Adam Szymkowicz's Blog, page 74

I Interview Playwrights Part 604: Ayad Akhtar

Ayad Akhtar



Hometown:  Milwaukee, WI

Current Town:  NY, NY

Q:  Tell me about Disgraced.

A:  The basic story of Disgraced tracks the unraveling of a Pakistani-American corporate attorney's marriage and career as the long-guarded secret of his Muslim origins comes out at work. The body of the play is a dinner party where a group of successful New York professionals begin to talk about Islam, and Amir, under extreme stress from his work situation, begins to unloose long-stanched emotions related both to his Islamic heritage -- which he is profoundly at odds with -- but also with being Muslim in America.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I have a new play going up in 2014 at La Jolla Playhouse and at Lincoln Center's LCT3 in New York. It's called The Who & The What, and is a partly comedic exploration of Muslim-American matrimonial mores. Also at work on a heavy rewrite of a play called The Invisible Hand. It has new productions in Seattle and Portland at the end of next summer. Have a couple of commissions I am plugging away on, as well as my next novel. I'm keeping busy.

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

A:  This is a story I've told a few times. But it's really the central one when it comes to my story as a writer. I had an amazing high school teacher who changed my life, who made me want to write. Her name was Diane Doerfler. (We called her Ms Doerfler.) She was in her late fifties at the time that I took her class, an eccentric, remarkable woman, who lived on sixty acres of land in forest-country north west of Milwaukee, with a farm-sized garden she awoke at four AM to tend every morning, usually surrounded by her ten great danes. She'd been married five times, divorced all her husbands, and carried herself with an assuredness that belied her station as a high-school teacher. Her bearing was at once regal and acute. She didn't suffer fools well. And she didn't take kindly to kids who didn't do the evening assignment. Suffice it to say, I don't recall a single incident of insubordination in her class.


Our first assignment that semester was to read Friedrich Durrenmatt's short story, "The Tunnel." It's about a man who wakes up on a train and doesn't understand how he got there, or where the train is going. He goes from car to car, asking the passengers, the conductor, the workers, but no one seems to know. Most don't care and shrug. Others point to someone else further up the chain of command for an answer. Finally, having made his way to the locomotive, the protagonist finds the driver: A madman shoveling coal maniacally into the engine. The protagonist asks him where the train is going. All the driver can do is point at the ceiling. The protagonist climbs the short ladder and peers over the perch to see: A tunnel of darkness into which the train is headed with unstoppable fury.

I hadn't the slightest idea what to make of it. When Ms Doerfler strode purposefully into class the next day, her right hand buried -- as it always was -- in her sport coat pocket and playing with a set of keys there, she asked us to explain the meaning of the story. I was confounded. I couldn't understand how anything so incoherent as the story I'd read the previous night could have a meaning. No one had an answer. And so she proceeded to explain: The train was life. And sometimes we awaken to the question of where it is headed, how it began. Unfortunately, as we look for an answer from others, they often have no interest in the question, and those who might have an interest have no answer. The most that one could do was to confront the truth -- after great effort -- and that was itself a conundrum: That life is unknown headed into a deeper unknown.

I was stunned. I remember the moment I understood what she was saying. It was like lemon juice on the surface of milk, parting the murkiness, revealing something clear underneath. It struck me then (and it still does) that giving shape in stories to the deeper questions of existence was the most remarkable thing I could imagine doing.

Ms Doerfler responded to my newfound passion with care and guidance. I spent a great deal of time around her my senior year, doing independent studies and writing essays about what she had me read. She introduced me to Thomas Mann, Robert Musil, Albert Camus, and Franz Kafka. And when I was done with those, she had me read Sartre and Rilke and Mishima and Proust. It was a baptism in world literature, a formation I still draw from everyday...

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

A:  Ticket prices!

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Eleanora Duse, Andre Gregory, Arthur Miller, Jerzy Grotowski, David Mamet, Ariane Mnouchkine, Kate Valk, Tony Kushner, Solomon Mikhoels, Ibsen, Reza Abdoh, Jean Genet, Anatoly Vasiliev, Kazuo Ohno, Cherry Jones, Bertolt Brecht.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?


A:  Theater that takes audience engagement seriously, which isn't to mean work that panders to the audience. It's a matter of who the primary interlocutor of the work really is. Is it dramaturgy, form, the process of storytelling? Or is it the audience? To me, this is the distinguishing line. Not that the former isn't valid. I admire so many writers whose primary interlocutor is really the form. But I find that it just doesn't excite me as much.

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

A:  Keep at it. Stay open to criticism from those you admire and trust. Work hard. Expect that it may take much much longer than you would ever imagine. Show business is about attrition more than anything else. You have to have the staying power -- which I associate with creative drive -- to keep at it.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Little, Brown and Company is bringing out an edition of Disgraced the second week of September 2013. Aasif Mandvi -- who starred in the play at Lincoln Center -- will be joining me for a reading and discussion at the Union Square Barnes and Noble on Thursday Sept 12 at 7.00 PM. Aasif is a very talented and funny guy. Should be a lot of fun. http://store-locator.barnesandnoble.com/event/81350








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I Interview Playwrights Part 603: Jerry Lieblich

Jerry Lieblich

Hometown: East Setauket, New York

Current Town:  Brooklyn, New York

Q:  Tell me about Eudaemonia.

A:  As somebody put it in rehearsal the other day, Eudaemonia is “Faust for hipsters.”

The play focuses on three people reaching the end of the first third of their lives, the end of the period of selfish, self-involved self-development that characterizes your mid-twenties. These people are not happy with themselves – they don't want to be who they are, but don't know exactly who (or what) they want to be.

So they each summon into their lives magical, demonic forces to bring about this desired (if misdirected) change. The play tracks how this desire for change, this desire to create a new self, in effect destroys a previous self – how making a new “I” by necessity destroys the old “I.”

But it's also funny, and bizarre, and there's a demon, and a giant egg, and music, and dancing, and Marshall Pailet has done an unbelievable job putting this nearly-impossible play on its feet.

It's going up as part of an event I created with Kevin Armento and Jaclyn Backhaus called (not just) 3 New Plays. We're producing our three plays in rep, sharing a budget, space, set, and production team. We figure that joining forces, we're more capable than any one of us alone.

Their plays, KILLERS and SHOOT THE FREAK, are gorgeous – I'm humbled to be sharing a stage with them.

We've also invited over 60 other artists to use our space for free before and after the shows. So every night there's going to be pay-what-you-can performances – we've got dancers, comedians, filmmakers, photographers, musicians, all sorts. Plus, during the day, artists and companies will get to use the theater as free rehearsal space. We've turned the Paradise Factory into a little pop-up arts ecosystem, and we think that's pretty cool.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm working on a horror play about a junkyard that eats people. I'm also trying to adapt a play my grandma wrote in the 80's – she passed away several years ago, and so the though of co-writing a play with her based on this manuscript I found is pretty alluring.

I'm also making a devised piece about ghost stories with director Stefanie Abel Horowitz and our company, Tiny Little Band. It's still pretty nascent, but in essence it's an examination of belief – what does it mean to believe in ghosts? In true love? In anything? If I hold fundamentally different foundational beliefs from you, how can we ever speak the same language? And in what ways is fear just an extension of belief?

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

A:  On the first day of first grade, my teacher (a lovely white haired lady with the excellent name Mrs. Costabile), handed out a diagnostic math test.

I started answering the questions – 1+2, 3-1, etc. After about a minute, though, I stood up on my chair, crumpled up the test, threw it on the floor, and shouted “What do you think I am, some kind of idiot?”

Now I don't actually remember this happening – I've only heard about it second hand. But I think it's a pretty funny – if more than a little incriminating – origin story.

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

A:  Space has got to be more affordable. Rehearsal space, yes, but particularly performance space. It's hard to take risks in your writing if the costs of production are so high. I dream of a theater culture in which everybody is making work all the time – like Fringe, but always. We'd eliminate the cycle of “developmental purgatory,” and be able to take bigger, bolder risks with lower stakes.

This is the main thing we've been trying to combat with (not just) 3 New Plays – by teaming up, we've made it much more affordable for the three of us to produce our work. And by opening the space up as free performance and rehearsal space before and after our shows, we've given free space to over 60 artists who otherwise wouldn't have it. We're grateful to have them on board – it makes an instant community around our work. And they're grateful for the space to make and show their work. Everybody wins.

I think if we can all be a little more community minded in the ways we make our art, we can allow for a more vibrant, more diverse arts community. And when that happens, well, everybody wins.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Oh man, so many. Anne Washburn, Melissa James Gibson, Jenny Schwartz, David Greenspan, Glen Berger, Richard Foreman, Richard Maxwell, Sibyl Kempson, Kristen Kosmas, Madeline George, Annie Baker, Karen Hartman, Dan LeFranc, Jordan Harrison, Lucas Hnath, Caryl Churchill, The Debate Society, Elevator Repair Service, Rude Mechs, Mac Wellman, and of course my first playwriting teachers Deb Margolin and Donald Margulies.

I'm also always impressed by the immensity of the work being created by the artists in my cohort. The Smith + Tinker gang, The Cockpit Writers Group, the Extremely Famous Writers Group – these folks have really got it going on.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I'm turned on by theater that experiments with language and form. Jenny Schwartz and Melissa James Gibson do such incredible things with words – reading or seeing one of their plays makes you think you've never heard the English language before. Kristen Kosmas and Sibyl Kempson similarly have this way of turning words into concrete things – objects with sound, weight, and shape, rather than just reference.

I'm always a sucker for a play that takes you through an experience, rather than depicts that experience. Anne Carson once described that (in reference to poetry) as subjective mimesis, and I think that's totally right. You leave having felt something new, having experienced something new, instead of simply watching other people feel and experience things (which is the most boring sort of voyeurism, in my book). I'm thinking specifically of plays like THE INTERNATIONALIST or the ridiculously genius MR. BURNS that use form as their primary (and extraordinarily effective) means of communication.

I love plays that give me space and agency as an audience member, plays that don't do my thinking for me, but invite me to fill in the gaps. Be just a little confusing, so I've got something to do while I'm in the audience.

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

A:  Write write write. Read read read. But also do other stuff. Be a person.

Also, ask for advice! Everybody who's doing this is doing it with the help and guidance of a whole army of great mentors, heroes, and friends. And, at least in my experience, most people are more than happy to pay it forward.

For instance, me! E-mail me – j.a.lieblich@gmail.com – I'd be happy to go out for coffee and talk about this weird and impossible thing we're all trying to do.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  

 

EUDAEMONIA
by Jerry Lieblich
directed by Marshall Pailet

KILLERS
by Kevin Armento
directed by Stefanie Abel Horowitz

SHOOT THE FREAK
by Jaclyn Backhaus
directed by Andrew Neisler

All shows run Sept 8-29 at the Paradise Factory (64 E 4th St., next to LaMAMA).

Tickets and more info at www.notjust3newplays.com/tickets, or find us on facebook at facebook.com/notjust3newplays

ALSO! There are so many amazing performances happening in the space all month. Stop by any night and you'll see something super cool! I promise! For instance, on September 14th my roommate is performing a kickass cabaret of folk-rock re-imaginings of musical theater songs! How can you say no!?

 

 

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I Interview Playwrights Part 602: Marc Spitz

Marc Spitz



Hometown: Lawrence, New York, one of the "Five Towns" - the others are Inwood, Cedarhurst, Woodmere and Hewlett. Johnny Drama stars in a show about them on Entourage, directed by Ed Burns. They are a punchline on that show and kind of a punchline in my life. The joke was on me as a kid but as I am now middle aged, I often find myself dreaming of the pizza places and record stores of my youth. I set the new play there, part of it anyway, and give a shout out to Friendlier, a real pizza place. I was in Friendlier in Woodmere when the Challenger exploded.



Current Town: Makin' Money Manhattan (I'm making no money)



Q:  Tell me about Revenge and Guilt.



A:  It's a romance. Guy meets girl. Guy sleeps with girl. Girl steals guys watch. Guy meets girl again. Girl (not a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, mind) convinces the guy to confront his demons which is in this case, a guitar teacher who deeply scarred him in 1993. As it's very, very easy to find people from the past these days, they track the now aged guy down (think the Don Ciccio scene in Godfather 2) and mete out vengeance. She has ulterior motives of course. She is not who she seems to be. Mayhem ensues. There's a lot of sex and violence and pop references, it's kind of a throwback in that case to my older plays but I could not have written this at 28. It takes a middle aged man with a little humility to pull some of this off. It also marks the first time I'm directing one of my own plays after about a dozen produced Off Off. Again, I'm old now and if not now, when. It's so personal and there are only three actors so i figured why not? I saw a Woody Allen doc. where he said if you wrote it and surround yourself with good people then why can't you direct and that hit home.



Q:  What else are you working on now?



A:  I am writing a story for the New York Times on punk film, the good ones and the bad ones, and I am finishing up a book on an aesthetic that some people call Twee and others call... Indie when they are trying not to offend people who are twee. It starts post War (Disney's feature films, Salinger, Seuss, Dean, Capote) and goes all the way up to New Girl. An epic. I am also working on not being suicidally depressed. That's a bit easier than writing a big book. They have pills now. The book will be out in the second half of 2014 from IT Books/Harper Collins. It's my eighth book. I released a memoir in February called Poseur: A Memoir of Downtown New York in the 90s, which took me three years to write and might have contributed to the above mentioned suicidal depression. I also wrote Revenge during this period.



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 much of it is covered in the memoir, I mentioned above but Revenge in particular stems from a real incident. You know I never wanted to be a rock critic which is how I made and still sometimes make my living. I wanted to be a rock star. But I was unlucky when it came to teachers (yes, I blame them not my utter lack of natural talent). My piano teacher would not teach me the piano riff to "Rock the Casbah" and when I went to learn the drums I was basically told that I was uncoordinated and asked if I was "good at sports?" The implication being I was an utter physical reject-o. So there's a bit of me in Cal. I've never forgotten those lessons and in moments I wonder what could have been had I a more impatient instructor (or one who was a Clash fan). It's why there's power in this play whereas some of the recent ones I've done seem more like larks. There's painful truth in it. About regret, getting older, realizing things you will never be. And coming to accept what you are, which when you scour away the anger and regret, is most of the time, not so bad at all.



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



A:   Rentals would be cheaper for young playwrights. When I began doing plays on the Lower East Side in the late 1990s, if a producer like Aaron Beall liked your play or your coat, he would give you his space and split the door with you. He would also champion you and mentor you. I think that's just about gone with this sanitized, new LES. And all the small theaters are now in Brooklyn but I am a romantic about downtown theater in Manhattan (makin no money). It's why I like the Kraine where we are now. You can smell the history there. And sometimes fish.



Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?



A:  I always wanted to write Burn This. Not be Lanford Wilson per se but to have written Burn This. Burn This by Marc Spitz. I've re read it recently as I've read the Forced Entries by Jim Carroll and neither are as good as I remember but when I was young and hungry they fired me up. Also Durang. Nicky Silver. Orton. Pinter. Rabe. Kushner. Albee. Shepard obviously. I once saw him at the Washington Square Park dog run walking a large black poodle. Kushner for different reasons. I love reading him and respect his ambition but I know I can never touch him. Whereas I like pretending I have a chance at the others. Hero worship at my age is bad anyway. I want to be a hero myself. You know that piece of Christopher Street in front of the Lucille Lortel with all the stars? I think they just gave Neil LaBute one. There are a lot of blank stars left. I want one of those stars. And until I get one, I am happy to let my two basset hounds pee on them. Especially on LaBute. I will say



Q:  What kind of theater excites you?



A:  I am no fan of the avant garde. I like loud, ,violent, darkly funny plays. I tried to see a Robert Wilson play once and a bunch of stuff at PS 122 and I just shift and feel like I'm back in math class.



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



A:  Go to Brooklyn I guess? Or Queens. Or Staten Island. Or stay here and fight. Take back Ludlow Street, Le Miz style.



Q:  Plugs, please:



A:  Listen to the Plugz.














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Now Published, Upcoming, NYTVF

My webseries, Compulsive Love got into the New York TV Festival.  The festival is Oct 21-26.  Should be fun.











Hearts Like Fists is now published by Dramatists Play Service here.  Take a look at my other published plays here.





UBU, that movement piece I wrote for Daniel Irizarry, returns to NYC, this time at Intar in Sept.









And then production 14 of Nerve opens in Akron in Sept.



Here is the original cast from the '06 production.  1 part Rockstar O'Connor, 1 part Supersexy York.










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I Interview Playwrights Part 601: Jay Stull

Jay Stull

Hometown: Chesapeake, Virginia

Current Town: Brooklyn, New York

Q:  Tell me about The Capables.

A:  The Capables is a play about a family buried beneath the matriarch's hoard. Her daughter enlists a reality television show to come and remove the hoard, but their agenda is less about cleaning house than about getting folks to cry on camera. It's about what we do for the people we love and how we try to soften, if not heal, their specific pain.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm working on the AmoraLABs for the fall and winter season with The Amoralists. AmoraLABs are semi-regular gatherings at which the ensemble reads selections from four or five plays by writers new to the company. It's less a development series than a showcase. It serves a dual purpose - one of surveying some work by writers with whom we share an aesthetic and whose work may be something we include in future seasons; alternatively it's meant for writers who are close to our aesthetic but different enough from it to give the ensemble something new with which to work. It gives the playwright an opportunity to work with our ensemble and our actors an opportunity to perform for excellent playwrights.

I'm also working on a play about psychics and 9/11, which involves me getting my palm read at as many different psychics as I can afford.

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 thirteen, I spent the summer with my parents' video camera making parodies of a Regis and Kathy Lee type variety show. My cousin Jenn, visiting from out of town, was my all-too willing co-star and on the first day of her visit I worked us for so many hours and did so many takes to get it right that Jenn's pony tail, which she had pulled tightly onto the top of her head for the sake of verisimilitude, incapacitated her with a headache the next day. I'm still apologizing. But we did get the take and it was awesome.

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

A:  I still feel very new to this "club" and still, oddly, see it through rose-tinted glasses. It's tough for me to have a specific thing about theater I'd like to change since doing the work and making it at all are such liberating and soul-filling tasks aside other things like accounting, or corporate litigation. It's not that I'm blinded to its problems as much as it's that I can't believe my luck that I'm doing this instead of getting pear-shaped in an Aeron chair in midtown.

If I were to say one thing, though, I wish theater spaces in New York City were less expensive to rent.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I didn't grow up in the theater, or even around it so this question makes me a little self-conscious. Like, in the same way that it's very hard for me to go to Marie's Crisis and not feel like a complete failure. Still, I have a few playwrights whose works have changed what I think is possible in performance. Terrence McNally, Conor McPherson, Young Jean Lee, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Stew, and Larry Kramer are a few of my favorite theater artists so far based on their work. I'd also say that so many of my heroes are people that I make theater with, friends whose crafts are still growing and in sometimes astounding, unpredictable ways, friends who inspire awe by their dedication and development.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like to be afraid, terrified, unsettled. I also like to cry; I find it transformative to be silenced by overwhelming emotion. I've only ever experienced that in the theater, though, felt grabbed by the throat, and completely inhabited by an experience that can linger and incapacitate and change a person.

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

A:  Hmmm...I'm still starting out and, I'll be honest, I spend a lot of time reading this section from other interviews on this site, so the first piece of advice I have is:

Read Adam's blog.

And, if they're helpful, (and I'm not sure they will be) these are the things that I tell myself to when I'm feeling pretty pessimistic about my own art-making:

Remember neuroplasticity. Keep in mind that if your brain can change and grow (and in some cases regenerate) then the determinism of innate ability might not really apply, either. You can teach yourself a new skill, like playwriting, if you're observant, and if you practice enough, and if you're open to change.

Remember that skills (like playwriting) take many years to learn and those years are measured not in time but in pages.

Remember that the act of making something that can't sell thousands of tickets or make someone (if not yourself) rich, is itself a radical act in our society. Therefore, nearly all theater is itself radical and there is a reason for it that can't be measured in coin.

Remember that making theater is SO MUCH BETTER than doing nearly anything else, even if those other things reward you handsomely. You'll still just be daydreaming about making theater.

Commit to writing. Stop checking out other degree programs for jobs that offer you a 9 to 5 work schedule and weekends. You're an artist, not a social worker!

Remember art-making is arduous. Not every moment will be blissful. Maybe 1% of moments are blissful. But those 1% offer more bliss than doing anything else. And for others, others who aren't doing stuff they like, maybe no percent of moments are blissful. Bliss = rare.

Read things that give you big ideas. Maybe not plays. Read things other than plays. But read plays, too.

Write

Write

Write

Take an acting class.

Write

See the work of others.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My play, The Capables, is in its final week of performance at the Gym at Judson in Washington Square Park: 7pm on Tuesday and Wednesday and 8pm on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

AmoraLAB is this Wednesday, July 31st, 7:30pm at The Counting Room in Williamsburg.








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I Interview Playwrights Part 600: Joy Tomasko

Joy Tomasko

Hometown: Bethel, Connecticut after a short stint in Maryland

Current Town: Queens, NY

Q: What are you working on now?

A: This past year I had a playwright residency with fellow writer Eric Holmes and curator (writer) Les Hunter at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center in Long Island City.

I wrote a new full length play entitled Surrender.


Usually you get one reading of a play, but we had three staged readings, one after the other, which gave me time to really hear and experience the play and do a few rewrites in between, especially in regards to the ending.

In November I’ll have a workshop production again at LPAC and so I’m working on more expansive revisions.

Surrender is a dystopic play that I imagine in a future/parallel world after there’s been an information sharing burst/crash and a society that evolves/devolves out of it. The characters and audience exist in a world maintained by The Administration’s Protection Policy. We follow the main character D Thomson who works as a Reporter of Loss and Recovery. She helps to track and share what we hold most dear. But she’s been doing her job too long…

Q: What else are you working on?

A: I’m connecting the dots.


I’ve been exploring intimate theater/immersive interactive experiences/moments of return. My frequent collaborator, Sarah Murphy and I are playing with a Words, Words, Words project that has had many iterations – from an interactive performance in a sculpture park in the Hamptons, to online Literary Valentines – recommending books and arranging bibliophile penpals to sending and receiving postcards to//from friends and strangers on Governors Island. GI is a fascination of mine, even more so when I learned that my great grandparents met there in 1900. I’m going to write something that plays with their story. I have his military and court martial record (he was in jail on the island). She was a servant/cook newly emigrated from Ireland.

I’m also writing 3 short narratives for videos for the new Civil Rights Museum in Atlanta.

I’m posing for a painting inspired by John Alexander White’s The Repose (on view at the MET) for my friend the painter Elizabeth Beard. We talk art, process, life while working – it’s fun to be a muse.

Soon, I’ll be helping re-imagine the Jackson Heights Trilogy with Theatre 167 and director Ari Laura Kreith for a site-specific experience for the Queens Museum of Art’s Queens International.

And there are other things cooking, some with artist Phoebe Joel…some of my own projects that I’ve kept in the crockpot simmering simmering simmering and now need to be served.

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

A: Growing up, my family would drive down to Ft. Lauderdale to visit my grandparents. One time, after we arrived at the beach, as I was running into the water, I felt a sharp pain in my foot and leg. I had stepped on a Portuguese man o’war. I hadn’t noticed that the beach, crowded with people was also crowded with all these beautiful, blue and yet dangerous, venomous creatures. A tentacle wrapped itself up and around my leg. I was paralyzed for the rest of the day. And then I ran back out there to look at them again, a bit more cautiously and curiously and then later I researched them. They are not jellyfish even though they are similarly gelatinous. The allure and magic of bioluminescence. You think you can see through them but you can’t see everything. There’s still a mystery to figure out and/or imagine. A metaphor, at times, for the process of creating and experiencing theater.

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

A: So much about theater is business. And business in the USA…Oh, capitalism. And lots of –isms. Money. Politics. I, like many others, more than long for equality and get angry at the consequences of greed and insecurities and...

In my little utopian mind, I think every artist should have an artistic home that is passionate about committing to artistic growth overtime. Producing at least three works at each venue, understanding some may fail. Some may fail big. And some may totally surprise and surprise in ways that redefine the word success. And the homes should rotate and there should be a transition period where the previous artist(s) and new artist(s) overlap. And for every performance there are paid and free tickets perhaps given out in lotteries. And every artist gets paid a living wage. And artists must also curate – mentor and encourage other artists. I like that Joe Papp at some point gave each space at the Public to a few different artists/directors and said curate. I think curating should be not only of people you know but also go far, outside your known and find someone(s) you are curious about.

I want to curate a space/event(s) someday. And more immediately, I’m going to stop sitting on my plays.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: I admire the process and the masterpiece. I have a lot of heroes in theater, dance, music, art, literature, science, life…This question makes me think of Adrienne Kennedy’s People Who Led to My Plays. (Perhaps that’s been referenced in other interviews already.) I’m happy that my parents introduced me to theater as a kid, that I started experimenting with it, sometimes using a pool table as a stage at a friend’s house. Oh, the classics from the Greeks to Shakespeare to O’Neill (and more) that were introduced in middle and high school, and finally spending countless hours with everyone in the theater at Drew in undergrad. The people I encountered while working at The Public Theater under George C. Wolfe, Bonnie Metzgar and John Dias to the collaborators, peers and mentors at CalArts, to the people I’ve shared with through travels in the US and abroad and through the Women’s Project, The Playwrights Center, Theatre 167 and LPAC. So many of whom have been interviewed by you, Adam. And I can’t leave this answer without saying Kafka and Beckett.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A: I seek out a wide range. I’ve long been engaged by promenade style theater thanks to the Macnas theater company’s production I saw in 1996 in Galway of Rhymes from the Ancient Mariner, and many immersive productions since (I’ve directed a couple too). Theater that surprises me, that makes me react (positively) “Oh, theater can do that” either in the moment or after. It keeps me engaged, makes me gasp, puts me in a fit of laughter or wiping tears. Exposes /exchanges vulnerabilities. And later, later, it’s stuck with me, perhaps haunting and/or giving me hope…

So, I have a list. It grows. To choose two that I’ll never forget: Sarah Kane’s Blasted and Baryshnikov and Merce Cunningham dancing a duet at Lincoln Center.

I love that there’s so many ways to be/create/define theatrical – to transform a space and create an event with or without actual spoken words that’s either very real or imaginative/ parallel/perpendicular/potential to what we know in our every day lives.

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

A: Advice that I need, too. Here’s ten things, lists can go on forever…and I’m going to send this in, finally.

Ask questions such as “what am I curious about?” I like to write down my initial impulse for a play, story, project on an index card and post it, keep it handy. Another good question is “What is the play/story you are not writing?” And then go and write it. Make it immediate.

Trust your gut. Get underneath/inside it but don’t overthink it.

José Rivera once told me that early on he established a writing schedule that reflects a full-time job. The times I have done this, I have experienced the difference it makes. I haven’t been able to sustain it financially yet consistently. And hence, I have/had varied dayjobs, that at least have been inspirational. But…

Read, write, seek theater anywhere and everywhere.

Feed also on the other art forms. Visuals and music help me find the atmosphere and sensuous layers of a world and help lock me in as I write/create.

Travel. Capture what you experience. Use it. Live in the midst of it.

Find your people. Find a muse(s). Collaborate. Join/start/get into writing/theater groups where people know how to give you notes and deadlines and vice versa that take you to the next level and help bring your ideas onto and off the page in space, with audience.

Find mentors and be a mentor. Maintain your own voice. So you also need to isolate, have alone time and face yourself.

Collide what you think you know with what you think you don’t know. Think chemistry experiments. Discoveries are made by doing the work, opening up, making connections and through these “accidents”.

Stop getting in your own way. Focus. Persist. Make/Do. Fail/Succeed. Share again and again. Survive.

Q: Plugs?

A: Come to my workshop in November at LPAC http://www.lagcc.cuny.edu/lpac/.

I have a very work-in-progress website (where I need to upload info on my plays) http://joytomasko.com

Visit my tumblr. http://wordstimesthree.tumblr.com/

And since you are online reading this now-take a moment to pop on over and sign up for Meredith Lynsey Schade’s StageReads http://stagereads.com/

Participate in Kristoffer Diaz’s Free Scenes http://theheavylifting.tumblr.com/

Read more of Adam’s interviews http://aszym.blogspot.com/

And check out some articles in HowlRound. http://www.howlround.com/

And Culturebot: http://www.culturebot.org/

Visit Cloud City in Brooklyn https://www.facebook.com/cloudcitybk

Now, go see something. And make something. And release it into the world.








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I Interview Playwrights Part 600: Joy Tomasko

Joy Tomasko

Hometown: Bethel, Connecticut after a short stint in Maryland

Current Town: Queens, NY

Q: What are you working on now?

A: This past year I had a playwright residency with fellow writer Eric Holmes and curator (writer) Les Hunter at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center in Long Island City.

I wrote a new full length play entitled Surrender.


Usually you get one reading of a play, but we had three staged readings, one after the other, which gave me time to really hear and experience the play and do a few rewrites in between, especially in regards to the ending.

In November I’ll have a workshop production again at LPAC and so I’m working on more expansive revisions.

Surrender is a dystopic play that I imagine in a future/parallel world after there’s been an information sharing burst/crash and a society that evolves/devolves out of it. The characters and audience exist in a world maintained by The Administration’s Protection Policy. We follow the main character D Thomson who works as a Reporter of Loss and Recovery. She helps to track and share what we hold most dear. But she’s been doing her job too long…

Q: What else are you working on?

A: I’m connecting the dots.


I’ve been exploring intimate theater/immersive interactive experiences/moments of return. My frequent collaborator, Sarah Murphy and I are playing with a Words, Words, Words project that has had many iterations – from an interactive performance in a sculpture park in the Hamptons, to online Literary Valentines – recommending books and arranging bibliophile penpals to sending and receiving postcards to//from friends and strangers on Governors Island. GI is a fascination of mine, even more so when I learned that my great grandparents met there in 1900. I’m going to write something that plays with their story. I have his military and court martial record (he was in jail on the island). She was a servant/cook newly emigrated from Ireland.

I’m also writing 3 short narratives for videos for the new Civil Rights Museum in Atlanta.

I’m posing for a painting inspired by John Alexander White’s The Repose (on view at the MET) for my friend the painter Elizabeth Beard. We talk art, process, life while working – it’s fun to be a muse.

Soon, I’ll be helping re-imagine the Jackson Heights Trilogy with Theatre 167 and director Ari Laura Kreith for a site-specific experience for the Queens Museum of Art’s Queens International.

And there are other things cooking, some with artist Phoebe Joel…some of my own projects that I’ve kept in the crockpot simmering simmering simmering and now need to be served.

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

A: Growing up, my family would drive down to Ft. Lauderdale to visit my grandparents. One time, after we arrived at the beach, as I was running into the water, I felt a sharp pain in my foot and leg. I had stepped on a Portuguese man o’war. I hadn’t noticed that the beach, crowded with people was also crowded with all these beautiful, blue and yet dangerous, venomous creatures. A tentacle wrapped itself up and around my leg. I was paralyzed for the rest of the day. And then I ran back out there to look at them again, a bit more cautiously and curiously and then later I researched them. They are not jellyfish even though they are similarly gelatinous. The allure and magic of bioluminescence. You think you can see through them but you can’t see everything. There’s still a mystery to figure out and/or imagine. A metaphor, at times, for the process of creating and experiencing theater.

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

A: So much about theater is business. And business in the USA…Oh, capitalism. And lots of –isms. Money. Politics. I, like many others, more than long for equality and get angry at the consequences of greed and insecurities and...

In my little utopian mind, I think every artist should have an artistic home that is passionate about committing to artistic growth overtime. Producing at least three works at each venue, understanding some may fail. Some may fail big. And some may totally surprise and surprise in ways that redefine the word success. And the homes should rotate and there should be a transition period where the previous artist(s) and new artist(s) overlap. And for every performance there are paid and free tickets perhaps given out in lotteries. And every artist gets paid a living wage. And artists must also curate – mentor and encourage other artists. I like that Joe Papp at some point gave each space at the Public to a few different artists/directors and said curate. I think curating should be not only of people you know but also go far, outside your known and find someone(s) you are curious about.

I want to curate a space/event(s) someday. And more immediately, I’m going to stop sitting on my plays.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: I admire the process and the masterpiece. I have a lot of heroes in theater, dance, music, art, literature, science, life…This question makes me think of Adrienne Kennedy’s People Who Led to My Plays. (Perhaps that’s been referenced in other interviews already.) I’m happy that my parents introduced me to theater as a kid, that I started experimenting with it, sometimes using a pool table as a stage at a friend’s house. Oh, the classics from the Greeks to Shakespeare to O’Neill (and more) that were introduced in middle and high school, and finally spending countless hours with everyone in the theater at Drew in undergrad. The people I encountered while working at The Public Theater under George C. Wolfe, Bonnie Metzgar and John Dias to the collaborators, peers and mentors at CalArts, to the people I’ve shared with through travels in the US and abroad and through the Women’s Project, The Playwrights Center, Theatre 167 and LPAC. So many of whom have been interviewed by you, Adam. And I can’t leave this answer without saying Kafka and Beckett.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A: I seek out a wide range. I’ve long been engaged by promenade style theater thanks to the Macnas theater company’s production I saw in 1996 in Galway of Rhymes from the Ancient Mariner, and many immersive productions since (I’ve directed a couple too). Theater that surprises me, that makes me react (positively) “Oh, theater can do that” either in the moment or after. It keeps me engaged, makes me gasp, puts me in a fit of laughter or wiping tears. Exposes /exchanges vulnerabilities. And later, later, it’s stuck with me, perhaps haunting and/or giving me hope…

So, I have a list. It grows. To choose two that I’ll never forget: Sarah Kane’s Blasted and Baryshnikov and Merce Cunningham dancing a duet at Lincoln Center.

I love that there’s so many ways to be/create/define theatrical – to transform a space and create an event with or without actual spoken words that’s either very real or imaginative/ parallel/perpendicular/potential to what we know in our every day lives.

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

A: Advice that I need, too. Here’s ten things, lists can go on forever…and I’m going to send this in, finally.

Ask questions such as “what am I curious about?” I like to write down my initial impulse for a play, story, project on an index card and post it, keep it handy. Another good question is “What is the play/story you are not writing?” And then go and write it. Make it immediate.

Trust your gut. Get underneath/inside it but don’t overthink it.

José Rivera once told me that early on he established a writing schedule that reflects a full-time job. The times I have done this, I have experienced the difference it makes. I haven’t been able to sustain it financially yet consistently. And hence, I have/had varied dayjobs, that at least have been inspirational. But…

Read, write, seek theater anywhere and everywhere.

Feed also on the other art forms. Visuals and music help me find the atmosphere and sensuous layers of a world and help lock me in as I write/create.

Travel. Capture what you experience. Use it. Live in the midst of it.

Find your people. Find a muse(s). Collaborate. Join/start/get into writing/theater groups where people know how to give you notes and deadlines and vice versa that take you to the next level and help bring your ideas onto and off the page in space, with audience.

Find mentors and be a mentor. Maintain your own voice. So you also need to isolate, have alone time and face yourself.

Collide what you think you know with what you think you don’t know. Think chemistry experiments. Discoveries are made by doing the work, opening up, making connections and through these “accidents”.

Stop getting in your own way. Focus. Persist. Make/Do. Fail/Succeed. Share again and again. Survive.

Q: Plugs?

A: Come to my workshop in November at LPAC http://www.lagcc.cuny.edu/lpac/.

I have a very work-in-progress website (where I need to upload info on my plays) http://joytomasko.com

Visit my tumblr. http://wordstimesthree.tumblr.com/

And since you are online reading this now-take a moment to pop on over and sign up for Meredith Lynsey Schade’s StageReads http://stagereads.com/

Participate in Kristoffer Diaz’s Free Scenes http://theheavylifting.tumblr.com/

Read more of Adam’s interviews http://aszym.blogspot.com/

And check out some articles in HowlRound. http://www.howlround.com/

And Culturebot: http://www.culturebot.org/

Visit Cloud City in Brooklyn https://www.facebook.com/cloudcitybk

Now, go see something. And make something. And release it into the world.








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Support The Blog Or Support The Art




















Mailing list to be invited to readings, productions, and events



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Books by Adam

I Interview Playwrights Part 599: Aurin Squire

Aurin Squire

Hometown: Miami, Florida

Current Town: Queens, NY

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I'm working on a lot of different small and large projects. I co-wrote a historical drama titled “Hansberry & Baldwin” with Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj. The play is about a series of meetings Lorraine Hansberry and James Baldwin had with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in 1963. These meetings were an attempt to address civil rights concerns through Negro leaders and it's quite remarkable that two artists could actually be negotiating policy with an Attorney General to effect history. Rajendra approached me with the idea at the beginning of this year and we began hammering it out. Now we're getting to the final revisions and tweaks.

I've discovered that co-writing a play can be fun. The only experience I've had with that is working on musicals and an opera with composers, but it's not the same as co-writing a play.

After that I'm writing an experimental performing arts piece for a Berlin museum putting on an exhibit by artist/curator Melissa Steckbauer. A few years ago, I snuck on to the set of a “Burger King” commercial and pretended to be an actor so I could get paid as an extra. I placed on set at a table with a bunch of other artists, one of whom was Melissa, who is an erotica photographer and painter. I went to her show Bushwick and she moved away to Berlin and her career has taken off. I'm creating a feminist satirical performing arts piece that's interactive. I love the idea of doing something experimental for a museum crowd. And yes, I got paid for the Burger King commercial and was a featured extra in an ad probably running in some obscure Baltic country.

I'm revising my comedy “Defacing Michael Jackson” for its world premiere this fall at Nuyorican Poets Cafe. “Defacing” was a short play I wrote while in school that got published by Samuel French. Two years ago I decided to change the plot and expand the story into a full plot. The play was a finalist at Princess Grace and was picked up by Redshirt Entertainment, a new commercial production company. I'm the resident playwright at Redshirt this upcoming season so I'll be writing other shows as well for their ensemble of actors.

I'm also adapting the “Bhagavad Gita” to the present-day Bronx. Arjuna is a soldier returning home from Afghanistan and suffering from PTSD. The project is called “Red Mind” and it's a multimedia piece involving electronica and video. I'm working with Matt Vorzimer, an extremely talented composer/music producer.

Q: What else are you working on?

A: In January I wrote a short play called “African Americana” that premiered at Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX). I expanded this into a full-length satire, “Obama-ology” that I'm rewriting this summer.

Also this year I wrote an airplane drama “Freefalling” that premiered at Barrington Stage Company and filmed for Williamstown TV: http://vimeo.com/67827216.

“Freefalling” just won the Fiat Lux (Let There Be Light) from a Catholic Church parish and it's inspired me to expand this into a full-length play this summer as well.

To pay my bills I'm writing/producing web videos, which is actually very interesting. I wrote and produced a slate of funny webisodes last year for MISTER, a gay dating app. I'm doing that again this year but also writing/producing videos for LearnLiberty, a Libertarian media company. I'm a left-wing Libertarian from college day.

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 grandmother, Lynn Maddox, taught me how to write the alphabet. I learned in her yard with a broken off limb from a tree and a plot of dirt in front of the aloe plants. I started writing the alphabet, words, and then sentences. When I would finish something and it was satisfactory, I would sweep away the words with my feet and continue writing. She would take me on trips to the store and make me write a story about it afterward. She would tell me to think of details and then piece them together in a pattern. Years later, I discovered a story I wrote about taking the Metro-Dade bus with her over the bridge to go to the K-Mart in Miami Beach. When I read the story again 20 years later I was shocked. There was a sort of narrative I had created by just describing the step by step process of getting on a bus. This was 1983 and I was four years old because I'm describing 'pink islands' in the bay. I was describing Christo's arts project he did for Miami Beach that year where he covered the smaller bay islands in pink cloth. Unfortunately, the cloth wasn't biodegradable and was killing wildlife so they had to take it down. But for a four-year-old child to see these massive pink islands was incredible. And I even drew a picture to go along with the story.

Whenever I'm stuck I go back to those images: me in the front yard writing in the wet dirt with a stick and those pink islands. Writing should be as primitive and connected to the environment as writing in the earth. And it should invoke the wonder of a child staring at magical islands.

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

A:  Obviously making it more affordable and expanding the audience would give our craft a huge boost. But I think it would also enrich the lives of many people in the audience. From elementary school through high school, I saw 2 plays. That's it. “Dreamgirls” at community college and “Midsummer Nights Dream” as a school field trip to an empty theatre. Both plays were incredibly moving spectacles and invoked a sense of wonder, but that was my entire theatre experience until I went to Northwestern University. When I came home from my freshman winter break I was eager to see theatre (capital 'T') and picked up the Miami Herald and saw a play by Lee Blessings. “Black Sheep.” It sounded funny. I called up the theatre and they informed me that tickets started at $40. I couldn't afford that. I was also used to movie prices. I wanted to know if there was a student discount and they said 'no.' Before hanging up, I asked if there were available seats and the operator assured me 'oh yes, there are LOTS of open seats.'

If theatre was more affordable and had a younger audience, that would trigger a lot of changes in content and the direction of American theatre.

Aesthetically I would like to see more challenging plays that break traditional narratives. I remember reading “The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer” and discovering 'theatre of debate' where the argument itself was the focus. Then later on Augusto Boal's 'theatre of the oppressed' in Albuquerque when creating a scenario for underprivileged Mexican families involving domestic violence. These were light bulb moments.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Susan Booth got me to write plays at Northwestern so she's my hero. I was taking her class and unknowingly wrote a violent opening scene between a father and son that involved an inflatable red ball and a butcher knife. Professor Booth pulled me aside. She could have crushed me and told me I was 'doing it wrong,' I probably would have never tried to write a play again if discouraged in that moment. Instead the professor quietly asked me 'what writers influenced me?'' I had no idea what she was talking about and said so. She looked at me for a long beat and finally gave her judgment: I should keep writing. And I could see that she wanted to say something else but held back. She allowed me to fill in the silence. I immediately asked if she would produce this play at the Goodman Theatre. She laughed. That was the end of it and the beginning of something else.

August Wilson would be the other hero. That summer after Professor Booth's class I went to LA to be a literary intern for 2 movie companies. I lived in a UCLA frat house and went to the campus bookstore frequently. One Saturday a play jumped out from the others on the shelf: “Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.” I sat down on the ground and read the whole thing right there. I felt so strange afterward, like someone had reached inside my mind and bent a few wires around. I immediately went home and began writing an epic play about Cubans and Blacks in Miami. It was 190 pages, spanned generations, covered the South Florida landscape, and was a mess. I managed to get it down to 130 pages. But I would constantly refer to “Ma Rainey's Black Bottom” to simplify. Think like August.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Theatre that makes me uncomfortable. Theatre where the writer is trying to figure something out on stage or is fighting for their integrity, sanity, or basic humanity.

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

A: Hang out around as many different people and listen. Listen, listen, listen. Try to remove judgment or the 'advice voice' of what they should be doing. Listen. My teachers made me listen, transcribe conversation of strangers on the street, and find the rhythms in their voice. In my entire four years at Northwestern, I had the same work-study job: radio news. I interviewed professors over the phone, transcribed their answers, and edited it all together for AP and UPI wire stories on the radio. All I did was listen to voices. People have some pretty funny idiosyncratic quirks and rhythms when they're allowed to speak. And their speech is a window into how they think and see the world.

And read the classics as well as poetry.

Stay at the fringes. Be uncomfortable.

Be the canary in the mine for your family, your friends, or your tribe. Tell the story of their extinction.

Q: Plug?

A: I'll let you know more during the fall. This is writing time.

I do have a blog: sixperfections.blogspot.com.

Six Perfections is a compilation of essays, poetry, videos, and reviews I've written over the years.









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Books by Adam

I Interview Playwrights Part 599: Aurin Squire

Aurin Squire

Hometown: Miami, Florida

Current Town: Queens, NY

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I'm working on a lot of different small and large projects. I co-wrote a historical drama titled “Hansberry & Baldwin” with Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj. The play is about a series of meetings Lorraine Hansberry and James Baldwin had with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in 1963. These meetings were an attempt to address civil rights concerns through Negro leaders and it's quite remarkable that two artists could actually be negotiating policy with an Attorney General to effect history. Rajendra approached me with the idea at the beginning of this year and we began hammering it out. Now we're getting to the final revisions and tweaks.

I've discovered that co-writing a play can be fun. The only experience I've had with that is working on musicals and an opera with composers, but it's not the same as co-writing a play.

After that I'm writing an experimental performing arts piece for a Berlin museum putting on an exhibit by artist/curator Melissa Steckbauer. A few years ago, I snuck on to the set of a “Burger King” commercial and pretended to be an actor so I could get paid as an extra. I placed on set at a table with a bunch of other artists, one of whom was Melissa, who is an erotica photographer and painter. I went to her show Bushwick and she moved away to Berlin and her career has taken off. I'm creating a feminist satirical performing arts piece that's interactive. I love the idea of doing something experimental for a museum crowd. And yes, I got paid for the Burger King commercial and was a featured extra in an ad probably running in some obscure Baltic country.

I'm revising my comedy “Defacing Michael Jackson” for its world premiere this fall at Nuyorican Poets Cafe. “Defacing” was a short play I wrote while in school that got published by Samuel French. Two years ago I decided to change the plot and expand the story into a full plot. The play was a finalist at Princess Grace and was picked up by Redshirt Entertainment, a new commercial production company. I'm the resident playwright at Redshirt this upcoming season so I'll be writing other shows as well for their ensemble of actors.

I'm also adapting the “Bhagavad Gita” to the present-day Bronx. Arjuna is a soldier returning home from Afghanistan and suffering from PTSD. The project is called “Red Mind” and it's a multimedia piece involving electronica and video. I'm working with Matt Vorzimer, an extremely talented composer/music producer.

Q: What else are you working on?

A: In January I wrote a short play called “African Americana” that premiered at Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX). I expanded this into a full-length satire, “Obama-ology” that I'm rewriting this summer.

Also this year I wrote an airplane drama “Freefalling” that premiered at Barrington Stage Company and filmed for Williamstown TV: http://vimeo.com/67827216.

“Freefalling” just won the Fiat Lux (Let There Be Light) from a Catholic Church parish and it's inspired me to expand this into a full-length play this summer as well.

To pay my bills I'm writing/producing web videos, which is actually very interesting. I wrote and produced a slate of funny webisodes last year for MISTER, a gay dating app. I'm doing that again this year but also writing/producing videos for LearnLiberty, a Libertarian media company. I'm a left-wing Libertarian from college day.

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 grandmother, Lynn Maddox, taught me how to write the alphabet. I learned in her yard with a broken off limb from a tree and a plot of dirt in front of the aloe plants. I started writing the alphabet, words, and then sentences. When I would finish something and it was satisfactory, I would sweep away the words with my feet and continue writing. She would take me on trips to the store and make me write a story about it afterward. She would tell me to think of details and then piece them together in a pattern. Years later, I discovered a story I wrote about taking the Metro-Dade bus with her over the bridge to go to the K-Mart in Miami Beach. When I read the story again 20 years later I was shocked. There was a sort of narrative I had created by just describing the step by step process of getting on a bus. This was 1983 and I was four years old because I'm describing 'pink islands' in the bay. I was describing Christo's arts project he did for Miami Beach that year where he covered the smaller bay islands in pink cloth. Unfortunately, the cloth wasn't biodegradable and was killing wildlife so they had to take it down. But for a four-year-old child to see these massive pink islands was incredible. And I even drew a picture to go along with the story.

Whenever I'm stuck I go back to those images: me in the front yard writing in the wet dirt with a stick and those pink islands. Writing should be as primitive and connected to the environment as writing in the earth. And it should invoke the wonder of a child staring at magical islands.

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

A:  Obviously making it more affordable and expanding the audience would give our craft a huge boost. But I think it would also enrich the lives of many people in the audience. From elementary school through high school, I saw 2 plays. That's it. “Dreamgirls” at community college and “Midsummer Nights Dream” as a school field trip to an empty theatre. Both plays were incredibly moving spectacles and invoked a sense of wonder, but that was my entire theatre experience until I went to Northwestern University. When I came home from my freshman winter break I was eager to see theatre (capital 'T') and picked up the Miami Herald and saw a play by Lee Blessings. “Black Sheep.” It sounded funny. I called up the theatre and they informed me that tickets started at $40. I couldn't afford that. I was also used to movie prices. I wanted to know if there was a student discount and they said 'no.' Before hanging up, I asked if there were available seats and the operator assured me 'oh yes, there are LOTS of open seats.'

If theatre was more affordable and had a younger audience, that would trigger a lot of changes in content and the direction of American theatre.

Aesthetically I would like to see more challenging plays that break traditional narratives. I remember reading “The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer” and discovering 'theatre of debate' where the argument itself was the focus. Then later on Augusto Boal's 'theatre of the oppressed' in Albuquerque when creating a scenario for underprivileged Mexican families involving domestic violence. These were light bulb moments.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Susan Booth got me to write plays at Northwestern so she's my hero. I was taking her class and unknowingly wrote a violent opening scene between a father and son that involved an inflatable red ball and a butcher knife. Professor Booth pulled me aside. She could have crushed me and told me I was 'doing it wrong,' I probably would have never tried to write a play again if discouraged in that moment. Instead the professor quietly asked me 'what writers influenced me?'' I had no idea what she was talking about and said so. She looked at me for a long beat and finally gave her judgment: I should keep writing. And I could see that she wanted to say something else but held back. She allowed me to fill in the silence. I immediately asked if she would produce this play at the Goodman Theatre. She laughed. That was the end of it and the beginning of something else.

August Wilson would be the other hero. That summer after Professor Booth's class I went to LA to be a literary intern for 2 movie companies. I lived in a UCLA frat house and went to the campus bookstore frequently. One Saturday a play jumped out from the others on the shelf: “Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.” I sat down on the ground and read the whole thing right there. I felt so strange afterward, like someone had reached inside my mind and bent a few wires around. I immediately went home and began writing an epic play about Cubans and Blacks in Miami. It was 190 pages, spanned generations, covered the South Florida landscape, and was a mess. I managed to get it down to 130 pages. But I would constantly refer to “Ma Rainey's Black Bottom” to simplify. Think like August.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Theatre that makes me uncomfortable. Theatre where the writer is trying to figure something out on stage or is fighting for their integrity, sanity, or basic humanity.

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

A: Hang out around as many different people and listen. Listen, listen, listen. Try to remove judgment or the 'advice voice' of what they should be doing. Listen. My teachers made me listen, transcribe conversation of strangers on the street, and find the rhythms in their voice. In my entire four years at Northwestern, I had the same work-study job: radio news. I interviewed professors over the phone, transcribed their answers, and edited it all together for AP and UPI wire stories on the radio. All I did was listen to voices. People have some pretty funny idiosyncratic quirks and rhythms when they're allowed to speak. And their speech is a window into how they think and see the world.

And read the classics as well as poetry.

Stay at the fringes. Be uncomfortable.

Be the canary in the mine for your family, your friends, or your tribe. Tell the story of their extinction.

Q: Plug?

A: I'll let you know more during the fall. This is writing time.

I do have a blog: sixperfections.blogspot.com.

Six Perfections is a compilation of essays, poetry, videos, and reviews I've written over the years.









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I Interview Playwrights Part 598: Catya McMullen

Catya McMullen


Hometown: NYC (Chanukah Heights, Upper West Side)

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about Rubber Ducks and Sunsets.


A:  It’s about five people with varied relationships with this guy who just died. But hopefully, it’s not “that play” about the people in their 20’s and their feelings that we’ve all seen. It is about people in their 20’s, though. And feelings.
It’s about a journey through grief, love, friendship and self-discovery.
It’s about smart people who tell jokes instead of face reality.
It’s about the way friends can become family. It’s about the idea that with great light comes great darkness and to experience one is to experience the other.
But, music also plays a HUGE role in the piece and really helps drive it. Scott Klopfenstein of Reel Big Fish wrote the music for the play. (It isn’t a musical. It’s a play with music). There are these series of concerts throughout the play. Scott’s music is spectacular.
The set and other production elements are awesome. Ground UP is great because they don’t sacrifice and are by no means a bare bones company. The cast is terrific. Man they’re rad. You should come just to see sweet-faced JD Taylor and his guitar.
This play is immensely fun, has lots and lots o’ jokes, and I think is pretty moving. I write plays where, hopefully, you’ll laugh and cry in the same sitting. People seem to be doing both with this one.

Q:  What else are you working on now?


A:  I’m currently developing my play, “Rock Me Like a Hurricane.” (I’m still not sure if that title is a joke or not)

In September, I’ll be doing my September Challenge, where I write a ten-minute play for a week for a month. Then, in mid-October, there will be a brunch that showcases the readings of the plays. Last year, Matthew Klein, another playwright, joined me in the challenge. We hosted an 80-person brunch. It was awesome.

Additionally, I’m going to do another round of workshops with The Middle Voice Theater Company (Rattlestick’s Apprentice Company) for my play “Everything is Probably Going to Be Okay.” It takes place ten years apart on a porch in Durham, North Carolina. It’s about these two girls, Grace and Sam, who make a pact when they’re seventeen to have the most number of meaningful experiences possible (they stare at light to experience blindness, they read poetry under the stars, they beat each other up, they play live action Frogger on highway 85 etc.). They fall in love. Things go array. The play is framed ten years later, when Grace shows back up trying to find out what was right about the stupid stuff they did when they were kids. The problem is that she keeps sneaking off with Sam’s seventeen-year-old brother, Syke, doing the same kind of things that got the girls in trouble a decade earlier. I think it’s a really exciting piece and I’m SO excited to keep developing it.

Oh and Scott Klopfenstein and I are about to start writing a musical. Dude is a genius.

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 in the seventh grade, I had to do a Humanities project on Iran.
I decided to write a piece where we staged the Iranian hostage crisis, surprise kidnapping my class with super soakers. I doubt it was historically accurate. It ended with a musical number of a parody of the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want it That Way,” (which was a hit single that time) called “Iran is That Way.” We actually figured out which direction Iran was so that the song would exist as entertainment and a teaching moment.
Still having ambitions of being an actor, I played Ayatollah Khomeini.
The problem was that my teacher was so excited about the project that she invited another class. Deeply committed, we took all those suckers hostage. It, by no means, worked. It was kind of sad and funny.
But we had food. And the musical number. So I still count it as a success.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?


A:  I wish I had a more interesting answer to this question.
I think I more have theatrical friend crushes than heroes (although I for sure have the people whose work has changed me). A lot of the mid career writers whose work I’ve followed closely in the last few years are new heroes of mine.
Sure, I love me some Tennessee Williams and Pinter and all the others my BA in theater facilitated me to read.
Lynn Nottage has taken my breath away. There are others Sam Hunter, Raviv Joseph, Sarah Ruhl, Annie Baker, Madeleine George (basically Playwrights Horizons past and future seasons). Bekah Brunstetter is prolifically wonderful. Lucy Thurber has changed my life and the way I hear and revise my stuff and I love her work. Jackie Sibblies Drury.
Taylor Mac makes me lose my mind in the best possible way.
And so much more.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?


A:  Plays where you can laugh and cry in the same sitting. Plays that make me think and feel. Plays driven by heart not concept. Plays that merge the two.
Plays that are inherently theatrical. Plays that use spectacle but don’t sacrifice story in the process. Like Blackwatch. And “We Are Proud to Present…” Whoa that one shook me up. I like to be shaken up by a piece.

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


A:  Write. Set structures where you are accountable to others with concrete deadlines. That’s why I started the September Challenge. I was homeless and jobless and knew I needed to write and everything else would figure itself out so I emailed some actor friends and said “I’m going to write a play a week and then cook you pancakes on X date and you are going to read them please?”
“Rubber Ducks and Sunsets” started with a similar idea. I approached Ground UP Productions with the idea of developing a piece for their younger company members. Collaboration. Boom.
Also, have coffee with anyone who might have useful experience. Ask questions. Ask advice. People are willing to help.
Build a community of actors and directors who get what you’re doing.
Find mentorship.
Do living room readings.
See as much as you can, both readings and productions.
Have friends not in theater. Hang out with them.
If in New York: leave New York regularly.

Q:  Plugs, please:


A:  Rubber Ducks and Sunsets produced by Ground UP Productions at the Gene Frankel Theater at 24 Bond Street. Info and tickets at www.groundupproductions.org
We run for a limited engagement until 7/27.

Check out my website catyamcmullen.weebly.com!
There will be info posted there closer to the date about The September Challenge Brunch. And other opportunities to see my work.


 



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