Adam Szymkowicz's Blog, page 88

I Interview Playwrights Part 504: Dan Caffrey

Dan Caffrey

Hometown: I was born in Camden, New Jersey, moved around a lot until middle school, then pretty much grew up in New Port Richey, Florida before attending college at FSU in Tallahassee.

Current town: Chicago!

Q:  What are you working on now?



A:  I developed a play over the summer with Red Tape Theatre about the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916, which are the first documented shark attacks in American history. In the script, I try and remain somewhat historically accurate while using the attacks as a springboard to examine how people deal, or don't deal, with their own personal fears. The shark is an actual character, but in a good way. I hope. So yeah, I was really happy with it and am chipping away at a next draft before I send it out.

Q:  How would you characterize the Chicago theatre scene?



A:  Scrappy. Adventurous. Surprising. I'm always amazed at just the sheer volume of good work that's being done here, particularly in the storefront world. It's been said countless times before, but Chicago truly has a balls-to-the-wall sort of attitude when it comes to theater. Also, you'll see actors, designers, and directors work on a show at one of the bigger theaters (Steppenwolf, Goodman, etc.), then do something at one of the fringe companies around town. It happens more than you'd think, and that's always cool to me.

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 a real skinny kid, so when I was 15 or so, I wanted to start lifting weights. My Dad had this workout book that had pictures of people demonstrating how to do each exercise. One of the photos was for a dumbbell rear deltoid row, which you're obviously supposed to do for each arm. But the picture only showed someone exercising their left arm, so that's the only arm I worked out for the next couple months. One day, my Mom got worried because I was standing all crooked. I had scoliosis when I was 6, and she thought it had come back. Upon closer examination, my parents discovered the crookedness was due to my one freakishly large lat muscle. I mean it wasn't really that big relatively speaking, but it was like twice the size of my other lat muscle, which was basically nonexistent. After telling my Dad about it, I learned that you're supposed to work out both lat muscles and not take books too literally. That movie Lady In The Water is really terrible, but Freddy Rodriguez plays a guy who only works out one side of his body, which I think is pretty funny.

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?: Hmmm. That's a good question. I'll probably smack myself later for saying this, but I don't think I'd change anything. I know there's a lot of crappy stuff out there and maybe some bad trends, but there's also, at least to me, never been a shortage of good theater to see. That applies to pop culture in general. People always say this sucks or that sucks, or this is what's wrong with such and such these days. But at the end of the day, I always think it's a good thing when so many people are creating art, and that there's always been a berth of culture to discover. In fact, one of my biggest fears is that I won't discover all the wonderful art that's out there before I die. It's really overwhelming in the best way possible. Sorry, that sort of got away from your original question, but I always hear people bitching about what they think is wrong with the theater scene or movies or the music industry, and to me, that's just silly. Yes, it sucks that what you may view as low-brow or terrible art gets the success and the attention, but it also shouldn't keep you from seeing or doing what you love. And there's been plenty of great things that have achieved mainstream success over the years.

Actually, you know what? Theater should be cheaper. That's the one thing I'd change. I know it's not practical, but in a perfect world, it would never cost more than $20 to see a play.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?



A:  Oh wow. Ummm....Martin McDonagh, Paula Vogel, Conor McPherson, Christopher Durang, Adam Rapp, Craig Wright, Sarah Kane. I actually really dig Rebecca Gilman. I didn't think she'd be the sort of writer I'd be interested in, but my girlfriend start plowing through a bunch of her plays and recommended them to me. Spinning Into Butter, Boy Gets Girl, The Crowd You're In With, The Glory of Living––those are all great. That last one has an awful title, but I think it's an incredible script. I didn't like Dollhouse very much though. But for the most part, I think Rebecca Gilman tackles social issues in a really complex and interesting way. And I'm not someone who usually digs overtly political theater. I feel like she often gets a bad rap because students overdo her monologues and scenes in college acting classes. But like I said, I was pleasantly floored by her stuff.


Let's see, who else? I've only talked about playwrights so far, which I guess makes sense. I should probably throw some actors or directors in there too. Oh, the Handspring Puppet Company for sure. Jesus, they're good. And Trey Parker and Matt Stone. I've only heard the soundtrack to Book of Mormon and haven't had the pleasure of seeing it yet, but I'm a South Park fanatic, and I love the theatricality and clear obsession with musicals that they've always brought to their work. And while I of course don't know them personally, they seem to just do whatever the hell they want without any consideration of what people will like or get offended by. And I think that's very important.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?



A:  I like all sorts of things, but I always get excited about plays that tackle unrealistic things in a realistic fashion, particularly fantastical and paranormal subject matter. My favorite author is Stephen King. So that should say a lot.

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



A:  It sounds super corny and I'm by no means an expert on playwriting or anything really, but just trust your gut. When starting out as a playwright, it's so easy to get caught up in the technicality of format, stage directions, etc. Just write what comes to you and don't feel hampered down by any sort of rules. The beauty of theater as opposed to other mediums is that it's so flexible, yet challenging. Embrace that.

Q:  Plugs, please:



A:  I'd actually like to plug a show from my theater company, Tympanic. We're currently running a play by Brooke Allen, whom is just a killer, killer playwright. It's called Ruby Wilder, and runs through October 28th at Teatro Luna. It's sort of a revenge tale, but like a really subverted and unique take on the revenge tale. It's spooky, sad, surreal, and many other words that begin with the letter "s." Seriously, it's just great and I'm really proud of all the designers and performers who made it a kickass show. Actually, I should add them to my list of theatrical heroes: Brooke Allen, James D. Palmer, Joshua Ellison, Emett Rensin, Casey Bentley, Dustin Pettegrew, Brian Berman, Maxwell Shults, Charlotte Mae Ellison, Chrissy Weisenburger, Paige Sawin, Christine Vrem-Ydstie, Joshua Davis, Alex Kyger, Sean Thomas, Chris Acevedo. Phew!

But yeah, they all rock and if you're reading this, you should check out that show. More info at the link and below!

Ruby Wilder
Through October 28th at Teatro Luna (3914 N Clark St)
Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m.Tickets available at www.tympanictheatre.org


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I Interview Playwrights Part 503: Mark Mason

Mark Mason

Hometown: Joliet, Illinois

Current Town: Chicago

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  In January, InFusion Theatre Company will produce the world premiere of my play Allotment Annie at Strawdog Theatre in Chicago. It’s a twisted dark comedy about sex, money and murder in small-town America during World War II, directed by Bridgette O’Connor-Harney and starring Kate Black-Spence, Beau Forbes, C.J. Langdon, Carl Lindberg, Mallory Nees and Amy Katherine Rapp, and we have a terrific dramaturg named Jamie Bragg helping the play be all that it can be.

There are also several plays I’ve been working on and perfecting, editing, revising, etc. First is Black Ice Coffins, a play I wrote with writer/poet/actress Elizabeth Kay Kron and based on the true story of a young thief in the early 1960s whose exposure of the Summerdale Station burglary ring scandalized the Chicago Police Department: that particular play, taking place around New Year’s Day 1960 in the meanest places of Chicago is probably the most sordid and nightmarish thing I’ve ever done and is told though a lot of Beat-inspired poetry, much of it written by Kay. Also there’s A Perfect Shade of Skyline Gray, a lush Douglas Sirk-inspired melodrama based on the 1957 disappearance of Molly Zelko and a little-known incident in the life of Robert F. Kennedy. That play had a staged reading as a part of New Leaf Theatre’s final Treehouse Reading Series and I’m currently in the early stages of working on a film adaptation with director Malachi Leopold. Along with that is A Family Emergency, a sort-of epic tragedy about a family slowly disintegrating over ten years, starting on September 11th, 2001; Red Thunder & the Vodka Martini Surprise, a phantasmagoric espionage thriller based loosely on the Anna Chapman spy case; Private Family Conduct, a Greek tragedy about two New York investment tycoon heirs whose romantic and business endeavors lead to destruction and death in fall 2008; and finally Junk Girls, a play about three young women of extraordinarily different backgrounds who get stranded in a small Minnesota town by a snowstorm while on a mission to inform a sullen bartender that her husband’s been killed in Iraq. There’s also a piece called Riot Call, a play about Chicago’s 1919 race riots and commissioned by The Inconvenience’s Head of Theatre Programming/actor Walter Briggs, who directed a staged reading of it at The Den. That one I’d especially like to get off the ground due to the elemental power of the bloody and horrific true story that it is.


The only thing I’m currently trying to finish, i.e. get to writing “The End,” etc. is an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ The Chimes, in many ways a quintessential Dickens Christmas story, but I’d like to move the setting to a run-down V.A. hospital on Chicago’s South Side in December 1972. Hopefully I’ll have that done in time for us to do a reading of that in time for Christmas this year. I like doing adaptations because it’s an incredible challenge, to take something that exists in one medium and try and make it successful in a totally different one without diluting its essence but still somehow making it your own work and caring about/loving the characters like you would your own.

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 don’t know if there’s any one story or moment that made me want to be a writer, any kind of James Joyce-style epiphany for me that way, because I think it’s what I always wanted to be, since I was old enough to read I wanted to write, I wanted to act, to tell stories, to draw cartoons, anything that involved creating or fantasizing captivated me. In junior high I would do presentations/book reports as this idiotic character named Roger Rawlings, a pompous twit with a faux-English accent doing a thinly-veiled Masterpiece Theatre rip-off, and I would actually need time to “set up the room,” give direction to the hapless costumed “actors” I pressed into playing parts and play the classical music, etc. There would always be a prelude with Roger cheating in chess and his enraged but debonair opponent knocking him senseless with the book in question. Thinking back on it now, I’m surprised the other students in Mrs. Foskett’s Sixth Grade English class didn’t get together and beat me to death, though I’m sure it was discussed. But I was hooked, I liked writing theatre. My father, a lawyer for thirty years and now a judge, used to tell me tales of the various ne’er-do-wells and lowlifes he had known and sometimes represented, arch-criminals, thieves, rapists, murderers, etc. and I was always fascinated by the luridness of it all: the more sinister and unsettling, the more I loved it, and asked time and time again for the stories of the maniac who sabotaged his cell padlock by using an unmentionable substance, the deranged woman who stood on a Joliet street corner holding a box of Special K to the sky, the murderer sitting on a prison toilet asking if anyone wanted a bite of his sandwich. It’s the sick side of life that fascinates me, which is one of the reasons why Lenny Bruce’s autobiography How to Talk Dirty and Influence People became my artistic and political awakening, a book I read over sixteen times in one lonely week.

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

A:  If you’re a theatre artist, especially a playwright, you need to be a combination smack dealer/Baptist preacher/pimp to make it. Your work has to promise narcotic thrills, spiritual salvation and raw earthy pleasure, and there are so many plays, especially new plays, that don’t pass muster. There’s too much academia in theatre, where new work is constantly being asked if it makes the audience think about Important Issue of the Day or is it liberal enough or the “right time” to produce it or whether it helps Teach A Valuable Lesson instead of the question “is this play fucking awesome?” If it isn’t, why not? There should be a rawness to theatre, a sense of danger and an affirmation that life is worth living and that telling stories is magnificent, and it doesn’t matter if you have a budget of a million dollars or a tarp in a backyard, if the story you’re telling isn’t epic then why are you telling it?

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  First and foremost, Ben Hecht, because he brought real-world journalism into theatre and then wrote or co-wrote some of the greatest screenplays of all time (and read the anthology A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago if you haven’t already, no one else had so much game with printed prose.) William Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Tom Stoppard, David Mamet, August Wilson, Tracy Letts, Martin McDonough, Jules Feiffer, and poetry-wise I need to include Allen Ginsberg and Sylvia Plath. Honestly a lot of the writers I owe the most debt from are from film: in this category I’d put Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges and Ernst Lubitsch as three of my heroes for how beautifully their language flowed from their characters’ lips, and because each man was a superb writer-director.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Raw theatre, violent theatre, sexy, sensual and smart theatre, potent and powerful theatre, the plays that scare you, the plays that make you throw up, the plays that make you angry and the plays that turn you on. August Wilson’s Seven Guitars, the moment when the characters sit around a table and talk and you want to chime in, the theatre where it seems like the world’s richest conversation. Plays like Equus and Credeaux Canvas, plays with hushed intimacy and bold physicality, raw lust and the yearning for more. Plays with true hunger…of the characters and the artists behind them. In a word, the hunger is exciting. Because it’s universal, and it’s real.

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

A:  Write the play you’re dying to write and fill it with your soul and everything you are and work on it until you’re bone-tired and spiritually exhausted and when you go to sleep, you hear your characters speaking. That’s when you know you’re a playwright. And remember, theatre is always “we.” Nobody but nobody creates a play alone. Make friendships with as many talented actors, designers and directors as you can, do readings, submit to anything and everything, read Moss Hart’s Act One, read it again, see as many plays and movies as you can, read the reviews when you can’t afford the shows, get a day job that doesn’t make you want to kill yourself, and hustle your work. I know “pimp out your children” is usually considered bad advice but that’s what playwriting is: you created something, and now you gotta make it work for you.

Q:  Plugs, please:



A:  My play Allotment Annie, an InFusion Theatre production, runs January 3rd through February 3, 2013. Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:00 pm; Sundays at 3:00 pm, at Strawdog Theatre, 3829 N. Broadway, in Chicago.
http://www.infusiontheatre.com/currentseason.htm


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I Interview Playwrights Part 502: Martín Zimmerman

Martín Zimmerman

Hometown: Rockville, MD just outside of Washington, DC

Current Town: I'm writing this from the Twin Cities where I'm a Jerome Fellow this year. But my significant other, our cat, and many of my closest collaborators still reside in Chicago. So right now I have the great fortune of having two artistic homes.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I'm currently juggling a number of projects. I just finished the first draft of a brand new play. It's a taut, intimate three-hander which has proved a nice respite from the more epic projects I've been working on recently. I'm also in the midst of revising my play The Solid Sand Below ahead of an upcoming reading at the Goodman as part of New Stages Amplified. That play follows a somewhat reluctant soldier who is sent to Iraq during the surge only to discover what he considers to be his best self in the midst of combat. The play then follows him back to the U.S. after his deployment and examines what it means to feel like you're at your best in moments of violence and chaos once you return to civilian life. I'm also in the midst of re-writes on a project I'm co-writing with Rebecca Stevens about a sixteen year-old who discovers, when her parents are detained by the FBI, that they are not only foreigners, but also Russian Foreign Intelligence Agents. She then has to try the figure out the truth of who she is and why her parents had her while they remain in FBI custody. The "true" answers to her questions prove to be elusive. We created the piece this past May through a month-long workshop as part of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs' Incubator Series, and I'm really excited to dive back into it after working on some other projects. And soon I'm going to start adapting one of my plays into a graphic novel.

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

A:  When I was a child and my family would all gather to watch movies at home on a Friday or Saturday night, I had this habit of gathering a bunch of "props" on a blanket next to the screen and enacting what I saw on screen along with the movie. I would often recite lines and talk back to the movie. As you can imagine, this habit of mine was very controversial among my different family members. My father is known to have frequently told me "They're paid to talk. You're not." when I did this. Though, of course, that is in no way a larger reflection on what kind of a father he was. He was (and is) an excellent father. Although both of my parents to this day are very frank and unsparing in their assessments of my work. But I think that story captures some part of why I gravitated toward the theater. I learn by doing things, by participating in them, so for me writing plays is not just a profession, but has also become a way of trying to better understand and investigate the world. I will often write plays about people or situations far outside my personal experience. And I admit that when I begin these plays I am seized with this terror that someone will read the play and know I'm a complete fraud or fool. But I embrace that terror and use it to keep me honest. I use the process of researching and writing the play to really listen to and learn from the people and worlds I'm writing about.

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

A:  There are so many things I'd like to change, but if I had to choose just one I think it would be the way we allow ourselves and others to talk about our creativity. It may seem like a strange thing to choose to change, but I feel like it's connected to so many of the other challenges we face as a theater community in this country. So many artists and companies (quite understandably) go to great lengths to hide their processes from the public, their colleagues, their audiences, their collaborators, etc. And I want to be clear that I understand why so many artists and theaters do this. They only want to put their very best foot forward in order to protect their reputation, their brand. But what happens when we refuse to lay bare the chaos and sloppiness of our processes to the public is that we create the impression that art is something inaccessible, something you can only partake in if you have been imbued with this unique gift, this unique inspiration. When what we should really be cultivating is the idea that theater (and art in general) is something anyone can partake in and even master if they dedicate the requisite time and energy to doing so. It's a scary thought for any artist to confront because it forces us to acknowledge that we are somewhat less special and unique than we might like to believe. But in an effort to protect ourselves and our artistic reputations, we try to create the impression that we're separate from the public, that there is a gulf between us that the public cannot bridge because they do not possess our special, inaccessible gifts and inspiration. And then we wonder why the public doesn't invest in the theater and come to the theater more. I'm on this kick right now of using sports to look at what we as a theater community can be doing better. And people always complain that theater is too expensive to be accessible because it often is. But attending most college or professional sporting events is more expensive than almost any theater ticket I buy. Even the monthly bill for a cable or satellite TV package that allows you to watch your favorite team is more expensive than almost any theater ticket I buy. And yet people are more than willing to spend money they don't have to attend sporting events or watch sports on TV. And why is that? It's at least partly due to the fact that many fans used to (or still do) play the sport they watch. So while they recognize professionals as having mastered that practice, they also feel the sport is accessible to them because they have personal experience with it. And that personal experience gives them a greater appreciation for the process professional athletes go through because these fans tried to hit a golf ball or make a three point shot, etc and know how challenging a skill it is master. So I think we need to ask ourselves how can we cultivate this investment in theater? A big part of it is by talking more frankly and honestly about our processes, how we struggle to get to that final product. The Rude Mechs in Austin do this very well by making workshops of their unfinished pieces big events that are open to the public. When you attend these workshops they are very frank that what you're see is in process and that the final product may not cohere until a year or 18 months later. But by opening up their process to the public they've cultivated tremendous investment from Austin in their work. People may not necessarily be blown away by the initial workshop, but they go back to the next workshop and the one after that because they want to see how the initial kernel they saw will evolve into something breathtaking.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Eek. To me, the term "hero" is a very vexed and dangerous term. I'm someone who tends not to have any "heroes". But there are a number of writers whose work I deeply admire and whose work has indelibly shaped my own. Tony Kushner, Bertolt Brecht, Griselda Gambaro, Stephen Sondheim, José Rivera, Dael Orlandersmith, Juan Mayorga, Sarah Ruhl, Caryl Churchill among others. I would also add to this list all of my professors and colleagues from graduate school. I would not be the writer I am without exposure to their work and unique points of view.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that marries the intimate and epic. Theater that allows us to see how deeply connect personal choices and relationships are to larger social and sociological forces. Work that sheds the mundane. There is a Van Gogh quote that Steven Dietz often cited when I was studying under him in grad school at UT-Austin... "Exaggerate the essential. Leave the obvious vague." That's a philosophy I deeply admire and try to adhere to in my own art. I also love work that tries to tell huge and impossible stories within very tight constraints, work that embraces the relative poverty of theater as a medium and brushes up against the limited resources of theater as a means for sparking ingenuity.

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

A:  When I was in grad school, Steven Dietz had a framed quote in his office (I'm not sure if it's still there, though I hope it is) by Winton Marsalis. "Praise is the hardest thing to overcome." You never lose anything by being deeply, deeply rigorous with yourself. It may take a long time listening to your work in front of audiences before you develop the finer hearing with which you can instantly tell when your writing has the energy, charge, and momentum that makes an audience lean in. Trust that one day after listening to your work, your actors, and your audiences long enough, it will click and you will suddenly have this sense you never had before. You'll hear every sentence, phrase, or word where your play loses that charge. Once you're able to hear what I'm describing, do not rest until every moment of your play drives us forward, pulses with that charge. No matter how good people tell you it is. You can never go wrong by being your own harshest and most honest critic.

Oh, and, a nice little handy and pragmatic piece of advice... when possible, avoid directly-answered questions in your writing like the plague. Nothing takes the energy out of a scene faster. Let your characters be evasive. Cagey. Things get so much more interesting when you do.


Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  If you're going to be in Chicago in December, please come check out the reading of my play The Solid Sand Below at the Goodman as part of New Stages Amplified. The festival also features work by Tanya Saracho, Philip Dawkins, and Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, all of whom I know personally and whose work I admire. So please come see everything if you can!


http://www.goodmantheatre.org/season/newstages/

If you're going to be Minneapolis this coming week, come check out PlayLabs at the Playwrights' Center. The festival features work by a number of writers including my friend George Brant.

http://www.pwcenter.org/playlabs.php

And here's the url for my website in case you want to read more about what I'm up to...

www.martingzimmerman.com

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I Interview Playwrights Part 501: Christopher Durang

photograph by Susan Johann



Christopher Durang



Hometown: Berkeley Heights, New Jersey



Current Town: Bucks County, PA (previously NYC 1975-1995)



Q:  Tell me about Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.



A:  I wrote this play on a commission from McCarter Theater – it’s my second commission, the first was Miss Witherspoon in 2005. I feel lucky to work with McCarter – writer-director Emily Mann is talented, and a wonderful person. And producing director Mara Isaac is also terrific to work with. And McCarter and I approached Andre Bishop at Lincoln Center Theater to see if he’d be open to co-producing the play – and presenting it at both theaters. Andre said yes, and I feel very lucky indeed. Andre produced three of my plays early in my career at Playwrights Horizons – Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You in 1980 (on a bill with my The Actor’s Nightmare), then Baby with the Bathwater in 1982, then Laughing Wild in 1987.



Anyway, the new play itself came from the fact that I’m older and that my house on a hill in Bucks County made me think of Chekhov. The Sea Gull, Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard all have characters who live at pretty country houses “taking care of them,” while the more exciting relatives are traveling the world or living in the city, and the ones in the country houses are feeling stuck and unfulfilled.



When I first read Chekhov in college, I greatly empathized with the sadness and frustrations of the characters – but as with Vanya, say, I was a younger person empathizing with an older character – I had a young person’s remove from the character’s sadness.



But now I’m Vanya’s age – indeed, I think I’m older than he’s listed in the play. And I view the sadness in Chekhov plays more distinctly now that I have less time ahead of me than I have behind. Now I want to acknowledge I am nowhere as despairing as Vanya in Chekhov’s play – I pursued my theatrical hopes, I have been with my partner John Augustine since 1987. So I am not writing from the same well of disappointment that Vanya (and Konstantin) were experiencing. So my play is more of a “what if?” – what if this “farmhouse” I live in had been the home I was born in, and I never left it, and I lived with my stepsister Sonia, and she and I never made lives for ourselves but took care of ailing parents for 15 years, while our sister Masha was an actress, indeed a movie star. She had a life, and we didn’t.



Now I have written a comedy – their interactions are funny. But there is real emotion in it too. And it is set in the present day – Vanya, Sonia and Masha had professor parents who named them after Chekhov characters. So they are not in Russia, they’re in the present time in Bucks County. They have a pond, as I do; and they keep looking for the blue heron to show up, as I do too.



Vanya is also gay in my version – when I was in college (1967-1971), most people were not open about being gay; and indeed some in my generation kind of obeyed the “rule” of you get married anyway. Looking back, my going into theater certainly made it easier to be gay. But I know people of my age who either repressed it all their lives, or came out only much, much later. So I envisioned my Vanya as someone who either shut down his sexuality or perhaps had brief flings on the side, which he kept secret. I purposely don’t say.



So that’s how the play came about. Though I have added three fun characters to the mix – Cassandra, the cleaning lady who like her namesake keeps seeing the future (I always loved Cassandra in Greek tragedy); Spike, who is Masha’s very sexy 27 or 29 year old boy toy (who keeps stripping to his underwear to go swimming in a pond, which is both thrilling but alarming for poor Vanya); and a lovely aspiring actress named Nina (surprise!) who makes Masha feel insecure, and with whom Vanya finds a friendship.



So… it’s a “what if” play. With all my years and years of life experience tossed in, eh?



Q:  What else are you working on now?



A:  I usually don’t work on more than one project at a time. And I get very involved in the production of a play, at least when it’s a premiere as Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is. So last spring I did lots of rewrites. And I was involved in previews in September at McCarter; and in late October we will have previews at Lincoln Center.



I have another play I started, that’s very political as was my 2009 play Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them at the Public Theater. It’s called Consensus or Should We Just Kill Each Other? I started it quite a while ago, but unfortunately it is not dating with time – I say unfortunately because it’s about polarization in our country, and that topic doesn’t seem likely to go away any time soon, regardless of who becomes president. But I am so depressed about politics – the hatred of Obama over the past 4 years seems both toxic and mentally deranged – that there’s part of me that isn’t sure if I’ll work on this play-in-progress next or not.



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 two actually.



Growing up in the 1950s, we didn’t have a TV until 1953 (or so). So I saw I Love Lucy when it was CURRENT. I also watched a lot of 1930s and 1940s movies that were shown on both Million Dollar Movies and The Early Show. (There was also The Late Show with more movies, but indeed I was in bed by either 8 or 9 at the latest.)



But like most of America, I watched The Ed Sullivan Show. He was on at 8 p.m. every Sunday, and he hosted basically a variety show with talent from New York City – opera singers, current Broadway performers. Like most variety shows, some of it was dull-ish, but a lot of it was GREAT. (This program is mentioned significantly in a section of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.)



In any case, my mother loved plays and musicals. And I heard lots of Broadway original cast albums. And some of these people (like Mary Martin, say, or Ethel Merman) would be on the Sullivan Show.



So when I was six, I announced to my mother that I wanted to sing at my Aunt Phyllis’ piano recital. I had seen one or two of the recitals where her pupils, both beginning and more accomplished ones, would play classical pieces. No one ever sang at these recitals – they were about learning the piano. But as a six year old I saw that there was an audience there, and I thought – audience – why don’t I sing for them? For some reason I knew the song I wanted to sing – “Chicago,” which I’m sure I heard on The Ed Sullivan Show.



My mother and my Aunt Phyllis and the rest of the family seemed enchanted by my request. I’ve had so many friends in my life whose parents either criticized them or warned them not to get too a big head or something. But gosh, my family sure encouraged me. Anyway, my mother rented me a white tuxedo (why they had them for six year olds I’m not quite sure), and somewhere toward the end of the piano recital, I was introduced by my aunt and with no stage fright of any kind I strode out in front of the audience and “belted out” “Chicago.” I always spoke in a moderate voice, not too loud, but when I sang I followed the example of many on The Ed Sullivan Show and sang to the back of the house.



Story #2 is was at age eight. I announced to my mother that I was about to write a play. By now, I had seen a lot of the I Love Lucy shows, and I knew my mother loved plays; and I think I had read some. So I wrote my own two page play about Lucy and Ricky and Fred and Ethel.



My mother was always a bit of a press agent for me, so she told my teacher at the Catholic school I attended that I had written this “play.” And the teacher, for some reason, decided to take a couple hours off one afternoon to put on the play. I was allowed to choose who would play the roles (Katy Moran was my choice for Lucy; I have, sadly, forgotten the other names), and I kind of rehearsed them, and then my classmates laughed at a fair amount of it.



I must say I sound like I’m endlessly outgoing and overwhelming – actually for much of my life I have been actually a bit shy. And in college I got really insecure and doubted myself almost 100% - by now I was aware of ways in which my parents and aunts and uncles were troubled, and I literally thought, “well, they think I’m talented, but they’re insane. So I don’t know what I am.”



My parents and relatives were not insane – though there was a lot of alcoholism that somehow could not get solved, so they were troubled.



But whatever sadness was in some of my childhood – wow, the encouragement was generous and complete.



And so I sang at 6, and wrote a play at 8. And I kept writing plays - the next was five pages, the following twelve, etc. etc.



Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?



A:  When I was young, my inspirations were old movies and musicals (especially Rodgers and Hammerstein). And my mother loved Alice in Wonderland, Noel Coward, and James Thurber, and the humor in those authors’s work inspired me for years. (Some of my dialogue has a specific rhythm, and I’m sure I got it from reading Noel Coward.) I also saw and loved the original How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying – which was written as a satiric cartoon. I think my early absurdist work was influenced by this musical which I saw when I was 12 I think.



But in my late high school, my world view started to get darker. My family was unhappy a lot, and I didn’t see much solving of problems. Indeed much later in my life (and after a lot of therapy) I realized I had an unconscious mantra that went “nothing ever works out.” That’s a very bad mantra to have…. And it made for a lot of depression in my 20s.



At the same time, the darker view took me to some interesting plays and movies. I found the works of Joe Orton – very funny farces about dark topics, and he mentioned Catholic stuff very casually. At the same time I saw Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, 8 and a Half, and Nights of Cabiria. I loved those movies, and found them very different than the American movies of the 50s and 60s. And Fellini too brought up his Catholicism a lot, often satirically.



Others who inspired and excited me were Brecht/Weill musicals, all of Stephen Sondheim’s work, Tennessee Williams (love his work), Long Day’s Journey into Night, the movie and book They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? I also read Arthur Kopit’s Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feeling So Sad when I was in late high school, and I found this play very funny and quirky. His play definitely inspired me.



Q:  What kind of theater excites you?



A:  Exciting theater excites me. Ha ha. Sorry, I’ve written such long answers, I’m running out of steam.



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



A:  Oh I wish I had some magical advice that made it all work. I don’t.



Let me say what things I do know, in case any of it helps.



The old maxim “write about what you know” is really true. I used to think it meant don’t write about being a car salesman unless you’ve been one. But that’s too literal.



What it really means is write about stuff you know in your bones – the psychological stuff you lived around as a child, what you’ve found out about life as you’ve struggled with it.



When I wrote my absurdist plays in my early years, I assumed they were all strictly fictional – I didn’t know anyone named Edith Fromage who claimed she had invented cheese. However, as I got older, I started to realize that part of my family journey was dealing with an uncle and grandmother who were VERY FORCEFUL. They were not nice or allowing if you didn’t agree with them. And I suddenly realized that in ALL my absurdist plays I was writing about forceful characters who were bullying more sensitive or insecure ones. Over and over I was writing this.



This is part of my “stuff” – struggling against forceful people. (The dogma of the Catholic Church fits that too.) Then my family, both sides, had a lot of alcoholism – and I saw a lot of problems not getting solved. People kept doing the same thing over and over. Anyway, I draw on that too.



You may not know what your “stuff” is until you get older. But if you feel “heat” about an idea for a play – that’s a good sign. Write a play to communicate.



Don’t decide that a specific play is “going to do it” for you. If the play doesn’t get produced or much embraced, hold on to it, but write other plays. You never know what is going to be successful.



I almost didn’t finish Sister Mary Ignatius… because I could tell the play was wrapping up (intuitively), and it was going to be a long one act. And no one could ever make money with a one act. So I was about to put it aside – but I had had a serious writers block during my mother’s sad two year bout with cancer, and I realized it was very unhealthy not to finish this play – so I did. Never expecting it would be a big hit, and actually change my life. (Both in terms of being known as a writer, and financially as well.) So you never know what might work.



Apply to play contests. Get the Dramatists Sourcebook, and find theaters and playwriting events that accept plays without having an agent. I like to tell people I applied to the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference 4 times before I was accepted the 5th time.



Befriend directors and actors. You can learn from one another. And they can help you organize readings of your new work – I find hearing plays aloud so important when one is rewriting.



Find a theater you feel a kinship with – volunteer there, see who you meet.



In terms of theaters and opportunities, I used to say to myself: look for an open door, or for a door that is ajar. If the door is closed, move on. (Well you can knock, I guess, but if it doesn’t answer, move on…)



Every path seems to be different….



Q:  Plugs please:





A:  Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is just finishing McCarter (closes this Sunday Oct 14; but it's mostly
sold out).  Then Lincoln Center (Mitzi Newhouse) starts previews Thurs
Oct 25, opens Nov 12, runs until Jan 13. [image error]

I Interview Playwrights Part 500: Susan Miller

Susan Miller

Hometown: Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Born in Philadelphia.

Current Town: New York

Q:  Tell me about Anyone But Me.

A:  It’s only been my life every day for the past 4 years! One of the most artistically freeing and satisfying pieces of work I’ve ever done. Because I didn’t have to wait for anyone else to tell me I could.

“Anyone But Me” is a drama webseries I write and executive produce with creative partner, Tina Cesa Ward. In three seasons we’ve grown to over 13 million views worldwide. And in 2011 we won the first Writers Guild Award ever given for Original New Media. It’s a show about young people, gay straight and ethnically diverse, struggling with identity and modern relationships. We got very lucky in casting our leads just a year out of NYU and Rutgers. The chemistry was there, and we just mined it. The stories we tell speak to people who aren’t used to seeing themselves represented in the mainstream, so we developed a huge niche audience. The main characters are two girls in love. You don’t see that too often in any real way. Though, I think the reason our reach goes beyond age and gender is that none of us ever really gets over the drama that is high school. I mean, do we?

If anyone’s interested in the full story of how a playwright such as myself got into this webseries business, I wrote a piece for American Theatre about my journey with the show and how I think playwrights are beginning to understand and seriously consider writing for the web. Here’s the link: http://susanmillerplaywright.com/Main/ArticlesbySusanMiller.html

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I have a commission to write a new play. But, I can’t tell you what it is. Actually, I still don’t know what it is. Except to say that if I can pull it off, it’s something that will bring some of the most powerfully talented, sexy women on stage together. In the meantime, I’m doing a lot of walking around the city and sitting in cafes to see if any of them inspire me to do more than drink double espressos.

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

A:  You know that’s impossible, right?

Okay, so I’m five. I live in a small town. On a street with a haunted house on one corner and a garment factory on the other. This one afternoon my parents have to make a quick run to the neighborhood store. I beg them to let me stay by myself. I promise I won’t go outside. I wont answer the door. I’ll stay right here on the couch. But, I don’t. I can’t. I’m drawn to the world. So when I think it’s safe, I unlock the door and take my little self to where it’s forbidden to go. And, to feel what it’s like to be on the street without anyone to catch me if I fall is completely thrilling. So, then, of course, I fall. I’m running with abandon and I fall, skinning my knees bloody. When my parents come home, I’m on the couch, as I said I’d be, crying with shame and need. My parents, on the other hand, are just glad I’m alive. They didn’t punish me. They gave me comfort. And I guess they understood that this is who I’d be. The good rebel. A badass struggling with her badassity. Which says as much about my mother and father as it does about me.


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

A:  I’d do it all in a garage.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Joseph Papp. He wasn’t afraid to say yes. One day, some time after he’d produced two of my plays, and after I’d sent him the latest one, I got word he wanted to meet me in his office. His wife, Gail, who was head of play development at the Public, was there. And I brought my friend actress/writer Kathryn Grody along as a witness to whatever might happen. Joe began to read my play out loud. After he got through the entire thing, he said to me, “You know I’m doing this play?” I didn’t. Neither did anyone else in the room. “It’s the first one I’ve chosen for the new season.” I could see he’d made up his mind on the spot. No other readings in development hell necessary. On opening night, he sent me this handwritten note, which I keep on my desk to this day: “Dear Susan - I love your play and probably enjoy hearing your distinct voice more than almost any living creature. Best of luck, Joe.”

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Work that’s palpably original and takes it on. Something that stirs the air and leaves me wanting to make something that good of my own.

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

A:  Write plays only you can write, goddamit!

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Watch “Anyone But Me” on Hulu, YouTube or on our website: www.AnyoneButMeSeries.com

For more about my work: www.susanmillerplaywright.com [image error]

I Interview Playwrights Part 499: Nate Rufus Edelman

Nate Rufus Edelman

Hometown: Northeast Los Angeles

Current Town: Loz Feliz, by way of New York and Ireland.

Q:  Tell me about The Belle of Belfast.

A:  "The Belle of Belfast" is a comic tragedy about a forbidden love affair between an orphaned seventeen year old girl and her parish priest in 1980s Northern Ireland. It was a part of Cherry Lane Theatre's Mentor Project and is receiving its world premiere at EST/LA in Atwater Village. I wrote an article for LA Stage Times that illustrates its journey that can be found here:

http://www.lastagetimes.com/2012/10/an-angeleno-examines-the-belfast-troubles/

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I have several plays in different stages of development. I have written a trilogy of black comic plays about murder in the contemporary American West that I hope to polish and one-day get staged. I have also just finished producing and co-directing the inaugural production for the Savage Players, a new company in Los Angeles of which I am a founding member. It was a terrific collaborative experience and I am eager to help mount something with the company in the winter. I also have a couple of screen projects in the works that one day I would like to direct.

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

A:  I wish that theater in America was subsidized federally. It is a vital part of our national culture and should be treated with the respect it receives in Ireland and the United Kingdom.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  John Millington Synge. Sean O'Casey. Samuel Beckett. Harold Pinter. Anton Chekhov. Lady Gregory for founding the Abbey Theatre and the many people who followed in her path-- courageous Artistic Directors who have dedicated their own money and lives to showcase new work on stages across the globe.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that fully transports me somewhere I never expected to go.

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

A:  Try and write your favorite play-- no one else's. And I am partial to courier as a font.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  "The Belle of Belfast" opens on October 6th at Ensemble Studio Theatre LA. It runs in rep with Keliher Walsh's powerful "Year of the Rabbit." Please come and check them out!

http://ensemblestudiotheatrela.org/[image error]

I Interview Playwrights Part 498: Ben Rosenthal

Ben Rosenthal

Hometown:  White Plains - site of a famous losing battle in the Revolutionary War.

Current Town:  Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about Neptune Kelly


A:  A formerly mouth-breathing, kind of savantish auto mechanic develops a messiah complex and believes that one can place all their wretchedness in their foot and cut it off. Then they'll be free. He does so, with an axe, to both his feet, and soon young girls from the high school start following. The cutting spreads like wildfire and no one knows how to stop it. A famous psychiatrist -or as famous as they do get - is called to the town and eventually does battle with their local priest, who is likewise completely flummoxed by the mania. It's a very dark comedy and there's a cast to rival the size of the Russian army.


Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm working on several plays, one of which is sort of an omnibus pageant of doom, and that's the most I can say about it but the rest are a lot more naturalistic. Theater demands that you get small these days and I would like to write a chamber piece about couples over dinner and see how that turns out. Romulus Linney told me to write about my family years ago, when I was at school, and I've yet to directly heed that advice. Maybe I fear lawsuits?

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've blocked out most of my childhood but I did beat up a kid over a Big Wheel once. Oh wait, that was last year.

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

A:  A fellow playwright said to me recently that theater is always forty years behind the other mediums. I agree but I think that's a conservative estimate. We've all heard the very accurate complaints that there are innumerable "development" purgatories and very few production slots, but the money's never going to be there, so theater should make its peace with that and not try to dumb itself down and play to the room-temperature sensibilities of a lot of subscriber audiences, the people who find Maureen Dowd edgy. So long as it does that it'll keep itself mildly solvent but cease to matter in any real way. That's why we have the regimented mediocrity we have.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  When I started it was Harold Pinter and to some degree it still is. I really think he's a genius in that there's a conceptual clarity to his plays but they don't feel academic or like intellectual exercises, because he wrote intuitively. It's that magic some great novelists have - to walk that high wire where every line pulses with the theme but you are still tracking real people in real time, and you're kind of terrified of where it's going because the author is a little crazy. There's a writer more people should know about named David Lefort Nugent who absolutely blows me away. Carson Kreitzer is so very gifted and she has a great precision, a kind of spare discipline where her plays sneak up on you. I think Lloyd Suh is truly remarkable and there's a scene in American Hwangap that is so brilliantly loaded and yet unforced and I remember watching it and thinking, this is a kind of valedictory moment for a writer. How do I get here? It's not the kind of thing that can be coached or taught.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I know the stock answer here is probably "dangerous" theater, but that means different things to different people.

I want theater to be an expression of something personal, not by-the-numbers liberalism where one cherry picks a societal trend and writes ninety or so minute of stage time about them, having mathematically considered what will not be offensive to the paying middlebrow. If you were to read most playwrights on blind submission, could you tell them apart? Would you know who they were? Crazy, dangerous things happen on some of the better cable TV shows, because the creators of these shows have risked something personal, and the fiber optic distance of television allows people to watch them without shitting the bed. I want theater to do the same thing - challenge, discomfit, and it doesn't have to be Sarah Kane or finger-painting with sputum. I think so long as we're seeing the writer bare something about themselves, we'll feel something relevant has happened. The preface to Gide's The Immoralist basically says I'm going to make you sick, but there's poetry in that, so shove it. More of that would be helpful.

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

A:  I can't speak much to career advice, but no one's ever going to make it the way they think they're going to make it unless they're total hacks - in which case writing is algorithmic and why bother, so the only thing I would say is get yourself around other writers, even if it's painful and you're worried about losing the thread of yourself. For a playwright, especially one who is gifted with a personal approach, or whatever a "voice" is, being reminded of how much theater is about being present and engaged, is vitally important, otherwise, your work can calcify; you end up with black ciphers on a white page, not a living entity. It's too easy to disappear somewhere up your own fundament if you're not around other living writers..I would also say do what Saul Bellow did and double down on what you do after a rejection. Most people who are going to read your plays won't get them, and to be honest, there's no ultimate benediction. If Kenneth Tynan came back from the dead to write that I was good, would I believe it? Would my work be done? I'd probably get a swell head for a week and then be back tearing my hair out and diminishing Kenneth Tynan as a toff who liked to paddle fannies.

Q:  Plugs, please:


A:  Come see Neptune Kelly at Ensemble Studio Theatre September 27th at 7pm and 28th at 8pm. It's a blast. [image error]

I Interview Playwrights Part 497: David Auburn

David Auburn



Hometown: Really, three of them, since we moved a lot: Columbus, Ohio; Jonesboro, Arkansas; Little Rock, Arkansas



Current Town: New York City



Q:  What are you working on now?



A:  A production of Anna Christie I'm directing later in the year; some material that might or might not become a new play; a screenplay for Warner Brothers of the novel "A Discovery of Witches."



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 don't have a good answer to this one. I'm not sure where the impulse to write for the theater comes from, and I guess a bit reluctant to examine it very closely.



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



A:  I teach playwrighting to NY public high school students. They want to write plays, they're passionate to try it. But they haven't seen very many. It's difficult to afford, difficult to manage. Some have never seen a straight play in a theater. In New York City! My fantasy would be that any public school student in this city could walk up to any play and buy a ticket for the same price as a movie.



Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?



A:  Chekhov. The Romanian playwright and diarist Mihail Sebastian. George S. Kaufman, the ultimate pro and utility player. Samson Raphaelson. Harold Clurman. Viola Spolin. Odets. Quintero. Some contemporaries I've worked with, learned from and admire: Harris Yulin, John Lithgow, Dan Sullivan.



Q:  What kind of theater excites you?



A:  Very exciting always to see new plays by young American playwrights. We're in a strong period for new plays right now, I think.



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



A:  Don't sit around mailing plays to strangers. Produce yourself. Get together with friends and put on shows. Don't worry if you don't have an agent. Join the Dramatists Guild.



Q:  Plugs, please:



A:  My most recent play, "The Columnist," now out in paperback.[image error]

I Interview Playwrights Part 496: Jean-Claude van Itallie

Jean-Claude van Itallie

Hometown: I was born in Brussels, Belgium, raised in Great Neck, New York

Current Town: I live simultaneously in two places: Greenwich Village, NYC and Shantigar in Rowe, Massachusetts.

Q: Tell me about Confessions and Conversation.

A: “Confessions and Conversation,” the one person show (I call it “an intimate evening”) I’m doing at La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theater Sept 20-23, 2012, is a kind of Mad Hatter tea party. I’ll offer tea from mint in my garden in Massachusetts.

The show is in part a homage to my friend/mentor, the great late Ellen Stewart.

I’ll also reveal all about my own exciting theatre and promiscuous gay sex life in the wild and seminal 60's off-off-Broadway birth time.

A little singin’ and dancin’ too, cause, hey, why not?

Q: What else are you working on?

A: I’m finishing my memoirs – called “War, Sex, and Dreams.”

I’m co-writing the libretto of an opera about the wild Tibetan hermit yogi, Milarepa, of a thousand years ago – “Mila, Great Sorcerer.”

I’m finishing writing an e-book – “Galaxy of Living Alone, a Guide to Delightful Living with Cool Games to Play.”

I’m setting up an advice website – “Write to Leonardo”

I’m editing Part I of a Regency Romance I wrote – “To Be a Duchess”

Q: Tell me about the Playwright's Workbook.

A: When I started teaching play writing, there were no texts about it, or techniques, as there are for acting. I had to slowly invent my own, often using performance techniques but applying them to writing.

In the 80's, as I was teaching play writing at Princeton, I received a postcard from a publisher: “Would you use a play writing text if we published one?” I answered, “Yes, if I wrote it.” The result is “Playwright’s Workbook.”

Q: Tell me about The Shantigar Foundation.

A: I live most of the time on a beautiful old farm in the hills of Western Massachusetts. I’ve known it since I was a kid.

The Open Theater came up there in the 60's to improvise and make plays. My Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Chogyam, Trungpa, did a year’s retreat up there, named it “Shantigar,” or "Peaceful Home." The beauty of the woods and fields nourishes both creativity and meditation, which, in my mind, are closely related. So I’ve turned the farm into “Shantigar Foundation for theater, meditation, and healing.”

In a super fast world, we all, especially artists, need intimate contact with nature to breathe, remember ourselves, create. Shantigar provides that. (Shantigar.org)

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 almost four, the Nazis invaded Brussels where I lived with my Belgian Jewish family. Most of the family survived; we got to America without my seeing a Nazi. But fear was stamped indelibly into my nervous system.

By contrast, Great Neck, New York, where I grew up, in the late 40's and 50's, was a kind of Doris Day facade of pretty azalea hedges with no death or suffering visible (as in the current TV show “Madmen”).

I’ve remained mesmerized always by the contrast between the public mask and what lies underneath, hyper- aware of the lies of politicians, preachers, corporations...

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

A: I wish theater were not money-driven like the rest of society. I wish theater never gave pat answers in order to please.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Some theatrical heroes: Ellen Stewart, Peter Brook, Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward, Harold Pinter, Stella Adler, Jerzy Grotowski, The Earl of Oxford, Voltaire, Anton Chekhov, Euripedes.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I’m passionate about theater of sacred intent – entertaining, funny, musical theater asking, in authentic new ways, the age-old unanswerable questions – Where are we going? What am I here for? Who am I?

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

A: I’d tell a playwright just starting out to study acting, to act – not to conceive of himself/herself as merely a walking mind. Writing is not only an intellectual act. Truth, drama, humor and music have their rhythmic source in the body.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: Please come see my one man show, “Confessions and Conversations,” at La MaMa, Sept 20-23, 2012. (LaMama.org)

Please take the “Continuum of Performance” workshop I am giving with the amazing Emilie Conrad – at LaMama, NYC: Nov 6-8, 2012 Open to everyone. (Shantigar.org).

Please check out Shantigar.org – come up and see me some time.

Please look out for my upcoming advice website: “Write to Leonardo.”

I Interview Playwrights Part 495: Tom Matthew Wolfe

Tom Matthew Wolfe

Hometown:  Hillside, New Jersey

Current Town:  New York City

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m working on a new full-length play called THIS IS HOW WE EMERGE. It’s about a mid-career artist who loses an exhibition opportunity to his girlfriend and tries to alter/undermine her plans for it. It was inspired by the Narcissus/Echo myth, but the story doesn’t play out the same way. It’s also about living with day jobs, temp jobs, debts, delusions, loneliness, paternalism, ageism, mortality, grief, and the fear of having no impact—an entire life in obscurity. It’s a little wilder than my other work, more comedic and tense: there are death masks and bad punk songs, sharp reversals, and a protracted discomfort within scenes. I’m excited about it. I can’t wait to hear it at my playwrights group.

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 grew up with a lot of cats. One of them – named Bruce – loved to hang out on the front porch. He scared my friends even though he was quite friendly. He had long black fur and yellow eyes, big fangs that looked like something on a pit viper when he yawned. He liked to sit tall and motionless on the bookcase or spread his body across it so that his paws dangled off the edge. Sometimes he stood up on his hind legs when he was down on the floor and I reached out to pet him. One night I stepped out on the porch. It was dark: the overhead light was broken. I spotted Bruce standing up near the screen door, so I reached down to scratch the back of his neck. The fur was so stiff. I froze—my hand, my whole body. I heard a long, angry hiss. It sounded nothing like Bruce or any cat anywhere. I ran inside. My father was seated on the couch with his bare feet on a coffee table, eating jalapeño cheese. My sister was on a matching love seat. They were watching television.

“I think I just pet a possum,” I said.

They immediately laughed at me. My sister called me an idiot.

“Get the hell outta here,” my father said.

“The fur was all stiff. ”

“You sure it wasn’t the cat?”

“It made this … sound.”

“Alright,” he said, “let’s see your possum.”

So my father stood up and put on his moccasins, got his mag-light and 9mm handgun from a shelf above the bar in the hallway. He was a police officer in Hillside, a lieutenant at the time. There was always a gun in the house, small boxes of bullets. He stuck a clip in the gun (a distinctive sound, no comparisons), stepped out on to the porch and shut the door. After a few minutes of quiet, there was a gunshot. He came back inside, removed the clip, put his gun and mag-light back in the spot above the bar.

“Tommy, do me a favor and clean that up tomorrow, will ya?”

“Uh . . . okay.”

My mother found out about the incident and asked my father to perform cleanup instead. They fought about this, but he gave in and agreed, told me not to worry about it. Next morning, on my way out the door to school, I saw a possum on its back near my weight bench with a bullet wound in its chest, blood all over the floorboards.

I have no idea how this story explains who I am as a person or writer. But it feels like such a part of me. And I miss my father. So there you go.

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

A:  I wish it were more affordable and diverse, in general.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Chekhov, Fornés, Pinter, Albee, Beckett, Tennessee Williams, Paula Vogel, Tony Kushner, Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, August Wilson, John Patrick Shanley, Christopher Plummer, Meryl Streep, Jane Hoffman, Heidi Schreck, Marylouise Burke, Young Jean Lee, Marshall W. Mason, David Adjmi, Kia Corthron, Curt Dempster, Jerry Wayne Roberts, Erma Duricko. I saw a production of A DOLL’S HOUSE by Mabou Mines a few years back and thought it was genius. So I’ll add Mabou Mines. Also, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Civilians. My wife, Kara Lee Corthron, is such a brilliant writer; her discipline is a guide for me. Karen Hartman is an extraordinary playwright and teacher. There are so many people I’ve worked with personally that deserve to be mentioned. So many amazing actors have taken their time to just to read my stuff, and for no money. Those are my heroes. Also, I like Shakespeare.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like a lot of different theatre, so long as it’s well crafted and full of life. I love the lyrical naturalism of Lanford Wilson and the way Young Jean Lee experiments with form to puncture the membrane between audience and actors. I like family plays and political theatre. I like vulnerability, humor, fun, a distinct point of view, surprise. I love subverted expectations. I’m interested in a theatre in which humor and great pain are not exclusive to one another. I like when characters have real problems. I’m fascinated by our delusions (I’ve had my share). I love plays that make me uncomfortable, or make me talk for hours—or weeks—after curtain. I love theatre that makes me question my own behavior. I love plays that don’t bore me.

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

A:  Advice is tough for me to give. I feel like I’m a perpetual student. But I do have my own code as a developing writer. Here it is. Build your craft. Write often. Surprise yourself. Don’t judge a scene while writing it. There’s time for that during revisions. Take classes and/or join a playwrights group. My playwrights group ‘Wright On! is so important to me. It keeps me working and sane. When a teacher asks you to try an exercise, just give into that. Don’t question it. What is there to lose in trying something new? Be kind.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Ach. Unfortunately, I have nothing going on right now, except a private reading of my newest play. But Kara will have two productions this Fall (ALICEGRACEANON, produced by New Georges at The Irondale Center in Brooklyn; HOLLY DOWN IN HEAVEN at Forum Theatre in Washington D.C.). Go check ‘em out!