It was like My Dinner with Andre at the Princess Bride Reunion about Anne Frank. I still try to engage people in conversations like Wallace Shawn after that experience. He’s a great listener. It’s all in the head-tilt. I had a dream once in which I had to list my theatrical heroes and I talked about all those people above… and Schikaneder. I woke up wondering who “Schikaneder” was. Then I remembered. Emanuel Schikaneder wrote the libretto for Mozart’s Magic Flute. Papageno? The Queen of the Night? Zu hilfe, zu hilfe! He’s an unsung hero. Strike that. He is sung. Mozart just gets all the credit. Let’s hear it for the librettist!

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?


A:  I am excited by overtly theatrical adult theatre in which characters manage to be both human and godlike. I like children’s theatre that isn’t condescending. Theatre presents an opportunity to be in an utterly unique relationship with living human beings, who are enacting a rehearsed ritual that is constantly adjusting depending on the audience, but it isn’t a religious rite, or a speech, or a presentation; it is a reflection of life itself as we live it, however distorted that reflection or disjointed our lives. I like theatre that takes full advantage of this opportunity.

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


A:  Don’t get too comfortable.
Take breaks when you’re tired.
Listen to people talking as much as possible. If you don’t enjoy that, don’t write plays. If you do, try to be anywhere near as amazing as that—and I don’t necessarily mean write naturalistically, just be true to the music of human speech in its essence.

Q:  Plugs, please:



A:  The Reverend’s Daughter has a staged reading coming up December 15 at Judson Memorial Church for their Magic Time series, directed by Rosemary Andress. Another play of mine, which shall be named when I decide which one to do, will have a staged reading through the Writers Theatre of New Jersey in their Soundings Reading Series at Fairleigh Dickenson University in January. Master Wilder and the Cabala will have a workshop and staged reading at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign this April with Henry Wishcamper directing. I also write and sing songs. Right now the fanciest recordings of those songs are available on the albums I made with my band The Randy Bandits, which can be found on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon, and so on. Lately, I’ve been writing and singing songs as “The Jewbadour” for Tablet Magazine’s Unorthodox Podcast and I will be featured soon on the Ecumenical “Mockingcast” this November, talking about plays and singing songs. Speaking of podcasts, check out the recording of my play The Curse of Atreus on http://www.12peerstheater.org/modern-myths-podcast. And may I also recommend my tribute to Leonard Cohen at http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/213694/to-be-leonard-cohen.



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