upcoming productions

First, a reading of Herbie in Independence, Kansas at the Inge Center  Nov 6 at 7:30

Then a reading of Incendiary at Southern Rep in the New Orleans fringe Nov 19, 20, 21

2, maybe 3 productions of Nerve.  (They all haven't been announced, so I'll hold off on the specifics.)

Deflowering Waldo in Rochester, NY  Opening Feb 5 http://www.staszpruitt.com/

Another show of mine in NYC in Jan.

And some other stuff TBA.

Square One Series

I'm traveling a lot this year.  This is part of the reason why.  Am I coming to your town? Maybe. Mark your calendar. Info below:

Bloomington, IN – The Bloomington Playwrights Project (BPP) is proud to announce the inaugural play for the Square One Series, Elsewhere by Adam Szymkowicz. The innovative Square One Series will workshop a new work each year in collaboration with five theaters total.

The Schedule is as follows:

Dec. 6 – reading at Chicago Dramatists, Chicago, IL

Feb. 8 – reading at Greenbrier Valley Theatre, Lewisburg, WV

Mar. 15-16 – reading at Bloomington Playwrights Project, Bloomington, IN

May 27-June 11 – Production at Theatre Conspiracy, Fort Myers, FL

Next Fall – Production at Exposed Productions, New York City

Created by the Bloomington Playwrights Project, the Square One Series is designed to change the game of playwriting workshops and to give small professional theatres a larger role in the national new works scene. The predominant method of “workshopping” is reliant on an artistic department selecting one script out of many and producing a simple reading of the script for an audience. Often times this is accompanied by only 1 day of rehearsal and limited re-writes. In truth, it is less of a workshop and more of a reading series. Depending on the outcome of the reading, the Artistic Director will either choose to produce the script or not. More often than not it is the latter. This leaves the playwright with the same undeveloped script back at square one: sending the scripts out to every theatre possible in hopes of getting yet another “workshop” reading. BPP’s Square One Series aims to remedy that situation through a collaboration of small professional theatres in a progressive development format.

About ELSEWHERE: When Teddy comes to Celia’s house to deliver a package, he doesn’t expect to be invited for dinner. When he comes to dinner, he doesn’t expect to be invited to live with her. When he starts to live with her, he doesn't expect to fall in love with her sister Amanda. And he definitely doesn't expect to be drugged ... or buried alive.

I Interview Playwrights Part 274: Mando Alvarado

Mando Alvarado

Hometown: Pharr-San Juan-Alamo, Texas

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about Cino Nights and the play you did for it with RPR.

A:  Cino nights is homage to Joseph Cino and the downtown theater days. We rehearsed for one week, and then put it up for one night. Kind of like a happening. It was an amazing experience. Intense, enlightening, motivating, and really rewarding. That rehearsal week felt like a lifetime, but in a great way. When Daniel commissioned me to write the piece, I knew I wanted to play with structure and narrative. So in late August, I was up for a week at writer's retreat working with Taibi, Sarah, Jen Ferrin and Bernardo. We hammered out a way of working that helped me figure out what I needed to do to make the play come alive. It was a crazy five days. Real honest exchange of ideas, personal demons and self reflection. Back here in NYC, we had the same intense work week. Taibi, my director, and the actors, Bernardo, Jolly, and Sarah were real pro's. They gave a lot to the play and I'm eternally grateful. They dove into the work and really found ways to lift the nuance of the construct of the play. They found beautiful ways to navigate the fluctuating structure of the play which jumps between five realities -Present, Past, Memory, Thoughts in the Memory, In between, and What if.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I'm currently in workshop rehearsals for La Maga de Oz for Theaterworks USA. It's a latinofied interpretation of The Wizard of Oz. I'm also a participating company playwright for Theater 167's new project about fairy tales. And in rewriting mode for my play Basilica that is being developed for Rattlestick Playwright's Theater. We're planning a workshop production in my home town and then premiering it in NY for their upcoming season. Also working on not going crazy if there's not enough work. AND working on how the hell I'm gonna pay the bills so I can continue my theatrical habit.

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 loved Rocky. When I was a kid, I pretended to be Rocky. My uncles would mess with me, making me go running really early in the morning, making me drink eggs, box, do one arm push ups, run up stadium stairs like the stairs in Rocky. I was a maniac! And I knew they were fucking with me but I didn't care. It gave me permission to play pretend. When I got older and I learned about how the movie came about and why it was written, I found a deeper respect for the work and what Sylvester Stallone did. I guess I wanted to have that same kind of control with my work and find ways to say it my way. I AM ROCKY!

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

A:  The role of the critic. I've seen a lot of my friends go through the critical process and it devastates them. I don't really understand how one person has the power to validate the work. Who gave him or her that power? I would like for each critic to write a play, get it on it's feet and then have a room full of Artistic Directors, actors, directors, and playwrights come critique the work. You have to earn the right to be an arbitrator of taste. I know they are a part of the machine. I don't question that. I question their qualifications. You have to be able to do what you judge. That's all I'm sayin!

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Luis Valdez, Clifford Odets, Harold Clurman, August Wilson, Lewis J Stadlen - gave me the balls to call myself a professional, Robert Beseda, Jackyln Maddux, Gerald Freedman, Michael Lluberes, Stephan Adly Guirgis, David Mamet, Migdalia Cruz, Craig Wright, Wolly Mammoth Theater Company, Gregg Henry, Michael Ray Escamilla, Those Guys, Michael John Garces, Jorge Cortinas, Raul Castillo, The incomparable Felix Solis, Ed Vassalo, Alex Correia, Jeremy Skidmore, Abs, Rene Garza, Wayne Adams, Peter Hedges, my classmates from NCSA, the Tex Mex Mafia, Lou and INTAR, and as far as people that really challenge me as a writer and shaped how I approach the work, I got to say these three people really cracked the prose in my head. Eduardo Machado, really made me challenge my self and what I want to say in my work. David Van Asselt, he gave me a chance, gave me blind faith in a world where product is valued over substance, and Lue Douthit from OSF. She's the Lit. Manager there and she gave me the bones. She opened up the confidence to finally allow myself to feel like a writer. And the one that allowed me to be a writer, Sarena Kennedy!

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Honest, risky, take me on a journey, emotionally challenges me, makes me forget about the day, makes me feel like a kid sitting on the mat ready for story time, other worldly, dangerous, raw, unconventional, nontraditional, (and this if for Alfredo) NON-ALL AMERICAN THEATER in the traditional uninviting sense.

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

A:  Learn the rules. rewrite! and rewrite! Don't cheat yourself. Don't be afraid to fail. Screw them if they can't take a joke and never never stop learning. It doesn't get any easier but it does get better. Writing a play is fucking hard and writing a good play is fucking harder. And if you want to make money, learn how to write for TV. There's no money in theater but there's a type of currency that will carry you through the bad times. And say something in the work! And love the one's your with, drink, fight, be honest, give, and don't forget to smile, it's only a play.

I Interview Playwrights Part 273: Adam Rapp

Adam Rapp

Hometown: Joliet. Illinois

Current Town: New York City

Q:  Tell me about Ghosts in the Cottonwoods.

A:  It’s a play I wrote fifteen years ago. My first full-length. I had no idea what I was doing. It was written on impulse, kind of out of the dark. It was overwrought, overblown with too much self-consciously poetic dialogue, but something about the play has haunted me and I knew I would return to it. Some months ago I pulled it out, looked at it closely, and re-worked it. It seemed like a really good fit for the Amoralists, their style, their mission. I didn’t care for early productions of the play, but mostly I didn’t care for the play. I’m incredibly excited to have this new experience with it. The company is incredibly brave. They kill me every day in rehearsal. Some of the best actors I’ve ever worked with. I’m having a blast. The play is about a single mother and her 20-year-old son who are awaiting the arrival of the older son, who has broken out of prison. They live in a homemade house that is sliding down a hill in a nowhere forested region in the southern Midwest, somewhere between the interstate and the factory outlets. They’ve created their own government of language and their own brutal codes of morality. A stranger shows up, as does the younger son’s girlfriend. And all hell breaks loose.

Q:  This isn't the first time you've directed your own work. What do you learn about your plays by directing them?

A:  Well, I love directing – all facets of it. But I particularly love working with actors. My plays get better when I direct them because I become a rigorous dramaturg and I care that the audience is involved in every moment. I think the rehearsal process has become an incredibly fertile rewriting and discovery process that I wouldn’t experience if I was simply the defensive playwright in the room protecting his play. I’m not precious with my words or moments. I’m all about finding what works. I try to have fun. I demand a lot from my actors, and they demand a lot from me and I love that these are the stakes.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I’m rewriting a novel called THE CHILDREN AND THE WOLVES for Candlewick Press, and I’m preparing for my Hallway Trilogy, which starts rehearsals after the new year.

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

A:  I was raised Catholic. In church I used to daydream. I would fall in love with one girl during mass. I would imagine our lives together, our kids, the car in the garage, tornadoes, cows flying through the air, getting shipped off to war, getting my leg cut off, being chased by the FBI. Church was where I started making things up, started living in my head. For me, I think that’s where the impulse to write started.

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

A:  Government legislated 20-dollar tickets. Including Broadway.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Caryl Churchill, Pinter, John Guare, Edward Bond, Chekhov, Genet, Beckett, Irene Fornes, David Rabe.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The kind in which I am surprised by deft hard actions, the kind that trusts ambiguity and mystery, the kind that haunts and disturbs me. I hate leaving a play feeling resolved and entertained. I want to be shaken by something. I want to be made to forget that I was actually in a theater.

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

A:  Don’t wait for someone’s stamp of approval. Start making work in your living room. Waiting is death. Figure out how to make something work in a room with a window and a door. Maybe add a phone.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:   “Gatz” by Elevator Repair Service is incredible. The National’s record “High Violet.” Café Mogador on St. Mark’s Place.

I Interview Playwrights Part 272: Eliza Clark

Eliza Clark

Hometown:  Darien, CT

Current Town:  Culver City, CA

Q:  Tell me about Edgewise.

A:  EDGEWISE is a dark, comedic thriller about three teenagers flipping burgers during a near future total war. It’s about what people are capable of under extreme circumstances and what happens in a world operated by fear. I hope, too, that it will be a fun ride, that you’ll be laughing and enjoying yourself in spite of (or maybe even because of) some of the more brutal elements of the play. It’s an exploration of what life would be like for Americans living in an American war zone, specifically New Jersey.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I moved to LA a year ago to write for a new AMC show called Rubicon. The final episode of the season just aired and so right now we’re sitting tight, crossing our fingers for a second season. In the meantime, I’m working on a pilot about teenagers working at a Walmart-type superstore. I have a thing for kids working shitty jobs. One of my favorite directors and collaborators, Lila Neugebauer, is directing a 30 minute play of mine called SNOW DAY that goes up for a couple nights the week that Edgewise closes. I’m pretty excited about that! I’ve also been working all year on a play called DEAD CHILDREN about a family living in a town that’s being terrorized by a serial killer.

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 six years old, I was in a wonderful musical called Opal, written by Robert Lindsey-Nassif, that went up at the Lamb’s Theatre. It was based on the diary of a six-year-old French orphan, the sole survivor of a shipwreck taken in by a woman in a lumber camp, at the turn of the 20th century. It’s a really sweet, sad, wonderful musical with a beautiful, haunting score.

I loved being in the show – and I was in almost every scene (a situation that lead to me peeing my pants on the stage no less than twice). During the run, I started writing in my diary in Opal’s writing style, which was a sort of French to English translation – she would write sentences like, “I did go to the store” or “I did wake up.” I basically unlearned English in order to write in the style of a girl I wanted to be (‘cause she was published!). At one point, I wrote letters to myself from God and hid them backstage for the rest of the cast to find. Throughout the run, the other actors would find notes on the set written in six-year-old scrawl that said things like, “Dear Eliza, Break a Leg, Love, God.”

Not exactly sure how it relates to me becoming a writer, but I had an active, delusional imagination, I guess, probably from growing up in theaters. I don’t know what I was like as an actor, really, but I know that I had already started thinking of myself as a writer by age six.

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

A:  I wish there were more women whose plays were being produced. I wish that audiences would be more excited about seeing “science fiction” on stage. I’m told sometimes that I write sci-fi plays and that can be a bit of a turn-off. I love science fiction (though I don’t really think I would categorize what I do as sci-fi). But once people started saying that about my work, it got me thinking that I’d actually really love to write a straight up science fiction play. I would dig seeing something like that on stage. Ender’s Game, for instance, could be a beautiful night of theater.

I have this dream of owning a theater. It should be stated that in my fantasy, money is no object. I want to start a theater in Los Angeles, where there are a couple of fantastic theaters, but in general, the scene is rather small (certainly not as vibrant and overflowing as New York theater). I don’t want subscribers. I don’t want to have to do anything other than exactly the kind of theater that I would want to see. Again, money is no object, so if two people come to the show, then so be it. So we would only pick shows we love, shows by playwrights who don’t have agents or plays that nobody else wants to produce, or plays that everybody wants to produce but only with some crazy movie star in the starring role instead of the crazy talented weirdo theater actor who is really right for the part.

I guess it’s a childish fantasy, in that the dream is basically just, “I want a theater where I get to do whatever I want to do.” But it’s my fantasy, so it can be as silly as I want.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  There are too many. Here are a few. Deb Margolin, a writer/solo performer/teacher/mentor/goddess who helped me tap into some really messed up part of me that has never really gone away. Deb’s writing soars, it’s really quite amazing. Martin McDonagh – The Pillowman is the play that I most often give to people – it’s my favorite. Liz Meriwether, Amy Herzog, and Annie Baker – a real triumvirate of fantastic female playwrights who I think are killer writers as well as some of the nicest people around. The playwrights I’ve worked with in Youngblood (EST’s writing group for emerging playwrights under thirty) and Interstate 73 (Page 73’s writing group). I’ve been really blessed to be a part of supportive communities filled with writers I admire and learn from.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that is visceral, that elicits a physical reaction. I like laughing until I feel like I’m going to puke. I love musicals – that soaring, skipping feeling you get listening to someone belt out a song. When I saw Blasted at SoHo Rep, I felt a sheer terror that I had never felt in a theater before. A movie can get you up close to the action, can make everything insanely realistic, but nothing but live theater can make you feel like you’re right there, like you might be in danger. I live for that feeling.

I like theater that entertains. I have a low-brow sensibility that would totally appreciate seeing Die Hard on the stage. I like being frightened. I like when theater calls me out for the way I live my life.

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

A:  I’m just starting out! I guess my advice would be to keep writing. Donald Margulies, who was a professor and mentor of mine in college, always encouraged me to just move on to the next play instead of spending months and months editing. I sometimes thought it meant that he didn’t like my play, but I realize now that he knew the secret of becoming a better writer, which is just to write and write and write. I try not to get too attached to or precious about my work. Actors and directors are great at cutting right to the heart of something, and it’s so important to listen to smart people you trust when they are saying, “Cut these pages, cut this scene, etc.” Just make sure you like their sensibility. I’ve been lucky to work with people I really admire and click with. Find those people and then let them go to town.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A: 

EDGEWISE
DIRECTED BY TRIP CULLMAN
presented by Page 73 and The Play Company
NOV. 9 – DEC. 4, 2010
@ Walkerspace (46 Walker Street)
Tickets:
Online at https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/dept/255
Or call (212) 352-3101

More information here: http://www.p73.org/programs/productions/edgewise/


SNOW DAY
DIRECTED BY LILA NEUGEBAUER
(part of)
DIRECTORFEST 2010
Four 30-minute plays, directed by the 2010 Drama League Fall Fellows.
The Barrow Group Theater - 312 West 36th Street 3rd Floor
For tickets, call 212-244-9494 or email kcarter at dramaleague.org
Thursday, December 9 · 8pm
Friday, December 10 · 8pm
Saturday, December 11 · 2pm
Saturday, December 11 · 8pm
Sunday, December 12 · 3pm More information here: http://dramaleague.org/?page_id=2627

I Interview Playwrights Part 271: Margot Bordelon

Margot Bordelon

Hometown: Everett, Washington (about thirty miles north of Seattle)

Current Town: New Haven, Connecticut

Q:  Tell me about BOOzy.

A:  BOOzy is a two-night storytelling event produced by New York theater company Bohemian Archaeology. Five Chicago writers penned Halloween inspired stories that are performed by New York actors. Jordana Kritzer (Bohemian Archaeology AD and director of the evening) is a close friend and colleague of mine. We’ve collaborated on various projects since our Seattle days in 2002-03. She conceived the evening and asked me to submit a story for consideration. My piece “Kryptonite” is about an experience I had four years ago trying to navigate a relationship with an extremely attractive, yet extremely self involved DJ. It’s light. It’s both silly and sexy, with a healthy dose of self deprecating humor.

Here’s some language from the press release that might communicate the tone of the evening more clearly:

BOO(zy) explores the themes of Halloween: from the freakish, gross, and sexy to the rituals of dressing up and acting out. It's not campfire-ghost-stories, and it ain't your grandmother's Halloween! Produced by Bohemian Archaeology, this show reaches into the writer's pandora's box and brings forth the scathing, awkward, and hilarious truth about life.

Five of Chicago’s most twisted and original writers join five of New York’s most talented actors for two nights of Halloween tales (Thurs Oct 28 and Fri Oct 29, 9:00pm at the DR2 in Union Square!). From getting freaked out to getting their freak on these storytellers tell twisted tales to get you in the Hallows’ Eve mood. These stories are accompanied by a live musical soundscape by Ryan Blotnick and are paired with a boozy drink, one that best embodies the theme of each story.

On Halloween night, a young hipster gets freaky with a hot DJ and wonders what happens when the costumes come off (Blood-Orange Martini); a homeless man jams to ‘80s rock with a broomstick (Jack-O-Lantern 'n Coke); a backpacker finds herself surrounded by freaks in the Red Light District of Amsterdam (Green-Eyed Schnapps Monster); and a bike racer dons her superhero cape and rides for her life (Freaky-gin Fizz).

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I just started my first year at the Yale School of Drama studying Directing. So first and foremost, I’m working on readjusting to school life after having been away from it for nearly a decade. Also, I’m working on getting used to New Haven which is quite different than Chicago where I spent the last six years.

In addition to school projects, I’m preparing to co-direct WE LIVE HERE in August 2011, a piece I co-conceived with my best friend and fellow Theatre Seven of Chicago company member Cassy Sanders. It features eight short autobiographical plays written by eight Chicago writers, woven together to create a cohesive piece of theater performed by a versatile nine-actor ensemble.

Q:  Tell me about 2nd Story.

A:  First, some language from their website, because really, I can’t explain it more succinctly than this:

2nd Story is a hybrid performance event combining storytelling, wine, and music that is produced by the Serendipity Theater Collective as both a Monthly Performance Series and an Annual Festival. A typical 2nd Story evening goes something like this: you hang out with your friends and eat and drink and make merry. Four or five times during the night, the lights go down, a spotlight comes up on somebody and they tell you a story.

I first got involved in 2nd Story in the winter of 2006. I saw an event at Webster’s Wine Bar and I was awed by the level of craft, both of the stories and the performers. I’d just started to become interested in exploring autobiographical stories in a theatrical medium and this seemed like the perfect place to begin that investigation. Immediately following the event I introduced myself to the producer and said “I want to do this. How can I be involved?” He suggested I submit a story to the annual festival. I did and spent the next four years writing and performing for 2nd Story. Some of my closest friends and collaborators are artists I met through 2nd Story. In fact, four of them wrote pieces for WE LIVE HERE.

Q:  If I moved to Chicago, what theaters or shows would you recommend I see?

A:  Theater Seven of Chicago! This is my company so naturally I must recommend it first. We’re about to open our fifth season with a production of David Mamet’s radio play THE WATER ENGINE directed by our brilliant Artistic Director Brian Golden. In June we open The Chicago Landmark Project, a festival of ten short world premiere plays about specific Chicago landmarks. As you might be able to guess, a large part of our mission is to create work by and for the Chicago community.

Other fantastic companies to check out: Pavement Group, The New Colony, Sinnerman, Strawdog, New Leaf, Sideshow, Hypocrites, Tuta, TimeLine, Profiles, Dog & Pony. There are so many more I’m forgetting. Chicago is home to a wealth of thriving storefront companies, it’s truly an amazing city to live and create theater in. As for individual artists, I would recommend anything directed by Matt Hawkins, Shade Murray, Joanie Shultz, Seth Bockley, Sean Graney, or Leslie Buxbaum.

Lastly, if you’d never visited the city, I’d say go check out whatever is playing at Steppenwolf. They are the most important and influential ensemble company in Chicago, (if not the United States) and their work is always of the highest quality. I moved to the Midwest to do an artistic apprenticeship there, so Steppenwolf will always have a special place in my heart.

Q:  Besides a writer, you are an actor and director. How do your acting and directing inform your writing and vice versa?

A:  My writing tends to be very conversational which I believe is a direct result of hailing from a performance background as opposed to a literary one. Before I even sit down to write a story I’ll walk around my room and speak it into a tape recorder so that my body can be involved. Thoughts and ideas often spring from physical movement for me. When I direct I like to get the company on its feet as soon as possible after the first or second read through. We’ll go back to the table throughout the first week, but some of the most important initial discoveries come from actual physical doing.

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

A:  I’d like the government and citizens of this country to view theater as a vital form of expression that we cannot survive without, and as a result of that belief, be eager to fund it appropriately…

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Tina Landau, Charles Ludlam, Emma Rice, Mary Zimmerman, Lisa Kron, and Mike Daisey to name a few…

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Highly physical work created by companies or ensembles. The work of the Rude Mechs, Pig Iron, KneeHigh, Lookingglass, 500 Clown.

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

A:  I’m not sure I’m in a position to advise beginning playwrights since I'm not directly pursuing that career path, but practices I’ve observed from successful colleagues are a rigorous commitment to routine, discipline, and fearlessly seeking out artistic collaborators.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  BOO(zy): An Evening of Spirits and Storytelling

Thurs Oct 28 and Fri Oct 29th

9:00pm

Daryl Roth Theatre's DR2

101 E 15th St (@ Union Square East)
To buy tickets, go to:
https://www.smarttix.com/show.aspx?EID=&showCode=BOO18&BundleCode=&GUID=14375435-1f6b-4f9f-bee5-3205d85ae74b

or call 212-868-4444

www.theatreseven.org
www.2ndstory.com
www.margotbordelon.com

I Interview Playwrights Part 270: Ben Snyder

Ben Snyder

Hometown: Bay Area, CA (Tam Valley in southern Marin)


Current Town: Austin, TX

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I'm working on a new play Rivers of January, about three old friends meeting in Rio de Janeiro for New Years Eve.

I'm also working on a musical based on the novel You Can't Win. (I've mainly been writing screenplays these days and beginning to produce films as well.)

Q: After Juilliard you went to Austin to get your MFA. How do you like Austin?

A: Austin is a great place to go to grad school. It's a really livable town. Not a city city, but being in an overgrown town has a lot advantages. Cheap rent. Good weather. Fresh water pools. I'm definitely writing more then I was ever able to in NY.

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

A: As a kid in the 80s I was part of a Capoeira group that performed at culture events around the Bay Area. This was my introduction to the stage. The community center we practiced at was also home to a local chapter of the Nation of Islam. Being a Jewish kid in this environment was also my introduction to race politics. The theater I have created as an adult has always been about the intersections of race, class, culture and power.

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

A: I'd like to find a way for theater to be relevant. Not just in its content but in its presentation. I wish HBO or someone smart produced theater for live audiences but also taped really well so it could be shown on TV or in movie theaters as well. Like what Spike Lee did for Passing Strange. That shit was beautiful. Maybe that would be the death of theater. I dunno.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: My main theatrical hero would have to be Harry Belafonte. He's the best role model I know of as far as fusing arts and activism.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: That's a hard one. It's not really a kind of theater, but specific shows. Passing Strange was amazing to me. I thought August Osage County was pretty exciting. Nilaja Sun is exciting. Danny Hoch is exciting. I loved Billy Elliot the musical. I'd have to say I'm most excited by old shows that are new to me. Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death is exciting theater to me, but it came out in 1971. All My Sons is probably my all time favorite play.

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

A: Advice, hmmm... If you're going to grad schools look into the ones that are funded. Also, realize this will most likely be a hobby your entire life, in that really nobody makes a living as a playwright, so be sure you love it, and figure out how you're going to subsidize your theater habit. Is that advice?

Q: Plugs, please.

A: I'm afraid of plugging shows. I have a few things coming up but if I talk about them too much maybe they'll get cancelled. (I have had some problems with that in the past)

I Interview Playwrights Part 269: Emily Bohannon

Emily Bohannon

Hometown: Sandersville, Georgia

Current Town: New York, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I’m rewriting a solo piece about the inmates of a Georgia State Prison that I wrote last summer, and I also started a new play last week about marrying someone your parents hate. I find rewriting incredibly difficult, so I like to work on something old alongside something new. Stepping into a first draft feels like falling in love before things get complicated.

Q:  You recently won a NYFA grant. Can you tell me about that?

A:  It’s a funny story, because I applied for the grant as part of an application for a residency that I wasn’t accepted to, and had completely forgotten that I applied when I was notified that I won. I’m actually much happier that I won the grant, and have met some wonderful people as a result of it. NYFA is a fantastic organization with really nice folks that every artist should check out: http://www.nyfa.org. They give grants both to established and emerging writers (like me!), and it encourages me immensely to know that there are people in the world who believe in my writing.

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 almost held back in first grade because I told my teacher that I could talk to mice. They called my parents to the school for a conference, and when my parents asked me about it, I explained that I was retelling Cinderella from a first person point of view. From then on, I was pretty much always in trouble for talking. I was an only child and spent most of my childhood at flea markets talking to adults, so whenever I had access to children, I bossed them into putting on plays. I remember reading a play in an old Victorian textbook when I was 6 or 7, and then sitting down with a notebook to write a play of my own. Not a whole lot has changed since then. In sixth grade, there was a girl who wrote nasty things in everyone’s yearbooks, so I wrote a play about a girl who writes nasty things in people’s yearbooks and performed it for our class. She watched it and came up to me after class. I thought she was going to hit me, but instead she apologized. It was the first time I saw that writing could affect someone’s point of view, and that’s still what I aspire to with every play I write.

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

A:  Cheaper to produce and cheaper to see. If I had a second thing to change, I’d create more funding for individual artists and small companies, who can do so much more with less money than large organizations. And a third thing would be for more producers and artistic directors to believe that there is an immense hunger for new work in the world, and embrace the unknown instead of producing and reproducing the known.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I have great admiration and respect for the women who have taken me under their wing, particularly Tanya Barfield and Cusi Cram, who have given me a tremendous amount of support and encouragement. Chekhov is and always will be my hero. I’ve always said if I can have a career like Stephen Adly Guirgis, acting and writing and doing both things incredibly well, I’ll die a happy woman. And few playwrights excite and inspire me more than the wildly gifted Katori Hall, who is the only other writer I know writing about the South of my childhood.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The most exciting thing I saw this year was Space Panorama in the Under the Radar Festival at the Public. It proved that you can tell any story you want on a bare stage with a little imagination. I get excited by theatre that invokes noises from the audience — crying, screaming, gasping — especially plays that make me laugh and cry at the same time. I get really excited by structure, and when plays come out of left field with a surprise or reversal I wasn’t expecting. I get excited whenever I’m in a reading at the Lark where there’s a huge variety of work being developed in a supportive environment. In short — anything DIFFERENT. Anything I haven’t seen before, heard before, thought about before. Tell me stories I don’t know, in ways I’ve never seen.

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

A:  Find people who believe in your work, whose work you believe in, and stick to those people like glue.

No matter how broke you are, keep reading and seeing plays. Don't forget movies either; with the instant watch on Netflix, you can watch unlimited movies for less than $10 a month. Find the artists whose work inspires you.

Apply for everything.

Get excited when you see a really bad play, because you’re about to learn something.

Give yourself permission to write really bad first drafts and write things that feel crazy, offensive, and dangerous. Write about the things that terrify you.

Go look at the first page of the first draft of “The Homecoming” in the British Library. Pinter wrote things and crossed them out. A lot.

Question everything you know to be true about the world, and attempt to believe the opposite of everything you believe.

Have a reading for yourself before you invite anyone else into the room, and learn to trust your own judgment about what works and what doesn’t.

No matter what happens or how many bad days you have, just keep writing. If you can’t make one play work, write another one. No matter what, don’t stop writing. If you believe in yourself, eventually other people will, too.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  This would also fall under the “advice” category, but I want to give a huge plug for ESPA, the Einhorn School of Performing Arts over at Primary Stages (http://www.primarystages.org/espa). You will not find a place with more supportive talented people anywhere

I Interview Playwrights Part 268: Cheri Magid

photo by Charise Isis.

Cheri Magid

Hometown: Easton, CT

Current town: New York City and Saugerties, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Juggling a few different projects: The Tavern Wench, a contemporary and fantastic love story inspired by the bawdy tales of Boccaccio’s Decameron; The Virtues of Raw Oysters, about an eighteen-year-old aural smut peddler in the age of the phonograph (Yes there’s a theme—in my other life I write erotica.) And also a musical, The Christmas Windows of 1937, about the birth of the New York City Christmas windows.

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 remember seeing Guernica when the Picasso exhibit traveled to New York.  They had it set off in a separate room from the rest of the exhibit. I had never scene art like that before, so charged, so alive. But what struck me more than the art itself was the empty space in front of it—that vibrating state of possibilities, of emptiness with this impending sense of being filled. We were the theatre in it—when we walked in we changed the essence of that space, bringing into it our reactions or non-reactions or our need to get something eat. That push or desire to create something—I felt it so acutely even if I couldn’t exactly put it into words at the time.

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

A:  Oh how I wish you could write something and see it up immediately. I think about Jon Stewart’s show and how he and the staff can have an immediate reaction to a speech or a political decision and see it skewed or commented upon immediately. There’s a timeliness that unless you’re doing sketch comedy you just can’t get in the theatre. I wonder sometimes if we’re ruining our own power by that developmental delay.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I like messy oblique theatre that doesn’t answer every question, theatre that taps into another world. I think of the Mark Wing-Davey’s production of Caryl Churchill’s The Skriker that I saw at the Public. The breadth of that imaginary world floored me and that opening monologue of virtual nonsense that went on for at least ten minutes was amazingly theatrical. I want to be taken somewhere and to forget everything that pins me to the real world when I go to the theatre. I want it to have that kind of power and magic.

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

A:  Write and write and write and write. And then send out your work relentlessly. When you first start sending out your plays you will hear a whole lot of ‘no’. But if you keep at it, if you study plays and productions that work, if you hone your skills and be your own best editor and then if you send it out relentlessly you will see results. But you need to do both to be a successful playwright; writing and marketing.

I Interview Playwrights Part 267: Jason Chimonides

Jason Chimonides

Hometown:

Tallahassee, Florida. Moved there when I was two – born in Tuscaloosa though, Alabama. I guess I’m a southern ex-pat.

Current Town:
I split my time between NYC and a tiny little place called Indiana, PA where I teach theater at a reasonably sized public school called Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Indiana is about an hour east of Pittsburgh and Jimmy Stewart’s hometown!

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  It’s a thing called serverLove and it’s a bit difficult to describe – it’s set in a “futuristic” paracosmos in which a vast superintelligence called “server” (imagine if the internet became conscious) is exponentially integrating itself with humans at a rate that’s becoming difficult for our species to keep pace with. If you’re familiar with Transhumanism, or The Singularity, Virtual Reality, etc – this topic will not be exactly new to you, science fiction writers have been exploring this terrain for eons…

What I hope will make serverLove fresh, (and why it’s a play in the theater and not a film or novel), is, that as our man made machines become more and more intuitive and “organic” seeming, more natural, then to me it follows paradoxically, that live theater becomes the perfect medium through which to explore “Virtual” reality.

I became fascinated by the idea that an audience could watch onstage characters that existed in an utterly fleshed out, vivid, three dimensional virtual reality world - in utterly fleshed out, vivid, three dimensional time and space - and that the play itself could toggle back and forth between both the “virtual” and the “real” and that if calibrated well, the audience would feel, in a visceral way, all the simulacra folding in on themselves - which is how neuroscientists and philosophers increasingly see consciousness itself and does this make any sense at all…?

Anyhow. Topically, the play examines exponential technological evolution – and its implications for human relationships – but at a completely mundane level: youngish professionals falling in and out of relationships.

All of the characters in the play have been “mated” by server (try to imagine a kind of SUPER E Harmony matching your brain’s “lovemap” with another person’s at the minutest of neuronal levels) and are, in an objective sense, highly suited to each other, yet, despite their consonance, they still find themselves unable to form lasting relationships. The reason? server is always improving. The mating is always gaining subtlety and just like next year’s iPhone promises to be better than this years, there is an ingrain societal expectation that no matter how successful a pairing, one could always do better; The Paradox of Choice.

I’ll stop there.

Q:  How do you manage to balance your teaching life with your playwriting life?



A:  Teaching has actually provided the financial and psychic stability to seriously pursue writing, not to mention it’s given me the necessary time to really grow – I teach only 28 weeks a year! And since I don’t necessarily consider myself a “writer,” first, but more of a “generalist” generally – teaching’s a nice structure for a guy like me to keep his unruly brain occupied.

I write one full length project a year and have done so since about 2003, and balancing these projects with teaching, directing and music allows my creative interests to feed and talk to each other – life becomes integrated and that’s incredibly important to me. I also really enjoy attempting to contribute value to other people’s lives and to elicit growth. One isn’t always aware of the effect one is having on students, but I rest in the illusion that I’m doing some good. And just like in my Playwriting – I no longer read reviews.

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


A:  When I was 7 years old I had a “Death Meditation” on my Big Wheel. I knew, intuitively that everything would one day come to an end and yet I simultaneously realized that things were infinite (the ultimate “BIG WHEEL”) - I think it was Joseph Campbell who said “The image of death is the beginning of story…” That day on the big wheel is where mine began.

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


A:  My overwhelming feelings of guilt that I don’t see enough of it, know enough about it or care enough about the medium AS a medium if that makes sense.

I’m 37, when I was in college I was OBSESSED with theater, (in addition to cinema and Brit Pop), I consumed as much of it as I possibly could, had dreams of joining the RSC or starting my own company, etc. Now, in a way, I’ve moved on from it and only enjoy seeing plays as a rare treat. Sure I’ve been burned by seeing a lot of uninspiring professional theater, but simultaneously there are SO MANY other human endeavors that I want to explore and for too long theater has siphoned off too much of my attention: visual art, physics, experimental music, space, Buddhism, neuroscience, are just a few examples of my current “Subject Crushes.”

And though I teach theater, ostensibly, at the undergraduate level, for me, it’s simply a lens, a container through which to view life and to develop as a human. And beyond writing my plays, that’s how I attempt to contribute to the field. Theater is a really great thing to do as a young person! For a certain type of personality, it can be the keystone of a truly transformative education. It certainly was for me.
Beyond that, the central thing that keeps me devoting large amounts of my life to making it is, that, as an art form, it’s open. And most importantly, perhaps: theater = the present.

And it’s always the present…

So what do I want to change about theater? Nothing. I only want to stop feeling guilty for it no longer being the center of my life.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  George Judy, my mentor at Florida State University - now at Louisiana State University. He was the first person who showed me that one could be something other than one of the conventional options the culture offered up. He was and remains one of my greatest inspirations.

I liked Peter Brook and Growtowski and Stephen Wangh and Sam Shepard and Shakespeare and Moliere and a bunch of writers and actors; I still feel that Anthony Hopkins is a soul mate.
Oh, and Morrissey! Can’t forget him! He’s my ULTIMATE theatrical hero!!!

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?


A:  It’s always changing, but essentially I like stuff that’s cosmic in nature. I like stuff that deals with the BIG questions: the ultimate nature of reality, the self, relationships, death, love, inner paths to outerspace, etc. I’m engaged by theatrical inventiveness and endlessly impressed by it, but it’s not what I really care about – at my core, I’m a naturalist and I like (and write) chamber pieces.
I saw “The Aliens” by Annie Baker this spring and that play totally met my test for Cosmic Naturalism. It was clear to me that she writes from an instinctual, intimate, yet ultimate kind of place. There was a moment at the end of the first act where a dude is watching a sparkler burn out and he’s saying something like: “It’s going, it’s going…” (I’m butchering it, sorry) And I thought: “YESSSSSSSSS………THE TRUUUUUUTHHHHHH…….”

The theater that excites me the MOST however currently, the very most, is the play that Phillip Seymour Hoffman directs over 50 years in Charlie Kaufman’s “Synedoche, New York.”

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


A: 
• Play to your strengths and use the writing as meditation – a listening for personal truth, work for yourself first and then invite people to dialogue with your play but don’t operate from a place of trying please anybody – this will only lead to SUFFERING;

• Cultivate a “growth mindset” as opposed to an “outcome mindset” and be comfortable knowing that it will take thousands of hours of practice to achieve ANY expertise at all. This approach will also help you to relax when you’re totally LOST in a script by reminding you that the more lost you are the more possible it is that a truly extraordinary creative discovery lurks JUST beyond your winking “I beam!”

• Don’t read reviews. If they say it’s good it’s not that good, if they say it’s bad it’s not that bad.

• And most importantly, DO IT FOR FUN….. Just for fun. Everything else will follow naturally and if it doesn’t – who cares…? You’re invested in the PROCESS! And the process is the only thing that actually exists.

Q:  
Plugs, please:


A:  serverLove is being read on Oct 18th through MCC playlabs! Marin Ireland and Thomas Sadoski star – Josh Hecht directs!
http://www.mcctheater.org/literary/playlabs.html#serverlove
I’m also in a band called the Cinema Twin, type us in to Facebook or iTunes and listen!!!!

I Interview Playwrights Part 266: Karinne Keithley

Karinne Keithley

Hometown:   A pair: Bishop Monkton, No. Yorks, UK / Los Altos, CA

Current Town:  Modjeska Canyon, CA

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  Half the day, building displays for Montgomery Park, or Opulence, which is half museum, half audio-video-operetta. The other half, working on my dissertation prospectus.

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

A:  As a child I did a lot of things repetitively: draw oil pastels of Jupiter, watch the three films I owned on video (Wind in the Willows, My Fair Lady, Guys & Dolls), talk to the peacocks that came from Mr Jones' farm across the street to eat my mother's basil plants, and go to ballet. One of the highlights of my childhood was a hiking trip to the Lake District where we ate Kendall Mint Cakes and I was allowed to stay up past my bedtime to watch Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe.

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

A:  Put the room it happens in always in question, and architecturally make thinking space for different syntaxes of storytelling.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Mac Wellman, Big Dance Theater, Pina Bausch, Sibyl Kempson, Amber Reed, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Deborah Hay.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The serene, bewildering, mind-as-proliferating-multitudinous-scaffold, singing, ceremonial kind.

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

A:  Take anatomically and somatically oriented dance class -- seriously, I think that the best ear arises from kinesthetic intelligence.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Montgomery Park, or Opulence, an essay in the form of a building, at Incubator Arts Project NYC Nov. 4-13, 2010.

I Interview Playwrights Part 265: Rich Orloff

Rich Orloff

Hometown:  I was born and raised in Chicago.

Current Town:  New York City

Q:  Tell me about your new comedy SKIN DEEP.

A:  Several years ago, one of my plays was produced at the Key West Theatre Festival. At a party one night, I met a guy who worked as the front desk clerk at a local clothing-optional resort. The more he told me about his job, the more I knew there was a play there. A few years later, the festival produced another play of mine, and so I spent a few days - and nights - at the resort. I got a lot of material and a good tan, and it was all a tax-deductible business expense! I love my job.

On the surface, SKIN DEEP is simply a fun sex comedy, which I've tried to tell with clever wit and a few surprises. But I wanted to anchor the story in a way so that it'd be more than just a bunch of funny situations. Without giving away any plot twists, I've striven in SKIN DEEP to create moments in which characters have to face the ramifications of decisions they're both making in the play and made long ago. From the best comedies, I've learned there have to be moments when the laughter stops.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  As soon as I recover from SKIN DEEP (which starts performances on Sat Oct 16th), I plan to return to two unfinished projects:

Although it has lots of laughs in it, MEN OVERBOARD is one of my few plays which I've labeled "a play by" and not "a comedy by". It's about three brothers in their 40's, their elderly father, and the 13-year-old son of the oldest brother, who is about to have his Bar Mitzvah. The play explores the concept of "soul murder". If you see someone commit physical abuse toward a child, society agrees one should interact. But what responsibilities do each of us have when we see emotional abuse? This is the most raw play I've ever written, and I spend as much time not writing it as I do writing it.

To balance, I've also been working on a comedy revue entitled JEST DESSERTS. Inspired by the blackout humor of LAUGH-IN, none of the sketches in JEST DESSERT are more than a few minutes long. It's been great to be able to walk down the street, get an outrageous idea, mull it over and write it down. There's not a moment of character development or depth - this one IS just about the laughs.

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 seen you ask that in previous interviews, and I always think, "Boy, I gotta come up with something!" I can think of two moments that helped shaped me as a writer:

At a New Year's Eve party Maura Kosovski gave during my senior year of high school, Dede Endliss and I snuck into the den and watched A NIGHT AT THE OPERA on TV. I had never seen a Marx Brothers movie before, and I was in rapture. Nobody had ever told me that comedy could be such a relentless and anarchic attack on EVERYTHING, including logic itself.

In my junior year of college, I saw my first Frank Capra comedy, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT. After years of only wanting to write comedy as witty and crazy as the Marx Brothers, I suddenly realized comedy could be quiet, about the minutiae of human behavior, and that comedies could charm and touch us through the process of amusing us, instead of stopping to get serious.

I like to think my plays mix those two schools of comedy, the mix varying depending on the play.

One other story, about me as a person:

One summer I was a counselor at a day camp in Chicago, and during a field trip, as all the kids were getting back on the bus, one kid started to run away. I chased after him, and he ran down an alley. I cornered him. There were lots of pebbles on the ground, and he started to throw the stones at me. I kept my distance, so I was unafraid. I didn't know what to do, so I let him keep throwing stones. He kept throwing them and throwing them, until he was exhausted. Then he began to sob deeply.

Ever since then, I've realized that what a person is expressing and what they're feeling underneath can be two radically different things.

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

A:  Ticket prices! Who can afford Broadway or even Off-Broadway anymore? My friends can't - and most of them work in the theater! I'd love to have a play on Broadway someday - but I'd hate to ask folks to pay Broadway prices for anything I've written!

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes and influences?


A:  I think anyone who works in the theater these days is doing a heroic act. The hours are long, the risks are great, and most people (at least in the United States) wouldn't lose any sleep if theater stopped. To continue to create theater (especially if you've done it awhile) takes courage. I feel a deep affection and gratitude towards everyone working in it - regardless of talent.

My influences are way too numerous to mention, but they include the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, and a whole bunch of vaudeville comedians; the playwrights George S. Kaufman and his collaborators, Neil Simon, Joe Orton, Ferenc Molnar (best Hungarian comedic playwright ever!), Anton Chekhov, Noel Coward, Michael Frayn, Lanford Wilson and Terrence McNally; the early films of Woody Allen and Mel Brooks; the sitcoms of Norman Lear and James L. Brooks (Mary Tyler Moore, Taxi, etc.); and the sketch comedy of Sid Caesar, Monty Python and the Second City.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  A lot! I have eclectic tastes, ranging from mainstream musical comedy to the Wooster Group. I just want to be engaged and taken on a ride.

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

A:  Write more than one play. Have more than one theatrical experience. Say Yes unless you can think of a damn good reason to say No. Strive high, but constantly let go at the same time.

Some of the above are lessons I've learned; the last one is one I'm still learning.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Thanks for asking! The Foolish Theatre Company presents SKIN DEEP, a comedy without tan lines, from Oct 16 through Nov 6 at Theatre 54 in NYC. Winner of the Larry Corse Playwriting Prize and a finalist for the Sunwall Prize for Comedy, the play had eight readings and workshops around the country before I agreed to have it produced in New York. (I've learned not to rush the process!) As I participated in readings in New York, Florida, Georgia, Arizona and New Jersey, I also gained the confidence that the play works.

Folks can get tickets at http://www.smarttix.com/SearchResults.aspx?GUID=ccc571e4-c0a4-4a4d-97fd-ba6f0feacc28

You can learn more about my plays at www.richorloff.com. You can learn more about me by offering me drinks.