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Dec 18, 2015

I Interview Playwrights Part 807: Tatiana Suarez-Pico



Tatiana Suarez-Pico

Current Town:  Los Angeles, CA and Brooklyn, NY

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  A play about a woman who finds a dead child in a trash bag-- that's not what the play's about but it's the starting point. I'm also writing for Netflix’s TV adaption of "A Series of Unfortunate Events."

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 (3rd grade), one of our teachers took us to see a children's play-- an adaption of the myth of Icarus. There was a Greek chorus, which I thought was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. Then there was Icarus with his melting wings and the Greek chorus saying everything in perfect unison. I walked out of the theater, and this is the moment I remember the most, with my head in the clouds. I wanted to be both Icarus and, I wanted to be a part of that beautiful chorus. I wanted to be the stage, the words, the costumes. I couldn't speak about how much I loved it all. I couldn’t speak at all. My head had exploded. And, I have never looked back.

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

A:  If we could just get more writers who do not identify as “white” and more writers who are women produced that would be… FAIR. I read some quote about a theater in New York, "Oh, they're producing the classics of the future," or something akin to that. My heart broke again and again and again. The theater company that they were talking about only produces writers who identify as "white." I thought, "So there will be another 140 years of theater history with writers who by and large identify the same way?" This has to be a joke. It has to be. You can’t be that exclusionary and not be doing it on purpose. You can’t be that “selective” and not know that the theater community is aware that they (the theaters) are aware of the exclusion. I would change that.

Theater-makers don’t get better at their craft if they don’t get their art on stage. That’s where the real honing of the craft happens and if so many of us are barred from more commercial theaters, from reaching wider audiences, then once again, we’re being purposely written out of history.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  There are many. My mom is a teacher and let me tell you, she puts on a show for her students. Some of my other heroes include (not listed in any particular order): Cherrie Moraga, Lynn Nottage, Albert Camus, Lisa Kron, Rogelio Martinez, Paddy Chayefsky, Diana Son, Suzan-Lori Parks, Fernanda Coppel, Marga Gomez, Katori Hall, etc. etc. The list goes on.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  The kind that makes you pay attention and has something to say. I enjoy works that show me different ways of looking at the world, at life. I want to lean in… I want to be smacked by the truth? I like theater experiences like that.

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

A:  You know, I can’t tell if I’m just starting out myself or if I’ve been doing this for too long. I’ve had a life as an actor as well so it all melds into one big life of creating characters.

The only advice I can think of is, you better love this theater thing. And I mean, you better love it with all your might, like if someone took it away from you, you’ll want to die. Or you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

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Dec 14, 2015

I Interview Playwrights Part 806: Kevin Mullins



Kevin Mullins

Hometown: Watertown, Massachusetts.

Current Town: Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Q:  Tell me about your upcoming shows.

A:  I have two shows coming up this year in Boston. Citizens of the Empire (with Boston Public Works) and A Southern Victory (a trilogy of plays being produced in rep by Vagabond Theatre Group).

Citizens of the Empire, is a space opera that takes place 800 years in the future. It’s about a nobleman who leads an uprising to free his planet from imperial rule and in doing so goes to war with his friends and the people with whom he grew up. It has union organizing robots, the Madame of a space brothel, an intergalactic garbage-woman, lords, ladies, hackers, spies and despots, and it ends with a giant space battle.

A Southern Victory is a trilogy of plays that take place in the 1920’s, but in a world where the south won the American Civil War. We’re still two separate countries, slavery still exists in the Confederacy and there’s a militarized border with the United States. We follow a young man from a wealthy planting family in Atlanta who goes to Harvard as an international student and slowly gets sucked into the terrorist underground of the abolitionist movement.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I just finished the first draft of a play about a Lovecraftian monster that lives in the basement of a bookstore that’s about to go out of business.

I’m also working on a re-imagining of The Oresteia set in Jerusalem during the final years of the British Mandate, from 1945-1948. We’ll watch a British officer’s family get drawn into the quagmire of national and religious politics, and eventually destroy themselves in a very Greek fashion.

I’m also working on a play about spies during the early years of human colonization on the Moon and Mars.

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

A:  The money. The price of space, the price of tickets, and the lack of money that we all get paid to do what we love.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Naomi Wallace, Howard Barker, Eugene O’Neill, Susan Glaspell, Tony Kushner, Rob Handel, Connie Congdon, Mac Rogers, Sharron Pollock, J. T. Rogers, Migdalia Cruz, Yael Farber, Jennifer Haley, Caryl Churchill, Chay Yew, Jan Kott, Harold Pinter, Catherine Filloux, Christopher Shinn, Qui Nguyen, Hallie Flanagan, Karel Capek, and all the playwrights of 13P, Boston Public Works and The Welders.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I love big epic plays. It doesn’t have to be a ten person cast. You can deal with big ideas with two people in a living room, but the scope should be there.

I want to lose myself in the play. I want to turn around and have two and half hours go by and have it feel like I just sat down.

A few years ago I took my husband to see Long Day’s Journey into Night. It’s a long play. Ushers were going around and reminding some of the older audience members that the run time was pushing four hours. He was horribly sick and was coughing throughout most of the first act. At intermission I turned to him and said “Hey, let’s go home and put you to bed.” He looked at me and said “Are you crazy, we can’t go. I have to find out what happens.”…..”Nothing good,” I told him. But that is how all of our shows should be. Time should stop.

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

A:  I feel like I’m just starting out myself, but I would say:

Write! Don’t stop. Write one play and then another, and then another. The more you do it, the more you’ll get a feel for it. Don’t try and write what you think theaters will produce, write the play you feel you have to write this very second.

Seek out the people who share your sensibilities as an artist. Find the writers who you respect and admire. Self-produce. Don’t wait for someone to tell you your work is good enough. Perform it yourself. Productions are development. Find directors who understand what you’re trying to do. A good director is a real treasure.

Don’t get too attached to the first few plays you write. Those are the plays you write when you’re learning how plays work. More often than not they’re better left in the drawer. I see some playwrights trying to workshop their first plays when they should be finishing their new play that’s ten times better than what they wrote four years ago.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Citizens of the Empire runs at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, January 8th -23rd:

http://www.bostontheatrescene.com/season/iCitizens-of-the-Empirei/

And A Southern Victory runs March 4th -26th at the Boston Playwrights Theatre:

https://vagabondtheatregroup.wordpress.com/


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Dec 3, 2015

Some of My Playwriting Numbers

Year I started writing plays:  1997
Number of long one acts and full lengths written: 40  (Well, I almost have the 40th written)
Number of long one acts or full lengths produced at least once: 18
Number of total productions of these plays (including upcoming): 108
Number of long one acts and full lengths published:  7
Collection of short plays published: 1
Number of half hour plays published under another name: 5
Number of long one acts and full lengths that I wrote that I no longer show to anyone: 17
Number of long one acts and full lengths I'm actively trying to get a first production of:  8
Number of long one acts and full lengths I'm trying to get a second production of which aren't published: 3
Plays that need some work/development before I show anyone: 2 or 3

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Nov 30, 2015

next up


Hearts Like Fists

Production #23 of Hearts Like Fists
Maxwell Heights Secondary School
Oshawa, Ontario, Canada
Opens December 9, 2015

Production #24 of Hearts Like Fists
St. Francis High School
St. Francis, MN
Opens January 29, 2016

Production #25 of Hearts Like Fists
La Feria High School
La Feria, TX
Opens March 10, 2016

Production #26 of Hearts Like Fists
Adirondack Community College
Queensbury, NY
Opens April 7, 2016

Production #27 of Hearts Like Fists
University of Findlay
Findlay, OH
Opens April 13, 2016

Production #28 of Hearts Like Fists
Muskingum University
New Concord, OH 
Opens April 14, 2016

Production #29 of Hearts Like Fists
Shadow Horse Theater
Minneapolis, MN
Opens May 27, 2016

Clown Bar

Production #13 of Clown Bar
Springs Ensemble Theatre
Colorado Springs, CO
Opens May 13, 2016


Production #11 of Pretty Theft
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, VA
Opens April 26, 2016

TBA workshop

The Chance Theater
Anaheim, CA
August 4, 6, 7, 2016.


7 Ways to Say I Love You 
(a night of short plays)

Production #2 of 7 Ways to Say I Love You
Natomas Pacific Pathways Prep HS
Sacramento, CA 
Opens May 11, 2016


PUBLISHED PLAYS


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Nov 24, 2015

I Interview Playwrights Part 805: Ryan Fogarty



Ryan Fogarty

Hometown: Bay Shore, NY

Current Town: Sunnyside, Qns

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I'm currently working on a few plays.

The first is Code: Anchor which is based on some crazy kids I knew working in the toll booths at Robert Moses State Beach when I was in high school/college. My fourth and last summer there, three kids stole thousands of dollars by slipping money into books they were reading. It's the first time I’m using my hometown as a setting for a play.

The second is an EST/Sloan commission that centers on a programmer who is developing an education gaming platform and runs out of money. He releases a phone game app to rectify that and it takes off and usurps his original plans. I'm thinking about technology and how our level of empathy has changed because of our phones.

I have a few ideas swimming around in my head that I plan on tackling during a residency this summer - including a play that takes place over the course of the next five decades. It’s set at a series of happy hours at an Applebees featuring a group of high school teachers. I'm using education in America as a small lens and having fun predicting our future.

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 little both of my parents worked and my sister, Cait, and I used to spend a lot of time with our grandparents. My Mom's Dad watched a lot of old movies on AMC (when they actually aired them...) and TCM. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers was one of my jams and I later figured out it’s a musicalization of the Rape of the Sabine Women...oof. I saw Peyton Place at seven, The Lost Weekend at eight, Psycho at nine... So, pretty much one of the first on-screen rapes, hardcore alcoholism, and, well, Norman Bates, respectively. Yay…Where was my Disney? It was all formative though...in a positive way. Old movies are very theatrical - back lot sets, styled to a T, and overly dramatic talk (Lynn Nottage's By the Way Meet Vera Stark and Rinne Groff's Ruby Sunrise were a lot of fun for me). When I got my hands on a camera in high school I made a few short films (I think there's a music video of Green Day's "Brain Stew" I made on my old laptop). But, I didn't feel I had a good eye for film and wanted more intimacy and smaller spaces. I wasn't good at orchestrating people either so directing was out of the question. Among other reasons, that's when I started working on writing scripts and I applied to NYU.

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

A:  I would love to see change in how artists are supported financially. I feel like fiscal-sponsorship only covers so much for individual artists and gets you so many grant opportunities. There are crowd funding opportunities, yes, but people burn out on that or expend their pool after a few projects. Few institutions give major awards or individual project grants nowadays (and if they do it’s usually with restrictions). The President of a major foundation was recently boasting in an interview about past (in the 60s and 70s) individual grants they gave to people who made GIANT contributions to their fields. Why would that stop if they made such strides? Why can't they bring that back? Why would a large organization that may run healthy surpluses get a five-figure grant to mount a production that doesn't ostensibly need that support? Why not split it five ways between five artists to create something individually? I’m sure there is a way to measure the impact of that sort of change. The positive effect for the artist would obviously happen over the long-term but it could possibly be more meaningful. I know it's not just individuals – many small theatres and companies feel the pain too.

I don't have the power (or the money) to change support for artists in this country but I think it needs serious consideration. I find the artists who are able to make the most notable contributions are the ones who can write without working full-time and/or can pay to travel. I don't begrudge anyone the ability to do that and at some point I hope I'll be in that place. But, someone who is sagged in debt (school, moving to New York City, etc.) is going to be more concerned with finding a day job and paying off that degree or pay their rent than taking the time to go write or make sure they can self-produce. We talk a lot about money and who has it in this country, and theatre is a microcosm of that. I've seen this topic brought up minutely in the "all artists should be paid for their work" discussion but I wish individual artists had a greater platform to make this struggle known or promote better practices.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  There are so many playwrights I admire. Churchill, Pinter, Hare, Ruhl, Herzog. Gina Gionfriddo is a hero of mine. I saw After Ashleigh at The Vineyard when I was a freshman and I had been so used to the Greeks, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Miller, and Williams up to that point. I saw Gina's play and was like, "What is going on here? This is very different. This is fucking awesome." After I graduated, when I was the Artistic Assistant at Second Stage and wasn't writing much they produced Becky Shaw. I watched that show sooo many times, not because I had to but because I really wanted to. Watching the whole process of that play made a huge impression on me. That play made me want to write more and write really well.

I've also been very lucky to have very personal heroes in my life whose work I was introduced to early on and magically I have befriended/been mentored by over the years: Anton Dudley, Chris Shinn, Doug Wright, and Chris Burney, who I think is one of the great champions of young writers and new plays out there.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Work that is unlike my own in either style, form, content, and/or theme. Recent (last few years) work that’s excited me: Lucas Hnath’s The Christians, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon, 600 Highwaymen's Employee of the Year, SITI Company, Bill T. Jones, and Janet Wong’s A Rite, Jackie Sibblies Drury's We Are Proud to Present..., Jenny Schwartz's Iowa, The Civilians’ Paris Commune. I’m really looking forward to Under the Radar this year. Other past impactful nights of theatre for me have been David Lindsay-Abaire's Rabbit Hole (which I saw two weeks after my grandfather was killed in an accident by a teenage driver), Dan LeFranc's The Big Meal, David Hare's Skylight, Adrienne Kennedy's Ohio State Murders, The Young Vic’s production of A Doll’s House in 2014. There are also plays that I haven't seen productions of that I love: Emily Schwend's Behind the Motel, Clarence Coo's Beautiful Provence, MJ Kaufman's Sagittarius Ponderosa (which my friend Ben is directing right now in San Francisco at NCTC!), Daniel Pearle's Remote Viewing, Claire Kiechel's Some Dark Places, Nick Gandiello's Sunrise Highway (Long Island playwrights! Woo!), and Steve Yockey's Pluto or Bliss or Octopus...

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

A:  Ha. I feel like I'm always just starting out. One of my mentors said to me, "It only takes one person to read your play." I've sort of clung to that notion.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Look out for my reading of Code: Anchor in May at the Drama League.

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Nov 19, 2015

I Interview Playwrights Part 804: Suzanne Bachner



Suzanne Bachner

Hometown: New York City

Current Town: New York City

Q:  Tell me about The Good Adoptee.

A:  It is the true story of my search for my origins in the face of sealed records in New York State. I developed it in close collaboration with the amazing actress, Anna Bridgforth, and the incredible actor/writer, Bob Brader, who is my dramaturg. The Good Adoptee is a solo show where Anna plays a dozen characters, including me, and only one first name have been changed. It’s one of the scariest and most challenging pieces I’ve ever written - and one of the most rewarding.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  A 90-minute two-actor production of my play, Circle, starring Bob Brader & Anna Bridgforth; an S&M themed TV series; and a play that I’ve been working on forever: Conversations with My Divorce Attorney.

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

A:  My mom, who is an phenomenal artist, took me to the MOMA all the time when I was little. There are always multiple warnings not to touch anything even before we even enter the museum, plus the intimidating guards watch you like hawks. Once, when I’m three, I spot this massive Jackson Pollock on the wall at the end of the gallery. Suddenly, I take off like a shot and run across the gallery towards the Pollock as fast as I can. People gasp and the guard nearly has a stroke. About a foot from the painting, I stop in my tracks, turn around and laugh.

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

A:  Accessibility. For audiences seeing it and for the artists making it. Theater should be for every single person in our community. Right now it's too pricey, aloof and removed. It has been heartbreaking to see tons of independent venues close over the course of the last decade in this city. Independent theaters - both venues and artists - need to be funded and supported or they will cease to exist. That may have been more than one thing.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Adrienne Kennedy, John Guare, Caryl Churchill, Paula Vogel, Suzan-Lori Parks, Lisa Kron, Robert O’Hara, Patrick Hillan, Kimo DeSean & Duncan Pflaster

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that is raw, vulnerable, risky and nonlinear. Both powerful stripped down true stories and heightened wildly imaginative invented extravaganzas. I love a completely compelling and visceral experience in the theater that forces the audience to delay thought and reflection till after the performance or even the next day.

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

A:  Hear your plays read aloud and get them up on their feet. I was given this advice when I had written my first play, so I’m paying it forward. A famous actor told me: it doesn’t matter if you do your play on a street corner, it just needs to be up on its feet in front of an audience so you can hear and see it. If your play stays on the page and on a shelf, your next play will never be any better than the first. I don’t think continual readings help move a play forward either - it’s got to be up or it will remain a literary expression on the page and not a play.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  The Good Adoptee has its final performance in the United Solo Theatre Festival at Theatre Row Studio Theatre, 410 West 42nd Street, bet. 9th & 10th Avenues, Saturday, November 21 @ 4PM
More info: www.jmtcinc.com & https://www.facebook.com/events/951699254903137/
Tickets: www.tinyurl.com/thegoodadoptee3
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Nov 18, 2015

I Interview Playwrights Part 803: Mêlisa Annis



Mêlisa Annis

Hometown:  Cardiff, Wales.

Current Town:  Brooklyn, NY.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I like to spin plates. Where to start…? I’m working on a new play that I’m very excited about. The first draft was a bit of a fever dream, and I banged it out in four days so I’m working through it now making changes, trying to make sense of it all. In all honesty, I was worried this summer - having just finished grad school - that I was all played out, so it was a welcome relief to get started on a new play again, organically and with enthusiasm. It’s a scary play, it scares me, and so I think I’m on the right track.

This fall has been a fall of new adventure. I’ve started collaborating with a group of extremely talented writers and producers on a TV pilot called “Sterling Place” (http://www.668productions.com/). We meet twice a week, move cue cards around walls, write some, laugh lots and get loads of work done. It turns out collaboration doesn’t have to be a hard slog at all; it can be a total creative pleasure.

I’m also working on a play cycle that uses both the Welsh and English language. The play spans 60 years in an immigrant home in Pennsylvania and it’s loosely based on the experiences of the family of Frank Lloyd Wright.

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 always been a mutterer. I would reconstruct conversations in my head, create new conversations with imaginary people and go through the emotional rollercoaster that was experiencing these imagined conversations. I’d mutter out loud while walking home from the school bus or whenever I was alone really. Perhaps it’s because I’m an only child? People often looked at me quite strangely. Thankfully, when I was eleven or so, my mother gave me her Walkman and it seemed as though I was just singing along to Take That or whatever it was I was supposed to be listening to.

I’m still a mutterer. Perhaps because I’m from a family of actors, poets and other creative types, no one ever told me to stop. I would be the worst witness and I’d be so worried that I filled in the gaps with my imagination. My husband calls me “Mêlisa, the Minister of Misinformation”. Playwriting has been a savior to me in many ways. My muttering is less intense when I’m working on a play because I can channel all of that emotion and imagination into my pages instead of out loud on the street.

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

A:  One thing…? Whew – that’s hard. If I could change one thing it would be the way we fund theater in this country. In my opinion, theater – and the creative arts in general – needs time, space and money to grow, and we have very little of those things, especially in NY. It’s hard to take risks in a city where time is at a premium, and it’s even harder to fail when you are gambling with investor/producer money and high-ticket prices. Failure should be a part of the process, not something that ends a career. You can only experiment with failure when you have the space to do so.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Wales has a very rich theatrical history, and the majority of the plays I read as a young adult were by Welsh language playwrights. They still have great influence on me. Gwenlyn Parry introduced me to the world of the absurd, Meic Povey taught me how painful theater can be, Saunders Lewis played with language and adaptation in the most spectacular of ways and the Welsh language Panto taught me – from a very young age - that theater can be fun and entertaining.

I’ve also met a wealth of amazing people over the past ten years in NYC. I was lucky enough to assist Theresa Rebeck last year and she has taught me the true meaning of being a hard working playwright. Cusi Cram continues to inspire the better, kinder and more spiritual side of me, and Stefanie Zadravec who recently helped me understand that I didn’t have to be afraid of what I write. Her encouragement was everything at a time when I needed it. And of course Melissa Ross who makes me want to be a better Pisces and playwright! We have some amazing female playwrights in this city, and they continue to inspire me daily.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that makes me feel, that opens my heart to learning about a new experience and perspective and adjusts the way I think about the world. This comes in a million shapes and sizes.

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

A:  I’m learning to stop comparing myself to everyone else. It’s hard but essential. If you don’t it will cripple you and suffocate your writing. Once you get a handle on that, make friends with playwrights, we’re fun, a little weird but very supportive of each other.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Follow my twitter! Then I can tell you about the donuts I’ve eaten, my frustration with the MTA and of course give you info when I have plays for you to see. @melisaannis

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Nov 14, 2015

I Interview Playwrights Part 802: Daria Miyeko Marinelli



Daria Miyeko Marinelli

Hometown: Hartsdale, NY

Current Town: Astoria, NY

Q:  Tell me about Untameable.

A:  Untameable is an immersive diamond heist play. Ten Actors, Three Locations. One Rockstar of a Stage Manager. There's the thieves side where they're trying to steal an old diamond and repatriate it. There's the museum side trying to find their mole and keep the diamond safe. And in the center, there's our origin story of a Boy Prince who first owned the diamond and the Lady Queen who colonized it away, all of which is told in dance, naturally.

In real talk, it's about love and choice and big dreams.The characters choose, the audience gets to pick what to see, and part of the play is the fact that we never quite get the whole thing. It's also about doing big impossible things that shouldn't be done, and well, you know, trying to do them.

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I'm currently rewriting another split action play- one side is small town of hunters, other side is the woods with a wild wolf woman tribe that commits despicable acts of violence to initiate women into their tribe. Passion, violence, and the importance of rituals and storytelling. If we play our production cards right, there's also going to be a 15 minute war ballet in it, and different versions depending, again, as always, on audience choice.

Untameable closes end of November, I think we post-mort, sleep, and remind our friends we exist for a month, and then we'll dive in and start workshopping and piecing together this beast in January.

After that, it's trying to find the pulse for a big project that that's lightly been dubbed American Mythology- ultimately asking- what are our American Gods, with something about American History thrown in. The joke during production for Untameable (w a cast of 10, and 3 simultaneous locations, and more than a few technical headaches) is the next one's going to be a two hander over a kitchen table. Which I'm intrigued by. So, I think this one will be a series of 10-minute, 2 hander scenes over kitchen tables. The trick being there will be one for every year of American History. (And hopefully some food.) I've found a dramaturg and a director who make me look smarter than I am, so the goal is to write a lot of scenelets, drop a sheaf of pages on their respect desks and inboxs, and together we'll make it into an exciting theatrical experience. I've found people who will tolerate my appetite for the epic and I'm very grateful for it.

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 inappropriately saw Fight Club when I was 13 at a poorly supervised sleepover. After that I decided I was going to write a grimy violent novel, but it was going to be "experimental" in that it was going to only have dialogue. What I actually had written was a play. I wrote my first play and was calling it "an experimental novel."

Which is to say, I'm the kid who sticks out at the edge of the class photo. I'm kind of in the wrong spot and maybe (hopefully) it's endearing enough to not get me kicked out of the class. I'm rubbish at staying in line, I revel in independent deviation, I have a penchance for stumbling upon previously invented wheels and calling them new, and I have a deep affinity for fast banter dialogue, swift punches to the gut, and sweeping landscape moments where you watch the city burn.

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

A:  Diversity and Accessibility.

Tell me a broad range of stories and get a broad range of bodies portraying those stories, and you'll start opening up your audiences. And when you start opening up your audiences (assuming that you're also taking steps to ensure that the work is accessible to a diverse public, and that is vital) , you're then cultivating the next generation of theater artists to be stronger, braver, and more diverse than we are. And their work will be stronger, braver, and more diverse too. And if we can do that, if we can explode who's telling theater, coming to theater, and then making theater 10 years from now, then we've got the heart going and the blood pumping in our beautiful Usonian Theater Machine. And I'm into that. That's the thing I aim to change.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Bob Dylan when he played the electric guitar for the first time. Jose Rivera and Junot Diaz, because they're my heroes, full stop. Tess Slesinger for jamming a lot of words on paper and letting it live halfway between poetry and prose. Erik Ehn for teaching me the unknowability of the wreckage. Lisa D'Amour for prepping me for time with the wind at my face. Donmar, Kneehigh, Punchdrunk, because Yes.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that breaks things (hearts, barriers, and rules). Theater that pulls a gasp from you. Theater that makes you care, with stories so important we are reminded why storytelling is important. Work that needs to be live and reminds us what it is to be alive. Work that wakes us up and reminds of us all we can do. Work that is passionate and messy and unafraid.

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

A:  Figure out what drives you and position your work in relation to that. Is it accolades? Mastery of the craft? The people? The allure of power? Whatever it is, it's perfect to you, and you must make it your North Star. Hang it from your rearview mirror, blazon it on your heart, write it on that spot on the wall you first see upon wakening. And let that drive you to write, and never forget it and never stop writing. Accept your gods, harness your demons, and let their winds fill your sails.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Untameable: Immersive Diamond Heist. Playing til November 22nd. We're stealing diamonds and keeping them safe this weekend and next. Untameable.bpt.me. Wed-Sun: 8pm w a Sat 2pm too.

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Nov 4, 2015

I Interview Playwrights Part 801: Cheryl L. Davis



Cheryl L. Davis

Hometown:  Mt. Vernon, New York

Current Town: New York, New York

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  At approximately 6:14 p.m., on my plate is (are?): Bridges, a new musical commissioned by the Berkeley Playhouse, which is due to premiere February 2016; a rewrite of my play Tuxedo Junction (about Alabama Jazz Musician Erskine Hawkins), for the Birmingham Childrens' Theater, also for February 2016; tweaks on my play Carefully Taught for the Astoria Performing Arts Center, which is going up from 11/5-11/21; a new historical epic work with director/dramaturg Gwynn MacDonald and playwright Randall David Cook dealing with race, sexuality, and secrets in America (more later!), and; some rewrites on a TV pilot spec script. Aren't you glad you asked?

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

A:  How about as a writerperson? I still have memories of seeing my very first play in elementary school. There was a girl who played a daisy and when I saw her in the hallways the next day, I called out "Hi, Daisy!" She, of course, thought I was crazy. But that was how caught up in the experience I was. After that, I decided to write a play for my entire second grade class. And, so nobody felt left out, I wrote a role for every single kid. Needless to say, that was extremely time-consuming, and since I only wrote out one copy, the play was lost to the ages in the grubby little hands of second-graders passing it between themselves during recess.

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

A:  Make it more affordable for wider audiences. My play Maid's Door was able to reach people at the Billie Holiday Theater in Brooklyn who can't afford Manhattan ticket prices. My play Tuxedo Junction is not only going to appear at the BCT, but it will tour schools in the Birmingham area and introduce children in poorer communities to theater.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Lynn Nottage. Not only do I find her work incredibly gripping, her works differ greatly from each other.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Work that takes me by surprise, either dramatically or comically.
Some years ago in London, I saw a production of Joshua Sobol’s play “Ghetto”, about Jews making theater while imprisoned in a ghetto in WWII. The characters were repeatedly berated and told “No theater in a graveyard” – yet they continued to raise their voices in song, and to perform to the heights and depths of their souls. In one particular scene, a Nazi soldier raised a gun to shoot a terrified young woman. A puppeteer stepped in between the soldier and his target and made his puppet (also played by a young woman) stare down the barrel of the Nazi’s gun, all while telling jokes. I was on the edge of my seat, not knowing whether to laugh, gasp, or breathe. That is what I want to do to audiences.

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

A:  The standard "Keep writing", but more than that, keep getting your writing out there. It doesn't do anyone any good if it just sits on your computer. The only way you can learn is to hear your words being spoken.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Come see (and be) Carefully Taught at the Astoria Performing Arts Center from 11/5-11/21! And if you're in Berkeley CA in February, come see Bridges, and if you're in Birmingham AL that same month, swing on by and swing at Tuxedo Junction!

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Nov 3, 2015

800 PLAYWRIGHT INTERVIEWS



Dear friends,

For about 6 years I've been doing these interviews.  In total, I've probably spent somewhere between 200-400 hours of my life in service of these interviews.  I love that people read and enjoy them.  I'm glad they exist.  But I know I won't be able to keep doing this forever.  If you want to help out, please consider a small donation.



A
Sean Abley
Rob Ackerman
Liz Duffy Adams
Johnna Adams
Tony Adams
David Adjmi
Keith Josef Adkins
Nastaran Ahmadi
Derek Ahonen
Kathleen Akerley
Ayad Akhtar
Rob Askins
Chiara Atik
Forrest Attaway
David Auburn
Hannah Bos
Leslie Bramm
Benjamin Brand
Jami Brandli
Jennifer Fawcett
Joshua Fardon
Caitlin Saylor Stephens
Ariel Stess
Vanessa Claire Stewart
Kate Tarker
Jona Tarlin
Judy Tate
Roland Tec
Cori Thomas
Matthew B. Zrebski 

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