I Interview Playwrights Part 623: Lauren Ferebee

Lauren Ferebee

Hometown: Dallas, TX

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY (for two more weeks...then Spartanburg, SC until June 30)

Q: Congrats on being A Hub-Bub Artist is Residence. Tell me about that program. What will you work on while you're there?

A: Thanks! The program brings together four artists-in-residence, one filmmaker, two visual artists and one theatre artist, living together in Spartanburg, SC. We live in a building that also houses The Showroom, a performance space/gallery space in downtown Spartanburg, SC. My time will be split between collaborating with fellow residents, working on community-based projects (including site-specific work, I hope), working with the Hub-Bub organization and furthering my own portfolio of writing and theatre work.

Q: What else are you working on?

A: I just finished a commission for Spark and Echo Arts that is a reflection on and response to Psalm 137, a experimental video project that will be displayed on their website soon. I'm currently re-drafting Blood Quantum, a play about Texas and magic, finishing a half-hour original pilot and writing a first draft of an untitled road trip screenplay. I'm also working on two different benefits: one that Winter Miller is helming, on December 17th at the New Ohio, and one that will be part of V-Day's One Billion Rising for Justice in NYC - a fundraiser for the amazing City of Joy that will feature extraordinary new work engaging theatrically with justice. That will be in February.

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 kid, I couldn't stand still. I used to talk to my mom and just jump up and down while I was talking to her; when I got excited about something I would run around the house as an expression of my excitement. I remember really clearly the first time it occurred to me that I could be a writer - for a living - I was composing a poem in purple pen in my Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper. After that I COULD NOT stand still. I was just running up and down the hallways thinking about all the different things I could write.

Shortly thereafter (I was 10), I began my first novel, which was about a girl that used to stare wistfully into a stream that ran through a wheat field. I think the combined facts of that story say pretty much everything about who I am as a writer and a theatre artist. Not much has changed. Less wheat fields, maybe.

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

A: More women playwrights and playwrights of diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds being produced everywhere, all the time. I think we're very slowly moving in that direction, but if I could snap my fingers and have it just be that way, I would do it in a heartbeat.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: In terms of writers, I greatly admire Caryl Churchill, who I hadn't read much of until everyone interacting with my work told me I had to go read her. then I fell in love. Meredith Monk, for being extraordinary and strange. I also idolize Thomas Ostermeier and his aesthetic: I saw his Hedda Gabler at BAM in 2007 and it's stuck with me in great detail since.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I love people that do bold and unusual work that strikes at the heart. Some of the best work I've seen in New York has been with Flux Theatre Ensemble, who I'm lucky enough to work with as an associate artist. When I was just out of school and saw The Lesser Seductions of History, it rocked my world pretty hard. I also pretty much adore everything The Debate Society does and continues to do with their work, and I love the honest process of companies like The Assembly and The TEAM, who work so thoroughly and beautifully creating courageous and innovative work.

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

A: Go where your intuition takes you, write a bunch and then find a teacher that kicks your butt on structure so you learn how to put the plays together beautifully. Then, go make plays however you want.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: My short play Voir Dire goes up on December 17th as part of the Mad and Merry Theatre Company's Fractured Fables series at the Access Yheater'. In February, look out for my teen superhero play Invisibility, or Tiny Rockets, done by Adaptive Arts. Stay tuned for the Night of Joy benefit, also in February. Check out my work on Indie Theater Now! http://indietheaternow.com/Playwright/lauren-ferebee or check out my website www.laurenferebee.com.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 622: Lizzie Olesker

Lizzie Olesker

Hometown: New York City

Current Town: Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about the play you are working on in your Audrey Residency at New Georges.

A:  My play EMBROIDERED PAST is about hoarding and the loss of nature; accumulation and depletion. In part a "family drama", the play also incorporates object and toy theater elements. I wrote a rough, first draft during a week-long silent retreat with playwright Erik Ehn (an amazing, intense experience). What sparked the play was this recurring image of an 80 year old Chinese woman obsessing on her past, listing her few possessions. Also, the image of a middle-aged white woman sitting on a chair outside her house, not wanting to go back in yet unable to leave for good. Her husband, perpetually on the couch, is a serious hoarder who thinks of himself as a collector. Their grown son appears in the middle of the night, with nowhere else to go. Just outside the frame of this small, domestic story is the reality of environmental degradation and climate change, explored in miniature.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I'm also working on DOING THE WASH, a site-specific performance for neighborhood laundromats around NYC . I've written some text and just began working with actors in creating movement sequences around women's personal and historical relationship to the work of doing laundry. I will also be interviewing people currently working in drop-off service laundromats. Experimental filmmaker Lynn Sachs is going to collaborate, creating filmic elements for the performances from the interviews. Wash and Dry Productions, which has been producing literary readings in laundromats for several years, commissioned this new piece.

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

A:  My father died suddenly when I was just 12 years old. This profound loss affected me in many ways, making me tougher and more sensitive at the same time. I was still a girl yet felt like the world had completely shifted. I quickly understood impermanence and the relativity of one's experiences. I become more responsible yet also more rebellious. I suddenly had a stronger sense of injustice in the world.

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

A:  Make it more affordable and accessible to more audiences. It would be great if theater was less stratified and there were more opportunities of bringing new plays into production.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Let's see... Euripides. Bertolt Brecht. Anton Chekhov, Adrienne Kennedy, Maria Irene Fornes, Joe Chaikin, Samuel Beckett, Tony Kushner, Mac Wellman, Caryl Churchill, Will Eno, Annie Baker, Anne Washburn, Suzan-Lori Parks, Enda Walsh, to name a few...

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  When something is transformed. When I feel like my head and heart are literally expanding.When reality shifts through language and image, in time and space. When I'm being made smarter: emotionally and intellectually. And of course, when the familiar is made strange and the strange, familiar.

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

A:  Find and/or make a community of other artists who you like to work with and respect, who you can be in dialogue with. Find a way to direct and put on your own play, in whatever interesting context you want- it doesn't have to be a formal theater. Read a lot of good literature. See a lot of theater. Go to see visual art which relates somehow to whatever it is you're working on. Have faith. Hang in there.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 621: Sarah Shaefer

Sarah Shaefer

Hometown: Baltimore, Maryland

Current Town: New York, New York

Q:  Tell me about The Gin Baby.

A:  The Gin Baby is about a young woman whose life falls apart after getting sober and commits herself to a psych ward.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm currently working on two commissions from Kid Brooklyn Productions and one commission from Rising Phoenix Rep. For Kid Brooklyn, I'm workshopping All's Well That Ends Happy, a play about two ambitious porn actors who go to any lengths to climb up the ladder of sex industry success. It will be produced Fall of 2014 and Evan Caccippoli will direct. The second commission is for La Ronde Project, where Kid Brooklyn has commissioned eight playwrights, including Daniel Talbott, Charlotte Miller, Troy Deutsch, Nic Grelli myself and others, to write pieces inspired by Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde. That will go up at IRT July 3 - 5, 2014. I'm also working on a play for Rising Phoenix Rep's Cino Night series, that will be performed November 26. We start rehearsing on Monday!

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 five years-old, I was cast as a Dove of Peace in my Sunday school's Christmas play. Our costumes were white dresses with nude stockings. I had to get special permission from my mother to wear the nude stockings because she thought they were too provocative. She strictly forbid that I wear them anywhere else but on stage for my church play. That was the first experience where I was allowed to do things on stage that I was forbidden to do in real life. I love the sense of freedom I get on stage. I am allowed to be crass. I don't have to pretend I'm some kind of refined, conservative person who enjoys being polite.

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

A:  I like feeling like my skin just got shredded off with a cheese grater. I like feeling raw, overwhelmed and paralyzed after seeing a show. This doesn't always happen.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Sarah Kane, Jose Rivera, Daniel Talbott, Marcus Gardley, Harold Clurman, Jack Doulin, Edwin Sanchez.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that gives me a spiritual experience excites me; theater that I have a visceral reaction too, much like going to a huge Sunday gospel service. I just wanna raise my hands up and say yeah!!! Like I was blind and now I see. That kind of theater.

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

A:  Write everyday. Focus on the writing. Do what you need to do to keep writing. Being accountable to someone else helps me write. Deadlines keep me disciplined, but before I had the luxury of deadlines, it was just me and my desire to write, so taking a class really helped me get out the pages.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:   I have two productions coming up. The Gin Baby, directed by Daniel Talbott, produced by Mermaid Sand Productions and Kid Brooklyn Productions, running at IRT (154 Christopher Street) January 19, 2014 - February 2, 2014. You can buy tickets at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/476076. All's Well That Ends Happy, directed by Evan Caccioppoli, starring Nic Grelli, James Leighton and Briana Packen, produced by Kid Brooklyn Productions, coming up in Fall 2014. For Summer 2014, Rising Phoenix Rep will also be producing the Beach Plays in San Francisco. For more information on Kid Brooklyn Productions, you can check them out here: http://www.kidbrooklynproductions.org and for Rising Phoenix Rep, you can check them out here: http://www.risingphoenixrep.org.

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I Interview Playwrights Part 620: Sarah Matusek

 

Sarah Matusek

Hometown: Miami then St. Louis.

Current Town: Brooklyn.

Q: Tell me about your production with Everyday Inferno.

A:  The official title is short and sweet: PEOPLE WILL TALK ABOUT YOU SOMETIMES (A love letter to 4.48 Psychosis). Everyday Inferno is generously producing PEOPLE WILL TALK as part of their upcoming evening of one-acts, If on a Winter’s Night. As I reread 4.48 Psychosis last year, I couldn’t get past the heart-breaking line: “What do you offer your friends to make them so supportive?” I was intrigued by how memorialization can serve as the final compassionate act for a loved one, but also how we are memorialized in multiplicity.

Inspired by Sarah Kane’s final work, I have imagined the dynamics of a supportive network of friends affected by a suicide. Director Taylor Reynolds has joined me in exploring a poetic theatrical space composed without stage directions. PEOPLE WILL TALK does not attempt to adapt or explain 4.48 Psychosis—that would be impossible, and probably irreverent. Also, you do not need to have read Kane’s play before experiencing mine.

Austin-based Poison Apple Initiative is currently developing a full-length version of PEOPLE WILL TALK for Austin’s FronteraFest in early 2014. I am experimenting with these two lengths to discover which form best serves the content.

Q: What is Small Claims Court?

A: I started Small Claims Court as a devised performance group with an evolving/revolving team of collaborators. Since our residency at the Creative Arts Studio of Sea Cliff on Long Island this summer, our first full production, FALL OF ROME (an unofficial history), and two other short works-in-progress have been hosted by Title:Point and Fresh Ground Pepper at the Silent Barn. Due to fall/winter projects that have fallen outside of the realm of Small Claims, the group is on a small hiatus, but I’m looking forward to developing a dinosaur-themed dance theatre project with pals this spring.

Small claims court also “permits you to recover, without retaining a lawyer, up to $5,000 from individuals or businesses residing or having a place of business in the city or town in which the court sits.” – Better Business Bureau

Q: What else are you working on now?

A: A current exhibition of clocks and watches at the Frick Collection called “Precision and Splendor” has inspired my latest play, The Little Egyptians. It’s a love story set against the history of horology. It’s a two-person piece that calls for heavy Ancient Egyptian eye makeup.

I am also working on my first short screenplay—a mockumentary.

My mom wants to write something with me, so we will probably do that over Christmas.

Most pressing, however, is coaxing my heater to turn on.

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 wanting to be a dolphin trainer and/or Broadway choreographer. After receiving the sad news that there were no dolphins in Missouri, I turned our unfinished basement into a performance studio. All through elementary school, I asked for CD’s of musicals and ballets as gifts for all major holidays so that I could choreograph each track into a fully realized basement production. I cast my friends from school and even bought them costumes from Goodwill. One major problem persisted: I was usually too shy to ask my friends if they wanted to be in my shows. So for years until adolescence I would rehearse these fully choreographed musical numbers with these ghost casts that I never mustered up enough courage to actually invite over. My productions of Annie and The Nutcracker include some of my best work to date. Some days I was lucky enough to guilt-trip my younger brother into standing in for a sugar plum fairy.

I really don’t know what changed along the way, how I began to open up. Theatre has taught me so much about courage—from presence and preparation to claiming ownership of original thought and action. While I still battle some of that residual shyness, at least now I can hold rehearsals with all members present.

Q: Who are your theatrical heroes?

A: Sherry Kramer, Eugenio Barba and Odin Teatret, Dah Teatar, Howard Barker, Dario Fo, Annie Baker, Mac Wellman, Sibyl Kempson, Jenny Schwartz, Young Jean Lee, Elana Greenfield, Sam Hunter, Anne Carson, and, most recently, writers of the French Oulipo movement.

Also, I just graduated from Bennington College where I was surrounded by theatre geniuses. So look out for my friends.

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

A: Well, I am a playwright/performer/director just starting out. If I knew how to be better, I would be better. I will say, though, that living and making work in a fast-paced city requires daily patience with myself.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Everyday Inferno Theatre Company – If on a Winter’s Night… One-act plays, Dec 5-8 at Access Theatre Gallery

http://www.everydayinferno.com/WintersNight2013/

Stay tuned for Poison Apple Initiative news involving PEOPLE WILL TALK at FronteraFest 2014!

Small Claims Court (reach out at info.smallclaims@gmail.com)

http://smallclaims.biz/who_we_are

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I Interview Playwrights Part 619: Christian Levatino

Christian Levatino

Hometown: West Haven, Ct.

Current Town: Los Angeles, Ca.

Q:  Tell me about Sunny Afternoon.

A:  Sunny Afternoon is my contribution to the Kennedy assassination, an event that has fascinated me since my single digit years. It is a look at the 46 hours that Lee Harvey Oswald was in the custody of Dallas homicide captain Will Fritz. Sunny Afternoon is the first sequence in my playbook G-BOY//THE J. EDGAR HOOVER PENTALOGY - a look at the power and corruption of J. Edgar.
 

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I am currently directing Sunny Afternoon @ The Asylum Theatre in Hollywood, putting the finishing touches on a music video that I directed for Matt Mann and The Shine Runners as well as working on the follow up to Sunny Afternoon a two-act play entitled Black Bag Job (the second sequence in G-BOY).

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'm always looking out for the party. I've never wanted to ruin anyone's enjoyment. At the age of six, I broke my arm at a family picnic. I didn't tell anyone because I knew it would stop the party and I remember everyone was having fun. One of my earliest memories that still has much detail, I believe I was two years old and I attempted to shave with my father's razor. Very bad idea. I cut my lower lip open pretty bad. I was unsure what to do, but I knew this wasn't good. I crept downstairs and saw my folks watching television. They seemed to be enjoying the program and that made me happy, so I went back upstairs, grabbed some tissues and a green bucket. I put the tissues on my lip, the bucket over my head, handle against my neck like a chin strap and went to bed.

I've been looking out for the audience for awhile. ;)

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

A:  I would make the consequences for bad theatre - extremely severe. Perhaps bring tomato throwing back? Or face punches? That'd be cool. Bad actors get jumped when they get off stage.

‘Were theatre a tightrope where no incompetent would dare to tread’
- Goethe

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Orson Welles with The Mercury Theatre Company and Woody Allen. I'll throw Stanley Kubrick in as well even though he directed no theatre, you'd never know that from his films however. All three trust in their writing and let the actors do their thing in a wide shot. I love that. They brought theatre to film for me. Write good dialogue and get great actors to speak it.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Original, passionate, focused, provocative, unapologetic - speed & fucking violence. Let me add comfortable actors, I despise strained, forced or muggy acting. Ensembles that blaze make me smile.

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

A:  WORKSHOP or be BULLSHIT. You must be willing to collaborate and know when another idea is better than your own. Have an ego when your kid's hitting home runs for Varsity not when he's playing tee-ball.

And NEVER be satisfied.

Q:  Plugs, please: 

A:  Come see Sunny Afternoon running unil 12/01. Black Bag Job will be workshopped at The Asylum Lab at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in June of 2014.
LIKE the gangbusters theatre company on Facebook, PLEASE (it helps spread the word).

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I Interview Playwrights Part 618: Lisa Lewis

Lisa Lewis

Hometown: I grew up mainly in Louisville, KY and Naperville, IL.

Current Town: Astoria, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  A half-hour sitcom pilot called THE GAMBLE, based on my play TRIPLE CHERRY.

Q:  Tell me about NY Theatre Mag.

A:  This is a great upstart magazine for the theatre community. Beautiful, glossy, photo and editorial rich, it aims to do in-depth stories on leaders and innovators on the NY theatre scene, predominately Broadway and Off-Broadway institutions. What makes this magazine so exciting is its desire to really illuminate artists’ lives. Very often it has theatre people interviewing theatre people, so there’s a great sense of intimacy and understanding in the writing – you get the best stories that way.

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

A:  My parents met at a singing lesson in New York in the 70s. My dad was living at the Y and doing children's theatre and wanted to be Robert Goulet. My mom was an actress who later started an experimental theatre company in our hometown of Louisville, KY, and resembled in her glamour and chutzpah the great diva of the era, Miss Piggy. They put their only child in their plays at the state fair (I was a flea and a toaster!) and my grandmother would take me to the famed Actors Theatre and the Guffman-esque Derby Dinner Playhouse. In college, when I moved into my first walk-up in New York, my dad carried the boxes up the stairs while reciting the opening to Barefoot in the Park. Theatre was a big part of our lives. And in such a theatrical family, there was a lot of drama, big personalities and emotions. Sometimes as a kid, I’d pretend that I was watching a play and we were all characters and it was absurd, and funny, and sad, and wonderfully melodramatic. I think a lot of kids do that, look at their life - or the difficult parts of it - as a story. This gave me some distance, and when I started actually writing, some control. As a writer, I tend towards funny, poignant, tragicomedies. Though someday I'd like to do a big, crazy, slamming door farce, with music! I try not to write about my actual family, but they do sneak in here and there. They're eccentric, funny people.

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

A:  Oh gosh, I’m in the middle of my first self-production and it’s so expensive! And that expense inevitably shapes the content of shows from Off-Off Broadway to the Belasco. But it also forces us as artists to be creative, to work in unusual places, push theatre beyond the proscenium, and write shows that work in non-traditional venues. Crowdfunding has given opportunities to an incredible array of new voices and become a revolutionary answer to the economic challenges of putting up a show. As artists we’re always reacting, adapting and rebelling to the environment we’re in. So, yes, making theatre is expensive, but we must let it be a force of creative change that gives birth to something new and exciting.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  It started with Tennessee Williams, his lyricism and family dramas, then it was Anna Deavere Smith for telling the stories of everyday people in their own words, then Aaron Sorkin for making politics admirable, and Eric Bogosian for being dirty and brilliant, and Donald Margulies and Christopher Durang and Annie Baker, but always there was Woody Allen. Though technically much of his work is in film - it’s been his humor, his insight, his playful neuroticism, his romanticism, that has pushed me to go deeper, be funnier, embrace the digression, and believe in the eccentricity of my own voice.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I love comedies, and especially ones that are heart wrenching. My favorite plays last year were Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike and Annie Baker’s The Flick. Plays about people suffering hilariously. That to me is the perfect mirror on real life, which is not all sad and not all funny, but some surreal in-between.

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

A:  Writing takes time, so take your time with it. It’s not all about productions, it’s also about process and also different artists work at different paces, so give yourself that. And, jealousy/envy is self-destructive. It comes from the fear that there is only so much success to go around, which I don’t believe. I worked in film for many years, and the amazing thing in film development is that the cream rises, good work gets read. There will always be room for another great voice.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Please look out for my play SCHOOLED coming to New York in August 2014 – and very soon, keep your eyes out for the SCHOOLED Crowdfunding campaign. And check out the future issues of New York Theatre Magazine where I’ll be continuing to contribute: http://nytheatremag.com

You can find me at www.LisaLewisWriting.com

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I Interview Playwrights Part 617: Mallery Avidon

 
Mallery Avidon
 
Hometown:  Seattle, WA

Current Town:  Brooklyn, NY

Q:  Tell me about Mary-Kate Olsen is in Love

A:  We had our final run thru before tech last Friday. Afterwards Kristan Seemel, the director, and I were outside with the lighting designer, John Eckert.

It was the first time John had actually seen any of it on its feet and John said "This might be an insult but the play is WAY funnier than I thought it was. I mean when I read it I thought it was funny but..."

Which is of course not at all an insult...I always hope my plays are funnier and sadder and weirder and more beautiful when people are doing them than they are on the page...I think (hope) that's the point...

But yes: It's a FUNNY play about SAD PEOPLE

We start previews Friday Nov 1(tomorrow!) and it's been great being at The Flea. The Bats are so game and committed and just awesome to work with and I'm thrilled to be working with Kristan again. He directed the workshop of O Guru Guru Guru when we were at Brown together and we worked together a lot in grad school and then haven't had the chance since and it feels like a nice sort of homecoming. I think our collaborators are so important. I've had a bunch of workshops and readings of this play over time and gotten to work with a bunch of different actors and directors on it and I think I talk about the downside of play development but really I only like doing rewrites when I'm in a workshop/rehearsal setting and have awesome smart people around me challenging and giving life to whatever thing I've written.

We had an in-house reading of Mary-Kate for Jim Simpson in the spring and afterwards he said "this is done right?" Which was such an amazing thing to hear from an artistic director, but also speaks to all the work that had gone into the play in its earlier workshop/reading iterations.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  Mary-Kate will be my fourth world premiere in the last 12 months. breaks & bikes last November with Pavement Group in Chicago, O Guru Guru Guru, or why I don't want to go to yoga class with you at the Humana festival in April queerSpawn with a collection of shiny objects at Here Arts Center in June and now Mary-Kate.

It's really difficult for me to write things other than the show that is actually in preproduction or rehearsals so I hadn't written a new play in over a year which felt crazy.

I finally wrote a a first draft over the summer called a to z that I did a reading of at the Bushwick Starr in July and is having a reading with Satori Group in Seattle later in November.

Thus far mostly people have told me it's VERY sad.

I quit smoking a couple weeks ago and I've been worried about writing without smoking so I started a new play that I'm writing in the notes on my phone and I'm only writing it when I'm on the subway where I can't smoke no matter what. It's called We Will Be Ephemeral (which is a tag I saw on the Williamsburg Bridge and couldn't stop thinking about) and it takes place at a pot dealer's apartment in Seattle (where pot just became legal)...like video store employees, being a pot dealer will soon no longer be a job in Seattle.

I'm doing a Target Margin Theater Lab at Abrons Arts Center in February as part of Beyond The Pale, their investigation of Yiddish Work. I'm adapting a Celia Dropkin short story called At The Rich Relatives (about teenage revolutionaries) into a short musical that my friend Margot Bordelon is directing.

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

A:  My parents met in Santa Cruz in the 70's they did weird theater and my dad cooked at a restaurant and my mom worked at a bookstore. And they basically had no money but it was ok because it was the 70's in Santa Cruz and they were hippies. One summer Spalding Gray came to town to teach a workshop in autobiographical solo performance. My parents wanted to take the workshop, but again, had no money...so they made a deal with Spalding that they would help out in exchange for the workshop...this seems to have consisted entirely of them getting him pot and playing scrabble with him. I wasn't born yet but there is photographic evidence that at least some version of these events happened.

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

A:  A magical world where all the tickets are way way less and everyone gets paid more...

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Caryl Churchill, Maria Irene Fornes, Les Waters, John Kazanjian & Mary Ewald, David Herskovits, David Zinn, Lenore Doxsee, Erik Ehn, Lisa D'Amour, Adam Rapp, Will Eno

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that wants me to be there. Theater that might be called performance. Theater with amazing language.

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

A:  Write! Figure out where and when and how you like to write. Write as much as you can and then write some more. Figure out how to see your writing up on its feet with people who have worked on it and maybe some design ideas. This could be in your apartment or an abandoned building or your neighborhood bar/gallery/bookstore that has space in the back and is willing to let you use it for free. Find collaborators! Say yes to things! If you've written one full length play and "no one wants to produce it" write another one. Do other things in theater if you haven't! Stage Manage! Assist a director! See what other people do to make theater happen. Read lots of plays! See lots of theater! Don't just see the stuff your friends are in...see things you know nothing about! Talk to people you admire who make theater...if you ask nicely people will often have a coffee with you and answer questions...If you're already an actor or coming from some other part of theater when you read plays read them like a writer...how are they put together how is the language stacking up what is it doing...Figure out in really concrete terms what can indicate success for you that isn't money. Don't worry about getting an agent.

Go to other kinds of live events: music dance sports parties how are these the same/different. Go to museums. See visual art. Take long walks and don't listen to headphones and don't look at your phone.

Give yourself Time to Think and Daydream.

Pursue your obsessions.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Mary-Kate Olsen is in Love @ The Flea! If you come to previews between the 1 & 14 I'll be there and we can hang out!
a to z reading with The Satori Group in Seattle!
O Guru Guru Guru, or why I don't want to go to yoga class with you @ Carolina Actors Studio Theater in Charlotte, North Carolina
Beyond The Pale Target Margin Lab! So Many Great Artists!
The Bushwick Starr Reading Series that I co-curate with William Burke and Mark Sitko! (also all the shows at The Starr Always!)
Ryan Mitchell's Company Saint Genet who I am a dramaturge for!

Adam Rapp's play The Edge of Our Bodies performed by Samie Detzer at Washington Ensemble Theater in the Spring
Bo-Nita by Elizabeth Heffron directed by Paul Budraitis at Seattle Rep Right Now!
Iska Dhaaf!
Donna!
Infinite Jest!

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I Interview Playwrights Part 616: Andrew Farmer

Andrew Farmer

Hometown: It's a split between Laconia, New Hampshire and Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. As a result, I'm very resilient to the cold but I'm also terrified of getting stung by Portuguese Man o' War.

Current Town:  Brooklyn, NY.

Q:  Tell me about your current and upcoming shows.

A:  I'm just finishing up a workshop production run of my ghost story play, "The Gray Man" at HERE Arts through the writers group Smith + Tinker. I've been developing it with one of my favorite directors, Andrew Neisler, and a killer group of actors, for a couple years now and this has been our first chance staging it and seeing how the pieces work in front of an audience. It's a bit of a departure for me. It started out as an out and out horror play and ended up a piece about a lonely man who's just lost his mother, stranded in turn-of-the-century Manhattan. There's a bogeyman involved too, so rest assured, there are definitely still moments of horror. I like to think it's become a ghost story with a heart beating inside of it.

Coming up is a very different play called "The Fall of Hotel Mudafier to The Toltecs" directed by ANOTHER one of my favorite directors, Annie Tippe. We're doing a one night experiment of it at Swift Hibernian Lounge on Sunday, November 10th at 7PM. It's been so fun. It began as a scene that Annie directed at Williamstown about two women discussing one's imminent wedding in an upscale hotel cafe while everyone around them is being surreptitiously killed by poison blow darts. It was so strange and in an odd way, kind of joyful too, so we came up with an idea to make an anthology play around it. I picked 19 actors who I love, randomly split them up and then wrote scenes for each of them. What we ended up with is a glimpse into the quasi-future in which the whole world has turned into a vicious jungle, forcing the remaining cultural elites to hide out in the last beacon of luxury, Hotel Mudafier.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  Oh loads of stuff. This December, Neisler is directing Ryann Weir and I in a two person incarnation of "A Christmas Carol." But there won't be any Cockney accents. Ryann and I play a young couple who decide to read a bit of "A Christmas Carol" every day in December and we learn about their lives through the telling of a story that everyone knows. The goal for the show is to start a holiday tradition. We want the experience to be intimate and warm and more than a little boozy.

I've also been developing another piece with Claire Rothrock, Ryann Weir and Annie Tippe called "I Heard Sex Noises: A Glimpse at Gardening on Roosevelt Island." It's inspired by this insane New York Times article about a political coup within a senior citizen garden club. There's so much intrigue, I can't even begin to talk about it. All I can say is arson and bullfrogs are involved.

Some other things in the works include a folk-song storytelling piece I'm writing with Andrew R. Butler, a new sketch and improv show with my comedy group Gentlemen Party, and a one man play about The Wolf Man.

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

A:  I had a lot of surgeries as a kid, so I spent quite a bit of time reading, drawing and watching E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial on repeat. Before I could write, I would draw stories. When I was four, I drew a story titled They Weren't Themselves. They Were Mice. It was an oddly sobering tale about two boys who woke up one morning to find they no longer humans, they were now mice. There was no reasoning behind it or any identifiable cause, they were just mice now and there was nothing they could do about it. The story followed their exploits in which they were pursued by a giant that had living alligator shoes. One of the mice was desperate to return to his previous state while the other was relieved to be free from human obligations, so there was a lot of tension between the two that they'd occasionally have to put aside in order to escape various dangers. I'm not sure that that came across in the drawings but it was definitely going on in my head.

Anyway, I don't think my interests as a writer have changed much since then.

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

A:  This isn't so much something that needs to be changed, but rather something that IS changing and I want us all to keep it up. I'm SO happy to see risky, ambitious and complicated stuff like Ann Washburn's Mr. Burns and Dave Malloy's Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 get exposure on a wider scale. They're pieces of theater that NEED to be be theater. And man, that's just the best.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Oh God. Too many to name. But here goes!

The first play I saw in New York was The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh. He made the audience scream and laugh and cry all within 90 minutes and that was the first time I realized a story can do that to people. David Cromer's productions of Our Town and Tribes just destroyed me: how he doesn't need to throw a concept on top of a play to make it his. He goes back to the text and let's it reveal itself. Rachel Chavkin and the TEAM. Their work always seems to glow with excitement and wonder and humanity. It never feels crafted as much as it feels like it's bursting from the minds of all the collaborators for the first time. Sam Hunter, Young Jean Lee, Annie Baker, Wallace Shawn, Tom Stoppard, Suzan Lori Parks and every other playwright I go to when my battery needs recharging.

Then of course the heroes I'm surrounded by. Young theater companies like Fresh Ground Pepper, AGGROCRAG, Theater Reconstruction Ensemble, Pipeline Theatre Company; who find a way to put out SO much incredible work, while at the same time providing development resources to artists just starting out. And of course the good people at Ars Nova and id Theater who help new work get seen.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Anything that makes good on the promise that I couldn't have the same experience watching it on a TV or computer screen in my pajamas at home. Anything that makes me say "Thank God I went OUT!"

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

A:  Write the play you're dying to see. Write a lot of them actually. Then find people you love working with and put those plays up.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  The Gray Man runs one more night at Smith + Tinker's "Ladder to the Moon"! (Saturday, November 2nd, at 8:30PM) And I absolutely recommend you check out the other plays by Francis Weiss Rabkin, Jerry Lieblich, Amanda Szeglowski and Ryann Weir. http://here.org/shows/detail/1300/ for details and tickets!

The Fall of Hotel Mudafier to the Toltecs has a one night only showing at Swift Hibernian Lounge (34 E. 4th St, 10003) on Sunday, November 10th at 7PM!

And A Christmas Carol is coming this December! Feel free to email me for updates! andrewduncanfarmer@gmail.com.

 

 

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